Bean Showers

Earlier this month, back when I truly believed the Bean was going to arrive mid-February not mid-March, my wonderful friend Dory orchestrated a baby shower. Dory enlisted some help from Kristi and the two of them turned an ordinary pizza joint (one that serves special dieters) into a foreshadowing babies and Spring.

It was a great turnout and some of the guys showed up to support the Daddy to be.  I'm sure the coincidence of pizza and candy had nothing to do with that support :)

We loved every minute of it!

Those Eyes

Baby lust has turned to puppy lust for someone I know. I think it's the combination of having a nice fenced in yard, a wife who is home all the time, and all the little baby things lying around.

Who am I kidding? Skip's wanted a dog since we moved here. And I'm holding him back, specifically my reluctance to let the dog live indoors. Now that I have a mini-me on the way, Skip is vying for a hunting buddy. One that licks and wags its tail.

I figured I'd have another year before he started hinting and persuading me that we needed a lab. And then he sent me these.

Sick Day

After a weekend of feeling not great I called in sick to work today. I decided that I should not gift the aches, congestion and cough with others. Plus it's a little hard to demand attention from a young child with autism when you have no voice. My sign language is not impressive enough.

I spent my day recovering with some throat drops, water, TV, naps and homemade chicken noodle soup. Yes, yesterday when I felt not so great I threw together some chicken noodle soup. You know, because why rest up? I'm sure that exertion had nothing to do with my downfall today. Chicken noodle soup cures everything. Better even than the chocolate chip cookies I convinced Skip we needed to make on Sunday night when I was feeling poorly. These are comfort foods. Rituals to heal. Only I'm used to my motha making such things. She is a nurse extraordinaire, plus cook, plus she's nice. A good person to have in a time of need.

So today, instead of calling her and demanding that she board a plane and take care of me, I did exactly what she would do after three days of illness: I scoured the kitchen, stripped the sheets and Cloroxed the bathroom.

Nine months into pregnancy and I officially feel like a mom.

Also, the bean left Hang Ten imprints all over my belly as she moonwalked on the inside of my woooooomb, and Skipper tripped out big time when she got the hiccups: "it's the nebulous blob gnawing at my gizzard, as far as Skipper is concerned, but when she got the hiccups it made her seem like a real little human bean in there, a person inside me, cause people get the hiccups, not nebulous blob urchin things.

Blue Hues of Winter

It has occurred to me many times that I should post something profound and entertaining. And then I become distracted by my husband, my work, my dancing stomach. So when I left the house this morning and saw that our once proud pumpkins had shriveled into rotting pumpkins overnight I acknowledge my negligence with life. (We did not feel it necessary to remove our October pumpkins from their festive spot. Worked through November, possibly pathetic in mid-January.)

That's a bit harsh, but it was a harsh morning. Overcast with a strong bitter wind whipping small iceflakes in my eyes. The depleted pumpkins reminded me of my overgrown weedy garden and withered potted plants. Yes, it is winter and I feel it's depressional pull. The kind that says "You should only sit in front of your fireplace and sip hot chocolate." Luckily, my growing Bean has produced a pumpkin-esque rotund look to my tummy and serves as a constant reminder that Spring will bring new blossoms. That sounds poetic, but actually it was difficult to plant my tulip bulbs whilst pregnant. Lots of stretching-the-leg breaks.

Lamar Lovin'

The blizzard in Lamar has me craving snow. Nevermind that I wouldn't be snowboarding at seven months pregnant, I still wished to be in mountainous Park City instead of snowless Peoria.

Years ago I stressed over the perfect snowboard. I found one that I love, it's beautiful and brought many days of joy and bruises. But had I known about LaMar Snowboards things may have been different...

Hairy Situations

This story should have come out when it happened, in October near Halloween, as it was an on-going nightmare and ended with me holding a razor menacingly to my hair. My vanity prevented me from divulging the secret then, but today's overcast gloom lends itself to the telling of such misery and woe. Actually, I did tell a handful of people what happened and they all laughed, for days.

For most my life I've been minimally concerned about my hair. It's a little too fine and slick for funky hair styles (which I've tried and have awful family photos to remind myself that a pixie cut doesn't suit me), so I usually let it grow out and pull it into a twisted knot throughout the day. Simple. And then the terrible awful thing happened.

As a child my white-blonde sisters convinced me I'd been adopted. How else could anyone explain my brown hair. While this accusation brought tears to my eyes I reminded myself that both my parents had darker hair at the time. By age 7 my hair had gone from brown to raven and I hypothesized that my hair was experiencing a rapid aging process. It seemed everyone in my family (parents included) had white-blonde hair that gradually darkened. Now They all have some variation of sun-streaked brown. My hair? It continued it's rapid aging and at the all-too-young age of 21 I began to notice strands of white.

I pulled them out, cried to my roommate Tracie that life was over and she should push me off a bridge and put a hold on that year's birthday celebrations. Then something miraculous happened. I found a strand that had gone from black to white to black. A fluke! I wasn't aging horribly fast and life continued.

Three years later driving home from St. George with my cousins, Laney commented on the crown of white I had poking through my part. I immediately burst into tears. After many attempts to console me Kellie and Laney offered to help me dye my hair. And so began the lengthy search for the perfect hairdresser.

Sidenote: Every so often my spontaneous side catches the better of me and I allow friends to chop inches off my hair. Usually this ends badly. I never kept a hairdresser for this reason. Also, I was too cheap to pay someone good.

My cousins gave me a referral to the most beloved hairdresser. Kristi tamed my wild inclinations and tastefully added fun colors and an anime hair cut. I loved it so much that for the first time in my life I went back, and back, and back. It was love. And then I moved. To the Midwest. Where hairstyles scare me.

I refused to have anyone touch my hair for a little too long. The first girl I went to did fine. Just a little blunt cut trim, lacking imagination, style and grace. I longed for Kristi and her magic scissors. Nearly a year later, my mom and sisters commented that my ends looked a little dry and perhaps my personal appearance could use a boost. The truth stung. I asked around for some recommendations (which I had done the first time) and was given the name of a trendy salon in cute Peoria Heights.

The deliberation process took a couple weeks and then I recklessly agreed to an appointment with the first stylist available.  It felt good to know that someone else would dye my hair, trim off the straw ends and recreate my image. A fair trade for the protruding belly I had since acquired.

The lady seemed nice enough until she attacked my head with a paintbrush. I'd only asked for a touch up and that somehow translated to "stab my head with a poky brush and stinging dye". Noted. What I failed to note was the increasingly larger perimeter she maintained on my hairline. Maybe no one told her that to dye eyebrows you don't have to dye the forehead. Oh, and I wasn't getting my brows done...

I kept telling myself that she would use the magic wipe cloth and fix me up. And she did. But it didn't fix anything. I had a dark black line the width of a pudgy forefinger around my hairline. ON MY FOREHEAD.

At home I furiously scrubbed at the dye with soap, nail polish remover, anything I could find. It worked a little and soon I was left with a faint brownish stain, you know like dried blood on your favorite white shirt. Fine, really.

I figured everything would be back to normal after I took a shower in the morning. The dye did fade more after my shower and I wasn't so freakish looking. Two days later I realized that I was no longer looking at dye on my skin. No, she had managed to dye any facial fuzz I had giving me sideburns. Skip was jealous. Or would have been had he been home when I made the discovery. He was not and I courageously took a razor to the sideburns.

This foolish act created a clean-shaven effect right up to the point where I'd neatly chopped off my wispy locks by my hairline. Legitimate 12-year-old boy sideburns.

I am no longer allowed to touch my hair without husband supervision.

Bean Loves Golf

Years ago I wrote a post about the Poons trying to teach me to golf. I had new clubs from some stint I did as an editor of a luxury magazine. Those same delicious Chocolate Moda golf clubs made an appearance this past spring as Skip departed some wisdom. Blue and plaid checkered golf bags and accessories...dee-lish.

"You have these great clubs, but you suck at golfing. We can't go together until you learn. Let's sign you up for some community lessons."

And so we did. I went to weekly lessons and listened to a golf pro and then came home to share my new knowledge. I wore cute skirts and bright outfits I bought just for golfing to make it fun. That knowledge was then tweaked by the man I married who claimed to know more than me because he's played on elite courses around the world and was editor of Luxury Golf & Travel. Whatever. I vaguely remember him looking quizzically as I summarized lessons and then politely telling me I'd misunderstood.

 With the pressure of girly looking clubs and professional lessons I invested in a golf outfit: skirt, shoes, shirt. Then I waited for our cold May to warm up. My perfect outfit never made it to a golf lesson, but I just knew that mid-June would be filled with golf dates. I even prepped some of our couple friends for Saturday outings. When June came my dates were with the toilet and standing in the unbearable heat, impossible. Who knew pregnancy would come so soon? And with such utter disregard for my summer plans. 

I didn't make it for golf dates in July, August or September. In October Skip found camo more appealing than pleats and it wasn't until a cold November weekend that we finally had a golf date. I enthusiastically laid out my perfect golf outfit and addressed the cold weather with some long johns. The first layer went well, but by the second all the tugging and adjusting didn't make up for the fact that my stomach was three sizes too big. Pretty soon I was in my goose down snowboard jacket and beanie. But we had a grand time and on the 18th, I ripped one with my eight iron that actually looked remarkedly like a decent ball strike and Skip was shocked.

Our golf date turned into our first family outing.