Ten Questions

Because my blogging brain  is broken, apparently. This came from KatieOhKatie, who got it from someone else, who got it from someone else, and so on, and so on, and so on.*

{one} how often do you do laundry?  Clean clothes are for pampered princesses and persons of limited imagination.


{two} what is your favorite type of cookie? Soft, large gingerbread. Or cream cheese iced pumpkin. Or milk chocolate HobNobs. Or roasted garlic chocolate chip. Or iced molasses. Or peanut butter. Or soft sugar. I hate cookies. Cookies are the devil's lure. My oven is still broken.



{three} what would you do with an extra $2000 per month? Pay extra on the mortgage, extra on the car, extra on the line of credit. Put the rest in savings. Finish becoming Ross Gellar.


{four} what was/is your favorite subject in school? British Literature of the Victorian Period, Making Oneself Very Smart but Unemployable, If I went back today it would be American Political History and Public Affairs.


{five} have you ever ridden in a hot air balloon? No, but I can respond to queries with a tangential answer like "helicopter."


{six} what was your high school mascot? Herky, the WinHawk. Because LoseHawk is not a rallying cry.

The fu*#? Apparently, there has been a makeover:

{seven} if you had the chance to go into space, would you? I fear change and new experiences.
That said, it would be foolish to refuse, so with the right medication. What I most want right now is to see the last shuttle launch. Space geek.


{eight} how often do you go dancing? Never. There's no dancing in The Motherhood.


{nine} would you rather drive or fly? Drive, bitches. All. The. Way. Flying with a child is a pain in the ass. Flying freaks me out just a bit. I am not in control when I am flying. Our last long trip, we weighed the options and chose to drive 21 hours rather than fly because it was less expensive and we could pack what we wanted without having to pay for our bags and carry a car seat and pay for our seat assignments. Screw the airlines.


But I have no opinion on the above question.


{ten} have you ever been caught re-gifting? Nope. That stuff goes to Goodwill, or I give it to someone who needs it, not as a gift.
*name that commercial.

This is Why I Make Lists

We got it all together. Everyone had clothes on, which were weather appropriate. There were freshly laundered diapers in the bag, ready to go. Snow boots for muddy days in the day care backyard. Bags, electronic devices, all of it, and out the door in time to get to work for a meeting.

It wasn't until the first time I went the restroom that I noticed I had no makeup on. I was innocently washing my hands, when I looked up and saw my Sunday afternoon at home face staring at me, not work face.

Now, it's not like I am an extraordinarily well-groomed individual. I look with envy at those put-together women who are always flawless, but I just don't have the will to put all that much effort into it. This is not to say that I come to work looking like a hobo (can we still say "hobo"?). I match, my clothes are clean, I am clean. But the perfect hair and make up just don't happen on my head.

Still.

At the end of the day, a coworker came by my desk and said I looked tired. I said, "well, sure, but the real issue is I forgot to put on mascara."

Croup d'état

It was Terms of Endearment around here last night. Not in the "Give my daughter the shot!" sense, but the scene when the baby comes down with the croup and they are sitting in a steamy bathroom with a barking child.

At around one a.m. I was wakened very suddenly by Finn who was himself wakened very suddenly by wheezing and a cough that could only be described as a bark. He sounded like a seal. As this is not the circus (yet), I was alarmed. A number of things ran through my mind:

1. I am alone, and Pete has the car
2. He has his pertussis shots, but what if they did not work? Has herd immunity gone down enough that he could have caught whooping cough? This sounds like the cough they describe in the symptoms and in the anecdotes that parents have told.
3. What if his breathing gets labored to the point where it seems he is really having trouble getting oxygen? Do I call an ambulance? Would that be covered?
4. The Internet is down, and I can't consult mayoclinic.com

In the end, after the whole forty five seconds the above steps took, I called my mom. She's a nurse. I put us on speaker phone and let her listen. She told us to go into the bathroom and run the hot water. I called Pete and told him not to dawdle after his gig; he was almost home anyway. Finn and I went into the bathroom. Babywhumpus was upset because he thought he was getting a bath, and he was not completely awake, but we got the bathroom all steamy in minutes. Small spaces have their benefits.

He settled down, and we watched some Winnie the Pooh while we waited for the Tylenol to take hold, and we all went to bed and slept until (later that) morning. It was a scary moment with a fortunately unexciting ending.