Love is Blind

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• Short of Breath.

  On Saturday morning I packed the car with my suitcase, plenty of GiGi-type-food, and a granola bar for good measure.  It had been at least 3-4 weeks since I had last stayed the weekend with my girlfriends in the bay area, so I was looking forward to a weekend of uncensored girl talk (complete with words and topics to make my mother blush).  It was especially exciting to get a tiny break from being a snack making, mind shaping, potty training mommy and passing her along to spend time with her daddy-o.  I had high hopes of bouncing out to the car at 7 am on the dot, and actually succeeded in doing s, despite the super stress of dealing with a slight fender bender the day before.   Backing out of a parking spot in a most unfavorite superstore chain, I looked both ways several times, and then smacked into a driver who decided to play “raceway” in the parking lot isles. A small woman in a large suv hit the brakes to “wait for a parking spot” to empty out and I backed into her going .0004 mph.  I hit her tire and gave the rubber a little of my silver paint, and my back bumper suffered a dent the size of a hand…or a fist punch.  This seems like the true meaning of the word “accident” in my opinion.  At least it does, on my end.  GiGi seemed fine aside from the obvious distraction in our plan to acquire some much needed milk from Starbucks.  She didn’t make a peep, and since it really didn’t feel like anything at all, I considered us both v. fine.    I stepped out of my car with my paper, pen, insurance card and license on hand.  The woman in the other vehicle refused to move.  She also spoke zero English and even after someone who spoke her native tongue arrived, still couldn’t manage to understand my need for an exchange of information.   I’d like to say that it worked itself out smoothly after that, but there was an ambulance, a police officer, several eye rolling witnesses, and a very near fight (a lovely father of two confronted the driver and her passengers while they requested an ambulance and I believe my favorite phrase was “come on now, this is a fucking scam and you know.  There’s nothing wrong with you OR your car.”)   In the end, she drove away in an ambulance while the officer continued to look for any sign of damage on her vehicle.  He came up negative on that one, just as he did with proof of her insurance.  I was left sobbing, wondering why someone would be deliberately trying to take advantage of the situation.   So on Saturday morning, I tried to be positive and hush the neon words in my head, like “$1000 DEDUCTABLE” and “SCREWED OVER”  and “MY INSURANCE JUST WENT DOWN. NOW THIS!?!!”   I managed to get into a happy groove and drop off the tot to her dad, and get over to my haircut, eyebrow wax and dye appointment with 10 minutes to spare.  I got all dolled up and then drove over to A’s house.    I remember taking an allergy pill the moment I arrived because I was feeling a little snotty.  Staying with her is hit or miss on the sneezing thing.  We were roomated for years, and so her home and the kitten condition is nothing new to my nose, but sometimes it affects me a little worse than other times.   I honestly assumed that I was just more sensitive that day, considering that I wasn’t there for that long before she and I, and two other of my lovely ladies went to lunch.    At lunch I still felt sort of sneezy, but  short of breath as well.   I chalked it up to a pretty fucking miserable symptom of allergies, but nothing more.  By the time I got into bed that night, I was having harder time breathing.  I flipped through pictures on my phone of GiGi, since I hate spending an evening away from her, and thought about the little things I was trying to remain positive about.  Sometimes working hard to remain positive takes it toll and at night I just lay tere thinking of all the shit that I need to really get a hang of.  I had gone through every class listed in the Fall Schedule catalog for college and gotten onto a few waitlists and nothing for sure. I had a doctor appointment for GiGi and needed to make another that I totally forgot to do.  This accident was going to impair my ability to finally pay off my debt, as well severely bother me with its unethical crap a-brewing from the other party….and now on top of all of those things I was having hard time breathing.   Awesome.   The next morning I woke up with the same issues of snot and sneezes and shortness of breath.  I trudged along through... Read More... Posted Jun 30 2009, 09:16 PM by Megg with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: gigi, toddler bed, shortness of breath, anxiety, scams, car accidents, asthma, bitches, breathing

• zZz...Big girl bed...zZz

  There is a room next to mine with toy boxes marked “Noise” and baby blankets galore.  There is a hot pink rocking horse that my sister made for GiGi  to celebrate her first birthday, and there are mountains of clothes.  There’s also a small lamp that casts a very faint shadow on the wall of my toddler sleeping in her bed at night. Her two pigtails were nestled deep into a new pillow sometime after 7 pm.   And for 5 hours and 7 minutes, I got to have my room all to myself.   I never planned on pushing the whole sleep-in-your-own-bed thing, because let’s face it, I don’t have enough memories to count on one hand of the times she slept in her crib. Something wacky about the relationship between my daughter and I just allows for a sense of “ah-ha” at random moments.  About three weeks ago, I was cleaning her room and I just decided to turn her crib into a toddler bed.  We bought one of those handy 3-in-1 conversion cribs so I thought it would be easy as pie to assemble.  I was dreadfully wrong, and that little warmer colored wooden bitch took skin, sweat, and many-a-foul-word from me.  It was not as easy as I thought so I went back to my room to search through my now meticulous files to get the folder titled “MANUALS.”  Of course, it wasn’t there.  So I went back to the crib, wrote down all info (not that there was a lot) and googled my ass off.  Long story short – it took me four phone calls before I reached the person in charge of emailing me an instruction manual.  As I read the instructions with the crib company woman, I noticed that there was a sack of parts I should of kept, so that I would be able to convert the crib to a bed.    Oops.    I actually think that I have it packed away somewhere but my finding it would cost more than having it shipped.  “Those replacement parts will be $10. Shipping will be $12.99,” crib rep. crazy person said.  Since I am not a fan of being bent over and having my money taken from me by a sweet southern accented woman, while I scream “Hoooow Muuuuch,” I opted to find them at a hardware store.  Plus, I’m not known for my patience, and waiting in the mail for a screw would be agony (insert joke here). Jackpot!   Of course I looked like a jackass trying to describe what I needed over the phone.  I had one of the screws I needed in hand and it involved a lot of thingamajiggy and hang-on-let-me-get-my-ruler talk to get the part correct, but I did and I walked away spending $5 and even bought spares.   Bolts in hand, Directions on laptop screen – I went to work, with a toddler crawling all over me and wondering what I was doing.  I find it annoying that it was harder to change this to a toddler bed, than it was to make it a crib, by myself, at nine months pregnant.   I told GiGi her crib went bye-bye.  It seemed like the proper thing to do since it isn’t a crib anymore AND…she hated it.  I told her she had a big girl bed now and that she was going to sleep in her room when she was ready to.  I’m sure that she didn’t understand everything that I rambled on about that day, but I keep reinforcing it.  I tell her that she can go at her own pace, like everything else in life, and I won’t push her.    We bought new sheets, white with little pastel polka dots (yes, I said pastel, and yes I picked them), and got a new pillow with a pink pillow case.  I know that I am the one who looks at these things, but... Read More... Posted Mar 05 2009, 07:20 AM by Megg with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: gigi, kids, toddler bed, beds, routine, g crib, night time, converting a crib to a toddler bed, sleeping, big girl beds

• ...but you might LIKE your own bed....

  Sleeping in a bed with a string bean a.k.a. GiGi, is not as fun as it sounds.  Don’t make that face at me.   I know you’re shocked that I don’t find feet in my neck, restless and kicking at 3 am, the most comfortable in sleep practices.  You’re probably shaking your head and puzzled by the fact that I simply don’t enjoy rolling to the last millimeter of free space on the bed only to have a sweet faced toddler come barreling into my back like a bowling ball down the lane, making it impossible to move.    You’re flabbergasted, and that’s okay.    …Or, you’re shocked and making that weird non-sexual “O” face because I’m still co-sleeping, even after that long talk we had in this post. The truth is, I do want to co-sleep, most of the time.  Then again, I think that I’m ready to have the bed all to myself.  It’s such an odd predicament, especially since I scoffed at the idea of co-sleeping past - oh - six months old.  But seriously, you have these ideas of what you will and won’t do with your kid, and then the little ball of cuteness comes tumbling out into the world and you say to yourself, “What the f*ck was I thinking?  That doesn’t match my child or our life at all!”  So….you co-sleep.  Or feed them captain crunch, because life has unexpected twists to it. Read More... Posted Dec 16 2008, 12:38 PM by Megg with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: co-sleeping, I miss the cuddling, mattress, toddler bed, transition, cribs, family bed, bed