And you call this vacation?

I suffer from a disease that is best named the Ignore It and Maybe It Will Go Away Syndrome. This syndrome does not require a lot of additional clarification. I like to avoid even being exposed to things that I don’t like, or avoid taking care of things that are just a quintessential pain in the ass. It is similar to denial, but in denial, you have to at least make yourself aware of the issue in order to appropriately deny it, correct? I much prefer my approach, which sometimes means I don’t have to think about it from the start. There is some psychologist reading this blog who is pinning me as the next poster child for some trendy new diagnosis, I can feel it now.

For example, let’s take winter weather. I hate snow. I hate the arctic cold. I hate driving on bad roads. Instead of constantly obsessing over it and inflicting more emotional distress than necessary, I abstain from even listening to the weather. So, when people say, “Did you hear about the snow storm coming in tonight? We are supposed to get hammered!” I stare at them with a blank look. I much prefer the vision in my head, the optimistic side of me that instead secretly hoped to wake up rejoycing that we miraculously found a 70-degree February day. While this is good for my psyche, it isn’t necessarily helpful when I wake up to freezing rain, absolutely unprepared for the additional drive time my morning commute will require.

I’ve taken this same approach to buying our airline tickets for a trip we are taking NEXT WEEK. While I’ve been diligently researching flights for two months, our options have been fairly repulsive. In other words, paying $1600 to fly three people to Florida, with two connections each way and arrival times around the midnight hour, is not my idea of a vacation. I am not mentally prepared for Kate’s first flight, not to mention navigating multiple connections and subjecting myself to the absolute meltdown that will certainly take place between the hours of 9pm and midnight. And seriously people, if I am spending $1600 on airfare, that plane better be landing somewhere better than Ft. Myers.

So, I ignored it. I continued to think that maybe if I just waited, a much better scenario would come along.

It didn’t.

Then, Craig started to consider driving. The only thing worse than the travel arrangement described above would be the three of us in the car for 24-hours. I am developing a facial twitch just thinking about it. If I were a betting person, I’d put five-grand on Kate’s vocabulary expanding to include much more colorful language at the end of that car ride. I thought Craig was joking about this suggestion, but he wasn’t. Even more frightening, I caught myself in a moment of ENTERTAINING.THE.NOTION.

I feverishly got back online, trying to secure some flight arrangements that would put an end to this madness. On Airtran’s site (which we have to fly for a reason too exhausting to explain), I realized they sold tickets each-way, versus roundtrip only. I found an excellent price on RETURN trip tickets, so I booked three. I was apprehensive that if we waited for the THERE ticket prices to come down, we’d miss out on the great non-stop return flight.

We don’t have flights there, because at $950, I am still choosing to ignore that conundrum, hoping a solution will spontaneously appear. However, I’ve sufficiently obstructed any plans involving DRIVING to Florida by booking the return flight. I’m such a pain in the ass.

No Worthy Title

Click to enlarge

Kate: Month Thirty-Seven

Kate,

It’s hard to believe that you are thirty-seven months old. On one hand, it seems like you were just born yesterday, while on the other, it seems like you have been part of my life forever. Over this past month, more than any other time in your life, I’ve noticed just how much you have changed in such a short period of time. You truly are much more of a little girl now and much less of a toddler. With that growth, your addiction to clothing has intensified from mildly-obsessed to life-or-death-give-me-my-morphine-clothing-drip obsessed. Since I whole-heartedly believe in allowing you the freedom to express your creativity and believe in choosing my battles wisely, you often run around looking something like this:


(Please note that the summer dress over the pajamas in the middle of winter still does not really explain the behavior portrayed in this picture)

While “Baby Kate” has been your favorite baby for quite some time, your unfaltering love for her has increased exponentially. It is a true testament to the unwritten rule that children will often attach to the homeliest toy that they own, forcing you to oblige and carry that toy into every public place you visit. Baby Kate wasn’t really acceptable in her brand-new, clean, form, which makes her current shabby state even less bearable. The open-close mechanism on her eyes only works part of the time, rendering a slightly psychotic looking unkempt baby. Craig doesn’t take too kindly to the fact that my term of endearment for your baby is “ghetto Baby Kate”. You make a habit out of routinely playing mommy to baby Kate and showering her with love and affection, which warms my heart. You also have a knack for engaging baby Kate in bad behaviors, then sternly reprimanding her. At your recent Doctor’s appointment, Baby Kate was obnoxiously banging her plastic hands on the window. I quietly told you to stop. Suddenly, you started loudly hitting Baby Kate’s hands on the window, while yelling, “Stop Baby Kate, Stop. Mom, I can’t get Baby Kate to stop, she’s going to be in trouble! She isn’t listening.” I am not sure I am ready for Freud’s interpretation of your parenting tactics, or your early identification of a scapegoat.



Lately I’ve been calling you My Little Peanut Butter and Jelly. It is a fact that motherhood makes you say and do strange things, while suddenly seeming like a totally normal way to act. I am not sure if it is a gene that unexplicably morphs into your DNA when you give birth, or the loss of one of the more rational genes that occurs at that time. After a few weeks of calling you by this name, I’d start saying, “My Little Peanut Butter and …” and you would quickly chime in “Jelly!” Suddenly it became a game and you would work incredibly hard at filling in that blank with anything but jelly, becoming Peanut Butter and Ketchup! Peanut Butter and Banana! Peanut Butter and Chicken! Then you would erupt into fits of giggles, uncertain of how anything could be quite so funny. One day last week, we were playing this little game in the car and I said, “My Little Peanut Butter and …” and you yelled, “poop!” You proceeded to laugh so hard you snorted, which I guess is a revelation of just how weird your humor is. For days you paraded around singing “Peanut Butter and POOP! Peanut Butter and POOP!” which is nothing short of spectacular. It is some intuitive measure that kids find the word poop unexplainably funny. When I add that to your recent practice of making your baby puke, all while yelling, “BLAAAAAAAAAA … Baby Kate is puking!” it is a slightly disconcerting combination. It feels more like I am mother to a belching, farting, puking teenage boy than a darling little girl.



This month has introduced another change in you, which was one that I did not anticipate. You have always been a daring child, totally fearless and confident. Recently you have shown some trepidation, concerns in the face of meeting someone new, uncertainty about shadows in your room, and the practice of burrowing yourself firmly into my legs. It is not an abnormal phase for a kid your age, but one that I sort of thought you would breeze right though, or sort of hop right over. It makes me sad to see you scared and anxious, preferring instead to believe that somehow you would be immune to those horrible feelings. However, I can’t help but to breathe a sigh of relief that there is some apprehension there to counteract the absolute fearless with which you approach life. So, instead of darting out into the middle of the road, I have some hope that you will at least attempt to look both ways. Instead of eagerly engaging in play with any stranger, I have some hope that you will at least stop to ascertain their name and the fact that one of your parents at least know who they are. Instead of wildly launching yourself off the couch to try to land on the yoga ball (who thought that was a good idea anyway?), I hope you will assure that one of your parents are present to hold your hand. Perhaps this newfound hesitation is not something to be questioned, but something designed to ensure your third year of life does not include any more ER visits than necessary.

While I have enjoyed every moment, every stage, and every change you have gone through, I think this one is my favorite so far. A wise mother once told me that your favorite age is the one your child currently is and I couldn’t agree more.

Love,
Mama

Interviewed by Cate at Show my Face

Today I am being interviewed by Cate from Show my Face. Cate sent me a series of thought-provoking questions to answer here today. Cate was one of my first regular blog-readers and daily commenters. For that, she earns a special place in bloggy-heaven. I love Cate’s blog for her humor, her ability to say so many things I think, but would never be brave enough to say, and her ability to respond to nearly every single person who comments on her blog. She makes me look really, really inept at this particular task. Cate also deserves accolades since she hooked me up with a great new laptop when my last one caught some infectious disease a couple of months ago. So, truthfully, without Cate, this blog might have met an untimely death.

(Insert applause for Cate here)

I had the opportunity to ask Cate some questions on her blog today too. Click here to see her answers to my questions.

I'm going to start by asking a follow-up from the awesome interview Jenny conducted. You indicated you're more likely to give advice than to receive. What do you feel was the best advice you've ever given?

I indicated that I was likely to give advice, yes. I did not attest to the quality of that advice. In fact, I think that I do give stellar advice; people just rarely ever listen to it. So, I guess it would be hard to measure the quality of my advice, considering the majority of it hasn’t been implemented. Maybe one of my blog-readers can chime in and gush about my genius advice that changed their life. Waiting. Still waiting … wait, is this thing on?

And a follow-up to the follow-up, since I'm so creative that way. What piece of advice have you given that didn't work out?

Okay, see above. Apparently the majority of my advice hasn’t worked out, since people rarely seem to listen to me. However, I will say that I have advised a plethora of people against taking new jobs and I always end up being in an “I told you so” position. I don’t rub their nose in it, I just write about their bad decision on the internet. So, without divulging any secrets, I’ll just say, listen to me when it comes to career choices, okay?

What would be (or has been) your perfect vacation destination? Let's go with a family trip, a "woohoo, Kate's with a sitter" trip for you and your husband, and a "woohoo, your husband IS Kate's sitter" trip for just you!

In the past ten years I’ve had the opportunity to travel quite a bit. I’ve realized that my best vacations are ones that don’t require doing much. So, while I’ve visited a significant number of major cities in the US, they just require me to do too much work. I hate navigating the transit systems, meticulously planning daily agendas, standing in tourist-attraction lines with a multitude of claustrophobia-influencing people, wondering whose idea of relaxing this would be. I’m quite happy to be beach-side, enjoying warm weather, good restaurants, and the most significant looming decision to be if I should wear my Reef flip-flops, or my Rainbow flip-flops. My two top vacations to date have been Key West and Hilton Head. So, whether alone, with spouse, or with family, anything that fits this criterion is perfectly suitable for me.

Since you work in HR, I assume you've probably conducted your share of job interviews. What's the most bizarre answer (or question) you've ever received from a job applicant? I always hate being asked "what's your worst quality?", any interesting answers for that?

Expectedly, I’ve had more awkward situations than can be documented here. My all time most bizarre interview is best portrayed by relaying the conversation that took place:

INTERVIEWEE (Hereafter referred to as CD (Creepy Dude)): I just want to let you know that I have a criminal history.

ME: Having a criminal history doesn’t exclude you from employment. Depending on what your conviction was and how long ago it occurred, there are still some positions that you would be allowed to obtain. We will get to those questions soon.

CD: Well, I’ll just tell you that I am a sex-offender.

ME: Okay, well, again, we’ll ask you some specific questions about those convictions in just a moment.

CD: I’m a registered sex-offender. I’m listed on the sex-offender registery.

ME: Yes, ummm, I see. Well, we might as well just skip ahead and ask you those conviction related questions now then.

CD: Yeah, I’m not a only a sex-offender, I am a REPEAT sex-offender. I just want you to know.

After the interviewee left, I used so much hand sanitizer, I think my skin needed detox from all of the alcohol. I momentarily tried to conjure up a way I could turn that hand sanitizer into desk sanitizer, chair sanitizer, pen sanitizer, and mental-image sanitizer.

I often feel misunderstood or unheard. What is something that not a lot of people know or realize about you but you wish more people could know?

Oh, this is an ineffably difficult question for me. I feel misunderstood the majority of the time. Admittedly, likely not unheard, but misunderstood, which can be unheard on a different level. I would pretty much say that nearly any assumption that people have about me is inaccurate, except for the handful of people that know me very, very well. The most audacious is the people who believe that I truly have it all together and I can’t control the urge to shout … do you read my blog people?

Cate, it’s been a pleasure! Thank you for taking the time to participate in my bloggy interview exchange today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Welcome to the world!

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my sister’s first baby. They decided to be one of those difficult couples who didn’t find out the sex of the baby, which made the wait near unbearable, but admittedly, a lot more fun. If this baby’s arrival into the world is any indication of his temperament, his parents are in for trouble. Pre-term labor started Dec 24th, resulting in weeks of bed rest, unending contractions, and stress on the parents-to-be. However, despite being released from bed rest and “technically” full-term, the little one gave no indication of making a grand appearance anytime over the past couple of weeks. Needless to say, this frustrated the very impatient parents. The baby kept trying to come when it wasn’t time and they wouldn’t come when it was time. I can’t resist the urge to compare their child to the Springer-spaniel that we tried to train, albeit unsuccessfully, for five years. I am hoping my darling sister is too busy with her newborn to have time to check my blog and realize that I have compared her first-born to our ill-behaved canine. I see difficulty in their future, but at least they will be in good company. I should start copying my instruction manual for her now.

Part of me sees this as paybacks to my brother-in-law, who has indicated that if the child has ADD, he will be able to blame my sisters’ genes. Apparently he is using Kate is the proof of that theory, which is totally lame because that associates Kate's pseudo-diagnosis with ME, whereas it is most definitely her father’s genes.

Without further ado, I introduce my nephew, Ethan Joseph, born at 2:11 a.m. this morning.



I can’t wait to meet his perfect little face and kiss his cheeks. I absolutely love babies and I love them even more when they are ones that someone else needs to feed and get up with multiple times per night. I only had a moment to speak to my sister today, so I don’t have many details. All I heard was “this is the FIRST and ONLY natural (un-medicated) childbirth I will ever have.”