LU x 2

I've already got an hour's worth of chores under my belt and still have energy for more. Woo hoo! Please note that I'm posting this after 5:00 PM. This would be considered pathetic for a normal person, but I'm digging my way out of a collapsed Depression Mine. Also, the baby wore me out yesterday with his extended cervical onslaught.

On a more positive note, I think my mood is up even higher today than yesterday. Maybe I'll be able to cut back on the Zoloft after all. All in good time. If red wine weren't off limits, I could kick the Z in a heartbeat! Dr. Spock says a nursing mother can have up to 2 beers or glasses of wine a day without affecting the baby. You know what that means. As soon as I'm able to make it up and down the stairs after the C-section, Mommy and Aunt Kayly are taking a field trip to the Wine Library (which is a cruel misnomer--they don't actually lend you the wine for free).

I had a dream last night that a rather large part of the baby was poking a big round lump on my belly. I grabbed it and squeezed it trying to identify it until I realized it was probably the baby's head, and I really shouldn't be squeezing it that hard. But I gave it another squeeze and noticed a definite "cleft" in the middle and figured out that it was his butt, so I gave it a "Get back in there!!" shove.

I'm sure he was kicking the crap out of me in my sleep. He's quite the kicker/puncher. In MMA (mixed martial arts) Land we'd say he's got a "great stand-up game." From all the tumbling he does, he might just have an excellent ground game, too. Lord knows he almost made me tap out yesterday.

Laziness Update

I promised I would check in with you periodically to let you know how I'm doing on the laziness challenge. So far, so good! Granted, I've started off slowly, only doing about 1 hour's worth of chores a day.

Yesterday that hour was spent going to the grocery store. I forget what I did Monday, but I did at least an hour's worth of it. Today I've already put in about 20 mins tidying the living room. I've got another 10-15 mins to go and then I'm off to the bathroom. We're going out to dinner with a friend tonight, so those are the only 2 rooms she's likely to see. I'll leave the kitchen and dishes for tomorrow.

My energy level is actually approaching normal today, and my mood is certainly higher than it was last week. The only things I have working against me today, physically speaking, are my usual back pain and the kid riding heavy on and kicking the crap out of my cervix all day long. It isn't painful, just really uncomfortable. I have to sit down periodically to try to get him to move, which he absolutely refuses to do.

It feels like he's trying to escape. Someone needs to inform him that he needs to chill out for another 5 months before he can get outta Dodge. He stops kicking if I rock him in the rocking chair, but he refuses to relocate. I'm about to stand on my head or do cartwheels. This is my penance for complaining last night that he was pushing up on my stomach and giving me heartburn. He's a spiteful little shit.

I Like Weird Smells (It Puts The Lotion on Its Skin...)

My mom gave me 2 bottles of this wonderfully moisturizing lotion while we were visiting this past weekend. In the bottle it has almost no scent, but when I put it on my skin, it smells like plastic Band-Aids. The problem is my skin, not the lotion. It does odd things to fragrances. Some people might be put off by this olfactory transformation, but I found it to be a pleasant surprise. I love the smell of Band-Aids. Plastic ones especially, but the stretchy fabric ones are OK, too.

Since I put the lotion on right before bed, I lay awake for a good 20 minutes thinking about all the other weird smells I like. Feel free to chime in with any weird smells you happen to like. I'd be fascinated to hear.

These are not necessarily in order of preference...

1. Puppy Breath--my absolute favorite smell right after baby heads.

2. The way my dogs smell right after they come in from a walk on a sunny day. I don't know if it's the fresh air or the way the sun activates their oil glands, but they smell wonderful. I scoop them up and bury my nose in their fuzzy coats and tell them they smell like "sunshine." Wet dog smell is repugnant, however. I also love the way Ethan's hair smells when he comes in from the sun, so I'm guessing its an oil gland thing.

3. New shower curtain smell--Applies to vinyl shower curtains only.

4. The smell of those hard, pink parallelogram-shaped erasers you'd get in elementary school--especially when you'd just vigorously erased something and the rubber was still warm from the friction.

5. Crayons--Love that waxy smell. Oddly enough, when I put on patchouli oil (which I haven't done since college), my wacky skin makes it smell exactly like crayons.

6. Rubbing Alcohol and bleach--From a distance. I don't stick my nose right up to the bottle and inhale deeply. They just smell so "clean" to me. Like purity in a bottle.

7. Rain on hot asphalt. I don't know if this is a "weird" smell or not. I can understand how many folks might find it unpleasant, but I love it.

8. That earthwormy smell that hangs in the air after a long, hard rain when the ground is so drenched that all the worms have to come up to the surface. I spent many summer days as a kid rescuing worms that had crawled onto the asphalt to escape the deluge.

9. The smell left on your hands after you've held a caterpillar or caught and released a lightning bug (or firefly, depending on what neck of the woods you're from).

10. Rubber tires. Car or bicycle. Right now we have our bikes parked in the other bedroom which will be the nursery as soon as we get our shit together. Sometimes I just stick my head in their and inhale. I'll give the room a good airing out before Junior comes home.

If I think of others, I'll tack them on later.

Inertia is the Enemy

I finally opened up to my therapist today and admitted out loud that I am incredibly freaking lazy. I am--shamelessly so.

Until recently I've had various excuses to justify my laziness--depression after losing the twins, depression after being let go from work, depression and anxiety regarding the health of this baby, etc.

What I realized today is that I no longer have any valid excuse to sit on my butt all day. I have a wonderfully healthy baby in my stomach who deserves to have a fantabulous nursery and well-organized apartment to come home to as does my hard-working, sole bread-winner husband. I vowed to my therapist that I would start off slowly, setting 1-2 hours a day aside for housework and/or nursery decoration. He thought that was a stellar plan.

What's kept me from doing this until now? Glad you asked. The answer, my friend, is a complete and utter lack of accountability. I became lazy and disinterested simply because I had no deadlines or semi-yearly reviews. If the dishes don't get done, who's going to call me into his/her office to give me a tongue-lashing or fire me? Nobody. Hence this post. I'm putting my plan out there on the Internets so that you readers (all 2 of you) can hold me accountable to sticking to it. I will sum up my progress periodically. Feel free to give me the above mentioned tongue-lashing if I fail to comply.

In other news, Christian Bale has been put on probation from my boyfriend list until more details of his alleged assault on his mother and sister are made public. I'm hoping he didn't actually hit them or anything. Perhaps he just threw a drink on them. The latter would not result in permanent removal from my list as the bitches probably deserved it (KIDDING...JEEZ!!!!! Simmer down...). Gael Garcia Bernal and Johnny Depp remain in good standing.

Some interesting celeb quotes of the week:

At least she's honest: "You know how you do things, and you don't really know why you're doing them until the end? I don't know why I'm doing this yet. I'm (sic) just know I'm an exhibitionist." — Pamela Anderson, who has a new reality series.

Besides, the busier she stays, the less likely she is to "give it up" and get knocked up: "I probably won't tour again as a 'Hannah Montana' tour ... I'm kind of past that stuff. But I definitely wanna keep doing my show. I love doing (it) and I wouldn't wanna give it up quite yet." — Miley Cyrus.

Who the fuck needs you anyway???: "Just because I'm famous doesn't mean that I work for the audience. I'm not obligated to do anything. I'm an artist. I will do what I want to do. Whatever the consequences. ... I certainly hope that it's a civilized reaction." — Neil Young. SO THERE!!

Hiatus Interruptus

Nothing Personal is back--with a vengeance! I have no idea what I mean by that--it just sounded exciting.

If I've learned one invaluable life lesson since this blog was first created, it's that I need to accept that I have absolutely no control over my own life's path and to just kick back and enjoy where it takes me. So much wacky shit has happened over the past 5 years that I have ceased to imagine what the next 5 years might bring because I will invariably be wrong.

After 3 painful pregnancy losses, we decided to adopt. It's a long, arduous process, but we were committed to it--and to creating a family. I bought and read every book on adoption I could get my hands on. I started to forget what was so great about biological children anyway and could no longer even picture myself with a caucasian baby.

Then, in early May, I realized that it had been a while since I had my period (uh, like SEVEN WEEKS!!!). I bought some HPTs to prove to myself that there was nothing to worry about and chalked it up to adoption-related stress. The first stick turned positive in seconds. The next morning, the second stick turned positive before I finished peeing on it. We were speechless.

The next few months were filled with incessant, debilitating worry about the health of the baby. We finally got the all clear that the little man was A-OK this past week. Naturally, we're excited. I still found it odd to picture myself with a caucasian baby after months of assuming my son would be coming from Eastern or Central Asia. Then I saw his face. I'm completely and utterly in love. He is the single most adorable, beautiful, perfect thing I have ever laid eyes on--and he's only half-baked. See for yourself. He looks like Daddy :)

We made this gorgeous creature with our naughty bits! That's INSANE!!!!

As I said on Bishkek Bop, it looks likely that we may not receive a referral until I'm too far along to travel, so our adoption plans are temporarily on hold. We have a lot of things to think about between now and when the baby's born. Do we still want to adopt a boy, or switch to a girl now that we're expecting a boy? How far apart in age do we want them to be? And so forth...

I've been so wrapped up in the adoption and pregnancy whirlwinds that I haven't been paying nearly as much attention to current events and the everyday things I used to pontificate about on this blog. I promise to discuss more than my developing fetus in future posts.

Now I need to feed the wee beastie. He demands lunch.

V