The Odd Broad

This Preggo Feels Loved

I have the sweetest coworker friends a girl could ask for.  There's Court, who kept me sane when I returned back from my maternity leave, and who left this for me the other day, just because.

What preggo doesn't want to be surprised with a whoopie pie from Flour?  No preggo, that's who.  Heck I'd want this even if I wasn't PG.

And then there's GG, who is pretty much the brother I never had, and who has been supplying me with vitamins and antioxidants by way of a delicious daily smoothie.  He blends them himself and even jazzes them up with little messages like "sweet cheeks" or "it's a girl!" or sometimes simply, "hunty!"  My little girl is due to be born on GG's birthday, so this may be his way of buttering her up so she arrives right on time. Naturally, I've taken to calling GG the "Smooth Operator."  I really think he needs to go into business.  His smoothies would be the 'tawk of the town!  They're already the 'tawk of the office!

This morning my sweet friend Becky asked if I wanted to make a Trader Joe's run, but I was feeling a little sluggish and told her I wasn't really up for it.  I didn't think much of it when my friend April (who makes the most dee-licious homemade banana bread I have ever tasted) told me I should really go outside to get some vitamin D, but it wouldn't take unless I was out there for at least fifteen minutes.   

I found a sunny spot outside and was so comfy I didn't think I'd ever be able to move, even when a girl approached me and said she was in some sort of a competition and needed to hug two strangers before her friends did.  (I hugged her.  What the heck.  I was just relieved she didn't want me to get up and take their picture, as that would require actual moving.)

But GG was texting me.  He's been going through a bit of...drama...with his plumber (and FYI that is the wildest understatement ever but I'd need permission from GG to elaborate much more than that because the story is just that outrageous) and wanted me to hurry back inside so he could fill me in on the latest development.  

"I'm sitting on the benches.  Come outside!" I texted.

"No!  Hurry back!"

He even promised to fashion me another bikini, if I would only come back into the building.  Eventually an unsavory type sat down next to me and began chain smoking in my face, which was the perfect impetus to move my fat ass.  (Incidentally, I don't really have a fat ass, and neither does GG; but sometimes we like to pretend that we do.)

When I got back to my office, it was decorated in pink pink pink! and I wondered what everybody was outside whispering about.  Was something going on?  Oh wait, is this for me?!!  I'm usually way too nosy to ever be surprised, but they had pulled it off!  And I got a little verclempt.  I work with the sweetest bunch of people ever.  

I really struggle with being a working mom.  It's not something that has ever gotten easier for me, and I'm not sure it ever will, quite frankly.  But I'm smart enough to realize how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such kind, funny, generous people on a daily basis.  {Stand back!  The preggo is getting emotional again!}

I don't think I'll ever take down those pink fluffies.  No way, no how.  And Beck, I'll be thinking about that peanut butter Georgetown Cupcake for days to come.  Thanks pals. You certainly know how to make a tired, hormonal broad feel loved.  xoxo

Five Reasons I'm Genuinely Excited About My New Maxi Skirt From Maaaaashalls

1. It stretches.  A preggo needs that in a waistband.
2. The length eliminates that bothersome need to sit like a lady whilst riding public transit.  
3. No desire to shave your legs?  No problem!  (It's getting hard to reach down there, anyway.)
4. No more worrying about my skirt flying up over my head while walking through the wind tunnel that is Copley Square.  This skirt comes with a G rating! Modesty for days!
5. It's cuuuuute!

I haven't worn a maxi skirt since...well, probably at least 1999.  But I found a cute one yesterday at the Marshall's on Boylston Street which has rekindled my fondness for them. Now I just need to go out and buy one for each day of the week.  

Score one for the preggo!

 

Editor's note: that bump was intended to be a baby bump, not an enormous ass.  Alas, it's been a long day, and that's about as good as it's gonna get.  Forgive my slapdash artistic rendering of maxi.  She deserves better, and frankly, so do you.  But it's getting late and I have a 'New Girl' waiting for me on the DVR.

SLUG! AHHHHH!

Um... I just stepped on a slug in our basement.  With my socks on.  I think I may have killed it.  {Unless it was already dead to begin with.}  I'm still pretty boneless over the whole thing.  Reminds me of this ugly episode.

Hubby is trying his very best to be sympathetic.  After all, he once had a mouse run across his bare feet in Dorchester. {chills, bleh!}

I think I'm going to go eat some chocolate peanut butter pretzels right now...and watch the Ramsey episode with the crazy restaurant owners from AZ.  

Ah!  AH!  AHHHHHH!!!!!  Can't.  Stop.  Whimpering.  Slug!  Dead slug!

Gross.  The grossest!

It's a...

...girl!  A beautiful little Libra girl!  (Or at least we're 90% sure she's a girl!)  We're in love.  xoxo

Sleepy Time and W's Big Reveal

I was snuggling with W just now as he wriggled and did his best to resist falling asleep. Tonight he had an impressive three binky rotation going on, and he alternated them at a feverish pace as I read "The Old Pirate Of Central Park."

As he got more and more tired, I talked to him about our good day and he did that thing he does where he looks past me and stares intently at the corner of the room.  Now, it's very true he could be gazing at the colorful clothesline of paper W's I hung over there, or his Sesame Street decals.  Maybe he's looking at the gap in the crown molding, or the stars on the ceiling. But if you know anything about me, you know when it's just the two of us lying there in the dim light, I'm not thinking what is he looking at, but who. 

Ah!  What you lookin' at, W?!  Babies can see things most adults can't, can they not?  Is it an angel?  Is it my Nanny?  Sometimes he smiles at whatever it is his eyes are fixated on. I'd ask him what he was looking at but I don't want to frighten him, and let's face it, I'm not sure I want to know.  

{Hubby insists he's looking at the wall, a'course.}

As I silently pondered these thoughts and stared into my baby's big blue eyes, he pumped on his binky and said, suddenly, "Baby in dere."

Say WHAA?!

"Baby in where?  In here?" I asked, pointing towards my belly.  "Uh huh," he nodded.  

Uh, did someone just give him this message?  True, I did try vaguely mentioning something about this a couple of weeks ago, but Hubby thought it might be a bit too soon so I quickly dropped it.  Anyway, I didn't think W had been listening.  But who am I kidding, he absorbs everything.  And he has been talking an awful lot about his baby cousin Jane lately.

"Is it a little brother or sister for you?" I asked, and he nodded.  "Do you think it's a Lukey or an Anna?" I said, using his cousin's names, and as he rotated out his binkies he muttered emphatically, "Looook" (which is W for Luke).

"You'll be the best big brother, baby; just like Luke."  After that we just laid there with our heads together until he drifted off to sleep, on the eve of my third mother's day as W's mama, and the night that he said to me for the very first time, "luff you, mama." 

Luff you, mama.  Doesn't get much better than that.

 

PS: I do think it's an angel.  That's a thing, isn't it?  Angels in corners?

Saturday Randomness

I was resting last night after a long day when Hubby came home from Trader Joe's with a smile on his face.  "Do you want some chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels?" he asked, and naturally I did, but I'd already consumed three quarters of a pint of Ben and Jerry's, so I had to wistfully decline.  Pregnant or not, there's only so much room in there.

He then told me he'd found something special at TJ's, something that was sure to make me very happy.  

Could it be?  Is't possible?  (It could.  It is.)  

Edamame rangoons are back!  You may recall my distress some time ago when we learned this product was seasonal, but apparently the person who told us that was remiss, because it's back on the shelves!  

It's a Mother's Day MIRACLE!

In other news, W and I just went for a leisurely Saturday drive to the mall.  (Leisurely because admittedly, I drive like an elderly.  Stop riding my ass, jackoffs!)  I don't talk about it much here, but I very rarely drive.  It's not my favorite.  And living so many years in the city made it something I was easily able to avoid.  But I'm a mutha now, and muthas should be able to drive from time to time.  Right?  (Of course right!  my grandmother just told me from beyond the grave.)  Motherhood is always pushing me out of my comfort zone.  It shakes things up like that.

We took a $2 train ride at the mall, which was pretty neat albeit a little nauseating. We also discovered that when you don't have any quarters handy and the change machine is out of order, if you sit on one of those mall kiddie rides long enough someone is bound to come along, put their kid in the other seat and plop four quarters in.  W actually got two free fire engine rides that way!  (Is that bad?  We said thank you and everything. We may be moochers but at least we have manners.)

W fell asleep on the way home, and as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror, he took my breath away in all his angelic, chubby cheeked, open baby mouthed glory.  He looks exactly like my husband, everyone says so (ok, I get it, guys!); but when I look at him I also see myself. I see so much of me in him.

I feel I should add that Hubby, being Hubby, is always very quick to say that W also looks like me.  He's nice like that.

It's funny, just this morning I was thinking back to our years in New York, when Hubby was waiting tables and I'd while away my solitary weekends composing posts about...oh, I don't know...my puffy coat or my inability to stop compulsively singing the theme song to the 1976 situation comedy Alice.  Life was so different back then.  I had so much spare time on my hands.  Our recycling bin had so many empty bottles of Riesling.  It's not that my life lacked meaning, it's just...it's as if I was waiting for it to begin and didn't even realize it.  Being a mother has consumed my soul in the best way possible.  It was my destiny all along, and I didn't even know it.  

Happy Mother's Day to all the muthas out there.  And to anyone hoping to be one someday, or finding it difficult getting there, don't stop dreaming.  Sometimes dreams take a long while.  Other times they come through in what seems like the blink of an eye, transforming everything around you before you even know what's happened. Either way, dreams come true every day, so...why not yours?

Now get out there and eat some edamame rangoon(s)!