I’ve been blogging less than a month, and already I’m changing pages and jacking stuff up. The new and improved Belly Up can be found at: bellyupblog.wordpress.com. Please use this URL for all future posts. For old news, you can cruise this site.
During round two of the House Hunt 2007, I spied something truly horrifying to a chickenshit like myself.
The baby and I met with the real estate agent to view houses 4-6. Four sucked, 5 is a nice alternate, and house 6 scared me. Gave me the palpitations. Caused me to grab the toddling girl and hold her for the rest of the tour. What happened in there, you ask? I saw a baby snake. A very thin, probably 3-4 inches long reptile that prompted me to say aloud, “Please tell me that’s a toy snake.” The real estate agent said, oh, I’m sure it is. Then she touched it with her shoe, and that sonofabitch moved. It goes without saying that I am freakishly afraid of snakes. Never been bitten, never had one strike at me. Must be the Eve/serpent thing from the Garden of Eden (not that I believe any of that scheisse). Or it could be that I grew up out in the sticks and got tired of seeing those bastards on the porch, in the yard, in the driveway, in the creek, blah blah blah. This fear is the main reason I don’t camp. Really.
If you can believe it, I manage to view the rest of the house after the snake moves more to the center of the room. Did I mention it had a yellow band around its neck and a triangular head? Hello, poisonous! Anyhoo, the real estate agent sees what she thinks is a dead one in the master bathroom, then says, “I wonder where the mama is.” Christ, I’m out of here.
House 6 did not make the cut.
These two bullet points were included in the NOW e-mail newsletter I received yesterday. Nice work, Super Industrialized Nation Arrogant Enough To Continue Inflicting Its Beliefs Onto Other Cultures That Don’t Really Like Us Anyway. I could very easily get into a rant about missionaries that would be a seamless segue, but I’ve got other things to obsess over.
“Families of GIs killed in Iraq Mourn”
You don’t say?
In the amount of time since I posted the baby cage missive, she’s made another escape attempt. Unfortunately, she’s suffering in the playpen’s 29 square foot confines. By suffering, I mean she’s surrounded by toys and playing contentedly. For now.
In a bid to frustrate us parents and make us realize who is really running this operation, the baby has started throwing her food on the floor during mealtime. This is no ordinary lack-of-motor-skill display, it’s a full-on, boundary-pushing battle of wills. On Sunday night, I’m feeding her dinner, when she looks me in the eye and slowly moves her pea-grasping hand over to the edge of her tray. The pea is dangling above the floor, and she drops it, never breaking eye contact with me. I laugh, because, you know, she’s a genius. After a few more peas bite it, my amusement turns to indignant motherliness. How dare she flaunt this behavior in my face! I’m telling her NO and she won’t listen! The nerve!
Every meal since that one has turned into a mini-battle. As soon as she starts dropping food to the floor, we feed it to her with a spoon or end the meal entirely, depending on how much she’s had to eat. The fact that I’m surprised by her willfullness is the real comedy in this scenario. Between her father and I, she’s got a quadruple dose of independent, authority-despising genes. The student has become the master in a matter of 13 months.
We don’t actually keep the baby in a cage, of course. It’s a joke we make around people who won’t report us to family services. What she has is a very cool playpen that you can expand by adding additional plastic panels. Before we moved into the rental house, she spent most of her days in this enclosed space, with me blathering over and over, “Hang in there, we’ll have you in a huge room in a few months/weeks/days.”
The rental house has a 400 square foot bonus room (the latest new construction bullshit craze, along with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops) above the garage. This open space serves as the office and play area. Instead of confining the baby to the 29 square foot playpen, we use the panels as a divider between her and the rest of the fun stuff she’s not supposed to touch: power cords, TV, phone, fan, etc. This arrangement was going swimmingly until a few days ago. She figured out that she can move the panel away from the wall, and ta da! She’s in the No Baby Zone. It was sort of cute in a “aren’t you a genius???” kind of way until yesterday. Just because a baby does something once doesn’t mean they’ll give you a repeat performance. Unfortunately, this is only true of things you WANT them to do, like saying “hello” or drinking out of sippy cup without throwing it on the floor 50 times per meal.
What happened yesterday? She pulled the panel away from the wall several times. She knows where the design flaw is, and there’s no turning back. Our next challenge is to somehow secure the panel against the wall or go back to the 29 square feet of torture. Option B is not going to fly; she’s a toddling master now.
Ideas and suggestions are welcome.
This morning, my husband asked if I’d written any posts lately. I told him that yes, I’d written two yesterday. He said, am I in them? I said, well, you’re mentioned in the house one. He seemed disappointed in this answer, then shrugged it off as though he was joking. Something tells me he wasn’t, so let me tell you a little more about him.
We met 2 years and 3 months ago. Wow, and we’re already married and have a baby? Wow, indeed. We met the week before my 33rd birthday and one month before his 39th, so no one is a spring chicken in this scenario. About a week before we met, I severed ties with a singles group I’d belonged to for a few months. Prior to that, I had used every remotely reputable dating website (Lavalife (sort of reputable), eHarmony (told me there were 80 men in the area who were a match for me, ha!), Match.com (same people as on Lavalife and every other site), etc.) off and on for 3 years, looking for Mr. Right. Obviously, these were all unsuccessful ventures.
So what happens? I finally finish recording my voice over demo, and now I need to have the graphic design, manufacturing, and replication done. I have no clue where to begin searching for a vendor to perform these tasks. Thankfully, I have a friend in the industry, and she directed me to the big dog in this field. I check their prices, get sticker shock, and keep looking. As with most things, when you try to save a buck, you really pay the price, so I turn my radar back to the big dog. If memory serves, I filled out a form on their website, and the local sales manager called me. We chat a couple of times on the phone and set up an appointment.
I didn’t gussy up for the appointment, but I didn’t dress down, either; this guy sounded nice enough on the phone, but like your typical white shirt and tie sales type. It was bordering on hot that day; the first true warmth of the year, so I remember thinking that the long-sleeved shirt and black pants were a not-so-great idea. Take a cab to the sales office, open the door, and about fell over. A guy with shoulder-length dark hair stands up, one arm slathered in tattoos, and says, can I help you? I’m thinking, oh dear god, please let this be the sales guy. I say, I have an appointment with so-and-so. He says, that’s me. And suddenly, all of the dating bullshit and fuckovers and nights of being stood up might all be worth it, because I now have proof THERE IS A GOD.
We talk about my project, and we’re flirting so incessantly, it’s got to be making the kid at the next desk want to puke. I wanted to puke, but I couldn’t help myself. He was so goddamned sexy, and those tattoos drove me wild. Turns out the office was new, and he had just moved to Chicago from the west coast. Even better? We lived in the same neighborhood. Before the appointment was over, he had given me two tickets to a band competition sponsored by his company to be held two days later. I hadn’t even gotten up to leave when I decided what shirt to wear 50 hours later at our next meeting. White, not necessarily low-cut, but low-cut enough to showcase the chunky necklace/homing device I planned to pair with the shirt.
I went back to work, and the friend that referred me to this company asked how the appointment went. I responded, you didn’t hear me panting from your office? That sales guy is HOT! I asked a different friend to accompany me to the band competition, but she was travelling for work. And thank god. So, I flew solo. In the two days between our appointment and the band thing, we e-mailed quite a bit, but I was trying so fucking hard not to come off like a party girl or whatever, that I think I sounded more like the queen of the mood swing. To date, my experience with dating had been so atrocious, so full of bullshit, so full of lies, that I trusted no one, least of all myself.
Finally, the band competition evening arrives, and when I walk into the bar, there he sat, waiting for me. We had an awesome time, and I purposefully drove “in case” he needed a ride home. Well, he did. There was much smooching in front of his building, and I was so keyed up that I had to drive around for another hour to quell my excitement. We made plans for the next night, and again, we had an awesome time. From the get-go, he called me on my bullshit, and although this can be infuriating, it’s wonderful to think that someone can and does understand you. And they’re not going to tolerate your foolishness, whatever that may be.
After our first official date, I called a good friend in NYC and told her, if this guy isn’t completely full of shit, I’m in big trouble. When I described how close his apartment was to mine, she said, that isn’t even delivery, it’s fucking DiGiorno!
We continued to see each other every week, and my stealthy ways had us “accidentally” ride the same train to work many times. I was getting so good at figuring out his schedule, I thought I might blow it. And it seemed that I almost did 3 weeks in when I left him a voicemail on a Wednesday night asking if he wanted to grab a burger. Saw him on the train the next morning, and I panicked, thinking, shit shit shit he didn’t return the call he doesn’t want to see you all of the time and here you are on the same fucking train shit shit shit. It was cool, but two days later, he told me that he didn’t want to see me every day. Then I really panicked. The only thing that brought me back from the ledge was a male friend who explained that guys don’t want to see a woman every day early on, even one they’re totally into. This makes no sense to women, but WHATEVER.
Within 4 months of meeting, he moved in with me. At first, I said no, I didn’t want to live with anyone unless we were engaged. I quickly explained that this was not some passive-aggressive way of asking for a ring, which he understood. My dad, of all people, was the one whose feedback convinced me to change my mind. Three months after we started shacking up, we found out I was pregnant. I did not handle this news very well, but he was ECSTATIC. Turns out that while we were buying pregnancy tests and getting confirmation from the doctor, he had already ordered my engagement ring. He proposed on the Monday morning after we found out. I was a mess, all crabby and wearing my bathrobe. I never hesitated, and haven’t since.
We waited until 3 months after the baby was born to get married. Goddammit, I didn’t wait this long to meet the right guy and not be able to drink at my own reception. I mean, shit, come on.
In another 2 months, we’ll celebrate our first anniversary, and I can tell you, it’s the first of many.
I love you, baby.
We toured three houses on Saturday, and the first two were eliminated immediately. The third house, well, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty goddamned close. The exterior and lot are 100% of what we want. The interior is about 60%. It’s on three levels, which isn’t nearly as fancy as it sounds; the house is built into a hill. The problem with a three-level home is that with a toddler, stairs are an accident waiting to happen. Hell, with my clumsy ass, stairs are an accident waiting to happen. Our biggest beef with the place is the upstairs bathroom: there is no tub, just a shower. Those suck because they’re always too small, but more importantly, we can’t give the baby a bath there. We’d have to carry her downstairs and use our bathroom, then carry her slick self back up the stairs to dry and dress her. Can you see disastrous results of this exercise? Yeah. I can barely hold her when she’s got a fresh coat of lotion or sunscreen, much less when she’s wet from a bath.
Here’s the little fantasy I cooked up: maybe the house will languish on the market for a while, then the sellers will be more willing to negotiate the price down enough to allow us to have the bathroom redone. Of course, the stair issue remains, but the house is so so so close to what we want. This whole process reminds me a little too much of dating: you just never know when compromising is the adult thing to do or when you’re settling like a dumbass.
So, we’re going to keep looking until we decide that this is indeed the house we want, or something better comes along. Just like dating.
It’s been several days since I posted, and what can I say? I’ve been busy. Thursday afternoon was spent on my hands and knees in the kitchen and dining room. The house we’re renting has vinyl floors in these rooms (really, it’s a combination room, but whatever), and those bitches have been filthy since we moved in. On move-in day, the baby crawled into the kitchen and her knees, feet, and hands immediately turned from their lovely pink to a disgusting dirty black color. I’ve mopped that goddamned floor every week since, and it’s only improved slightly. So, on Thursday, I bit the bullet, pulled out the kneepad I use when scrubbing the bathtub, and went to work. Over two hours later, the floor was done, and so were my wrists and knees. Please insert all manner of filthy jokes here.