Yay!!!!!!

We watched It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve and it was the best thing we ever did. I can't get over this scene. It makes me glad.

why semi-adults should not wear baby clothes

My friend Britney is doing a series of throwback posts on her blog right now to commemorate her upcoming birthday. Her most recent post about extracurricular activities reminded me of this one embarrassing experience I had in high school. If I ever do a series of throwback posts, I think I'll commemorate embarrassing experiences from my past because I can remember several off the top of my head. (My memory for most other things is not so great.)

Once upon a time I found this tank top bodysuit/onesie, and I was so pleased. It kind of looked like this:



Apparently this is not really a common item of clothing, so I had a hard time finding an appropriate picture when I searched online. But imagine something similar to that hot little red number: a camisole in white with a snap-crotch closure. I loved this thing! I was always having issues with my undershirts coming untucked or riding up or whatever, so it seemed like the perfect solution. An undershirt that would never come untucked!

One day, I was hanging out after school for mock trial, wearing my awesome undershirt onesie, and I went to the bathroom. The thing is, I started getting kind of lazy about snapping it closed when I had to go potty.

You might be able to imagine what happened next. I came back to the classroom we were working in and the back flap was totally hanging out of the skirt I was wearing. My fellow mock trial participant Stephanie Handy (I wonder what Stephanie's up to these days . . . ) informed me of my oversight. She was probably pretty confused, but I appreciate her telling me how weird I looked.

Moral of the story: people who dress themselves should not wear baby clothes.

sleep monitor, take 3

I wore that crazy contraption to bed in order to get some cold, hard cash, because I will apparently do practically anything for money. I'm participating in a study that requires me to wear a sleep monitor two nights (or more if it fails and you have to repeat) during different points in pregnancy. This study, the sleep breathing assessment, is a subsidiary study to the NuMom2B study, which I've been participating in for these past few pregnant months. Months of being pregnant. Anyway.

The NuMom2B study is rather a massive undertaking, as I suppose many clinical trials tend to be. This particular study is trying to gather data from a diverse group of 10,000 women who are pregnant with their first child to better determine  factors that result in outcomes such as premature birth, low birth weight, preeclampsia, etc. It's interesting and kind of terrifying how unpredictable some of these complications are, so this study hopes to clear up some of the existing uncertainty. The problem is, it seems difficult to really determine the underlying cause of pretty much any outcome.

I recently read an article discussing Milwaukee's campaign against co-sleeping. Have you seen it?

Courtesy the Milwaukee Public Health Department:

Seeing the ad made me wonder about what exactly prompted such a targeted campaign. (Some incident where a Milwaukee mother put a cleaver in her baby's crib?) Apparently, Milwaukee has one of the highest infant death rates in the country (10.4 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2009), and at least some of these deaths are caused by "unsafe sleep environments" for the baby. There are definitely a lot of other factors contributing to the appalling statistics, but my foray into the issue made me realize that it's really difficult to get at the bottom of what's going on here, partially because many of the contributing factors are sociological.

This brings me to a beef I have with the field of social science in general. That may sound really cocky of me to doubt the credibility of an entire set of academic disciplines, but that's not what I'm trying to say, exactly. Mostly what I'm trying to get at is that it seems inherently problematic to subject behavioral issues to research and thereby get at their roots. One of my senior courses was called "Gender and Language," and it sounded really interesting to me, but subjecting the question of how language is influenced by gender to linguistic research proved less tantalizing. The research questions were interesting, but the resulting data seemed inevitably ambiguous. (Did anyone else taking social science classes have this hang-up?)

I'm actually not really sure what the sleep breathing assessment is trying to do, except gather additional data about factors that may influence pregnancy outcomes. But I've wondered how they're going to get any useful data from studying my sleep if I'm not actually sleeping while being monitored.  They are apparently trying to account for the quality of sleep, though, because I had to fill out a survey after wearing it that asks how I slept comparatively: "Much worse than usual," "somewhat worse than usual," etc. Too bad it wasn't a short-answer question; I can think of a lot of other ways to describe it. . .  Anyway, I have to wear that darned contraption again because for some reason the pulse oximeter didn't read when I wore it last week. At least they're giving me an extra $25 for the added trouble. Like I said, I will do almost anything for a little bit of cash.

sleep monitor

Wearing this again tonight. Happy resting.

shut-in

Yesterday I was so proud of myself because I got showered, dressed, brushed my teeth, AND left the house all before 10 a.m.

I'll hold for applause. (It's really amazing how easily I'm impressed with myself lately.)

I went into a work meeting, and people there were so nice to say I looked good [for a pregnant woman]. If they only knew what I look like 99% of the time. Probably I look kind of like how I feel: not well enough to brush my teeth on a daily basis.

Not that anyone needs more evidence of how hard I've let myself go for the past few months, but one of the first things Tim asked me when I arrived back at the homestead was "Want me to get you your sweatpants?"

Speaking of things that I feel proud of myself for, the other night Tim brought me some toast and hot chocolate and I threw up most of the hot chocolate afterward. I've still got it, folks.

vitamix

As we often do, we visited Costco this weekend. They had a demo guy there from Vitamix, and I WANT ONE OF THOSE MACHINES SO BAD! I was standing there like a young star-crossed lover, completely infatuated not with the man running the display but the nice blender he was operating. I kept turning to Tim, who was standing beside me patiently, and saying things like "We could make soup! We could make ice cream! We could make smoothies! It's so easy to clean!" I couldn't stop talking about it after we left, either.

There's a couple of questions holding me up, though. (a) Are Vitamixes really worth the money? (b) Where is said money going to come from?

this may seem obvious, but I never realized

sheep-herd
. . .
shepherd

Whoa.

dreams more boring than life

I dreamed last night that I was copying and pasting text from one document to another. I had spent a good amount of time doing that during the day, and it was tedious. At some point in my dreams last night, I also was doing the dishes. It was the worst.

20-ish weeks

Posting belly pics on the blog is one of those moments where the "When I'm pregnant, I don't think I'll do that" thought is thrown aside. I suppose there is a lot about pregnancy and motherhood that is like that.

To make my motivations clear, though, I'm posting this for the sake of documentation and comparison. So here I am in all my fat glory. Enjoy.

Also, I decided that starting next week (as I enter the second half of pregnancy), when people ask me how far along I am, I'm going to tell them 19 weeks instead of 21, since it is accurate in a sense (see my due-date post). I'm hoping in the process to convince myself as well as everyone else that I'm not so very advanced so no one gets too uppity. Which I don't imagine anyone would anyway, really, but you never know with these things.

Now on to tell BabyCenter I've regressed two weeks in gestation. This will help convince me, you see, because who can forget how far along they are with those blasted e-mails coming in once a week?

Chef Bernhard's Granola

I made some of this stuff, which has tons of nutty goodness. I'm excited to consume it.

oh, do you need to vomit?

After the discomfort has passed, I often look back on vomiting with some amusement. It makes for some awkward and hilarious moments that seem to be great fodder for the blog — the kind of thing that pregnancy should be rich with, really (I only wish I had great stories about crying over ridiculous things like nature documentaries, but my emotional breakdowns, though perhaps frequenter than usual, pretty well concern the same things they ever did.). If you are imagining me sitting on the bathroom floor thinking about blogging a few minutes after vomiting, then you'd be picturing my reality not too long ago. Does that make me more pathetic?

But enough with the metablogging and on to the good stuff. This morning, I had a milestone: I ate oatmeal without throwing it up. For some reason, feeding me oatmeal was a good way to go if you wanted to see me barf, but not this time. But lunch was a different story. Maybe it was the oatmeal that was getting its delayed vengeance, I don't know. I was almost done eating a burrito that Tim (husband to the invalid) had assembled for me when he looked over at me and said, "Wow, you've eaten almost the whole thing!"

This is what our lives have become: Tim producing foodstuffs for me to consume because I can't do so on my own effectively, and then praising me for eating when I do well with it, which is not usually. The number of times per day that Tim asks "What do you want to eat?" and I respond "I don't know" is actually quite astonishing. Unless it's junk like cookies and cinnamon rolls. I always feel good about those lately, which is strange, because I'm pretty sure the only thing I had going for me by way of physical fitness before this pregnancy started was eating mainly healthy food.

At the moment Tim commented on my progress, I was staring into space contemplating the possibility of vomiting, and he must know that look by now because he ran over and stuck out his hands in a cup shape in front of me, which I proceeded to dry heave over as he guided me toward the toilet.

I think one of my favorite vomiting experiences so far happened a couple of months ago when I had a morning doctor appointment and gulped a lot of water in an effort to pee in a cup (which is hard to do in the morning). Apparently gulping water that way is another pretty surefire way to get me to throw up. After my appointment, Tim and I went to the Corner Bakery Cafe (which is literally on the corner from our apartment, how apropos), and on the way out the door, the moment came. The grass was kind enough to receive my offering. Public puking is the best.

due dates are jacked

When people ask the question "When are you due?", I struggle to give a specific answer. Sometimes I'll say a specific date (arbitrarily chosen among the several I've been given—it changes with every ultrasound), sometimes I will say "early to mid-April," sometimes I will say, "The second week of April." Take your pick.

Before I became pregnant, I had no idea how due dates were determined. Now that I (somewhat) understand the process, I lack confidence in them entirely. Medical practitioners estimate your due date based on the first day of your last menstrual period (LMP) and add 280 days/40 weeks. Normally I wouldn't have any idea about this date when asked, but taking birth control then Clomid actually started and regulated my period, and I had to keep track of when I was bleeding because I based taking Clomid on that. So as a result, I actually have a fairly good idea of the first day of my last menstrual period, but there are even more variables once you've figured that out. Your fertility window, or when conception can actually occur,  is (depending on the length of your cycle) about a 10-day range beginning around 2 weeks after you start bleeding.

Given its impreciseness, it makes sense that no one would really be able to determine the exact date of conception. Instead, they use the date of LMP + 2 weeks, which means you get an extra 2 weeks of being pregnant when you're not actually (go you!). Remembering I've actually been pregnant for approximately 2 weeks less than I tell people sometimes makes me feel like I have forever left to go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pregnancy is longer than this ellipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The accepted method of due date (or as the ultrasound machine said, "estimated date of confinement," which is awful) determination gives a rather large window of error. Don't ask me how large of a window, because my math skills are poorly developed. But if my exact (estimated) due date (let's go with April 9 for now) comes and goes and Baby Rowan hasn't made an appearance, I'll try to remember that I need not be anxious because due dates are ±5 days anywho. Oh yeah, and let's not forget that the length of a "term" pregnancy varies ±2 weeks, too.

What I get out of all of this is simple: even if my pregnancy lasts a "normal" amount of time and I deliver "full-term" (which itself is highly unpredictable), I have NO IDEA when this baby is going to get here.

editing amusement

Being an editor provides me with the simple joy of asking humorous questions based on punctuation and word usage that less anal people might not wonder about. Example: "Emily's husband Aaron was not accustomed to dressing up for Halloween. . . . " (What about Emily's other husband(s)?)

Heh.

17 weeks

Isn't this nausea/vomiting stuff supposed to let up by now?

Also, this is what my belly looks like right now:

new technology? bummer

Sometimes I get excited about new techie items, but when I got an e-mail at work saying that they were replacing all of a certain model of laptop and I was on the list, I was indifferent. My laptop had been suiting me just fine for two years, and there weren't any problems.

Initially, I thought nothing would happen because the replacement process was never initiated, I was just told my machine would be replaced. Then they initiated the process, and I now have a new computer. I should be happy to have a new computer without spending a dime of my own, right? But I'm actually disappointed. This particular model of laptop has a less functional keyboard layout (which I'll probably get used to), and the speakers seem even worse than the ones on my old machine. Other than that, I haven't really noticed a difference.

I'm seriously considering asking about whether I can have my old laptop back. When they replaced it, I asked what would happen to it, and I was told it would become surplus. That poor thing! I'm thinking of it sitting alone, cold and dark (seriously, the IT area always has the lights turned down for some reason) and neglected. You may not be loved by many, but you are loved by me, little HP.

Babypocalypse 2012

Pregnancy is kind of a weird new thing for me. I wasn't sure how I felt about it before I got pregnant, and right now, I'm not quite sure how I fit into the broader context of pregnant women everywhere. I can't believe women all throughout the history of mankind have done this, even multiple times. What the what? How does it happen? It's seriously mind-boggling. And pregnant women are everywhere right now, too, it seems! I feel like I've never known of so many people who are pregnant all around the same time. Get ready for Babypocalypse. It's happening Spring 2012, World.

Being a participant in Babypocalypse is interesting. Sometimes I think I want to be the only person I know who is pregnant right now so that everyone will make a huge deal out of it. OHMYGOSH, I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED EVER THAT YOU WOULD EVER BE HAVING A BABY. LIKE EVER.

Because that's kinda how I feel about it. Even though all around, people are repeating this cycle of living and creating life, this territory feels terribly uncharted on a personal level. I've never really been around babies closely! I've never talked to pregnant women about being pregnant!

For a long time, I thought me becoming a parent would never happen, and I wasn't even sure if I wanted it to. At first, I thought it wouldn't happen because I didn't think I would ever get married. Then, once I was married, the issue became a lot more immediate. I started to think about my body differently; I had to consider birth control, and the fact that I never had a regular period became more of a disconcerting problem than an odd fluke of nature.

After more than a year of being off birth control without a period or a pregnancy, I started taking fertility drugs. When I started the Clomid, I did so thinking "Well, this has gotta happen some time," not necessarily sure if the Clomid would even work, but thinking I could no longer delay the inevitable. Though I'm not old, I'm not getting younger. And lo and behold, it worked, and here I am, and by all accounts, it looks like if everything continues as it has been going, sometime in April I will bear progeny.

I'm fascinated and in awe (especially after not functioning according to the womanly norm for so long) that my body is doing this and nature is taking its course, and that everything so far has been fairly normal. I must say, it was pretty miraculous the first time I heard Baby's heartbeat. My first ultrasound wasn't very moving (I wondered "Am I supposed to have any kind of emotional response to this unrecognizable blob on the screen?"), but there's something very visceral about the sound of a heartbeat.

As much as I still fear all of the things that could go wrong and what a horrible parent I might be and what if things don't work out very well, etc. (this list could go on and on and on), I am pretty sure I'm looking forward to this.

pretty song

I think that CJane blogger person posted this song a while ago:



It's pretty and nice.

bigger than a blackberry

I think that my gestating fetus is bigger than that mutant blackberry (which was rather pleasant to the taste) by this point. Whoa.

Go vote on whether it's a boy or girl (finding out later this week) on the married blog: http://timandarowan.blogspot.com/2011/10/baby-rowan-and-gender-contest.html

mutant berry

I ate this gigantic blackberry yesterday. After taking its picture. Because it's huge.

Italian 101

Last night my parents took us out to dinner for my dad's birthday (sounds a little backwards to me too). The menu item I ordered looked something like this:

cacio e pepe fettuccine, brown butter, garlic,  Romano, tomatoes   

Due to my lack of Italian knowledge, I didn't anticipate that the pasta would be COVERED with freshly ground black pepper. I could not taste anything else.

For the second time in my life, when the waiter asked how everything was, I complained and sent the dish back. I was kind of proud and ashamed at the same time.

the good news and the bad news

The good:

If my memory serves me correctly, there was only one word I encountered on the GRE that wasn't on our GRE Vocabulary list. (The list contains over 1100 words, though, so my memory may not serve.)

The word was inveigle. It means to win over by flattery or deceit. The American Heritage Dictionary uses "inveigled a free pass to the museum" as an example, which makes me chuckle.

The bad:

I never really studied the GRE Vocabulary list before taking the GRE. Consequently, there were a lot of moments where I thought "I know I saw that word on the list, but I have no idea what it means."

I did read Jane Eyre, though, and that's got to count for something, because those nineteenth-century authors love to use GRE words, I tell ya. Geesh.

bedhead

This is a crappy picture that really makes me want to zoom out, but it's the only documentation I have to put here on this blog.

This is how I slept last night: less comfortably than usual.

Not only did I have the nasal tube (pictured) going in my nostrils and held in place by tape on my cheeks (that stuff kind of hurts to take off, which I didn't consider when I put it on), but I also had EKG strips stuck to my skin, three different belts strapped around various portions of my upper body, and a device (with a red light) wrapped around my finger. Each component had a wire connection going into a monitor (held in place by one of the belts). Holy batman, wires everywhere! It was strange.

I would show you a picture of all the wily contraptions, but my "pajamas" (read: undies) aren't exactly kosher for the blogosphere. TMI? Probably.

Why was I doing this, you ask? Well, I'm participating in a study that involves sleep monitoring. Duh. I'm actually not even sure what they're trying to figure out, but they told me I could get $50 for each night I slept with this stuff attached to me. So I'm all like, booyah, baby.

vocabulary

For GRE prep, I've been working with Tim on compiling a vocabulary list, which involves finding words, looking up their definitions, and making flashcards for them. He's taking the GRE again next week in preparation for PhD applications, so I thought I'd take it with him this time . . . I might go to grad school in the next couple of years. Also, I like to commiserate, I guess.

This vocabulary list is frustrating a little bit because I keep discovering that words I think I know the meaning of actually have different definitions. For example, I just looked up the word nonplussed. I have used this word several times to mean something like "totally unaffected; indifferent," but it actually means "bewildered, confused, perplexed." Having the wrong definition in my head seems worse than not knowing the word at all.

On an unrelated note, I'm enjoying listening to music via Spotify lately. I listened to all of Bon Iver's semi-new album on it recently and enjoyed it. Also, (the semi-new album) Helplessness Blues from Fleet Foxes is nice. I like the title track:

a scan job gone awry

This amused me:

mmm, hamburger

The other night, I woke up around 1 a.m. from dreaming about a big, juicy hamburger. Tim suggested that we go to In-N-Out, which is open late, but that wasn't quite what I was imagining.

Where does one go to get a fresh burger with a thick, juicy patty, anyway? Also, since when do I dream about food?

revolutionary

I just vomited for the first time in probably 15 + years. NBD.

Ever thought about how many words there are for this? I found a site called "339 Puke Synonyms." Which ones are your favorites?

biffed it

I don't remember the last time I fell flat on my face. Before yesterday.

Well, actually, it was probably winter 2008 when I fell hard on the ice on my way to campus one cold and icy morning. Someone asked me if I was okay and I wanted them to go away. It hurt. But I'm over it now.

Yesterday, I happened to fall flat on my face in public as well. I was heading to the Trax station from Temple Square, and saw the train rounding the corner as I was waiting to cross the street. When the little green man indicated that it was safe to cross, I broke into a slight run (I can only do so much in a skirt, really) in order to try and catch the train.

I thought hope was lost because the train stopped at the station long before I got there. But then it waited, and  kept waiting, so I continued to walk/jog/run to the train. As I was striding across the platform to meet it, I tripped on a grate that was sticking up and fell. Flat on my face. Seriously. I looked like this, kind of:

I bruised my hip and skinned my elbow and knee, but I got up quickly (without looking around or making eye contact with anyone) and continued to the train, which was still conveniently waiting. Then I pressed the "Open Door" button. But nothing happened, and within just a second or two, the train was on its way.

Curse you, Trax!

emergency accident

Last Tuesday, I stopped by Smith's in the morning on my way to work to get some bread for a fondue shin-dig that was happening during the day. When I went, I was reminded of the sale: buy 4 participating General Mills products for $10 and get 2 gallons of milk free. Good deal, yeah? And since the deal ended the same day I stopped at Smith's, I figured I'd take advantage of it then.

Then I had the dilemma of what to do with the milk. Do I go all the way back home and then go to work again? No, that would be silly. I went on to work. I left the boxes of Corn Chex in the car and carried the milk, both gallons, up to my floor's break room and went on.

When I left for the day, I got the milk and got in the elevator. I used the thumb of the hand I was carrying one gallon of milk to press the elevator button, and the milk decided to press the emergency alarm button. I heard a bell ring but nothing seemed to happen after that. I didn't really stick around the premises long enough to find out, though.

technology magic

So I've been rereading Harry Potter recently. I spent most of my day on Saturday reading the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In fact, I read the entire thing on Saturday. Seems unhealthy.

As I read I keep thinking how, for us Muggles, technology is magic. What are Harry, Hermione, and Ron doing in the library searching for the perfect charm in order to enable Harry to stay alive underwater for an hour? Why aren't they Googling this? Also, why are they sending letters by owl post when they need to contact someone urgently? The Muggle world uses "fellytones," especially mobile phones, don't they?

The magical world of Harry Potter seems pretty behind the times in some ways.

the "random" feature on NPR

NPR's morning edition usually does a random news tidbit. You can read such stories on their website in the "Strange News" section. I like to call it the "random" feature, though. They're usually like 30-second blips.

Often, these are the stories I remember for a long time to come, not the important or compelling ones. I still remember the story about a couple who got married on New Year's (see? 8 months later here, folks), who were married on a boat in Pennsylvania and jumped into freezing water. A wedding to remember, or something.

This morning's story totally made me chuckle on my morning commute, which is a pretty big feat. It was about a London aquarium that acquired a new exotic fish. This fish was apparently quite fat, because his previous owners fed him a diet of straight chocolate. To wean him off his chocolate diet, the aquarium folks fed him fruit with Kit Kats crushed inside.

It reminded me of that cookbook with kid-friendly recipes containing hidden ingredients, usually unappetizing to children, but very nutritious.

I think we can all learn a lesson from this story.

a song for your day

Please enjoy.

speaking of dumpster diving

I pulled another chair out of a dumpster recently.

I think I'm going to start a business of pulling slashed chairs out of Office Depot-type dumpsters, then stitching them up and selling them for below market value. But I am really bad at stitching, as I am inconsistent, lazy, and slow, so this probably isn't my best business idea. Also, I think some of these chairs are thrown away due to defects.

Sigh.

Here's my other business idea (and if any of you steal it, I'm going to be very mad): Subway-style pizza restaurant. Personal-sized pizzas with your choice of sauce, toppings, and cheese, baked in wood-burning pizza oven. To go.

I should be an entrepreneur, right?

call it devotion

Last Sunday I was doing the dishes and the worst of bad things to happen happened: I broke my food processor.

As I was washing it, a piece of plastic broke off the lid. I was going to try to glue it back on, so I saved it by sitting it out on the counter while I finished my task. Later on, I asked Tim to take out the garbage, which he did. Sometime after he returned, I discovered my precious plastic was missing. So I asked Tim what happened to it. He revealed that he had thrown it away.

I thought about screaming "Why would you ever throw something like that away?!?!" But then I realized it's a pretty reasonable thing to do. So instead, we walked hand in hand to the dumpster (on our way out, we told our neighbor we were going dumpster diving, and he offered to help if needed—isn't that so neighborly?), retrieved the garbage bag, and rifled through it together, looking for that annoyingly elusive plastic shard.

This bit of trash was quite possibly the most disgusting bag of trash to come out of our apartment in weeks (which is why I asked Tim to remove it posthaste). Not that you wanted to know, but it contained shrimp peels and guts (seriously, it took forever to devein those), rotten limes, mushy tomatoes, and plenty of hairballs and dust bunnies from the freshly swept floor.

Never did find it, though. The only thing that's keeping me from sobbing into my mousepad right now is that the food processor actually is still functional without it.

Why I Might Suck as a Mother

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/26/138709595/6-year-old-shark-attack-victim-i-forgive-him

I read this blog the other day. I thought it was amusing, slightly, because it seemed like a ridiculous story to garner such a large amount of media coverage. But beyond that, I felt it was funny that the mother talked to her child about the shark this way: "The shark didn't mean to, it was an accident," and the child then saying "I forgive the shark." My thought? The shark doesn't need your forgiveness, child.

One person wrote, 'How about, "I don't hold a grudge against sharks, or the natural, instinctual actions of wild animals in general." Forgiveness it not called for, not relevant, and certainly not cared about (even known about) by the animal. It may be just as important to teach a child not to anthropomorphize.'

And I tend to agree/relate to that comment. (This commenter was accused of being a cynic in another comment. Guilty as charged?) Maybe it's because I don't really like animals too much, so I'm not interested in being "friends" with them. Or for my children to be (I often dread becoming a pet owner, which seems inevitable as a parent). It's a natural thing to do as a kid, to love animals. I might have even been that way myself before I started calling myself mature and seeing no value, only inconvenience, associated with owning a pet. Oh, and I might have felt that way before that one time when a dog bit my face off. That incited some dog dislike. But was forgiving the dog really an issue? Was blaming the dog really an issue? Animals are animals, and their behavior is unpredictable and not motivated by agency. I don't think I really can be any kind of judge there.

So how does this serve as a predictor of my inadequacy as a mother? It serves to show that I don't think like a child and don't know how to think like a child, nor do I understand how to appreciate the way children think.

You know, I have never really had strong or close relationships with people that aren't in my "life phase" (which I feel bad about). When I was a kid myself, I appreciated kids. When I was a teenager, I appreciated other teenagers (Though, as a whole? Probably not even then . . . Hardy har har! Take that, teenagers!) Since I've become an "adult"? Not really. I feel awkward and uncomfortable around children (and very old people, too). I don't know how to talk to them or love them.

Ergo . . .

office dilemma

I have a dilemma.

Option A: Be distracted by talking coworkers and eavesdrop on office conversations.

Option B: Put my headphones in and listen to something.

I don't really want to listen to anything, because I get distracted sometimes by what I'm listening to. (Most of the time music is fine, but I don't always want to listen to music.) If I listen to the news or an audio book, I end up not being able to pay enough attention to really comprehend anything, even if the task I'm working on is fairly brainless. Maybe for the same reason, I have a hard time devoting enough attention when I am at work to reading something that demands lengthy periods of concentration.

very carefully

I was at Costco the other day (surprise!) and overheard a guy in line asking another guy in line (I'm assuming they were acquainted), "How are they going to ring this up?"

The other guy said "Very carefully . . ."

Don't you hate it when people say that? Completely unhelpful. And maybe untrue.

broken chair

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"Good" strawberries

You can't really see it on the $1.78 strawberries, but on that sign and the other signs for produce, there is a 4-digit code. On the half-flat, the code says "GOOD." So it must be true.

grocery comparison, round 2

Here we go with another round of grocery comparisons. In this round, a new contender has entered: Walmart.

Although I imagine they may vary quite significantly from time to time, these prices do not reflect any promotions or sales. Values are expressed in US dollars and measured by ounces. Quality, item size, and brand names were not considered in the comparison.

	Walmart	Costco	Winco
all purpose flour	.024/oz	.018/oz (50-lb)	.026/oz
wheat flour	.028/oz	n/a	.030/oz
sugar	.035/oz	.038/oz	.035/oz
brown sugar	.044/oz	.052/oz	.048/oz
maple syrup	.478/oz	.431/oz	.616/oz
molasses	.173/oz	n/a	.180/oz
honey	.196/oz	.146/oz	.140/oz
oats	.059/oz	.043/oz	.037/oz
toasted oat cereal/Cheerios	.132/oz	.133/oz	.111/oz
chocolate chips (semi-sweet)	.211/oz	.136/oz	.142/oz
dried cranberries	?	.156/oz	.229/oz
cinnamon	.523/oz	.248/oz	.139/oz
applesauce	.035/oz	.047/oz	.042/oz
olive oil	.206/oz	.163/oz	.158/oz
canola oil	.058/oz	.056/oz	.049/oz
brown rice	.043/oz	.068/oz	.038/oz
white rice	.039/oz	.022/oz	.031/oz
wheat spaghetti	.075/oz	.070/oz	.063/oz
quinoa	?	.155/oz	.220/oz
garbanzo beans/chickpeas (dry)	.089/oz	n/a	.066/oz
black beans (dry)	.057/oz	n/a	.056/oz
pinto beans (dry)	.047/oz	.035/oz	.043/oz
lentils (dry)	.058/oz	n/a	.054/oz
coconut milk	.104/oz	n/a	.159/oz
soy milk	.039/oz	.033/oz	.040/oz
pecans	.623/oz	.469/oz	.598/oz
almonds	.565/oz	.204/oz	.211/oz
walnuts	.313/oz	.291/oz	.313/oz
pine nuts	1.51/oz	?	1.134/oz
almond butter	?	.219/oz	.264/oz
peanut butter	.073/oz	.154/oz	.111/oz
tortilla chips	.167/oz	.079/oz	.065/oz
corn tortillas	.036/oz	?	.033/oz
flour tortillas	.125/oz	?	.063/oz
tomato sauce	.035/oz	.039/oz	.032/oz
tomato paste	.067/oz	.083/oz	.065/oz
diced tomatoes	.043/oz	.066/oz	.040/oz
butter	.186/oz	.154/oz	.186/oz
milk	.018/oz	.016/oz	.018/oz
eggs	1.00/dozen (lg)	1.13/dozen (xl)	1.10/dozen (lg)
cheddar cheese	.250/oz	.156/oz	.196/oz
orange juice (fresh squeezed)	.051/oz	.047/oz	.044/oz
apple juice	.026/oz	.035/oz	.030/oz
bananas	.033/oz	.031/oz	.033/oz
carrots	.046/oz	.036/oz (10 lb)	.031/oz (5-lb)
celery	.071/oz	.074/oz	.036/oz
gala apples	.059/oz	.083/oz	?
red potatoes	.055/oz	.034/oz	.049/oz
yellow onions	.029/oz	.031/oz	.049/oz
spinach	?	.100/oz	.330/oz
minced garlic	.149/oz	.104/oz	.124/oz
frozen fruit blend	.122/oz	.090/oz	.273/oz
frozen peas	.061/oz	.059/oz	.053/oz
frozen corn	.061/oz	.049/oz	.053/oz
frozen chicken	.145/oz	.130/oz	.162/oz

Another note: I inserted the question mark when I couldn't find the item or was too lazy to go back and look. N/A indicates the item is not carried.