We do this fun thing at MamaPop where we wax on poetically about one topic or another and we call it the MamaPop Roundtable. It is one of my favorite things that we do.
This week the topic was to pick our favorite pop culture topic of the week and talk. I talked for 3 minutes about Tiger Woods. Apparently I have a lot to say. The brilliant Palinode edited me, as he should, because there are a lot of us talking.
It took me months to get comfortable with me on video. My voice, my hair, and UGH, I look fat! But I loved my little rant. So I decied to post it unedited here. Enjoy. How can you not love air quotes?
I have reached internet apple dorkdom and there is no turning back.
Do you know what I did at work today? Watched the liveblog of the launch of the iPad. (Is that not the worst name ever?) And tweeted about it. With hashtags. And gchatted my husband, who could care less, but indulged me. And gchatted back with articles, that I then tweeted. To other people. Who cared about this.
I must go play Dungeons and Dragons now or something.
Also, I really, really need a vacation.
I'm not even going to BlogHer and I can't even talk about it. Doug has a conference and someone has to watch the child and WAH. I want to go to BlogHer. So much so that I want to throw myself on the ground and throw a temper tantrum. And Sparklecorn '10 is going to be awesome. And I'm not going. WAH.
So the moral of this story is, I need a vacation. Bad. When the most exciting thing in your life is the launch of iPad, you need a vacation.
On Saturday I took the rare opportunity to go shopping. By myself. My need for pants was reaching epic proportions as most of my pants were too big on me. And I'm not saying this to be all braggy, braggy, I'm saying it as a fact.
I have been overweight most of my life. I was always a fat kid. I actively cannot remember a point in my life that I was not on a diet. Doug fell in love with me at my heaviest, so at least I know he loves me for me. Right before our wedding I took off over 30 pounds and became the thinnest I ever was with a combination of Weight Watchers, exercise, and crazy OCD. Weight Watchers points brought out this crazy OCD calorie counting side in me that was probably a borderline eating disorder. But after the wedding my weight stabilized. And then I had Michael, gained the requisite amount of weight and took it off in a reasonable period of time with the crazy OCD WW me again and exercise. Gym daycare is a fabulous thing when you have five months of maternity leave.
And then I just became this person I stopped recognizing. I always wanted to lose the last 10 pounds, to get back to my "wedding weight" but I worked out because I enjoyed it and it kept me sane and I ate reasonably well, mostly organic and non processed foods. I learned to enjoy cooking. But I also enjoyed wine regularly and an occasional treat and my weight was what it was. I just stopped caring about it so much. I learned to be happy.
The past six months or so weight has just been falling off of me. I don't know if it was house stress or Michael stress or the fact that all my lupus meds say "may cause extreme weight loss" but, I no longer really pay attention or care. I signed up for the mamapop losers because it is fun and Doug said "I'm not sure this is such a good idea." I work out on the wii everyday and now, none of my clothes fit.
So I escaped to the mall on Saturday for the torture that is jeans shopping. And after two hours (!) and discovering that it doesn't matter if you are a size smaller all jeans still look terrible on you, I sucked it up and hit the really expensive jeans department at Nordstrom. And I tried on those brands that would never, ever, have fit me a short lifetime ago. Those really expensive brands that only certain girls could fit into. And they fit, and not even the biggest sizes. But I looked at the price tag and decided it no longer mattered that I could fit into $200 jeans and walked across the hall into another department. And I said to the salesclerk, "those jeans over there are too young for me, and these jeans are too old for me. Don't you have any 30 year old jeans in this store?" And she laughed and told me to go downstairs.
And I did. And bought two pair for the price of the truly expensive jeans I could have bought upstairs. And some cords that were seriously on sale, 2 sizes smaller than I normally wear.
And then I came home and got dressed up for a date night with my husband, where we shared a bottle of wine and I had a fantastic espresso creme brulee for dessert. Because while I like my new size, I like my life even more.
And then I worked out extra hard on Sunday to maintain it.
I've decided that 2010 is going to be the year I turn into an optimist. I've never really been an optimist. I've never really been a pessimist either, I've just kind of taken a situation for what it was, but I tend to always anticipate the worst in situations, or "awfulize" as my sister likes to call it. And I'm done. Because really, where has it gotten me? (Well, the worry has caused me to lose some weight lately, but besides that, where has it gotten me?)
I tweeted a few hours before the New Year that I was feeling unnaturally unhappy. I was cooking a lovely meal in my brand new kitchen while rocking out to the Glee soundtrack. I had not even poured a glass of wine yet. I felt lighter, less worried, happy, for the first time in months.
My point is this. Michael will be fine. If he needs help we will get it for him. We will figure this out. 2010 will be the year when everything turns around.
And besides, how can you not feel optimistic, when you are staring at this everyday?
So the past twoyears my New Years Eve posts have been maudlin and sad and grumpy. And I will not do that this year. Yes, 2009 was sad and hard. Oh, so, so, so hard. But there was much to be happy for too. Starting with the house I love so. And everyone is healthy and loved. Things could be worse, things could always be worse.
And all this stuff that is going on with Michael we will figure out. If he has learning disabilities we will get him the help he needs. If he has ADHD we will get him the help he needs. I need to stop focusing on all that is wrong and start focusing on all that is right. It took a while, but we have found a school that I think is "the right fit" and Michael will adjust. I believe he will and his teacher believes he will.
2010 is going to be his year. I can feel it. He is turning 5. 5. A whole hand. All good things happen when you are 5. We are going to make it happen.
We are spending the evening just the three of us, playing wii. And after Michael goes to bed I have a lovely dinner planned with more wine and wii. What could be better?
Happy New Year dear readers. I wish you health and happiness in 2010. May the New Year bring only the good, and if it brings the bad, may it be only the bad you can handle. And you can handle it all. If there is anything I have learned, I have learned that.
We have a crazy week around these parts. Michael is off of school and I took the week off of work and filled it with a dinosaur themed class*, doctors appointments, play groups, theater tickets, and various other activities. And now I have no idea what I was thinking. When I planned all of this I was like, must fill these 5 days so we are not bored. And now I am thinking, we will never get all of this done and all Michael wants to do is play wii and I would like to go to the gym during my week off.
We had lovely holidays, the kind that comes with minimal family trauma and happy children and lovely, unexpected gifts. Our New Years Eve plans are up in the air right now, we may be having a dinner party with some couple friends, it may just be Doug and I with wine and wii. (Man I love that wii. Seriously. How come people didn't tell me how much fun this thing was years ago?)
Posting may be light this week as I shuttle Michael from this thing and that thing, and my nights are taken up wiiing. But I promise my traditionalmaudlin New Years post later this week. (I'm kidding, it won't be maudlin. Well, maybe a little. 2009 kind of sucked. A little.)
**The lovely people at the Curiosity Zone invited Michael to a class fee of charge. I'll let you know what he thinks.
Even though we technically don't celebrate, we are off to the inlaws tomorrow to celebrate with them. I'm spending the day at the office while Michael is at his one day at "the bridge" program at school. (We expected it to be more but the stupid snow closed it. I thought it would be closed today but they opened even though schools were closed.) I expected a complete and utter freak out this morning, with a different teacher and different kids. But I told him over and over that this was one day, just one day, and I really needed him to hold it together because Mommy really needed to go to work. And he did. I think it was all the wii.
Shoe Friday is going to take a holiday break, but will be back in 2010. Please, send me some more shoes.
And to all who celebrate, I wish you the merriest of Christmases. Peace on Earth and Joy towards Man. What can be bad, right?
I'm sorry, but Michael is out of school and we are much too busy wiing to blog. I'm so busy, in fact, I typed this from my mobile ap and not even my computer. Michael woke up at 6 am yelling, I want to wii! Yesterday, he didn't know what a wii was. He is 4.
By now you have heard DC got two feet of snow. And at first it was like Wow! Amazing! This is Snow! Of! Epic! Proportions! And then it was like, I would like to leave my house.
I wish I could say Michael had a great time playing in the snow, but I can't. There was this,
which lasted about a half an hour, and then the next day while Doug was
shoveling he lasted a total of 5 WHOLE MINUTES. It took me longer to
get him in and out of his snow clothes than he played in the snow. He
came inside with a whiny, "But Mommy, it is cold." And what was I
going to say, I was sitting inside. I know it is cold.
Luckily the new house is part of a municipality that has some pretty awesome snow removal services and Doug spent 4 hours shoveling our driveway (he loves me for the whole we have to buy a single family home so much right now) so on Sunday afternoon we braved the perfectly clear roads and took Michael to see Princess and the Frog over his protests that boys don't like princesses. Which doesn't make much sense since we downloaded the Tinkerbell movie from On Demand and he watched it twice in 24 hours. So boys like fairies but not princesses.
But it is ok, because he loved the movie. And we got out of the house.
We didn't even get to go to my parents house for our annual family Hanukkah celebration. Which sucks, because I still don't have a wii. And a wii would have made snowmagedeon that much more tolerable.
So schools are closed for the near future and I have no idea when I am going to be able to get into my office again. (Because the Federal Government closed but not my office.) But I know I have to get in there soon because I took the week between Christmas and New Years Eve off, and I was out last Thursday with what I thought was a deadly strain of the stomach flu. (Spoiler: I survived.)
So all in all I think I have left my house 3 times in a 72 hour period. I'm beginning to lose my mind, as if you cannot tell from this blog post. Send reinforcements. And I'd love some Bailey's for my hot cocoa. And for the love of G-d will someone just open the schools the roads are fine.
I told Doug we are moving somewhere warm. And he was like, we just moved into this house. Remember how much fun that was? I was like TWO FEET OF SNOW. LET'S MOVE TO FLORIDA. He told me to go to sleep. This is how our marriage survives. I talk, and he ignores me.
About 3 months ago my iphone mysteriously stopped syncing with my Exchange server at work. I took it to the Genius Bar and their explanation was some blah, blah, blah about SSL and version 3 software and whatnot and upgrading to the iphone 3Gs would solve it. So yesterday, the first day I could, I upgraded. And guess what? It still didn't work. I configured ALL OF MY COWORKERS iphones and I couldn't get my own g-ddamn ONE TO WORK. PERFECT.
So Doug and I spent like 12 hundred hours last night and discovered (and to be fair Doug totally discovered this while I swore a lot and tweeted and contemplated a mobile me account) that my work account was to blame. I somehow didn't have a mobile account at work. They must have turned it off. So all my IT needed to do was flip a switch, or something like that.
I had little faith that this would actually occur, or solve the problem, but hey, it did. And now I have a brand new iphone 3Gs I did not need to spend $200 on. But it is 16 gig as opposed to the meezly 8 gig I had before, so sell me on your favorite apps. But please be free ones. Because I also bought a new camera. And my husband may kill me if I spend anymore money. Because we are supposed to be cutting back. Because we did just buy a house, and may be sending our child to private school.
Right, the camera. I somehow smashed my camera at Zoolights. A perfectly lovely camera my inlaws had bought me for my birthday 6 months ago, ruined, and I have no idea how. But the LCD is all gobbley gook and you can tell the camera was somehow banged. So I bought some under $100 piece of crap (no, I'm sure it is fine) on amazon. Because I cannot tell my inlaws I broke the $400 fancy wifi (that never worked with my Mac anyway) camera. And really, I barely remember to take pictures. So my little Nikon will do fine. Until I manage to break that also.
And now Doug is sick. I have no idea what I did to him. But I'm thinking all people and things should stay away from me.
