• I finally figured out why I should buy my lentils from the international grocery store: they don’t have the skins on. My WalFart lentils are all covered with skin… I didn’t know they were such a pretty yellow underneath! We lentil soup for dinner tonight… perfect for this cold weather.  Not so guilty.  Yet.  We have yet to see Ye Olde Temperamental Intestine thinks of it.
• Not so perfect for cold weather, but a comfort food, nonetheless, is Homemade Cherry Cordial ice cream. Homemade is a brand here in Indiana… not me being the Happy Homemaker. Too bad my nose is so stoppered up that it doesn’t even taste like much.
•  Silver Jewelry Club.
• Dr. Pepper/Diet DP mix.
• Rereading books.  I have an entire shelf of keepers
• Staying up late after I put Hamza to bed to websurf.
• Napping on the couch during cartoons.
• Online games.
• Rusk Shampoo and Tigi S Factor Serious Conditioner.  Will become much more guilty when I actually buy the stuff… that freaky but oh so wonderful conditioner is 28 smackers a pop.
• Bath and Body Works Minute Manicure… or is it instant manicure.  Its nice stuff. Feels so good.
• Sushi.

• I think our indian summer has finally come to an end.  Its 43° F outside.  Its been only a little warmer than that all day.  I still wore my birkenstock sandals.  Funny part was that my feet weren’t cold.  The rest of me was!
• What did I do wrong with my child?  He’s snotty, talks back, can’t play by himself, is addicted to television (my fault, i’ll own that one), and is having daytime wetting problems.  *sigh*  the other half of the dynamic parenting duo thinks we aren’t been strict enough with the child.  I am of two different opinions - one is getting really freaking pissed off (ha, an unintended pun!) because I can’t keep the kid clothed for an entire week because he pees in his pants.   The other is worrying if its a medical problem and I will feel like an ass for getting mad about it.
• Being the 95% caregiver for my son is wearing me out.  I wish I had the patience and understanding and desire to just enjoy my son’s company.  When he goes over to his father’s house, I don’t miss him.  At all.  I just feel so relieved and relaxed and I don’t look forward to him coming home.
• I apologized to my stove tonight for almost blowing out the flame.  It didn’t answer back, thank God. I felt a little silly about it at the time.
• Hamza and I spent the afternoon with a friend of mine who lives in an assisted living facility.  Seeing all these people, who probably had a life somewhere, reduced to living with a roommate in a room the size of my college dorm room feels so sad.  It kills me that we can’t find ways to take care of these folks in our own families.  I don’t know if I am oversimplifying because I don’t have this situation my too small, barely 2 generational family or if people just are too lazy or too busy to care for their own.

• Its congestion season for me. The membranes in my nose are swelled to impossible proportions. Does anyone have any homeopathic treatment for this beyond saline solution? I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. So far, the only thing that works some of the time is nasal spray… but that’s addictive and can only be used for three days at a time. Also, getting rid of my carpets and reducing household allergens are pretty much out of my reach.
• I got my first Avon sale last night. Woohoo! On the web too.
• Hamza dived bombed into the edge of the coffee table tonight and has an ugly but not really bad gash on his eyebrow. For some reason, he felt the need to jump off the couch and as soon as his feet hit the ground, his head kept going down and THUNK. It only bled a little bit. We ran up to the drugstore and bought New Skin and some peroxide. I felt bad at the idea of a bandaid attached to his eyebrow…ouch.
• Is it really so hard to say Hamza? It only has five letters and all of them get pronounced. Its not like there’s a silent Q in it. Its not Hazma. Even my white bread playgroup mommies can say it. Why can’t my extended family?
• I watched most of the Patriots/Colts game. It fizzled out in the fourth quarter. Bleah. I usually don’t get excited about particular teams, but I was looking forward to this game.

• I haven’t slept more than six hours in any given night this week for no good reason.  I planned on changing that tonight and be in bed at 11… but we can see that didn’t work at it’s now 12.12 a.m.  Hmm.
• I’ve made a major move (for me) in regards to employment and am now working for Avon.  I am NOT putting my Avon web addy on here for what little anonymity I still have left.  If I put that up, I might as well put a flashing beacon on my house that says Stalk Me.  If you email me and you’re not creepy, I’ll send you my Avon web addy.  I only need ONE online purchase a month to keep the web stuff free… you might be that one!  I probably should have told you needed ten to keep it free to make you feel motivated… but then I would have been lying and I don’t like doing that.
• I overcame my own inherant Saturday laziness and answered my cell phone this afternoon and took a friend out to run errands she couldn’t do herself.  Alhamdulillah.
• Its 40 degrees F outside and 68 degrees F inside.
• I listened to a mix CD that a friend made for me a million years ago while I was cleaning yesterday.  I can’t get Heaven is a Half Pipe out of my head.  Now its even worse since I watched the video on YouTube while I was blogging this.  Duh.
• Why? why? why ? why? why? why?  That’s what I heard all day long. Today. Yesterday, the day before.  Gooooooo, kid!
• Don’t be lazy and block the curb cut/incline to the sidewalk.  Just park your car or move it on down a bit.  My friend that I took out today fell smack on her rear end trying to get up a curb with her walking apparatus.

Hi.

I decided to do National Blog Posting Month, or Nablopomo. Say that six times fast. I’ve just spend the last 15 minutes trying to figure out how the hell to put the Nablopomo image somewhere on the page and its just not working.

So, I am putting it here.  In the post.  So, nyah.

Anyways, I am going to try to do this again and see I can unsuck at blogging… if anything, it might be cathartic.  But I am doing this in bullet points because I don’t know if I can be creative anymore.

Here goes.

• I don’t know if it was hormonal or what, but I was in a foul mood mood for most of the day today.  The only time it lifted was when I was walking in WalFart with the kid and I wrapped my arm around his mouth and enjoyed the silence.  Double benefit, he thinks its a fun game, not a sanity exercise.
• I’ve had some sort of a headache all day.
• My winter rhinitis is back with a vengeance.  And nasonex is 80 smackers a bottle… too much for me right now.
• I’m in love with Dr. Pepper again.  I don’t know how this happened.  I LOVED me some DP when I was growing up.  I thought it was the best stuff ever.  And then I hated it.  It started tasting weird… about the same time as when I moved up north…  something in the bottling perhaps?  Anyways, I’ve been sucking down the stuff in record amounts for the last couple of weeks, all from the fountain.  Been mixing it with Diet DP to minimize the damaging rear end expansion effects…
• I still have a headache and I am sitting in a dark room looking at a computer screen.  What sort of moron am I?
• I thought that today was Halloween all day and was in awe of how subdued everyone was and surprised that I had not trick or treaters.  Then someone had to burst my bubble tonight.  OH well.
• I made Dump Cake tonight.  Yum.  With apple pie filling.
• The kid and I went downtown today to see the Colts rally.  Kudos to the kid who walked almost the entire time… and we walked a lot.  Had to park quite a ways from the Circle too.
• Does anyone know any homeopathic stuff for allergic rhinitis?
• Hamza got to spend time with his dad tonight.
• We have two things to do tomorrow:  Laundry (boo!) and a playdate (yay!).  They balance each other.
• All the canned mushrooms at WalFart are grown in China or Indonesia.  Is Indonesia better than China?  I don’t know… but I didn’t buy any.

Before this becomes anymore incoherant, I will stop. 

Did ya miss me?  I doubt it.

Wow.

This has to be one of the best things I’ve ever done.  The group of ladies was wonderful.  The instructor was funny and knowledgeable, a great combo.  The information was valuable.  The experience was out this world.

There was so much experiential learning going on, hearing other women’s stories about their births or attempts to have children.  We all came out seeing so many new and different views of birth.  There were wonderful births, traumatic births, happily medicated births, unhappily medicated births.

Sharing a pregnancy with a woman is such a solid, intimate experience.  Being able to touch her baby through her belly (with permission) just blew me away.

Being a doula, for me, was still a dream before I met this group.  Unlike some others, I haven’t been to anyone else’s birth before.  I feel much more empowered and ready to start down this road.

The Day two marathon of the doula/labor assistant training is over.

I GOT TO PALPATE BABIES IN TUMMIES!!!!!  I got find the fundus, the little back… couldn’t tell the difference between a head and a butt, but I suppose that might get easier.  (the mommies were volunteers and were nicely compensated with a gift certificate or something - so  we had permission.  I didn’t just knock over some pregnant lady at the gas station and grab her belly.)  I am learning so much and putting together so much information in my head that I had but hadn’t connected.   We talked about all the pro’s and con’s of different interventions, how to get the right information for the mother, how to help HER make choices about her care instead of being pushed about.

Its interesting that Swistle and Linda over at Purple is a Fruit were talking about birth choices today as well.  I’ve come to realize my anger over how my son’s birth went and how much I wasn’t told, how much information I didn’t have at my disposal.   I’ve also realized how hard it is to let other people make their own choices in regards to their birth because I am so anti c-section.  Its mean to say to someone who regrets their choices in birth that “Well, you should be happy- you have a healthy baby!”.  Sure, you have a healthy baby, and you are grateful for that, but you may feel like you didn’t get to make the choices you needed to, even if it meant making the one for the c-section, because you didn’t have the information.

That being said, if you are happy with the way your birth went, then I am happy about it.  It doesn’t have to be same choice I would make.  Making the choices actively and with information is very important, as well as knowing the possible after effects.

I am blathering on and on.  I completely deluged the other adult who is still in my home with info tonight because I was so excited with I am learning.

I’m gonna be a doula!  I’m gonna be a doula!  Let’s go have some babies!

Well. Howdy!

Even though I don’t understand RSS or use it, I suppose its the only reason I got three (THREE) comments yesterday after not blogging for several months.

So, now we start the serious transition.  We’ve told our son that Daddy is getting another house.  He asked why and I said because Daddy and I want our own spaces and Daddy said because we have money.  The first is true, if evasive.  The second is possibly true since, in true back-homelandia style, there are usually large amounts of cash squirreled away in the damnedest places.

We’ve got to figure out dumb things like child support and living schedules.  As I am not employed as of yet (I really don’t feel like changing this - I’ve grown accustomed to going to bed at 2 a.m. and getting up at 8:30 - that’s like 3 or 4 hours of PERSONAL time every single day), I will probably be doing the bulk of things.  And until someone else gets with the program.

I really hate the fact that my son will have to learn things about his father as he grows up that will disappoint him.  That he’s a big talker, but a slow mover.

I don’t want to be single.  I want company, companionship and love.  I’ve got a biological clock on top of it that’s beating like a drum.  I don’t know how I am going to find someone else.  I don’t date.  I don’t want to find someone else that I like before getting married and then dislike later.

***

There’s no good segue out of that conversation.  Hamza turned four this month.  Alhamdulillah.  He’s 40 inches tall, 30 lbs, and is a mimic.  He repeats everything.  Some days I want to strangle him.  Obviously, I haven’t.

We’ve been swimming this summer.  A lot.  I bought a really nice, modest swimsuit from Splashgear.   Tres cute.  Hamza decided he LOVES swimming since we bought a 50 cent inflatable tube from the Dollar Store.  He is no longer my little octopus sucking up to me in the water.

***

I am attending a Doula training seminar hosted by ALACE (Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators) this weekend.  I’ve been excited about this for a while — the chance to see babies born!  The chance to help people have the birth they want to have.  If I had had a doula, I think my own birth experience would be tons different.

Enough for tonight.  I’ve got to work myself back into this slowly.  I am going to go read a book and relax for a while.