Birthdays

Five years ago today, all of my friends - even Politika, who lives on the coast - pulled up at my house in a limo. A "well stocked with booze" limo. I had spent the day shopping, I was sporting a new haircut, wearing new clothes. Nice, expensive clothes, without food or snot or tears on them.

(Clothes I no longer fit into)

The limo took us out for an expensive dinner, we dined and drank and laughed. Then it took us to every bar or lounge where we knew the bartender, which was...every bar or lounge. We celebrated and were celebrated, we charmed and acquired people in our limo and had shooters named in our honour. We were freaking rock stars.

We ended up at a club where we danced all night and closed the place down. At one point I pressed my face into the chest of the man who would one day become the father of my child, and moaned drunkenly and melodramatically, "I'm not going to make it!"

I spent the next day in bed, and didn't emerge until 4pm. That legendary evening was hailed thereafter as "The Day My Friends Tried To Kill Me With Alcohol".

Today, this year, I blissfully slept in until the unheard-of hour of 8am. I dozed and listened to the murmur of voices, tiny feet dancing, toddler giggles.

I got out of bed and the three-foot-tall light of my life ran up to me with a small box. He tripped away, laughing, as I opened it. And then the six-foot-tall light of my life, who had followed his son, asked me to marry him.

I said, y'know, I'd think about it.

We had breakfast and I went to the gym. I had a nap. I went out for lunch with my best friend and my favorite short person, then played in the garden for the afternoon. We had a great dinner, a glass of wine.

Birthdays.

(I'm just fucking with you. Of course I said YES. Duh.)

Probably the one and only post where I talk about my uterus. You've been warned.

I've been a little distracted lately, not really blogging angst but I'm having a hard time coming up with things to post. Mostly because I'm thinking about just this ONE thing.

I've had some issues with the, uh, plumbing for a few months. Things are not, shall we say, regular.

Oh, fuck it. I haven't had a period since January. There.

(Apologies to my two male readers. Hi Captain! Hi Cameron! You're allowed to go watch the game now, have a beer and ignore the rest of this post. Although, you're both parents so you must have SOME idea of how this works).

I've also had some weird hot flashes and various other goings-on, so at my physical this week I mentioned all this to my doctor. And she decided to test me for a) premature menopause and b) polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Yeah. Sounds fun, right? Both of those present problems, should I ever want to provide my son with a sibling.

I said, "Um," and my doctor said (in an annoyingly cheerful, I'm-done-having-all-my-children kind of way) "Good thing you guys are done, right? Aren't you done?"

And in that instant, months of waffling and humming and gawd-do-I-never-want-to-be-pregnant-again turned into OMG I TOTALLY WANT ANOTHER BABY YOU CAN'T TELL ME I CAN'T XANDER NEEDS A LITTLE BROTHER WAAAAAHHHH!!

I managed to not say that though. I said, weakly, "Um, we weren't sure." But I sure as hell am now.

I cried in the car and then went home and hugged the son I'm lucky enough to have already fiercely, and then I presented my case to Paul. He's been spending the same months voicing vague arguments such as, "Can we afford another one?", and "Ah...hm. I don't know. We just started getting some sleep."

I cried on his shoulder about my potential barrenness, and sudden and overwhelming urge to have another baby and he said, "Sure, let's have another one."

"Really? But you never seem like you think it's a good idea."

"I've been talking myself into it for a few months," he replied. "You're just never there for the conversations."

Hm. Well, then. Whatever the testing verdict comes back as, I guess we're giving this a shot. So to speak.

My Beating Heart - not as gory as it sounds, honest

I don't really do reviews, because nobody's ever asked me *sob* that isn't what this blog is about.

(No, I don't know what this blog IS about. But it's not that. Shut up. I'll know it when I see it).

This is just a cool thing that I found and ya'll should know about. Because it's both weird and useful, and what better combination than that?

Unlike me, who can slip instantly and without fuss into a sleep that's just this side of a coma, Paul has issues falling asleep. Combine that with a job where he mostly works nights and a loud toddler that thinks 6am is a reasonable time to wake up, and it makes for a cranky hubby. We try to make it work so that he gets as much sleep as possible, but part of the problem is it takes him an hour just to GET to sleep.

While Christmas shopping online (I do probably 75% of it online now, because hello? Lazy) I came across this little gem at thinkgeek.com. For those of you too lazy to click on the link (you're my kind of people!), it's a "stress relief pillow" shaped like a heart, called - wait for it! - My Beating Heart (ewwwwwwww). It simulates a heartbeat of someone in a deep meditative state. Hugging it makes your own heart want to beat in rhythm, and lo! You're de-stressed.

The geeky yogi in me thought, "Coooooooool", and the practical side of me thought, "If hubby hates it I'll try it on the toddler". So I ordered one. Because it was late and I'd had too much wine.

When it arrived I thought, "What the hell?", followed quickly by, "Oh right. What the hell?". But I'd blown my Xmas budget so I wrapped it up. And explained it for like, 10 minutes to a very skeptical hubby. But he has lots of experience in humouring me, so at the first opportunity, he took it to bed and while holding it gingerly, thought:

"This is stupid. This isn't going to work. Keely is weirder than I thought. This is...sssxzxxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz".

Then he woke up 5 hours later. It's THAT GOOD.

I've tried it myself, though I don't need help getting to sleep, but there is the very rare occasion that I might get stressed. It's a little bizarre. It feels like it's purring. Whatever's in the pillow actually changes every time you turn it on, so you get a different heartbeat every time. It's kind of like it's alive. And purring.

Before I wrote this I asked hubby if he still uses it or if it's just in our bed to humor me (because if you sleep like me, you don't notice quietly purring pillows in your bed at 3am). He said he did, but said it that way that made it obvious there was a "but" attached to the end of the sentence. So I waited.

"Actually, most of the time I don't even turn it on. I just hug it and fall asleep," he admitted finally.

Yes folks, it's THAT GOOD. You don't even have to turn it on.

Or possibly I just outed my husband as someone who essentially sleeps with a teddy bear.

Either way.

PS - It says for ages 3 and up, but I bet it would work REALLY WELL on a toddler. Not that I've tried that, because mine isn't 3 yet. I'm just sayin'. I bet it would.

Move along, nothing to see here

HASAY update. I had a lame week. Literally. I pulled a muscle attempting a step aerobics class on Wednesday night so I whined a lot limped along through most of the weekend. That and the projectile vomiting from my son earlier in the week meant I only exercised three times. I wasn't too bad with the Weight Watchers, but obviously I have to be even MORE well-behaved, because when I stepped on the scale today there was zero change. Bah.

After the step aerobics class Wednesday night (which we will NOT being doing again, what with the injury and the total lack of coordination and the generally looking like flailing idiots), Paul tried to grab me for a hug.

"Ewwwwww don't touch me I'm GROSS," I wailed, squirming away.

"Fair enough," he replied, but I could tell his feelings were kind of hurt. I mean, I'm pretty sure he'd snuggle with me if I was cracked-out, had been lying in a sewage ditch for a week and had given birth as recently as five minutes ago. He doesn't care. But I felt gross after the workout, two-days-worth-of-grime-and-sweat-and-may-possibly-have-forgotten-to-brush-my-teeth gross, and that doesn't exactly lend itself to closeness.

"Tell me again, why I'm doing all this sweating and stinking and...and STARVING?" I lamented.

"Um...for your health?" he replied dubiously.

For my health, right. Isn't a large component of your health HAPPINESS? Because all these endorphins are nice and all, but you know what makes me happy? Really good food. Great wine. CHOCOLATE.

I'm having a hard time NOT getting hung up on the number on the scale. I feel stronger, I feel good about myself when I eat alfalfa sprouts, I want to maintain an active life so that I'll set a good example for my family. So that I'll be around for my family. And, kettlebell class aside, I'm having fun trying new things and working out with FoN (tomorrow we may try a hula hoop class. Because apparently we have learned nothing from our step aerobics experience, nothing). When we're not trying to kill each other at the gym united in this common cause, we usually only see each other once a week or less. So it's nice.

It's just frustrating to not SEE any progress. All I have to lose is eight pounds to put me at the top of the recommended weight range for my height. It's only eight fucking pounds, how hard can it be?

And if it's "only" eight pounds, why am I so bent out of shape about it?

Now that's love

Some of you mocked me and pretended to be askeered of my Friday Fill-In answers this week. But that's okay. I showed hubby, and he laughed, and then he said, "That's funny, I was just going to change my Facebook status to say 'Paul can't believe how hard it is to get a hooker's blood out of the carpet.' ".

See? We're MEANT to be together.

And in other news, the Un Mom is going legit and is now just http://www.theunmom.com. It's still hosted with Blogger, so I have no idea if this will mess with your RSS feed. I'm not that kind of geek. Ask me which one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse Gambit turned into, or ask me to rant about how Grant Morrison has fucked up the entire DC Comics universe, and I can do that. But my web address knowledge is limited to "Can pointy THIS over THERE". So someone let me know, 'kay?