Shameless self-promotion

Like money? Check out my new blog, the Portland Penny Pincher. I swear, the pennies like it when you pinch them, even if you hear them scream.

http://portlandpennypincher.blogspot.com/

Dental Damn

The boys are at swim class so thought I'd catch up a bit in here. It is, of course, a busy time of year, and at the same time, the time of year that I most want to snuggle into bed and sleep and eat cases of clementines. Okay, what I really want to eat is pizza, but since I can't, I'll settle for those sweet temptress tiny oranges.

Speaking of sweet, despite the fact that I've rarely ingested sugar in the last seven and a half years, (not counting those vanilla soy latte days) I somehow ended up with a mouth full of cavities. It may have been that I didn't go to the dentist for about nine years. How does that happen, you might wonder? Well, it starts by just a bit of procrastination. I'll go next month. And then that next month comes and goes. After a few years of this, it becomes a matter of not wanting to go because I'm embarrased that it's been so long since I've gone. The old "gotta clean up the house before the housekeeper gets here" mentality. Then when I finally went, about a year and a half ago, I had a negative experience with the practice I chose. They tried to get me to buy some fancy schmancy vibrating (!) toothbrush, told me I needed a mouthguard at night (!) and other such silliness. I really was going to get the cavities taken care of at another practice, but then I ended up With Child and the only thing I could tolerate having in my mouth for months was cinnamon toothpaste (and tater tots).

So I finally went back and am getting the seven, yes, seven cavities taken care of. Yesterday was round one. Of course, as fate would have it, the only dentist covered on our otherwise fabulous health coverage is the yucky place I went before. However, I'm far too cheap to just pay out of pocket for dental work, so I sucked it up (so to speak) and went back for another exam. It was actually not so bad. My favorite part being that all the chairs have TVs on them! Since Max was at my parents playing his little heart out, I actually considered asking if I could stick around and just watch TV and maybe take a little nap.

Yesterday I went back for the first chunk of work on my teeth-- I was surprisingly anxious. Or maybe not surprisingly. Does anybody really like to go to the dentist? Besides my dad? It's so awkward-- strange people with gloves spelunking in your mouth. (Okay that sounded way naughtier than I'd planned it to. But I'm leaving it there anyways.) I like having the TV at the dentist because it gives your eyes a place to focus-- perhaps that's my biggest qualm about having people work on your teeth-- they're staring at your face, but at no cost should you try and make eye contact with them. I tried closing my eyes but that felt wrong-- what if they tried to slip something in there and I wasn't being vigilant? (Okay, that also sounded naughtier than intended.) So instead I spent about an hour staring up at the holes on the ceiling, while trying to look complentative lest the dentist folk think I'm a little slow. Of course, trying to look complentative while half of your face is all Bells Palsied up is challenging.

Add to this that I have a hard time when I'm anticipating pain-- I turn into a twitch mess when I get my eyebrows waxed. It's not that it hurts that much-- it's that I think it's going to hurt. Fortunately I took advantage of the fancy TV and switched on Discovery Health. At night that channel, which is probably my favorite, has all kinds of awesome shows like "The Woman With Giant Legs" and "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant" which has seemingly in touch, intelligent women accidentally giving birth into toilets ("I looked down and there was a little face staring up at me") but during the day it was mostly pure birthin' goodness. It seemed to slightly unnerve the dentist and the male dental assistant (Justin Timberlake lookalike!) to have women groaning and bloody vernix-smeared little babies on the TV-- though they shouldn't have been watching-- they're supposed to be paying attention to the dental work, yo!-- it helped me enormously. What a reminder -- a little shot of novocaine in my jaw? A drill barrelling into my pearly (not so) whites? That's nothing. I birthed the ample-headed Max, after all! After that little realization, I calmed down significantly and was able to breathe while pensively examining the ceiling and playing with my half numb face when the dentist took breaks.

I go back Tuesday morning for the rest of the fillings-- hope Discovery Health has something good waiting for me!

Oh, and I'm still obsessed with coupons. Scott thinks I have a problem and I agree. Doesn't that count for something, that I'm not in denial? I'm thinking of starting a new money saving blog to let people know about good local deals. Anybody interested?

Alright, happy holidays to all my readers (hahahahahahahahahahahha). See y'all soon.

For me to coupon (said in Triumph the insult comic dog voice)

Holy crap, I think I’m a housewife.

So my latest obsession is coupons. Seriously, have these been around all along? How come nobody told me about them? We’re working on trimming our expenses and the biggest ones we have that are malleable are our food expenses. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I never really paid attention to grocery store sales in the past. I just bought what we needed, or more frequently—wanted. I didn’t realize you could go online and check out what’s on sale at each grocery store. And then the fun part—try and match sale stuff up with coupons.

So for the past week or so I’ve been practically carrying around a pair of scissors (don’t worry—I don’t carry them in the same hand I use to carry the baby!). And the Universe clearly wants me to be using coupons-- when I went to Dash of Diva to dance with the Nia girls a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the Hannaford booth and they had tons of great Hannaford coupons there. As the rest of the crowd was greedily grabbing the free whisks and apples and oranges, I was grabbing the $1 off this, $2 off this coupons. Also on my first grocery excursion using coupons, I found that the coupon fairy had left me a little coupon inside the freezer by some frozen fruit that was on my shopping list. And I found a little coupon organizer at Goodwill for 99 cents. Cool stuff.

There are actually entire huge online communities dedicated to couponing—I am happy to report that despite my new obsession, there are people far more crazed then I am. Although, there’s still time.

Also within the last few weeks I’ve made apple crisp. Somebody get me an apron, I think I might be a housewife.

Fall Fun

So I’m realizing one excellent fringe benefit of becoming a parent is doing all sorts of fun things with your kid—even if they’re nowhere near old enough to enjoy it with you. We’ve navigated our way through a corn maze, been apple pickin’, taken a hayride, and of course, fired off the corn cannon in recent weeks. I find myself looking forward to future years of similar fall fun, as well as having a good excuse to go watch kids movies in theaters.

Eight months has been a really good age so far. Max isn’t really mobile yet—rolling is still his preferred method of travel. At the same time, he’s still very content to hang out in the Ergo carrier while I putter around the house. So he’s still very portable, but I don’t have to chase after him yet. Plus, we can still swear around him and he won’t remember it. And he’s now able to start the night in his crib, which feels like a small miracle. I’m getting little slices of my life back, while still enjoying the new pieces of my life. I went out twice this week in the evening, and Scott was able to get Max to bed. Starting to find a semblance of balance between who I was before Max, and the me that hangs out at libraries singing “Pattycake”. (Just to clarify, I mean singing “Pattycake” with other parents and tots at a library story hour, not just hanging out at the library randomly singing “Pattycake. Although I will mention that they should change the name of the story hour from “Finger Fun with Babies” unless they are trying to attract pedophiles.)

Despite all this fun, I still make room for my melancholic tendencies. Recently after a nice walk with a friend, I was prepping apples to attempt making an apple crisp, with Max in the Ergo. He fell asleep, his little head (okay, in all honesty, not so little—it’s a 97th percentile head!) resting against my chest. I found myself thinking “this might be the last (and first, for that matter) time that Max falls asleep on me while I peel apples.” He will eventually forget the sound of my heartbeat. When was the last time I heard my mom’s heartbeat?

Life is much busier than it was before—I used to be very content to putter around the house, taking my time, stretching out on the couch and reading in between getting things done around the house. Now I am always multi-tasking—feeding Max and checking my email, dancing with Max while doing the dishes, catching up on phone calls while trying to entertain Max. And because he’s a curious little guy who seems happiest when we’re busy, we’re out and about all the time. So different, but good.

Last night we attended—sort of—our good friends’ annual Halloween party. What a difference a year makes—last year I was 5 months pregnant with Max and having a fat day meltdown the day of the party. This year, at the last minute I decided I needed some black and purple tights so we headed out to the Halloween shop Spirit, and the mall to join the rest of the procrastinators. Unfortunately they only had black and purple thigh-highs, and the young sprite of a clerk informed me I would need a garter belt to keep the thigh-highs up. So there I found myself standing in line with my baby in the carrier, looking ragged from a bad night, and a tiny black garter belt in my hand. Sweet Lord. We went to the party early and headed home just as the other guests began to arrive. Got some good pictures at Jared’s fancy photo booth, and Max enjoyed staring at the trippy party lights. Next year—babysitter. Although Max looked pretty cute in his little pumpkin suit. Facebook pictures will be uploaded soon. Today—it’s out to Peaks with Max’s cousins.

The Vegetarian who Eats Bacon

Many years ago, my little brother decided to follow in my footsteps and become a vegetarian. I figured this would be a short-lived lifestyle change, as the boy believed pepperoni was one of the food groups. I knew it would be short-lived when he asked me “do you know any vegetarians who eat ham?” I think it was the next morning that I found him in the kitchen, stirring chunks of maroon pepperoni into his scrambled eggs.

I was a vegetarian for twenty years. The first few years I would sometimes eat chicken and fish. Then, the bruised veins on chicken wings made it impossible for me to continue, and a few years later fish went by the wayside, too. I always loved animals, and wasn’t able to disassociate the fact that my meals were coming at the cost of their lives. For quite some time, I didn’t even eat eggs. I was never one of those annoying types who was waiting to lecture you on the environmental impact of eating meat, or the elevated risks of health problems due to eating meat, or the way that animals are treated before being killed for meat. (Okay, there was that one persuasive speech in 11th grade but that was for school!) I never would’ve eyed your steak with disdain. Eating meat was simply something that didn’t work for me, so I didn’t do it. “But you wear leather shoes!” occasional instigators would say, trying to point out my hypocrisy. I would shrug. So what? My grandma Louise always asked me if I was “still in that vegetarian phase? You know that God gave us animals to eat, don’t you?” The “phase” lasted years and years but she always called it just that, a phase. I was pretty certain, in fact, that the phase would last for a lifetime. I would occasionally wonder what would happen if I was in some sort of survivalist situation that required me to eat the meat of either animals or humans, and whether I would simply perish instead of eating the meat. Of course in this pondering I would turn waifish and ethereal before perishing, the other survivalists eyeing my hollowed out cheekbones with what I thought was admiration at my saintly determination. But probably they were just wishing that they could get their bony fingers on some salt to sass up my wilting flesh a bit.

Enter Max. My constantly nursing, sweet-faced, blue-eyed boy. Who seemed to be reacting to all the vegetarian staples in my diet—beans, soy. Veggie bacon. After a few visits to a woman who wiggles her fingers while holding a food in front of my and Max’s stomachs and tells us whether it’s a “no,” “yes,” or “1/3 of a cup, then three days off,” my already limited diet (no meat, no wheat flour, no cow’s milk), a self-imposed month of a bastardized Total Elimination Diet consisting of only rice products, sunflower seeds, pears, olive oil and squash, a yeast overgrowth test that saw me carting a sample of my own filth (tucked away in an innocent looking Hannaford bag) to a lab—which came back positive for yeast overgrowth and put me on a nearly no-grains diet—I realized I needed, for my own health and stamina, and in turn that of Max—to see if I could tolerate eating a little meat.

First I tried chicken. It seemed benign enough. My husband fried it up in olive oil and neatly chopped it into small pieces that could be hidden into my food. I tried that for about three days but I could feel the little chewy bits between my teeth. I tried some amazing Alaskan smoked salmon—same thing. It tasted delicious but the texture was just too… meaty. Little bits of turkey sausage fared better texture-wise, but it turned out there were spicy bits in it that Max didn’t like. Finally, after much thought, I wondered if bacon might just be the meat for me.

As a girl, I once impressed my grandma Jeanne by putting away an entire pound of bacon in one sitting. “Lynnie ate well,” she reported to my mom. I’m still not entirely sure how a lapsed Jew like my grandma came to be proud of my feat, or whether this early accomplishment was a flashing yellow light signaling long battles ahead with eating, dieting, and weight. Bacon makes little sense from a health or environmental standpoint, but it just tastes so fricking good. And though it had been twenty years since the flesh of piggies had seen the dark cavern of my mouth, my recall told me that it wouldn’t have the same disturbing chewy effect that poultry or fish did.

My recall was right. Due to the candida, I had to find a bacon that had no sugar added in the curing process—not easy or cheap. But persevere I did, and thanks to Lois’ Natural Marketplace, the bacon that would feed just me and not my naughty candida was found. Scott kindly fried it up for me (okay, he had a bunch of it himself. Not quite a pound, but still) and I popped a few digestive enzymes for good measure before tentatively lifted the purple-brown curly goodness to my mouth. Crunchy, not chewy. Salty. Porky. Delicious. “The only bad thing about bacon is that it makes the whole house smell like bacon for days afterwards,” Scott complained. “That’s not a bad thing,” I rebutted.

And that, my friends, is how I became the vegetarian who eats bacon. I don’t know that I will continue this erratic behavior, as I once again am struggling to pretend that this salty treat comes to my plate from a plant of some sort—a bacon bonsai, if you will—and not a (formerly) living, breathing, squealing creature. But for this moment—and new parenthood, I’m finding, is all about trying to stay in this moment—it’s working for me. I think my brother would be proud. My grandma Jeanne would certainly be proud. And my grandma Louise would say “I told you it was just a phase.”

This morning’s walk
You snugged against me, curled
Cornflower blue eyes taking in
Smudges of green
Curves of stone
Flitter of branch

Older boys stumble around the pond
Donning nets
Flailing wide for small, tailed things.

I count turtles
Their long lizard necks
Reaching towards the sun
And I tell you how we walked here before,
When you were a pebble, a plum, a palm

You slide into sleep
Dreaming of warm rivers?
Coils and caves?

We pass three men digging a grave
And I steal kisses from your head
You smell of bark and rain

I think of the winding nights
Your legs kicking
Cheeks maroon, eyes like seeds
Both of us in tears

Or when you wake
And remember us
Your smile a half moon
Your almond eyes crescents

I think of first gaze, giggle, grasp
Of the way the days avalanche by.

There is not enough time
For you to teach me all I need to know…

Swingers

I'm probably establishing some poor sleeping habits, but my little one is once again peacefully swinging away in la-la land. Mama got to do laundry, dishes, and take a shower~ complete with a mustache Nair session, bang trimmin', and a bit of eyebrow plucking. Total bliss. This, on top of our new Sunday a.m. tradition~ Scott making gluten-free (banana this week!) pancakes. Good, good stuff. Oh, and Max must've slept at least 5 hours straight last night~ the fact that I'm not entirely sure how long he slept is an excellent sign. Today is definitely one of the top-ten Sundays~ at least since Max's arrival. Okay, so it's only been 11 weeks, but still!

Yesterday marked my first outing with Max~ excluding a brief excursion to my parents condo to put their trash cans inside (about 10 minutes away) when he was about 2 weeks old. I went to a yoga class and it was great. Getting out the door was hard though~ it felt so weird to leave the little guy behind, even in the extremely capable hands of my husband. Driving without having to worry about one-handedly reaching back to replace Max's pacifier was strange. I felt like I was forgetting an arm or something. But, once I got there, it was nice. And my body sooo needed to stretch. Sadly, the little guy was a little fussy for Scott~ which I felt bad about. But they both seem to have recovered nicely.

Well, I'm off to extract (it just sounds nicer than pumping, somehow) some milk for said little one before he wakes up...