Jon and Kate + The Whole Damn World

Okay, I admit it.  I’ve watched.  I mean, I haven’t sat through an entire boring episode of someone else’s kids getting free stuff, but I’ve channel surfed and have admittedly paused.  It was facinating to see the way Kate spoke to Jon even before their troubles hit the tabloids.  

After all, I would never get away with talking to my husband the way she does, and wouldn’t want to in the first place.  Funny, but I actually don’t like the idea of making him feel like an idiot man-child in front of the entire world.  But to be a doormat, you really have to volunteer to throw yourself down and quietly allow everyone to wipe their feet.  To each his own.

It is with increasing discomfort that I watch their personal disaster snowball into a more and more loathsome scenario.  The family is imploding, while cute but oblivious children run around collecting their freebies, living in their freebie house, getting their freebie haircuts, all while the parents get their freebie divorce.  They seem to have forgotten one of the most basic principles of economics.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Or a free Crooked House. 

My husband and I have had our children one at a time, with fourth child pending.  That doesn’t qualify us for any free stuff.  We pay for our own haircuts, clothes, and vacations (or lack thereof).  We also have to be careful to treat each other with respect and dignity because we are entirely relying on each other to raise these kids.  Our family nurtures a mutual fondness that’s based on a mutual need.  It’s not romantic, even though it’s the fondness that brought us together in the first place, but it’s real and it’s the truth.  When you take away the mutual need, whether it be financial or something less tangible, the work of nurturing mutual fondness starts to feel too  much like, well, work.

The price has been high for the Gosselins, and perhaps this is how they would’ve ended regardless of their money and fame.  But I would bet, if Kate were a stay at home mom relying on her husband to put food on the table (as she was after the six were born), she might have thought twice about treating him like a moron.  And if Jon knew his children were relying on his responsibility and his income for their security, he probably wouldn’t have been running out to bars and staying out all night with other women.  Those eight children might have forced them to learn something about being descent to each other, and insisting on descent behavior from themselves.  You know, discipline and maturity, that sort of thing.  The sort of things that make happily staying together possible.

So there it is, my take on something that ought not to be any of my business.  Only one of millions.  But I sure would like one (just one) of those Crooked Houses in my back yard.

That Wasn’t So Hard

Pregnancy always makes me feel like I’m suffocating.  I’m not, actually, it turns out that my body, in the midst of all the pregnancy hormones and readjusting itself to accommodate a growing baby, is actually forcing me to take deeper breaths.  Somehow this translates into my feeling breathless. 

I’ll just have to learn to ignore it because it only gets worse as the baby gets bigger.  Then it becomes aggravated by the feeling that I can’t quite empty my bladder.  Can’t empty the bladder, can’t fill the lungs.  What next?  Don’t ask.

Yesterday I spent two hours washing my floors.  Two hours.  My knees are all bruised up.  Needless to say but I’ll say it just the same, they were disgusting.  Changed the muddy water three times.  I’m trying to catch up on all the things I would have been doing right along had I not been sick, but I am waaaay behind.  Last week I washed the upstairs carpets and cleaned my room so that I don’t have to hate, you know, being in there.  The kids rooms are clean, Tommy’s mattress has been washed so it doesn’t smell like pee in his room, I’ve started sorting through clothes, getting rid of what’s too small or too destroyed or too wintry, making room for all of the summer clothes.  But that project is only in baby phase.

The laundry is almost caught up, but that only last so long.  The kids are back to getting ready for bed before 10 o’clock, and they’re actually wearing clothes that are clean and fit them.  Never underestimate how necessary mom is.  If I’m not functioning, this home quickly devolves into the toddler version of a frat house.  It ain’t pretty.  We don’t fling poo and we wash our hands before meals. 

I’ve talked to the two older boys about rearranging bedrooms, giving the three boys my big room, moving Ed and me into Ry and Sean’s room, and making Tommy’s room the baby’s room.  So far, everyone is on board with that executive decision.  We aren’t really a Democracy around here, but I like to give it that appearance.  Hmm, that sounds eerily familiar…

We had a guy over on Saturday to have a look at our garage and to give us some ideas about turning it into a big family room.  He’s going to give us an estimate some time this week.  We shall see…

Now we just have to wait for our level II ultrasound on July 1, at which we will find out that our daughter is perfectly healthy and all systems are go.  No problem.

Fun Monday Food

Fun Monday is hosted this week by M is for Misanthrope, so you’ll have to go visit to play along!

Here’s her choice of topic:  If you could choose one main course and one dessert that could be free of calories and cholesterol for the rest of your life, what would they be?

This was tough, but I think I would go with the following:

The Porterhouse Steak

The Ice Cream Sundae

It doesn’t get much better than that!  You would never know I spent two years of my life as a vegetarian.

I Feel A Little Dirty

I joined Facebook yesterday.  Well, apparently I joined some time ago, did nothing with it, and deactivated my account.  I guess that’s ambivalence for you.

After being urged by two different people this week, a cousin and a friend who lives across the country, I signed up for real, pictures and everything.

Which is fine and great, really.  It’s what happens when you do a curiosity search on someone you went to high school with, check out their “friends” list, and realize that everyone you went to high school with has each other listed as friends in their facebook accounts. 

I know, I know, this is the whole point of facebook, right?  It’s just that it makes me feel so exposed.  Sounds stupid since I have this blog, but I have relative annonymity here.  A few family members know about it and some fellow bloggers, but it just feels different. 

I guess it really has to do with how I feel about the people I went to high school with, and high school in general.  Not a good time for me, not a place I look back upon fondly, for a whole myriad of reasons.  Seeing all those people on there, all linked up to one another was simply unsettling.  I know if I “friend” even one of them, I’ll eventually have the same list of faces in my own account.  So–I didn’t friend any of them.  I’m safe for now, only one of them knows my married name.

This is definitely probably a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.”   After all, these people are likely just as normal as the average person, are generally pretty nice, and don’t really overly care what’s going on in my life.  However, I still happen to have a recurring nightmare that they won’t let me out of high school.  So yeah.  Me, not you.

It’s kinda like that episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon goes to her high school reunion and finds out that she was the jerk, not everyone else.  Boy did I laugh at that.  Here’s a clip from that episode, if you can get through the commercial, and some other Liz Lemon faves (does anyone else love this show?):

Clip from reunion episode

 

Jerusalem

Wordless Wednesday

It’s Wednesday again, go Wordless, or almost wordless.                                         

My grandfather:  Walter V. Grace, November 8, 1922-June 11, 2003

Grandpa on the left standing with his sister, Helen, and his brother, Gene.

Weird Pregnancy

I never really put much stock in the stories women tell of a pregnancy being different because the baby was a boy or a girl.  I just figured every pregnancy is different, and that the sex of the baby had nothing to do with it.

While that may be true, I’m beginning to believe otherwise.  This pregnancy has been radically different than my first three.  In the beginning the sickness was much more intense, but now that I’ve passed 18 weeks, the nausea, vomiting, heartburn and general discomfort has been much more manageable.  I still have to be careful to take my medication, but if I do that I feel pretty good.

I still have strong food aversions.  Strange food aversions.  I can’t eat chocolate.  There’s a big bag of M&Ms in the cupboard, and it holds absolutely no temptation for me.  Same goes for chocolate chip cookies.  What I normally would love just produces a feeling of yuck when I think of eating it.

What I crave is pie.  I’ve been to several different place in the past couple of weeks looking for good pie.  Grocery store pie–not so good.  Pie from a farm a few miles north–not at all good.  How does one manage to make a fruit pie dry?  Pie from the Carrot Barn one county away–magnificent.  Raspberry apple pie to be exact.

I crave peaches and nectarines.  But don’t give me one that’s been sitting in a crate all winter waiting to turn the proper color–cause that bad boy has no taste whatsoever. 

The other weird thing has been the way I’m carrying.  I know, it’s early to know how I’m going to carry, but I’m still wearing my regular pants.  The looser ones, yes, but still.  I can’t wear regular shirts anymore, they’re not long enough.  This might be because I was heavier to begin this pregnancy, and I’ve only in the past couple of weeks been able to gain a couple of pounds.

There’s nothing scientific to it, that’s for sure.  There are other variables in addition to the fact that I’m carrying a girl this time.  However, it does give some credence to the wives tales.

Fun Monday!

This week’s Fun Monday is being hosted by Sayre Smiles, so go on over to participate.

Using your imagination, project into the future and tell me what you will be like as an 80-year old. Will you be someone who doesn’t accept the aging process, spending all your time in thegym and the bars, or will you be a rocking chair granny, or something in between?

I like this topic because it’s something I think about often.  Once in a while I find myself saying, “When I’m an old lady I’ll….” whatever it might be at the time. 

My maternal grandmother lived to be 97 or 98, and my paternal grandmother is still living.  Based on that, and on my low blood pressure and genetically good cholesterol, I think I’m probably going to last that long as well.

When I’m in my 80s I will finally be an expert on gardening, or at least that’s what people will think.  I plan to still be outside, taking walks, weeding flower beds, taking photos.

I’ll be a grandma!  I’ll do a lot of thinking about these days when my children were young and I was privileged to be the center of their world, if only for a few precious years.  This is one of the reasons I haven’t limited the children I have to one or two.  I don’t think there’s anything better in life then nuzzling your very own newborn under your chin.  By the time I’m in my 80s I hope to see my children experience the same joy with their own kids.

I will age gracefully.  I don’t like hanging out in the gym now, I certainly won’t want to when I’m 80.  I do hope to be active and stay healthy that way. 

I certainly hope to still be living independently, and to stay that way for the rest of my life.  I often joke that before I’ll go to a nursing home, I’d rather just wonder off into the woods.  Those Inuits had it right when they sent their elderly off on an ice drift.

Remembering June 6, 65 Years Ago

Last year I wrote about my Great Uncle who died in France days after the invasion.  Read a little about him.

Abnormal Ultrasound?

You never want to get a call from the nurse practitioner the day after your baby’s anatomical ultrasound.  In fact, my first reaction was to just hang up the phone and go about my business.  “You’re who? Oh.” Click.

They are scheduling a level 2 ultrasound at a different facility after finding that our baby’s stomach appeared abnormally large on her ultrasound.  I’ve googled, and really been unable to find anything that explains what that could mean; at least nothing that I could make any sense of.

You know, they didn’t find that she has webbed feet or is missing a major organ, so in that sense it’s good.  They found something that could just be a mistake on the ultrasound, or maybe she had just swallowed a lot of fluid.  The crappy thing is that I will inevitably being worrying that it’s something awful until I find out otherwise.

I did find that there is sometimes a connection between certain types of blockages that result in a large stomach on a scan and Down Sydrome, but the connection is so weak that I can’t really go there.  If it even is that certain type of blockage in the first place, something like 30% of fetuses with that blockage also have DS.  See what I  mean?  Doesn’t even make sense to worry about it yet.

I also did not have my quad screen done, which can also give you markers of possible problems with baby’s health.  I didn’t have it done with Sean either, because of  a mixture of  reluctance to have a test done to find something wrong and just not wanting to drive to the lab with my kids to have blood drawn.  Now I’m wishing I had because a negative would be reassuring, and a postive would at least justify any worrying I’m going to do.

Isn’t she cute?  Please pray that she’s okay in there.