I last tried self-tanner when the little angel was four months old.  I should've looked up my post to remind myself how very bad I am on the first attempt.  This time was no exception.

I was inspired to purchase the self-tanner yesterday, when (on an 86-degree day in April) I was exposed by my Costco squort to my blinding, Midwestern legs.

I've decided that I don't LOVE the way I look in shorts anymore.  The front? Fine.  The back?  God save the queen.  The squort is longer than the shorts, though, reaching almost to the backs of my knees, and it's a lot easier to run around the playground after a two-year-old when one has the safety of the underneath shorts to fall back on when one ends up ass in the air after a bad round with the twirly slide.

However, the downside to the squort is the exposure of skin, any skin, especially skin like my skin that is as white as white girls get.  Last night, after looking at my whiteness all day, I ventured to Walgreen's at nine p.m. to purchase new self-tanner.  If only I had read the history.

This time I got foam, thinking it would be easier to control.  Also, I was sucked in by the "just mix the pink and white together" line on the back of the bottle.  The experience was more like I should've reckoned - massaging mousse into your ass.  Needless to say, I now look partially awesome and partially like I have some skin-ravishing disease.  Thankfully, it will wear off in a few days, giving me the opportunity to invest in some surgical gloves (this being the key to my success last time - I didn't have to worry about how long the stuff was sitting on my hands and took the time to rub it in properly) and try, try again.

In the meantime, if you see me, don't worry.  It's not catching.

The little angel has already mastered "Please, Mommy," with an angelic tone whenever she wants pudding (which we have convinced her is "ice cream").

Tonight, after her bath, I gave her baby spa, which is her nightly rubdown of lavender-and-chamomile-infused lotion.  She immediately wanted to wear her silky pajama bottoms, which are like Mommy's.

As she clamored over me, stepping (it seemed) purposefully RIGHT ON my bladder, she muttered in an off-hand, New York City sort of way, "'Scuse me."

Watch out, world.  She's already avoiding eye contact.

I had my sonogram yesterday, and it turns out everything is completely fine.  Once again proving that women's health is more of an art than a science, there is no explanation for why I had such an odd month. My OB, who dropped the little angel's placenta on the floor while I was giving birth (lending the "birthing suite" the look of a Soprano's set), sat there with his white athletic socks pulled all the way up and his Nike running shoes clearly displayed and told me "things just go haywire after thirty."

The sonographer concurred.  "I don't know how many times women come in here and say they've been just regular as clockwork, then all of the sudden there they are, bleeding like a stuck pig for no reason at all.  It happens a lot.  It happened to me," she said.

I searched for more answers.  Did they think I miscarried?  It's possible, they said.  But I did take that pregnancy test that came out negative.  Did they think I had tumors?  No, they said.  You saw the sonogram.  (Of course, to me, the sonogram always looks like a study in grays more than a clear picture of ANYTHING.)  Did they think my birth control was still working?  Ah, they said.  Maybe we should switch it. 

First he said he could give me a pill that I had to take every day at the EXACT same time.  Not taking it at the EXACT same time would result in "breakthrough."

I asked why the hell anyone would want a pill like that?

Then he said he could give me Nuvaring, but that it's too weird for some people.  There are very few things that are too weird for me.  I asked what happens if it falls out.  He pulled up his socks.

Dr. M.:  "If it falls out, you just wash it off and pop it back in.  Presto."

Weird. 

But then he said it's the lowest-dosage hormone available.

Awesome. 

So I brought this thing home.  My beloved examined it closely, completely baffled as to why I would accept such a thing.  Men.  I explained the alternative is for him to wear the little raincoat on his pee pee for the rest of our lives, because I was sick of remembering to take the little white pills every day.  The thought of the little raincoat snapped him back to reality and remembering, as he rightfully should, that he should have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, because I not only have dealt with my feminine issues for the past twenty or so years, but I also carried his beautiful little red-headed daughter to term then pushed her out while he stood by helplessly.  Every once in a while I have to remind him that physically? I've had the harder job.  It more than equals the fact that I have never mowed the lawn.

Anyway, so now I have this crazy thing.  And you are all probably horrified that I just discussed all this icky body stuff with the Internet.  However, no one EVER told me that your hormones can make your body go all wack-funky for no reason at all just because you've ticked over the magic 3-0.  So Internet?  Consider yourself informed.  'Cause I love you.

I woke up this morning to the little angel bonking me in the head with her cup.  Two nights ago, she woke up at three and I ended up sleeping on her floor until five.  That sucked.  Last night, she woke up at three again. I decided to take her down to the couch, because lately my strategy for conquering her sleep problems has been to make it all about me and my sleep.  Ironically, this strategy has worked better than Ferber or Sears.  I call it "Mine."

She slept pretty well until about five, when she commenced with the head-bonking.  I thought about drop-kicking her across the living room, but I am a nice person and would never do such a thing.  But I did think about it for a millisecond.  I was having a good dream. 

As I walked to the fridge to get her some milk, I noticed that my throat hurt really, really bad and all of my muscles felt as though they were encased in Polly Pockets rubber clothing.  This does not bode well for the rest of the day. I decided not to think about it until I woke up late, asked my beloved why he hadn't woken me up, and he said he'd been yelling for me to wake up for thirty-five minutes.  Hmm.  Didn't hear him.

Today is the little angel's Jog-a-Thon for the Emerald City. I can't make it, because I have a meeting with my new boss at the same time.  I feel bad - it would be soo worth the head-bonking to watch her jog around the school parking lot.  Alas, I'm here at work with a sore throat and Polly Pockets legs and have several Important Meetings That Can't Be Missed.  And a sonogram, because that thing that wasn't supposed to happen at that time this month kept happening for THIRTEEN DAYS.  So, there may be Fun Health News today, as well. We'll see.

I think I'll go find someone I don't like and bonk them on the head with my water bottle now.  I am a big believer in paying it forward.

Gah.

Relationships.  They are so hard.  I have a few loved ones going through some rough times with relationships, and it’s reminded me of all the evil men I’ve loved before, and some that I didn’t love at ALL but I continued to date for whatever reason.

My worst blind date was set up by my friend Sheila in Chicago. I haven’t seen Sheila in more than ten years, so I doubt we need to protect her anonymity. She set me up with a guy that worked in her company’s graphic design department. He was part-time there, and the rest of the time he worked in a record store on Michigan Avenue. I walked down to meet him for our afternoon date wearing khaki shorts, an orange tank top and clogs. (Do not question my fashion sense – that detracts from the story – but the outfit is important to the plot.)

The plan was to go to an art museum downtown then go to dinner.  After that, we’d see. 

Dating Lesson One:  Do not allow the first date to be open-ended.  This guarantees you will be stuck with a loser for upwards of six hours.

The art museum was closed for renovation, so we decided to go to his house so he could change out of his record store uniform (you think??) and go to dinner.  It turned out that he lived with a one-eyed cat, a stripper and a guy who was smoking the world’s tallest water bong when I walked in the door.  The guy with the bong was eating a huge plate of ground beef.  My date was pissed that the roommate was doing either the smoking or the eating of the beef without him.  I sat down on the couch to wait for him while he changed, and that’s when the stripper walked out dressed for work.  The one-eyed cat sidled up next to me. He smelled like Mary Jane. My date asked me if I minded if he smoked. I thought he meant cigarettes. I was wrong. After he’d puffed a few, he put his head in my lap and told me his therapist said he was ready for a relationship again.

I don’t know why I didn’t run screaming at this point. Probably because I wasn’t even exactly sure where I was. This guy lived about five neighborhoods south from my Lakeview apartment.  We went to an Indian restaurant. He ordered the fish. I ordered vegetables, being a vegetarian at the time.  When his fish arrived, it looked a little like Don Knox.  My date was so completely freaked by his food making eye contact that he proceeded to a) eat all of my food and b) tell me he was out of cash.  I paid for our meal.

We went back to his apartment and picked up two of his friends.  The male friend was wearing a leather dog collar. The female friend had immigrated from somewhere in Asia and spent about ten minutes telling me she had a tattoo of the goldfinch, the state bird of Iowa, on her ass.  We went to a club downtown called Drink. It’s a club, with beautiful people and really expensive drinks and house music.  Let’s recall two facts about this story:  1) my date had no money and 2) I was wearing khaki shorts, an orange tank top and clogs.  I did actually run screaming at this point, but in order to get home (I was out of money after buying him and his friends two drinks each), I had to let him give me a ride. He’d grown up on the north side and gave me a guided tour of his old neighborhood and elementary school. I had him drop me off in front of an apartment building that wasn’t mine, walked home, and called Sheila, threatening to kill her if she ever set me up again.

Dating is rough. I feel for you girls out there.

My mother's Easter/angel birthday celebration was everything I could've hoped for and more.  She had overflowing bowls of jelly beans.  She had bunny-shaped rolls made "from scratch."  She had lemon and chocolate cake for the little angel's birthday. She had Easter baskets for the kids complete with bubble guns that took BATTERIES.  And she had batteries. 

At one point, my aunt (and this is funny - the aunt that made my mother jealous when we were growing up because she made everything "from scratch") looked and me and said,"You know, I could never do Easter after your mother.  She's too hard an act to follow."  I found this incredibly ironic, since for some reason my mother seemed to think she was the one who didn't measure up in the culinary category to my aunts during my childhood.  I'm sure she is overcompensating now, but in some ways, she's having the last laugh.

It made me think about perception, though, and how we think people see us versus how they really do. 

After the party and the two-and-a-half hour drive home, we went to the grocery store, where my beloved hounded me for purchasing the little "meal" of beans and wienies for the little angel instead of the cans.  Why? It's cheaper.  As we were checking out, however, I noticed he'd thrown two pounds of Jelly Bellies into the cart.

Two pounds.

Twelve dollars.

Hypocrite.

I blame my mother, who can make anyone a jellybean addict with her overflowing and too accessible droplets of gooey, sugar goodness.

By the time we got home, the little angel had had enough. Enough ice cream. Enough bubbles.  Enough wardrobe changes.  Enough driving.  She had to poopy, and it wasn't working out.  Finally, in a fit of screaming, she got it accomplished, but it must've hurt.  Afterward, she sat up on the changing table with crocodile tears balanced on her rosy cheeks and looked at me.

"I'm a wanting-a ICE PACK," she said.

That's a new one.

We leave on Saturday morning for my mother's annual Easter celebration.  We would leave earlier, but that would mean witnessing the chaos that is my mother preparing for the Easter celebration.

She begins months in advance, cleaning sections of the house, baking complicated things "from scratch," cooking scary-sounding things like "hamballs."  All of this must be done in preparation for the twenty-plus family members, family members' girlfriends and boyfriends (the young people are all married - it's the grandparents that are dating) and other hangers-on and stragglers that she invariably invites and next to whom I have to sit.

I feel for her.  Really, I do.  The time I hosted Thanksgiving for about half of my beloved's huge family plus my parents, I thought I was going to die from the stress.  Of course, then I was newly married and the stove broke.

However, I also think she's a victim of her own perfectionism.  Hell, at the little angel's first birthday party, I hosted more people than at my own wedding.  But I didn't try as hard as my mother does.

My mother's Easters are something to behold.  There are special treats for the kids.  An Easter-egg hunt.  Homemade goodies galore.  Special plates.  Special decorations.  A sparkling house.  Tablecloths. 

In other words, stuff that I would never do.

I feel for her, I do.  She throws a hell of a party.  And for the last two years, she's thrown in a birthday party for the little angel on top of all this.  But it does make her cackling, stress-induced, don't-you-dare-show-up-on-Friday-night batshit.  Because that is what trying to be the perfect mother will do to you. Beware, Grasshopper.

Sorry, Ma.  I had to do it.

I've read that all toddlers go through stages when they prefer one parent or the other.  I am the Chosen One right now for the little angel.

The other night, she woke up crying with The Poopy.  I sent my beloved in, since I had done night duty for the past several nights. 

The little angel, she was not having this strange blond man from whose loins sprang the seed that would become Somebody Little.  She ran away from him, or at least, she ran the five steps across her Very Small Bedroom.  She clung to the footstool at the base of the rocking chair, screaming for me to save her from the kindly stranger who offered to put her back in her bed.

"MOOOMMMMY!" she cried, as though the Elmo had been shot at point-blank range by an insomniac, trumpet-playing Ernie.

I gave in, as I do so many nights, because me?  I just want to sleep.  Tax season is wearing me down, friends.

In the purple light of morning, they are always friends again.  She usually only loves me best when it's dark out.  Perhaps she remembers the comfort of my womb.  Perhaps she just does it to make him feel like The Most Useless Piece of Shit Ever.  Which is how he feels.

Plus, there is this little, evil part of me that LOVES being the preferred one.  LOVES being the apple of her shiny blue eyes.  LOVES that, as they should, mommies sometimes win.

 

This afternoon, I left work a bit early, ran home to change, and jogged over to pick her up in the stroller.  We had a lovely time on our way back.  She wanted to play in the SandBacchus (the god of wine and sandiness).  As she stuck out all of her piggies, including the one that wanted to go wee-wee-wee all the way home, she allowed me to help her remove her Mary Jane tennis shoes.  My beloved, who I swear engineered the death of our twenty-five year-old, hand-me-down lawnmower, had gone to get more gas for it so that he could make that one last pathetic effort to start it that would convince me to let him buy some Cadillac of Lawns. 

As he pulled out of the driveway to go fetch more foreign oil, the little angel looked up from her digging in the pristine play sand. 

"Bye-bye, Daddy!"  she trilled cheerfully, waving her purple shovel.  "See you next weekend!"

I've read that all toddlers go through stages when they prefer one parent or the other.  I am the Chosen One right now for the little angel.

The other night, she woke up crying with The Poopy.  I sent my beloved in, since I had done night duty for the past several nights. 

The little angel, she was not having this strange blond man from whose loins sprang the seed that would become Somebody Little.  She ran away from him, or at least, she ran the five steps across her Very Small Bedroom.  She clung to the footstool at the base of the rocking chair, screaming for me to save her from the kindly stranger who offered to put her back in her bed.

"MOOOMMMMY!" she cried, as though the Elmo had been shot at point-blank range by an insomniac, trumpet-playing Ernie.

I gave in, as I do so many nights, because me?  I just want to sleep.  Tax season is wearing me down, friends.

In the purple light of morning, they are always friends again.  She usually only loves me best when it's dark out.  Perhaps she remembers the comfort of my womb.  Perhaps she just does it to make him feel like The Most Useless Piece of Shit Ever.  Which is how he feels.

Plus, there is this little, evil part of me that LOVES being the preferred one.  LOVES being the apple of her shiny blue eyes.  LOVES that, as they should, mommies sometimes win.

 

This afternoon, I left work a bit early, ran home to change, and jogged over to pick her up in the stroller.  We had a lovely time on our way back.  She wanted to play in the SandBacchus (the god of wine and sandiness).  As she stuck out all of her piggies, including the one that wanted to go wee-wee-wee all the way home, she allowed me to help her remove her Mary Jane tennis shoes.  My beloved, who I swear engineered the death of our twenty-five year-old, hand-me-down lawnmower, had gone to get more gas for it so that he could make that one last pathetic effort to start it that would convince me to let him buy some Cadillac of Lawns. 

As he pulled out of the driveway to go fetch more foreign oil, the little angel looked up from her digging in the pristine play sand. 

"Bye-bye, Daddy!"  she trilled cheerfully, waving her purple shovel.  "See you next weekend!"