So last week was pretty horrendous. This new feeding schedule is supposed to be freeing up time for me and Little O, but it's actually become a little more taxing. On Thursday for example, Little O woke us at 5am for a throw-up and scream fest, but then did settle down again until 7.30am... for another throw-up and scream fest. He basically hasn't gotten all his PediaSure overnight since we started this routine a week ago, so on Thursday morning I just dumped out the remainder and put it back in to the fridge so I could give it to him later in the day via a bolus gravity feed. (I hate that term: bolus gravity feed. It makes me think of bowels and space and Newton and, for some reason, balloon catheters. It's just a really irritating phrase.) So that day I had to give him his remaining PediaSure at 9.30am because he got fussy and I correctly interpreted that as hunger, then water and an oral feed at 11.00am because his speech therapist came over, and finally set his pump to run at 12pm for his regularly-scheduled nap. It meant I spent allllllll fucking morning feeding (or fretting about feeding) my son.
It's been pretty much the same story all week.
Anywhoo, my husband and I weighed him tonight before bed and Little O has gained three ounces! Yay! He was 23lb 3oz last Thursday (July 29th), and weighed 23lb 6oz today (Aug 7th). It's not a great gain, but I WILL TAKE IT! We're still not jumping up and down, but hopefully this is the start of a better journey. The more weight he puts on and the bigger he gets, the more his stomach will be able to tolerate (in theory, I stress), which means we can up the pump rate and he'll hopefully keep more down. It's all a matter of biology I suppose.
My Mum is coming to see me next week! She'll be here for my birthday, which makes it the third year in a row I've had family out to Wisconsin on that day. It's rather remarkable and I feel incredibly special, but it is helped by both my parents working in education and August falling during the UK schools' summer holidays. She'll be bringing over D, who is a lovely young chap who lives with my Mum and Dad, and who has had a rather interesting start in life. It's not my place to discuss his affairs online, but I'm looking forward to seeing them both. (Worth noting is the fact he's openly gay, before anyone raises an eyebrow at a 52-year-old woman and 22-year-old man going away together on holiday.) Hopefully D will help break some of the inevitable tension that accompanies those times my Mum and I get together.
Mmm... they're bringing some Cadbury's Dairy Milk too...
In anticipation of their visit, my husband and I have been madly preparing the house for guests. Normally this involves washing the sheets on the guest bed and cleaning the bathrooms (both done far too rarely), but we've gone a little mad this time.
On the list this weekend:
1) Go to the DMV for the Ford's MOT/emissions test
2) Vacuum carpets
3) Clean carpets (we bought a fancy carpet cleaner machine for this, seeing as Little O gets our house rather filthy, and it's already paid for itself after four months)
4) Wash all bedding (yup, all three beds)
5) Tidy and organise the basement (a rather big job, which we're excellent at avoiding)
6) Clean oven inside and out (again, a job done too rarely, but I seem to have fallen in love with the self-clean programme and I fancy this will be done more often now)
7) Clean microwave (ditto... sigh)
8) Clean both bathrooms (I refuse to do this. It's gross)
9) Wash all non-carpeted floors
10) Clean upholstery in living room (our fancy-pants carpet cleaner has a gizmo for this, and Little O's goo gets EVERYWHERE)
11) Mow lawn (I actually really love doing this)
12) Stain the deck (we did this earlier today and now it's a rather startling shade of orange. Oops)
13) Replace batteries in kitchen clock (cheap piece of crap)
14) Go grocery shopping
15) Dusting
16) De-flea Bob (all done now! He shrieked like you wouldn't believe, but that shampoo is awesome. And now we have clean carpets and anti-flea stuff down too, so those little buggers better find somewhere else to live)
17) Finish toy box (my husband's job. He started making Little O a toy box for his birthday... which was in May... sigh...)
18) Put up curtain tie-backs in guest room
19) Replace air filter in heating/air conditioning unit (it's been well over a year, and who knows how long it had been there when we moved in. We changed it today and it was black)
20) Clean kitchen top to bottom
21) Laundry
There are others, but we've either done them already and I've forgotten them, or we're clearly never going to do them and I've also forgotten them. But at least five of those items on the list are BIG JOBS and it took us all day today to get them done. Tomorrow we're going out for brunch at the Botanical Gardens, thanks to our lovely friends J&G, who gave us a voucher for free babysitting and two paid-for brunches to use whenever we chose. I'm trying really hard not to stress about leaving Little O for a couple of hours because I know he'll be safe and loved, but I'm such a control freak when it comes to my son. It's really hard to spend all day looking after him and then hand him off to someone else, no questions asked. I feel guilty and a little bit lost. I need to work harder at letting go... but I don't really want to...
This post is a little bit of a ramble, I know. It's probably very boring to read about the chores we're getting done this weekend, but I felt a bit absent after my last post and I wanted to write about something utterly mundane. And chores are pretty fucking mundane.
I still miss Anthea. She moved in to a new flat a few weeks ago (they OWN it! In London! How cool is THAT?) and hasn't had any internet since then. She also works in education so it's not like she can nip in to work and get online for a few hours. It means I haven't chatted to her for aaaaaages, and right now she, her husband, her son, my other sister V, and my Dad are all on what sounds like a rather hilarious canal boat holiday. My Dad's always wanted to go on one but my Mum prefers city breaks so we never did it as children. Now Mum's flying over to see me, and Dad's taking the initiative and cramming four adults and a one-year-old on to a narrow boat for two weeks. It will be absolutely fucking hilarious and while I miss them like crazy, I also can't wait to hear about how much they got on each other's nerves and how my Dad nearly capsized a 30ft-long canal boat in some random lock.
Good times, man... good times.
Tina.
Showing posts with label Car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Car. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Oh. My. Good. God.
First off, I couldn't weigh myself this morning because before I could, the toilet overflowed.
Mike gets up earlier than me (at 5am, which is plainly ridiculous), and this morning he took the opportunity a dark, quiet house offered him and spent some time on the toilet doing whatever it is men do in there for sooooo long. After he left (5.30am: still ridiculous), I slept for another hour or so, then got up at 7am to start my day. I went in to the bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet, and noticed that Mike either hadn't flushed when he'd finished, or our toilet was clogged. So, because it was 7am and I'm not at my most coherent at that time of the morning, I decided to give it another flush to *ahem* help things along.
Oh. My. Good. God.
The toilet literally vomited out its entire contents on to the bathroom floor, including everything Mike had deposited there earlier. I think I screamed, or whimpered, or did something fairly sissy-ish, and then grabbed some old towels and literally threw them on the floor, thinking this would somehow help. It did not. To use the term "chunky water" is not something I do light-heartedly, but I feel it's appropriate in this instance. It was brown, yellow and had dark chunks of godawfulness floating in it. I then jumped over the towels on to a dry patch and chucked down the pan some de-clogging gel we have in the cupboard, shut the door and scarpered. This, my dear friends, is MIKE'S FAULT, and I am fully prepared to sacrifice some towels and bathmats if it means I don't have to *literally* clean up my husband's shit.
I did tell him about it though. I didn't let him discover it for himself at a later time. That would have just been cruel.
So, after this incident at 7am, I realised I was running late. Owen had to up, changed and eating by 8am, and I had to have the house clean, myself dressed and him done with refluxing by 10am because the Occupational Therapist was coming over for an assessment. I think Owen knew how stressed I already was, because halfway through his feed he took supreme pleasure in doing one of the largest dumps he's ever done, and it exploded out of his nappy on to his back, legs, highchair, blankets and, once I got him on to the floor to change him, the carpet, his hands and some of me.
Oh. My. Good. God.
I got him cleaned up, met with the OT, fed Owen again and made it to CHOW with about ten minutes to spare. Met with his Craniofacial doctor (the one we don't like) and his fabulously glam new nurse (whom we do), and left CHOW feeling much more upbeat. So upbeat, in fact, I turned up the stereo and put my foot down on the motorway. The speed limit went down to 55mph at one point due to road works, so I natually slowed down a little bit, then when it changed back to 65mph, I sped up to 73mph. This is the speed I normally do on the motorway, and as I'm constantly being overtaken my other vehicles doing in excess of 80mph, I think nothing of it. Today, this was not the case.
Oh. My. Good. God.
Not ONLY did I get my first ever speeding ticket, but because I sped up to 73mph coming out of a 55mph work zone, my fine was doubled.. DOUBLED!! I have gone from having a clean, perfect driving record to points on my licence and a $236 fine. I was gobsmacked. Well behaved in front of the police officer, but gobsmacked. And I'm too ashamed to tell Mike. I may have seen his shit, but telling him I have a speeding ticket is cheek-burning embarrasing because I'm always crowing my superior driving skills at him.
After all this nonsense I decided to call my sister in the UK to find out about her weekend under some Icelandic volcanic ash, and whether or not she made it to her friend's wedding out in Ireland, but our sodding phones kept disconnecting and I only got as far as Owen's blowout. This is too bad, because I really, really, REALLY need to vent.
They say things come in threes, but my day has already had so much crap in it (literally!), that I'm just expecting more of the same later on. What a disasterous Monday.
Tina.
Mike gets up earlier than me (at 5am, which is plainly ridiculous), and this morning he took the opportunity a dark, quiet house offered him and spent some time on the toilet doing whatever it is men do in there for sooooo long. After he left (5.30am: still ridiculous), I slept for another hour or so, then got up at 7am to start my day. I went in to the bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet, and noticed that Mike either hadn't flushed when he'd finished, or our toilet was clogged. So, because it was 7am and I'm not at my most coherent at that time of the morning, I decided to give it another flush to *ahem* help things along.
Oh. My. Good. God.
The toilet literally vomited out its entire contents on to the bathroom floor, including everything Mike had deposited there earlier. I think I screamed, or whimpered, or did something fairly sissy-ish, and then grabbed some old towels and literally threw them on the floor, thinking this would somehow help. It did not. To use the term "chunky water" is not something I do light-heartedly, but I feel it's appropriate in this instance. It was brown, yellow and had dark chunks of godawfulness floating in it. I then jumped over the towels on to a dry patch and chucked down the pan some de-clogging gel we have in the cupboard, shut the door and scarpered. This, my dear friends, is MIKE'S FAULT, and I am fully prepared to sacrifice some towels and bathmats if it means I don't have to *literally* clean up my husband's shit.
I did tell him about it though. I didn't let him discover it for himself at a later time. That would have just been cruel.
So, after this incident at 7am, I realised I was running late. Owen had to up, changed and eating by 8am, and I had to have the house clean, myself dressed and him done with refluxing by 10am because the Occupational Therapist was coming over for an assessment. I think Owen knew how stressed I already was, because halfway through his feed he took supreme pleasure in doing one of the largest dumps he's ever done, and it exploded out of his nappy on to his back, legs, highchair, blankets and, once I got him on to the floor to change him, the carpet, his hands and some of me.
Oh. My. Good. God.
I got him cleaned up, met with the OT, fed Owen again and made it to CHOW with about ten minutes to spare. Met with his Craniofacial doctor (the one we don't like) and his fabulously glam new nurse (whom we do), and left CHOW feeling much more upbeat. So upbeat, in fact, I turned up the stereo and put my foot down on the motorway. The speed limit went down to 55mph at one point due to road works, so I natually slowed down a little bit, then when it changed back to 65mph, I sped up to 73mph. This is the speed I normally do on the motorway, and as I'm constantly being overtaken my other vehicles doing in excess of 80mph, I think nothing of it. Today, this was not the case.
Oh. My. Good. God.
Not ONLY did I get my first ever speeding ticket, but because I sped up to 73mph coming out of a 55mph work zone, my fine was doubled.. DOUBLED!! I have gone from having a clean, perfect driving record to points on my licence and a $236 fine. I was gobsmacked. Well behaved in front of the police officer, but gobsmacked. And I'm too ashamed to tell Mike. I may have seen his shit, but telling him I have a speeding ticket is cheek-burning embarrasing because I'm always crowing my superior driving skills at him.
After all this nonsense I decided to call my sister in the UK to find out about her weekend under some Icelandic volcanic ash, and whether or not she made it to her friend's wedding out in Ireland, but our sodding phones kept disconnecting and I only got as far as Owen's blowout. This is too bad, because I really, really, REALLY need to vent.
They say things come in threes, but my day has already had so much crap in it (literally!), that I'm just expecting more of the same later on. What a disasterous Monday.
Tina.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Things which confuse me...
1. The difference between "that" and "which". I really ought to know this by now, seeing as I correct other people's grammatical errors for a living.
2. Why people iron baby clothes. Or children's clothes, for that matter. Actually... I don't know why people bother to iron on a regular basis at all. I certainly don't and I'm still alive.
3. Gender stereotypes.
4. Why chocolate isn't good for me.
5. Manual gearboxes on cars. Yes, I learnt to drive in a manual and I even passed my test in one, but now I've been solely driving an automatic for the last five years, a manual really baffles me. Biting point... what?
6. Vegans. Vegetarians, I get. Vegans, I don't.
7. Bob. He's just TOO Bob sometimes, as I said to Mike last night. The cat needs Zoloft.
8. Wisconsin weather.
9. Illinois drivers.
10. Why people in this country don't want healthcare reform, and they use the "Socialist" UK as an example of it not working. Firstly, the USA IS Socialist, and secondly, the NHS might have its flaws, but it seems to be trotting along just fine.
Tina.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Some days you just have to throw in the towel
Today did NOT start off well, I'll be honest with you.
First off, Mike's car is on the blink and he's not the most organised of people so it's still at the mechanics, a mere three days after he took it in. I wouldn't mind so much if they were actually working on the thing, but seeing as they can't identify the problem yet and Mike hasn't given them permission to do any unauthorised work, it's been there since Friday in the same blinkin' state it started in. Sigh. So today he has my car, which means I can't leave the house. I got all excited for about ten minutes planning a walk with Owen, but then I remembered the buggy's in the boot and Mike won't have thought to take it out before he left at 5.30am. Double sigh.
The next thing to go wrong was Owen waking up at 6am. This isn't SO bad, but seeing as I don't usually feed him until 7am, it was kind of irritating to have to go in to his room and shush him, then not be able to go back to sleep for the extra hour because my body assumed getting out of bed meant getting out of bed.
Well, Owen's feed was, as usual, a spectacular fountain of puke. We are down to the barest essentials now with his clothes as he's growing at an alarming rate (he's nine months old and yesterday we noticed he'd grown out of his 12-month babygrows. Awesome), and all the burp cloths are filthy from the weekend. I know it's not much, but not having anything clean and/or fitting for him just really, really gets to me. I mean, if he HAS to throw up constantly, the very least I can do for him as a parent is keep him clean and wearing clothes. I dunno... it just seemed relentless this morning.
So, after all this nonsense, I settled down on the laptop to load the internet... and the thing doesn't work. Argh. After FOUR attempts to get to my desktop in an hour it finally calmed down... and the internet doesn't work! Apparently there's an issue with my wireless card and I'm so far past caring about the waste of my life I just invested in it that I can't even bring myself to discuss it. Needless to say, the laptop is now lying abandoned on the floor and I'm on the big Mac. Mac = much better. I think my next machine will be a Notebook Air, or whatever they're called. They just never seem to fail!
Well... after FINALLY getting online here, I check my e-mails and what do I find? An innocent e-mail from my publishers. After waiting a whole week, sleeping badly and chewing my nails down to the quick... they are not picking up my proposal.
BASTARDS!!
I sulked for a good hour after reading that, then sent them a cursory e-mail thanking them for their time and informing them I'll be finding another publisher. It WILL get published, mark my words.
Anyway, after all this mayhem and foolishness this morning, I decided to treat myself to some new music on iTunes. I finally found that bitchin' song I love from Abby and Luka's wedding on Season 13 of ER and have been jamming away to it ever since. Because sometimes when things go wrong, you just have to throw in the towel and jam out to this:
"Can't Stop" by Ozomatli
Tina.
First off, Mike's car is on the blink and he's not the most organised of people so it's still at the mechanics, a mere three days after he took it in. I wouldn't mind so much if they were actually working on the thing, but seeing as they can't identify the problem yet and Mike hasn't given them permission to do any unauthorised work, it's been there since Friday in the same blinkin' state it started in. Sigh. So today he has my car, which means I can't leave the house. I got all excited for about ten minutes planning a walk with Owen, but then I remembered the buggy's in the boot and Mike won't have thought to take it out before he left at 5.30am. Double sigh.
The next thing to go wrong was Owen waking up at 6am. This isn't SO bad, but seeing as I don't usually feed him until 7am, it was kind of irritating to have to go in to his room and shush him, then not be able to go back to sleep for the extra hour because my body assumed getting out of bed meant getting out of bed.
Well, Owen's feed was, as usual, a spectacular fountain of puke. We are down to the barest essentials now with his clothes as he's growing at an alarming rate (he's nine months old and yesterday we noticed he'd grown out of his 12-month babygrows. Awesome), and all the burp cloths are filthy from the weekend. I know it's not much, but not having anything clean and/or fitting for him just really, really gets to me. I mean, if he HAS to throw up constantly, the very least I can do for him as a parent is keep him clean and wearing clothes. I dunno... it just seemed relentless this morning.
So, after all this nonsense, I settled down on the laptop to load the internet... and the thing doesn't work. Argh. After FOUR attempts to get to my desktop in an hour it finally calmed down... and the internet doesn't work! Apparently there's an issue with my wireless card and I'm so far past caring about the waste of my life I just invested in it that I can't even bring myself to discuss it. Needless to say, the laptop is now lying abandoned on the floor and I'm on the big Mac. Mac = much better. I think my next machine will be a Notebook Air, or whatever they're called. They just never seem to fail!
Well... after FINALLY getting online here, I check my e-mails and what do I find? An innocent e-mail from my publishers. After waiting a whole week, sleeping badly and chewing my nails down to the quick... they are not picking up my proposal.
BASTARDS!!
I sulked for a good hour after reading that, then sent them a cursory e-mail thanking them for their time and informing them I'll be finding another publisher. It WILL get published, mark my words.
Anyway, after all this mayhem and foolishness this morning, I decided to treat myself to some new music on iTunes. I finally found that bitchin' song I love from Abby and Luka's wedding on Season 13 of ER and have been jamming away to it ever since. Because sometimes when things go wrong, you just have to throw in the towel and jam out to this:
"Can't Stop" by Ozomatli
Tina.
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