dreamland

Ahh bliss.... when the fussy Lorelei finally succumbs to the jigglig of my knees and falls asleep in a limp little puddle of sweet drooley baby-ness

Buy nothing day

As I usually do I will be participating in Buy Nothing Day.... unless I need groceries and if I do that I make sure to limit the impulse purchases.

I've always thought the Black Friday rush is ridiculous and mindless, and the fact that it is used as an economic indicator even more ridiculous, so I guess I wasn't too surprised when on Facebook, a number of accusing comments were posted saying that participating in Buy Nothing Day would make the economy even worse.

Say what? It is all about MINDFUL shopping, instead of charging in and fighting over the last teapot just because it's on sale.

More to be coming in an edit after I stew about it some more :)

In other news...

This LOLcat sums up my opinion of my household company tonight


more animals

New Hair

I got that hair cut....
This was one of my crappy attempts to take a picture of it last night. Freshly styled and all that. I didn't take a print out of that other haircut with me because my printer doesn't work.. but I think it turned out pretty good. Unfortunately it doesn't look as nice freshly washed and air dried because my hair is naturally really wavy .. and I'm pretty unlikely to actually straighten it often.*sigh*

In general I love the girl who cuts my hair.. she's nice, easy to talk to, and even if I don't manage to explain what I want quite right, I still end up with a hair cut that looks good.

Crabs

I'm in a crabby mood today. The baby has been all short attention span about nursing and so grouchy that I had to take her on a long walk to get her to nap. The boy has been playing video games and watching football all day- not so bad except his computer is now in the living room so I get to hear the constant clicking of the mouse all day. The neighbors sprinkler is going right now... which is nice because it's not waking me up at 4 am but bad because the sound that wakes me up at 4 am is going NOW so I can't go take a nap in the silence. It's also burning hot in here between roasting the duck and the boy deciding to start a fire even though it is warm out.

Not happy here.

Really now with the judgements? Really?

As a stay at home mom new to the area I live in and not religious, there are limited ways to meet new people.

The thing that as been most successful is Meetup.com. While I was still pregnant I joined a pregnancy group and then got involved with a "new moms" group after Lorelei was born. One thing I have found striking is the immediate judgments I have experienced when getting to know someone new.

I meet someone at a playdate after being told by a friend that we will probably get along well, and the entire time we are spending time together I felt as if I was under a microscope. I've already got a boyfriend, I'm not looking to date who I am meeting... hello, I'm just looking for moms to hang out with so me and my little girl can have some daytime company. Two times the person I met up with has dissappeared after the playdate without so much as a "nice to meet you" after drilling me with wierd questions for an hour or so.

Now don't get me wrong, I have met some wonderful women too, but I am amazed to see people writing off others after only knowing them an hour, and the way that I have been bombarded with questions I was apparently being judged on.

Some of the people I have met that ended up being friends are people who I probably would have written off if I questioned them that way upon first meeting. For example, I think breastfeeding is super important and every mom should at least try, had a home birth and think that is the way to go if you are low risk, feel strongly about recycling, and love cats... yet I count as friends women who got the epidural at the hospital the second they could, never tried to breastfeed, don't recycle even though it is offered in their neighborhoods and ... well, no one has expressed a dislike of cats but even if they hated them I'd deal. I wish those people who felt inclined to evaluate people as soon as they met them just relaxed and enjoyed other people's company.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the differences are what keeps things interesting ... and having too many friends of the same opinions as you make for a narrow range of experiences and viewpoints.

Sleepiness

The kiddo has stopped sleeping through the night. I really feel for those whose babies have never slept through the night because somehow I am a zombie after just a few days of this.

Also she's spitting up a ton and it usually smells really acidic, which is unusual. Used to usually just be basically like spilled milk, now it seems more like actual throw up. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not a fan.

In the name of science

Will hot cocoa mix made with coffee as the liquid be tasty like a mocha... or a disaster.

Stay tuned for the answer!

(The answer- yum!)

Makeover time?

So my hairs grown out into a shapeless shoulder length, my glasses prescription is HORRIBLE, the baby keeps trying to eat my hair and my glasses... so I think it's time for something new.

I'm thinking contacts and shorter hair.

I like this hair style but I'm not sure what it would look like on me:

Need a laugh?

ere

My cat's would be like "no way man" and be out of there in no time flat.

Etsy fun

I finally got around to making an Etsy store for some of my... junk. right now I have a few burp clothes and some tag toys on it... but soon I'm going to list (as vintage) a bunch of little Wade miniatures I collected as a kid, some vintage buttons and bead and ... random little crafty stuff I will probably never use that my mom keeps getting at auctions and giving to me, more sewn stuff and... who knows what else. Because of the "who knows what else" part... I've named my store "Chaotic Whimsey"

Now we'll see what happens with it.

Holding my breath

The native Virginian in me is cringing from what I just did.

I just planted a small vegetable garden. In. Mid. November.

We went to the Natural Gardner on Saturday because my boyfriend wanted to ask them about planting grass seed. I was seduced by the seedlings and the assurances of the staff who said no, the plants wouldn't need to be covered up when it frosted and yes, it was a perfectly fine time to plant.



Today when the baby finally took her long nap I went out to the back yard and used a garden fork to remove the grass by the fence.. and planted the seedlings before I could procrastinate until the poor little plants died. I didn't get too many because I still don't completely believe that I can plant a garden in mid November and actually have it survive. What was planted is: broccoli, cauliflower, 2 spinach and 3 loose leaf lettuces.


Check out the cactus selection at this place- makes me want to add some cacti to our landscaping sometime.

Baklava

Yesterday a friend and I made some baklava. We followed this recipe pretty much to a T.
We used the honey sauce, which was tasty and made the whole house smell heavenly.

Some advice
Don't try to chop whole almonds. They are so hard that you really should start with slivered or slices almonds

Don't try to grind up cloves unless you have a spice grinder. Big chunks of cloves=badness

Don't.... follow this recipe to a T. It will be bottom heavy and stick to the pan pretty badly. I really recommend a few more layers of phyllo on the bottom than the recipe calls for. Also, probably more than 2 pieces between layers.



In general it is tasty- but we are going to try again with some changes.

Extreme Cakemaking!

I found this on Cakewrecks and it's pretty amazing. They actually made a full sized mock up car out of entierly edible materials, mostly cake (180 eggs anyone?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwBE1l6QexU

If you want to see it more in depth, there is a "making of" video too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb3tlVlJhgY

Anyone want to help me out and tell me how to embed a video onto this blog?

That Tongue!

Lorelei has gotten very interested in her tongue recently. She spent a good twenty minutes the other night licking her dad's shirt when her got home from work. This series of pictures makes me laugh, and I am the one of those moods where I need to post a laugh.

Whinng...

I have been sooo tired lately. Not grouchy at all though. Just exhausted, want to cuddle up with the baby and the boyfriend and rest... sleep... do nothing.

I have tons to do but the few hours a day when I can do more involved things because the baby is napping seems to also be the times when I am dragging the most.

I guess my body is putting all it's energy into healing from that surgery, and making replacement blood for what I'm losing while healing.

*le sigh*

Composty goodness

We finally figured out where to put our compost pile on Saturday! I know this doesn't sound like a big accomplishment, but we have been off and on talking about it since April. We cleared the ground and outlined the area with some bricks the old owners left and voila! a place to dump our scraps.

It makes me happy to see that corner of the yard being used for something instead of just being a weedy mess. The pumpkin makes me laugh too. I could have broken it up to put it there, but I couldn't bring myself to smash it's smiley mug.

Surgery?

First as a warning, if you consider it TMI to read about a medical procedure that I had, with a fair amount of detail- stop reading now. Come back another time and just skip this. If at any point you're thinking "I didn't want to know that" also stop reading and skip this. If you get to the end and then leave a rude comment... boo on you ;)

Friday I had a procedure done called a LEEP procedure.

It is an outpatient surgery done to remove precancerous cervical tissue. It is what they do after a pap comes back suspicious, and then after a biopsy procedure called a colposcopy comes back positive for precancerous or cancerous tissue. Personally I had a HGSIL- high grade squamous intraepitheliel lesion. The midwife who did the colposcopy described is as a pre-precancer. She told me she was pretty sure that the results of the colposcopy would come back saying I needed a LEEP procedure so she talked to me a little about it before I left. I really appreciated that because the results did indeed come back positive and when they did I had already talked to someone in person about what that meant.

So I was scheduled for an outpatient procedure at a surgery center.

I have never ever had anything that even somewhat resembles a surgery. I never had stitches until 4 1/2 months ago when I had my daughter. Just the word surgery scares me. Looking at the information I was required to fill out at the center I would start to freak out. No food or water after midnight, no jewelry, a person should be waiting to drive you home, if they were not waiting they would require contact information of the person responsible for your care... blah blah... auugh.

I was also scheduled for a pre-op appointment with the doctor that would be preforming the procedure.

So on Tuesday I went to the doctors office and talked to the wonderful Dr Sebestyen, the only ob/gyn in the area to work directly with midwives. She's warm and friendly and I felt very comfortable with her. She puts things simply so they are easily understood but also doesn't mind explaining in further detail if you want to know. We started talking about the anaesthetic and she informs me that it will make me groggy. In my opinion what's the point unless I'm going to be actually asleep? Being groggy and uncontrolled will only make it worse in my mind. Then she says I will be unable to nurse my baby for 24 hours after the anaesthetic. While I do have frozen milk stored in the fridge, I prefer not to give it to her often. The baby usually only gets one bottle occasionally when I'm gone for a moms night out.

But then the doctor offers me another option- an in office outpatient procedure. This would be done without the general anaesthetic, with only a local of lidocaine. Then I would not have to hold off on nursing the baby and it would cost me far less. Also, I wouldn't have to spend all day at a surgery facility. Dr Sebestyn told me that she used to do the procedure in office often when she was practicing in another state.

I wouldn't say I jumped at the idea, but it sounded very viable to me, so after a few minutes consideration I decided to go with the in-office procedure. I'm going to spell out how this went for me, because beforehand I looked a lot for someone else's firsthand account and only found accounts from people who had general anaesthetic during the procedure so only remember an iv and then recovery.

The Procedure

On Friday I showed up at 3:15 for the procedure. I had my boyfriend drop me off because while I thought I would be fine to drive afterwards, if I wasn't there wasn't an easy way to get to me if I had the car. The baby can't exactly ride on a motorcycle, nor be left at home while picking me up. If the truck had been running I would have driven myself and just left the car seat at home.

I get there, wait for forever as usual, chat with a lovely lady about her 6 week old baby while she asked me what it's like to have a four month old... and finally get called back. I say wait for forever, but it probably just felt like that because I was nervous.

They call me back to the nurses station and get my blood pressure taken, and am made to take a pregnancy test. Apparently they don't preform the procedure if you're pregnant. Makes sense, since the cervix is what holds a fetus in where it belongs. It was funny being asked the date of my last period. I had to think a little while about it. I think the right answer was September 2007. If I was wrong, it was close enough. At least it got the point across.

Then I was taken into the procedure room and introduced to the nurse that was the machine technician. The office doesn't own the machine that is used for the procedure, so they get it brought in and a technician is supplied to work the machine and assist the doctor.

I signed some stuff, and paid the machine technician , got undressed and then the doctor came in. She talke to me for a minute and then we got started. I explained that I'd prefer them to be as gentle as they could with the speculum (soreness left over from tearing during birth only 4 months ago) but that wasn't really an option because of the electrocautry equipment they use. More then usual during a gynecologist appointment, they need to make sure everything is well out of the way when they work on the cervix. The equipment cuts and cauterizes at the same time which cuts down on the bleeding and eliminates the need for stitches.

So the speculum was inserted, and a sticky grounding patch was placed on my leg. Then the area was swabbed with betadine. After that lidocaine was injected into the cervix to numb it. This is where it gets fun. I don't know if I react more than most people to lidocaine injections or not... but my heart started pounding, and I got very warm. For a few minutes I thought I was going to pass out. I looked up at the ceiling up the skirts of the little paper circus girls on the mobile hung above the table. I credit those little circus girls for keeping me distracted during the procedure.

When the doctor started the procedure, there was a vacuum attached to the speculum so there was no smoke or burning smell like I had heard mentioned about the procedure. I did feel a pinching feeling that freaked me out some, but that was about it for what I felt. It was over in less than five minutes.

I did see the amount of tissue they removed and it freaked me out a bit- one piece was as big as the last knuckle of my thumb. The doctor says at least some of it typically grows back. I stayed a bit lightheaded for a few hours and still 2 days later feel some light cramping. Nothing too bad in the way of cramping though. I've definitely had worse period cramps.

The doctor told me I did great and that she thought I made the right decision, and we made a follow up appointment for 2 weeks out.

I went to the zoo yesterday and did some light yard work and housework... I did make sure to take a nap though after the zoo. Healing from a surgery while nursing a baby means treating your body a little nicer than usual.

So that was my experience of a LEEP procedure done with only local anaesthetic. Did anyone reading this have a drastically different experience? Have any questions? Let me know :)

Zoo time

We went to the Austin Zoo and animal sanctuary today with a big group of families. I wasn't too sure if I was going to be up for it because I had a outpatient surgery yesterday, but surprisingly I seem to be healing fast. Poor baby still doesn't get any bath time with mommy for a full month. A month is a long time for babies so I'm fairly upset about that.

But back to the point... the zoo is a little place to the west of Austin, with a beautiful view of the countryside from one side. I wish they had an overlook. It would have been a nice addition. To get this picture I had to stand on one of the many picnic tables that were scattered around.


It is filled mainly with rescued animals, many of which look a bit sad to be there. A few different cages had explanations of lifespans of various animals and information about how much upkeep the animals take to make people think twice before adopting animals they won't be able to continue to care for.

I had read online before leaving that it was a bad place for strollers... turns out I wouldn't have minded having one, but the ground was indeed rocky and there were steps here and there that would have been a pain to get around. We brought the Ergo but Lorelei didn't stay in it long before starting to fuss, so we just carried her over our shoulders most of the time.


The lions were full of piss and vinegar- one even jumped up against the cage and roared scaring a little boy to tears while the zookeepers were getting their meal ready.

All the bigger animals had empty beer kegs to play with which was pretty amusing. Tigers were out and entertaining the crowds when we first got there. One fat one was in and out of a murky looking pool of water and playing with the kegs, others were paceing and eyeing the crowd.
The big cats are always a bit difficult to get a good look at in a zoo because they hide out and sleep a lot typically. The leopards were so sacked out taking sun baths when we saw them that I didn't even bother to try to get pictures. I did get a neat picture of the panther.


One drawback I have noticed with my new camera is that it likes to autofocus on the wires of the cages, and the manual focus is very touchy and hard to use for some reason. I'll have to figure that out better sometime.

There were tons of turtles, which made me wonder who is abandoning or giving up all these turtles. Also there were a lot of monkeys scattered about as well as parrots of various types. Somehow I had never realized that monkeys made chittering sounds like small birds. Made them cuter, but I know that allowed to run free they would be hellions.


One part that seems like a big draw was the goats and other farm animals, but I am not exactly sure why they have them there, other than the fact kids like seeing and feeding them. They had a petting pen and there were a bunch of older kids running in and out of the cage having a ball. I'm sure when Lorelei is older, she'll have fun feeding the goats and deer and other tame herbivores... but I enjoy seeing the more typical and exotic zoo critters more. There were lots of both types of animals though so it was a good mix.

All in all it was a nice afternoon- and for less than the price of going to the movies. Tired out the baby though. She went down for a nap as soon as we got home and has woken up twice to nurse but is still sleeping as of 7pm. She's probably not going to sleep much tonight.

Voting.. choosing like a toddler?

Here's my sure to be very unpopular opinion on voting after watching this video:



Voting for the general public reminds me of some parenting advice I read for getting a toddler dressed properly to go outside in the winter.

Let the kid choose which hat- the red one or the blue one, which gloves- the fuzzy ones or the smooth ones. But don't overwhelm them with choices. Their hat, gloves and clothes may not match but at least they are dressed warmly.

The system keeps the general public feeling like they have some control but really, we are being told to choose between the evils, in an embedded system that despite the hype can only change so much. You need to get out, vote, make a choice.... but only within the parameters. Sure, there are options to write in candidates, vote green party, vote libertarian; but the system is so entrenched that few people step outside their comfort zone to do that. They pick the red candidate or the blue candidate often not truly liking either of the options ... but at least they're voting, right?

Let me point out before the comments that I am not meaning this election specifically. This year many people had a strong allegiance to one side or the other. I am meaning the general process of presidential elections.

Holograms on TV?

I was surprised to see someone being interviewed by "hologram" earlier on the election c0verage. There were a few news articles about it by the time I got to looking including this amusing blog post. It made me laugh so I decided it was worth pointing out.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/11/04/tonight-on-cnn-interview-with-a-hologram.aspx

All the articles mentioned that the hologram was made by filming the person being interviewed in a "tent" with thirty some cameras, but the part I was curious about- the projection- wasn't even hinted at.

Oh well.. maybe they will explain some other time.

No luck

I tried to submit some pictures to Dreamstime yesterday with the hope of making a little bit of money selling microstock photos. Turns out my photos, while technically good, aren't enough better than their current stock for them to accept.

I can't decide whether to give up on the idea, or to just try some other sites.

Gnomeness

This hat is one of the cutest baby things I have ever seen. Someone needs to teach me how to make one... or I need to break down and buy one. Knitschmidt on Etsy is the genius behind this particular one.

I'm not usually one that finds any baby items "must have because they are soooo cute".... until this!

Rawr!

Lorelei loves this picture of herself too. Coming soon- a picture of her laughing at this picture on the computer screen. Tonight, we're off to a post-Halloween Halloween party. Which is good because we did nothing to celebrate yesterday but give away all but three pieces of our candy.