Blondecisions

Need good vibes!

My husband was interviewed for a new position and they said they'll have an offer on the table next week.

If this goes through hubby will work for them in NY until we're ready to move and they'll let him work in

California

!!

Plus this SHOULD come with a raise/bonus because he will be leaving their direct competition for them AND moving up into a management position. That will help us pay bills and move.

It might even mean while he'll have a HUGE travel schedule, he will work from home the rest of the week (once we get to

Cali

) which means we'll actually see him once in a while (of course other days he won't be home at all, but the boys rarely see him other than weekends now as it is).

He is fraught with guilt and nerves. He doesn't want to leave where he is during such a critical time for the company, but we're dedicated to moving to CA and this job should do that for us without so much worry. One of the big stressors has been finding a job in CA without going broke first.

We’re 3,000 miles away, so it’s not always as easy as just getting a job. But he turned this job in NY down and told them he was going to CA so the President of the company said … ok!

Send us those powerful positive thoughts and hope for the best! Going to

California

was something we wanted to do to be closer to friends and family and someday have a life again.

Reflecting on the Moving Process Again

As many of you know, we're moving 3,000 miles from NY to California this year. We decided to do so on a strict budget using a 4x8 pull behind. We're crazy!!!

But I am so incredibly happy that I am working so hard on getting rid of everything and taking note of what we are able to live without.

If we were not moving on such a tight budget and space, I would be still holding onto things. I have stationery and office/desk supplies from 15 years ago that never ever get used. I have moved with them EIGHT times in 11 years.

I'm getting rid of boxes of books. I'm paring down on clothes we don't wear, Years of coats we don't need, decorations we don't use, kitchen stuff we could live without, etc..

I cannot TELL you what all this clean space is doing for us! Not only is it healthier (we're BOTH allergic to dust!!) and easier to clean, but it just feels so good mentally.

No matter what though we just seem to still have SO MUCH.

We've sold hundreds of books, hundreds of dollars of items on eBay. We've gien away cart loads to Freecyclers and Goodwill. We've had nearly twice the amount of trash almost every week for 2 months. I have a trunk of stuff to go to consignment.

And yet somehow I STILL have so much. Believe me, we don't have a lot of great things. Most everything needs replacing. But with 5 of us, 3 floors and a basement, and two offices, there's a lot of STUFF.

I still have nearly 300 books to sell or donate and an office full of stuff to get rid of. I've already weaned myself down to at least HALF of what I had of office stuff, but it still looks like a daunting task!

Yet I look into that clean corner or organized closet and feel so much better too.

Apocalypse Now – Funny Later

We had the apocalypse hit our house this morning. I had one sick kid in need of me to go to the store, a very late school bus, another needing to go to preschool. The tree snapped in the park next door under 40 mile an hour winds. It was SIXTY TWO degrees. Yesterday it was 20. Last night it was supposed to be freezing rain and then suddenly this warm gust came in.

Heavy rains and flooding ensued. It's garbage day so the entire town is COVERED in trash that blew from every garbage can set out. Sirens were going off everywhere, emergency vehicles all over. I looked out the bathroom window and saw sparks shooting from power lines.  My computer and phone went down and then my cell phone too.  I couldn't take my ten year old to the store with me because of how ill he was and so I had to leave him in the middle of all of this alone. Waves of rain were flooding the roads and my van rocked with the wind. Major routes were closed because of accidents including a tractor trailer that blew over on the bridge.

The house was literally whistling and vibrating. I don’t know how the porch and roof survived... and they were only up to 40 mile an hour gusts! The only thing that kept my anxiety riddled son sane was that I blasted the radio in the room he was in and he was too ill to really see anything going on around him.

My husband is supposed to be on a plane and I can't get a hold of him to make sure he made it to the airport alright. My writer’s brain kicked into high gear as I drove and I was convinced this was a movie and the weather was an omen. His plane went down and this was my sign. I was alone.

I’m nuts! I’m over it now, but it was a surreal morning. I WOULD like to talk to the hubby though. I need to blame the weather on him.

Thank goodness the phone and internet are back and we have not officially lost power, just had rolling brown outs. The winds have died down and we just have some local flooding but that doesn’t bother us as we’re on a hilly street.

I guess I need to turn this into something funny at some point. For now I am just shaking my head.

I finally got to speak with my husband at 12:48 who was safe and landed. I did get to blame the weather on his as 30 seconds after we spoke the wind picked up and rattled the house again. I left a message on his cell telling him I now had PROOF it was all his doing.

 

The evening proved to be just as weird as the morning. Though it wasn't weather related, the kicks just kept coming until I finally went to sleep. A fitful sleep. I didn't even wake up for my early morning bladder relief, I just slept straight through until my alarm went off.

 

I grabbed my son out of bed at 7:30 and told him to jump into the shower and blow the stink off. He scrubbed every inch, scraped his teeth and furry tongue, spritzed on cologne, rubbed on deodorant (both of which he doesn't need but he likes them) and shoved some toast into his mitts. He was feeling much better and in a good mood. Amen!

Visit me at: http://www.blamemama.com/

Why do we have armpit hair?

What exactly is the evolutionary purpose for underarm hair?! I want to know.

Was it to trap our scent so we could attract a mate? And if so, since we obviously no longer need it, why hasn’t it gone away over millions of years? Even women who shave their pits never feel cold because of it (though I do seem to be chilly today!) so it cannot be leftovers from needing extra warmth, can it?

It’s a problem for me. I hate underarm hair. Just think of all the accrued time we women would have if we didn’t have to shave our legs, pits and SOME of us, our nether regions. We could do something wonderful for the world with all that time on our hands.

I wonder if you can wax your pits?

Family Coffee Habits

I'm in trouble with my dear husband, who says even HE was allowed to drink coffee on camping trips but who isn't so sure he likes our kids drinking coffee.

I recently gave up my soda habit (and lost 7 pounds so far from JUST that!) and took on a coffee habit. Funny because as a writer I've always wanted to get up in the morning, make a cup of coffee and write in my warm jammies. How cliche!

I stir in vanilla or chocolate soy milk as a creamer and am good to go! I even got a coffee maker for Christmas that makes just one mug at a time so I always have fresh brewed. It came with a scooper, so I use about 3/4 of a scoop for a mug and hubby says it's just enough to make the water dirty :) since he uses about 2 or 3 scoops for one cup. Ewww...

I drink mostly Green Mountain flavored coffee, though I am not picky to brand as long as it's good. I go through phases during the month of which kinds I love, but usually they're based around a nut or chocolate.

In my freezer right now I have more than the following:

Chocolate Espresso
Mocha Nut
Caramel Vanilla Latte
Southern Pecan
Hazelnut Cream
Gingerbread (no so good)
(Neuman's) Nell's Breakfast Blend
A bunch of medium and bold coffees that smell like nicotine from Starbucks for hubby's once a year coffee binge. eeewwwww

Well somehow my kids got ahold of these coffees little by little. We're in the car and they're DYING of thirst and all I have left is some lukewarm coffee. Well once they tried it, they fell in love.

They only get an occasional sip, but every time they do when hubby's around he smiles and comments. The smile is just a mask - I know he's not pleased.

With my 7 pounds of weight loss of proof in hand, I am happy to give them a sip here or there and get them hooked on my watery, flavored coffee over soda ANY time.

Memory lane: My horrific OB GYN

I was chatting with a girlfriend about male OB/GYNS and how some are so out of touch with what a woman needs. Some are downright mean and nasty. I'e had a few run ins with them. It reminded me of what I went through over 10 years ago (yiles! that long?).

I was 18 and having a miscarriage of my first 13 week pregnancy. Devastated, I had to go to a doctor because a miscarriage is where the midwife’s duty ends and you go to her backup

OB

(for the CMWs who deliver in the hospital anyway). I went to the backup doc who was this huge man. Maybe 7 foot tall and well over 300 pounds with these HUGE hands. HOW any woman could survive those hands for a whole pregnancy….

Well I’d been going thru the labor for several days and when I stood up from the car in the parking lot, I “delivered.” I was just a little girl of 18 ready to take on the world until the world took her on…what did I know?

It ended up in the toilet when I was trying to clean up and they were PISSED they had to fish it out. The nurses left me bleeding in a room for quite some time and I had to ASK for some kind of padding. They then left me sitting naked from the butt down on a blue pad.

My husband (high school sweetheart/mistake of my life) had missed work and had gone back so mom was with me. This doc was CRUEL. He told me mean things and said it was a waste to have testing done on the “thing.” I was sore inside from several days of labor pains and when he stuck his meaty hand in there I freaked. That bastard held me down by pushing on my stomach with his other and pretty much yelled at me.

Then we sat out in this more common area where patients and nurses were walking around and he’s asking me what my blood type is and what the father’s is. Do I even KNOW who the father is? Can I find him, etc… Mom is just looking really shocked, I’m freaked out and feel trapped. Of COURSE I knew who he was.

Ok. Granted I looked like I was 12, but come on, people….look at my chart!

Then he asks if I am going to be following up with (the midwife). The whole time he never spoke to ME, it was to my mom like I was mentally challenged (by all rights I must have been by default at that point!). He asked if we would be following up for birth control, “so this doesn’t happen again.”

Finally my mother realizes what he’s getting at and she freaks out and tells him to look at the ring on my finger and that when I WANT IT TO, it WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. And then of course he was shocked and calmed down, but the whole thing was completely unnecessary. I was still speechless. To this day I kick myself for being such a wallflower and allowing him to traumatize me.

You know, I am not into suing people, but if that were me TODAY? Oh yeah, I would have sued. And perhaps it would have never gotten that far. I mean look at the difference, some OB playing taps on my knees about 6 years later gets his head ripped off, but I was speechless with this guy.

But that’s not all! I no, no, I am not done.

10 months later,

T.

needs to come out. I have Toxemia and am being induced. The labor is 9 hours and going all wrong, his heart beat starts to dip, so we go into an emergency cesarean. GUESS who is still the back up for my midwife? So I have this jerk in the OR with me. I am fully awake having had a spinal and he’s loudly complaining that he was supposed to be on vacation at 9:30pm and I am keeping him! (T was born at 10:35pm).

He also told the kindly Dr. H. that he was taking too long to get me stitched up and “doing too good of a job.” Now the interesting part is, Dr. S. stitched my right side and Dr. H. my left. Interestingly I had pain around my right ovary and at the stitch site for YEARS afterward. Just on the right.

Dr. H. thought it might have been a line of scar tissue attached to my ovary, but what about the stitch site? Weird, huh?

He never came to see me in recovery either. And when I was in there having A. 3 years later, I heard Dr. S. out in the hallway just berating nurses and yelling.

Now the REALLY ironic part of this all… I’d heard the medical group dropped Dr. S. when he demanded a raise and he ended up being the doc on call for the local women's b

irthing center

. He was in the paper being quoted saying something about the experience a woman needs in childbirth. A whole touchy feely piece about how she needs gentleness and support. I could have DIED! I nearly called the birthing center right then to tell them what he did to me.

So there's my walk down memory lane. My three birthing experiences, though not ALL bad have left me with a huge desire to do it again, at home, the right way with little intervention and a lot of peace. I'm nuts.