He Never Ceases to Amaze Me

My dad. (The Doug one)

Abby's birthday was 2 weeks ago and mine was 2 days ago. Personally, I don't care about birthdays, but I'm thinking it's kind of a big deal to a 5 year old. And she's MY 5 year old, so I don't like it when her grandfather disregards her the way he does.

So, last night at precisely 11:59PM, I got a text from dear old dad. It started with a disgusting picture of an open sore/rash on his leg. I scrolled past that to see if there was additional information.

He said, "Happy b'day, absnlisa. G'pa,s ankle's going as freddy kruger's face. Having a tough time shaking this one. Good chance 2b in az 11/6-7 4 boat action at fartbird lake"

He spoke more about his stupid rash than his only granddaughter. Did I mention before that he finally came to visit her for the first time this past December when he moved his dying mother down from Eureka, CA, through his hometown in Southern California, and to my brother's and my town here in AZ? Abby was 4 by then and this was his first time meeting her. And, truth be told, he didn't even come to see her - he came to set his mother up in a home to live out her last days close to my brother and me.

So, now, we have this second pregnancy and he has YET to acknowledge it in any way, shape, or form.

I asked him if he was going to congratulate me before and if he knew what I meant. He assured me he knew what I meant and said he'd call me later. Guess who didn't call later or congratulate me?

I sent him a text with a picture from the sonogram. No reply.

Today when I replied to him I said, "Nice. I will make sure to send a pic of my placenta 4 your belated bday" since his bday is approximately a month or so before my due date. Still no acknowledgment of the fact that I am pregnant.

He should be here next weekend for some boat races. I may or may not see him, and he may or may not guess from looking at me that I am pregnant - assuming he just hasn't figured it out somehow. But after last time he asked me if I was pregnant when I wasn't and my "fuck you very much" comment, I doubt he will say anything then!

I just wonder if, now that he got the money from his mom's "estate" and he has a car, if he will broach the subject of coming out after this second grandchild is born.

Only time will tell.

Bulk Trash Pick Up

Do you ever wish that life had a bulk trash pick up day? I see that schedule in the water bill all the time and it makes me wish I could locate the one where someone comes and takes all the other garbage out of my life for me.

Another Reason, Another Blog

In case you're late arriving, you may not have realized I got pregnant!

In order to keep my Facebook relatively/reasonably baby talk free out of respect for those that don't want to be CONSTANTLY BOMBARDED with belly shots and ultrasound pictures, I started ANOTHER blog that I can share with anyone on there.

"LisaCarriesOn" is still somewhat private, so I would appreciate any efforts You, Reader, can make to keep it that way. I do realize there are ways of finding this blog, but I don't want to hand deliver it to everyone under the sun. I'm funny that way.

So, without further ado, the link to the new blog is www.BringItOnSpawn.blogspot.com or just click on Bring It On, Spawn! to go directly there.

I hope having multiple outlets for different areas of my life doesn't spread me too thin.

London

I just realized I never published this post from August! I just copied and pasted from what I posted on Facebook, so it's a total repeat, but it doesn't feel right to not have something about our London trip on my blog! :)

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8/14/10 - Day 1 - Red eye flight to Heathrow. Smelled some stinky people in line to get on the plane. Wouldn't you know it, they sat right behind us on the plane and had us gagging the entire flight! No option for 3 seats together, so we just stuck it out. In flight entertainment system shot, so it was a LONG flight for Marti, who doesn't sleep on planes like I do. Note to self: Abby is big (old) enough to just sit in a seat now. Check the carseat as luggage and give yourselves some extra space next time.



8/15/10 Day 2 - Arrived in the afternoon and took it easy hanging out with Sadie, Roger, and Jilly. Jilly made the most amazing macaroni and cheese for Abby, which Abby promptly decided she wanted to eat for dinner every night while we were there!



8/16/10 Day 3 - Took the train down to the Natural History Museum. Oh, the lines! (I mean "QUEUES!") Apparently I was spoiled on my winter trips, as the children are on break from school right now and everything has a line now. Lots of walking. Lots of stairs. Very tired Lisa. Abby loves chasing pigeons!!!!



8/17/10 Day 4 - Marti took Abby and I to see Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theater. Abby loved it, but was a little sad at the end that she couldn't go backstage to meet the cast. Where does she get these ideas from?!?!?! We also walked through Trafalgar Square and Abby got to chase some more pigeons. (Silly kid!!)



8/18/10 Day 5 - Double Decker bus tour through London. So-so, but I did enjoy just sitting on my ass for a while, checking out the sights in the cool air. Ended the day at Sadie's place so we could stay there a couple of nights and spend some more time with her.



8/19/10 Day 6 - Met up with Marti's old school mate and his family. John picked us up to take us out to the club in the country to meet up with his wife, Nicky, and their 3 kids. Abby puked 5 minutes before arriving - all over herself and the car seat she borrowed from John for the trip. NICE! The kids romped on the lawn while we enjoyed sitting on the terrace having drinks. Then we had lunch and fed the ducks by the stream, followed by a stroll down to the sports courts where everyone played games for a while. Another stroll over to the circuit training field, through the flower garden, and then back over to the putting greens where the senior Gullys triumphed over the Harrises while the children played happily in lawn chairs and the adjacent playground. Sadie took us out to dinner and it rained for about 5 minutes as we took a taxi to the restaurant. Lovely day!



8/20/10 Day 7 - Nice long walk/romp in Regent's Park. Fed the ducks and had ice cream. Abby chased more pigeons. Jilly made dinner for all of us, plus Barry, Susan, Claudia, and Alex came over as well. Good God, that woman can cook!!!!!



8/21/10 Day 8 - Took Abby over to Regent's Park again and rented a paddle boat for a while.



8/22/10 Day 9 - I woke up early for once and went for a couple of walks around the neighborhood to get some fresh air and stuff. ;) Roger and Jilly took us all out to lunch at Roger's favorite Italian restaurant, Scalini. OMG. YUM!!!!!!



8/23/10 Day 10 - Left Roger and Jilly's at about 11 AM and arrived home after 5 AM (8 PM Arizona time). No stinky drunks on this flight, but there were some ridiculously slutty drunks across the aisle from us. Cheap entertainment. That was good because the airline's headsets were absolute CRAP and made every word of dialogue sound like Charlie Brown's teacher speaking through a wadded up gym sock. I did use my own ear buds for a while but after trading those back and forth with Marti and Abby trying to find a happy solution for all of us, I finally broke down crying! The flight crew kept butting into the program with announcements, and after 4 of these megaphone-esque blasts in my ears, I couldn't stand it! I had to have the volume turned up pretty high to hear the dialogue, but movie on high volume is NOT the same as flight crew directly to my brain on high volume. I know TV stations change volume levels for commercials so you hear them when you walk away, but nobody attached to their seat by a headphone wire needs announcements blasted into their brain stem! Cross "seeing the upstairs of a 747 from the inside" off my bucket list and add a side of "pilot gave me a tour of the cockpit" just for kicks! Sweet! Customs was a breeze and this time Marti was a citizen, so we got to go straight through the short line together instead of me waiting for him to clear immigration. Woo hoo!!!!! And, we even got a little unpacking done once we arrived home.



8/24/10 Day 11 - Recovery. Mom and Ron dropped the dogs off (and donuts!) so Mom could get her Abby fix. ;) Abby was bouncing off the walls, so Marti decided she could go to school today after all. THANK GOD!!!! My idea of recovery doesn't involve chasing or being chased around by an overactive four year old. Sorry.

Soon...

I haven't been blogging lately. I will be again soon. There is a lot going on right now and I just haven't been able to get to my blog, but I want to.

Today is not the day though.

I'm just mentally breaking the ice today.

For now, it's off to bathe the little one then off to bed for both of us.

Zzzzzzzzzzz!

I.C.E., I.C.E. Baby!

Marti and I have had a little tension between us lately. It happens, right?

So anyway, today he comes up to me and it seems he was looking at my text messages on my phone for whatever reasons. He asks me with very serious look on his face why I have him listed as "ICE HUSBAND MARTI" in my phone. As pissed as he looked, I found it VERY hard not to laugh.

Some of you may already know this. There is a thing people do with their cell phones that supposedly emergency responders are supposed to know about. It's called I.C.E. or In Case of Emergency. If you are ever in an accident, they can grab your cell phone, go straight to your contacts, find "I.C.E. Whoever" and know they are calling the right person RIGHT AWAY.

I'm glad he asked. Imagine him going through the weekend thinking I was calling him cold or frigid or whatever. That would have made for a shitty date night tonight!!!! I wonder if he just saw that for the first time today or if he finally worked up the nerve to confront me on what he thought was a major "dis" after all this time?

meh.

I'm not "feelin' it" but I'm going to try anyway. I have a humorous tidbit I've been dying to share, so if nothing else, you can giggle with me at this one and I'll go on my not-so-merry way that has been ever present these days. Oh, that reminds me... My dad, too...

So, in this random mishmash of garbage today, you get to hear about our quail nest. Just at the top of our driveway, we had a HUGE lizard on the wall, which turned out to be stalking a nest full of quail eggs. (Fourteen to be exact!) I only discovered this when I scared him while trying to take his picture and he ran into the bush. When I moved the branches of the bush to try to see him, he ran out -- as did mama quail, at which time I spied the nest in the rocks with 14 eggs!

Gosh, how long has it been there now? And you know what? I see daddy quail on it more than mama quail! What's up with that? I didn't know they shared duties, but maybe with that lizard lurking, they struck a deal.

What's so humorous about that, you ask? Well, it's been a while and still no peeps. So, Marti asked me the other day how long the eggs take to hatch and when I looked at it, if they were getting any bigger.

You read that right, and damn straight I told him that was going straight to the blog!!!

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So, there's this guy that my mom married, and sometimes I call him dad.

Sometimes I wonder WTF!?!?!

Dad had always been into racing. Motorcycles, cars, whatever. I hear when my brother was 5 months old, dad zipped him into his jacket and went dirt biking. Nice...

So, yea. NASCAR weekend was a busy week at work with all the pit crews and drivers coming into town. It all started on a Thursday and was over on Sunday. Guess who was not only in the state, but in town that whole time (and then some!) and didn't call me once until a scant 3 hours before he was leaving town a week after he arrived?

Guess who never once asked about his one and only granddaughter until I showed up without her to "receive" something from him on behalf of my now deceased grandmother on his way out of town? I told him it was my mom's night with her and she had taken Abby out to dinner.

Honestly, I'm actually glad he didn't tell me he was coming into town for a week. I'm glad I didn't spend the entire week wondering WTF and if he was ever going to call. I'm glad I didn't spend an entire week running around to stay ahead of schedule on the off chance that he'd call, just to be let down at the end of the night when the phone never rang, or if it did ring, it was only so he could pass along his last minute excuse for bailing on me. And yes, that's what would have happened. That's pretty much how it went for the weeks upon weeks that he was here around the holidays before his mother died. It sucked.

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I had another grandmother die the previous December and we recently bought her car from my other dad. (The guy that actually ACTS like a dad!) Our garage has acted as a receptacle for everything baby for the last 5 years, so needless to say, there's no room for a third car and we're not quite ready to sell the second car yet.

Every weekend as we get closer and closer to another Arizona summer, I feel the pressure to clean out the garage so we can finally take possession of the car and move it into our garage. (Our association forbids parking on the street for more than 24 hours, so we just leave the car at my mom's for now.) This weekend was the weekend to get to work on the garage for numerous reasons. (The prime reason was I needed some alone time and it is a solo task for me!)

While out there, I went through all of Abby's clothes one "last" (?) time and pulled a few choice pieces to keep for memories' sake. I put boxes and boxes of clothes, toys, and baby gear out to the driveway to be donated to Goodwill. As the day went on, I started self-medicating with beer. I don't know. Maybe that helped, maybe it made it worse. But, I got R.E.A.L.L.Y D.E.P.R.E.S.S.E.D!!!!!!

It's always tough for me to go through the baby stuff because it symbolizes lost dreams and pointless plans we made. It brings up all too vivid memories of my miscarriages and everything I felt when they happened. Basically, when I dive into the boxes of stuff, all the cows come home to roost. (I know, it's chickens, but whatever!!!) And ALL that stuff just comes pouring out. Every. Time.

It is sooooo hard parting with the stuff, but I know it just weighs me down. That's partly why we're donating it all instead of selling it. We can give it away in one fell swoop. My brother had a saying about trying to make something hurt less by "cutting the puppy's tail off one inch at a time" and it's better to just lop it off in one fell swoop. So, lop I did!!!!

Well, I TRIED to, at least.

Apparently all the stuff wouldn't fit in the SUV, so I had to move a little bit of it back into the garage for now. But a good portion of it was in Marti's SUV to go away. He did NOT like that and ended up emptying half of it back into the garage in a not so delicate manner!

He's pissed. I'm pissed. The garage is more of a mess than when I started. I still have baby gear all over the place. I'm certain he didn't even KNOW I spent the day out there bawling my eyes out.

Is it wrong for me to resent the fact that he doesn't know what this does to me?

Is it wrong for me to resent that he didn't anticipate how much it would hurt, let alone notice the tear streaked face every time he came into the garage?

Was it wrong for me to be mad at him while I sat atop the ladder crying as he merrily jaunts into the garage obliviously asking if we have any margarita mix?

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Not bad for a "not feelin' it" kind of night. That was much more than I thought I'd get out here!

Not So Proud of Arizona Today

I can't add much to what Julie already said on this other than, as an Arizonan, I am LIVID! As you can see from my recent history, I'm a little short on words lately, but I feel the need to get this out there.

Arizona non grata

http://www.alittlepregnant.com/alittlepregnant/2010/04/arizona-non-grata.html

It Was a Nice Place to Visit, But...

I wouldn't want to live there.

We have some great neighbors with a little girl that is just a bit younger thsn Abby. They have play dates and recently they took Abby without me there for her first unsupervised play date because I had stuff to do. Tonight they needed me to watch their daughter, so naturally, I agreed to have her over for a while so they could do what they needed to. She was an angel!

The thing is, when I got the call, Abby was already in the middle of another play date. Well, that wasn't a problem, but I just had to leave a little earlier than I would have normally.

I asked the dad of the first date kids if he wanted to drop them off at my place since I was going to be tied down anyway, and then he, my husband, and the others could go out and play without worrying about the kids.

At first they all declined, but of course as soon as I got home I got the call that they would be dropping them off.

So, I'm getting to my point.

While it was a blast for me and the kids today, I can't see it being fun on a regular basis. I didn't even have time to let our dogs out, let alone get any household chores done.

So, as I was saying, I thought tonight was fun to "visit" but I wouldn't want to live there.

I am not meant to be that mom with a whole brood of kids. I am embracing these little peeks at the life I'm missing out on. They make things easier sometimes.

Random, Vivid Dream

I had the most random dream! It was so vivid that it made me kind of laugh when I woke up.

A little back story to this is that Abby never really was a nurser. I had to pump almost exclusively. So, there were difficulties that I guess are still sticking with me.

Back to the dream. I kept dreaming that I was trying to get a baby to nurse. (And it wasn't Abby as far as I could tell.) I was trying over and over and over to get the baby to latch on, but to no avail.

When I woke up, my chest was dripping wet with sweat just like when I first came home from having Abby! That seems to be one thing nobody warns new moms about. They could have warned me I was going to sweat like a whore in church and that it would be wise to sleep on and with bath towels for a while just to make things easier when I woke up drenched in the middle of the night. I'm not usually a sweater, so I do remember how odd that all seemed to me.

So, not only did I wake up with a sweaty chest, but the next day, my breasts were sore, just like when their sole purpose was feeding Abby.

So weird!

I mentioned it to Marti, and with a totally straight face, he asked me, "Is that why you kept trying to stick your nipple in my mouth last night?"

Ha ha! For a split second I believed him that I might have done that in my sleep!

She Gets it. She Gets it Not.

Anyone who has spent any time around little kids knows that from time to time they say or do things that can make you cringe. After reading one father's tale, I know better than to accept a "cup of tea" unless I predetermine from where the water was obtained.

My daughter, Abby, can generally be trusted in matters of the potty, but at four years old, she still does not grasp the idea of "if an item touches something dirty, then that item is now dirty, too - at least until it is properly cleaned, if it is a washable item." Likewise, once said item is dirty, EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING it touches is just as dirty.

Abby has some cute little pink princess gloves that she loves to wear. I have had to tell her every time she goes potty that she has to take them off so they don't get dirty. She's starting to understand that, if only on a procedural level.

That brings us to this quiet Sunday morning. Earlier today, I noticed her gloves sitting on top of a box in the bathroom. When she brought them to me and asked me to help her put them on, I didn't think anything of it. I just assumed she had taken them off and forgotten them in there yesterday.

As things always go with little ones at this age, as soon as I got the gloves on her, she had to go potty! I gently reminded her that even though it would be disappointing to take them off JUST as she had gotten them on, she'd HAVE TO take them off to go potty or they could get dirty.

Sharp little girl that she is, she instantly agrees with me, and even goes so far as to share a quick little tale to show her understanding. It went a little like this:

"Yea, they fell in the toilet yesterday."

< SHUDDER >

Next lesson in germs: even though they are now DRY, they LOOK clean, and you can't TELL that they were in the toilet yesterday, the gloves are still FILTHY!!!

Time to Delurkify!

Guess what? It's officially International Blog Delurking Week!

It is the first week in January each year, so that would be NOW -- January 4-10 this year!

Feel free to leave a comment letting me know you were here. If for any reason you prefer that I don't publish your comment, just start it off with "do not publish." I'm pretty darned good at following directions. ;)

For the rest of you, say hi or whatever you feel like saying in the comments section. I know who some of my readers are, but would love to hear from the mystery visitors.

Spread the word on your own blogs about International Blog Delurking Week! Quick, before it's over! Oh, and leave me a link if you have a blog and you're open to visitors!