This morning I was getting Elizabeth dressed, and she was playing with a sweater that had been on top of the changing table. When I was finished dressing her, she indicated clearly (grabbing the sweater, yelling, trying to wrap the sweater around herself) that she wanted to wear the sweater.

I explained to her that the sweater had been on the changing table like that because she’d outgrown it and I needed to put it in the handmedowns bag. I pointed out that the sweater did not go with her outfit anyway. I reminded her that the weather report had suggested that today was going to be warm and springlike, not a good day for sweaters.

Her debating tactics need work: her only argument was “EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Outcome of our disagreement?

Whose debating tactics need work NOW?

Maybe you have been wondering why there have been no Digging Ourselves Out entries lately? There are three reasons. First, I was getting jumpy about the number of posts: I would think, “Well, I already posted a Digging Out entry, and now I’ve posted a regular entry, so I really shouldn’t post another entry.” Second, I think that whole cleaning idea might have been Second Trimester Energy. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but compared to how I feel here in the third trimester, I think it was. Third, here are the Before and After pictures from one of my first tasks, the kitchen table project:

Doesn’t that look nice, all clean and smooth? So much better. And now here’s the After After:

It’s not as bad as the original Before picture, but nearly. And the worst part is, I didn’t put that stuff there. Those are Legos put there by Paul and Rob and William, a mask put there by William, school papers put there by Rob, magazines put there by Paul, etc. I know The F1y L@dy says that if your family doesn’t cooperate with your clean-up ideas, you should go ahead and do all the clean-up for them, but I say SCREW THAT!

The Flying Mum tagged me for a “7 Songs I’ve Been Enjoying Lately” meme. I’m supposed to include links to clips, but apparently I am too dim to do that: I tried copying The Flying Mum’s idea of using Rhapsody, but couldn’t make it cooperate with me. I am failing this meme.

1. Dragostea Din Tei, by OZone
2. Welcome to the Black Parade, by My Chemical Romance
3. Life Less Ordinary, by Carbon Leaf
4. What Hurts the Most, by Rascal Flatts
5. Behind These Hazel Eyes, by Kelly Clarkson
6. Too Little Too Late, by JoJo
7. Angel, by Shaggy

Do you know, I am actually a little nervous making that list? I feel like maybe you’re going to be snorting and saying, “She likes THAT song? She is SO lame.”

I’d like to start a meme of my own, if I may do that and I don’t see why I mayn’t. It’s a perfume meme. List three (or whatever–we’re casual in this meme) perfumes that are important to you, or have memories associated with them, or that you currently love, and say why.

Charlie (Revlon)– I wore this most of the way through high school, and I still have a bottle of it. I remember how appealing the ads were to me: beautiful girls in tough pinstriped suits, and, if I remember correctly, the idea that under their tough career exteriors they were wearing lacy lingerie. That concept makes me barf a little now, but I loved it as a teenager.

Sand & Sable (Coty)– I wore this during college. I still like it, but I can’t smell it without thinking of a relationship that ended very badly, and so I haven’t worn it since.

La Chasse Aux Papillons (L’Artisan)– This is one of my current favorites, and the first very expensive perfume I’ve owned. The way I found it is a little embarrassing: I read in US Weekly magazine that some celebrity liked it. The way she described it (“like fresh-cut flowers”) so intrigued me that I went online and bought a sample of it (I like Luscious Cargo for samples and also for their fun, cool site), and I loved it and now I have a whole entire expensive French bottle of it and it makes me feel special and pretty and not-frumpy to use it.

So! There’s my very own meme! And I tag ALL of you! Yes, ALL of you! You are ALL tagged! Well, all of you with blogs. All of you who have blogs and also wear perfume.

You guys. You are not going to believe this. I emailed Tal, saying almost exactly my sample email but with more gushing afterwards about the baby to cushion the first sentence, which started with “I don’t think it’s going to work out to get together…”

He wrote back within a couple of hours, and he says: “Are you on bed rest? Why the grim prognosis for visiting?” And then he talks about how great it would be to get together and catch up sometime soon.

Whuh? Has he experienced severe head trauma? Does he not understand any social cues at all? First I put him off, then I tapered off the emails, then I took ages to reply to this one, and then I said it wasn’t going to work out to get together but let’s “try” to keep in touch via email. That’s pretty clear, right? I mean, it’s not as clear as “Look, idiot, I don’t like you anymore but you can email me with major life changes if you must,” but it’s about as direct as I get with these sorts of situations. And he wants to know if I’m ON BEDREST??

Dropped on his head as a baby. Repeatedly. That’s my guess. Or else a LOT of recreational drug use since I last saw him.

Short version, for people who dislike reading other people’s long and not particularly interesting memories of their youths: Someone from my old teenaged social circle has reappeared and wants to start getting together socially, but I don’t like him anymore and need a good way to say “No, you idiot, can’t you see we have nothing in common anymore?” without feeling like a jerk.

Long version, for people who love long, unnecessarily detailed descriptions:
Back in high school, there was one summer where I spent almost every single evening with the same group of people. We all had daytime summer jobs, so around 5:00 we’d start calling around saying, “What are we doing tonight?” It was a lot of fun. I’d never been that social, before or since.

One member of the group was named Tal, and back when I was in high school I thought he was pretty great. He was bouncy and theatrical and outgoing and friendly, and the first day we met, he and I were assigned to go out on a snack run, and in the store he slung his arm over my shoulder. The first day we met! Plus, he was cute. Really cute. We saw each other a lot in our group, and he kept making me batiks and drawing charcoal sketches of me and sitting too close to me and so on. We did go out on one real date (he wanted me to meet his parents, who totally interviewed me as a Wife Candidate during that whole dinner–that would have freaked me out if I’d been a little older), but we never officially dated: he went off to two weeks of camp, and while he was gone, the ex-boyfriend I’d pined for all summer came back to me, that stupid loser, and I got back together with him. Later I kicked myself for losing my opportunity to date Tal, but LATER-later I realized it didn’t really matter which of them I’d dated, because neither of them were going to work out anyway.

Tal and I lost touch when I went off to college, and in college I lost my taste for bouncy, theatrical guys, instead preferring quiet, environmentally-conscious, flannel-shirt-wearing guys. We wrote a few letters, he sent me a couple of mix tapes (mix tapes!), and that was nearly it: we did write once or twice in a “here’s my new address” and “I got married” way, but nothing more.

This past fall, I got an email from him. He said he and his wife had moved to a nearby town, and that he’d love to get back in touch. He said his wife was pregnant with their first child, and he invited me to their baby shower. He hoped I and my whole family could come over some time for dinner.

I went to the baby shower, and here I am getting to the heart of this problem: I don’t like him anymore. I don’t like the theatrics, which seem even more abrasive in someone who is 32 not 17. I don’t like his wife, who says things like “I consume very little sugar” and “I don’t see why I have to get the same exact gestational diabetes screening as some obese woman who eats Twinkies all day” and “Yes, well, the way they do it in [country she spent a year in] is they….” She was snappish with him, and he was foppish and childlike. They referred to their cat as their “first baby.” I found them both irritating, and their baby registry was annoying.

After the baby shower, Tal and I exchanged a few emails, mostly talking about people we used to know. I allowed the emails to taper off, and when he suggested getting together for dinner (meaning him and his wife, me and Paul and all the children–in their perfect house filled with their international breakable souvenir collection, I’m SO SURE), I put him off with an excuse about being busy over the holidays. Then I didn’t email anymore, and I hoped that would be the end of it.

However, recently he emailed with an abject, bowing apology about being out of touch for so long, and reasserting his interest in booking a date for a get-together. I really, really don’t want to. I thought he would have noticed at the shower, as I did, that we don’t have anything in common anymore, but he hasn’t. I’m not sure how to put him off. If it was someone saying, “We should really get together sometime” it would be easier, but he’s saying, “Let’s set a date and time! How about a week from Sunday?”

There are probably people who would say to him, “Listen, idiot, I don’t even like you anymore,” but what I need is something more subtle. Something that doesn’t make me feel mean, but also doesn’t let him keep trying to set up a time, because he’s apparently not going to get the hint by me being all vague and “oh, currently too busy but maybe someday” approach. I could just not answer, but I don’t think he’s going to drop it. What if I wrote something like, “I don’t think it’s going to work out to get together, but let’s try to keep in touch by email–I’d love to hear how your new baby is doing!”

What I really wish is that there were an emoticon I could use. A certain little face that communicated, “Hey, I know we used to be friends, but we’re not anymore, and you really need to drop that whole idea before I have to hurt your feelings. Also, your wife is a humorless, judgmental bitch.” Anyone seen an emoticon for that?

Bags of candy containing assorted flavors present a problem in our household.

There are two philosophies regarding mixed bags of candy. The first philosophy is that you should select the flavors you like, and leave the others. Why would you waste candy by eating it when you don’t like it? Leave it for someone who does like it. This makes total sense.

But there is another philosophy. This is a philosophy formed when a person who likes all the flavors confronts a bag containing only a few. And it happens again and again, through nearly ten years of married life. And so she never gets to eat certain flavors. This philosophy states that if you don’t like all or at least most of the flavors, don’t eat from the bag at all. Buy non-mixed bags, containing only the flavors you like. You selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate jerk.

It has taken me over a dozen years of sharing a household, but I have nearly trained Paul not to THROW AWAY the flavors he doesn’t like, which was his former approach to mixed bags. And there are times when I wonder if maybe I should have allowed him to continue that. In some sense, it solves the problem: he goes through all the flavors at a steady rate then, some consumed and some destroyed. And what happens when I forbid it? I get a bag of, say, all the blue SweeTarts. All the Mr. Goodbars. I like blue Sweetarts, but I like them combined with their purple and orange and pink friends; Mr. Goodbars are my favorites, but I like them better when I’m also eating Krackels and plain Hersheys. But first I have to finish off these leavings–and by the time I do, Paul has left me another picked-over bag. This is the kind of situation that gradually begins to seem fraught with underlying meanings. He gets the first pick; I have to accept whatever he leaves behind. He doesn’t worry about what happens to the things he doesn’t like; it’s my job to take care of that. You see how this is dangerous ground?

It isn’t that I don’t understand his point of view. I like Hershey miniatures, but I don’t like the Special Darks. Does that make me a bad person? No. Does that mean I should have to eat full-size candy bars instead of cute miniature ones, just because I happen to dislike one of the four flavors? No. Does that mean I should force myself to eat the Special Darks, out of a sense of duty to the bag of Miniatures? No. What I do is this: my mom likes the Special Darks best, and I give them all to her. That’s using smart and considerate candy management principles.

The only time Paul and I are in harmony is with jellybeans. He likes the oranges, the yellows, the greens, and the blacks, ONLY. I like the pinks, the whites, and the purples, ONLY. Neither of us like the reds. We can peacefully share a bag of jellybeans. There, our marriage works, and we are happy. But we have not yet been married long enough to share a bag of Hershey Miniatures.

In June, when the new baby is about 3 weeks old, I’m going on a 3-day trip with my mom and my dad and one toddler (probably Edward) and the new baby, to attend my cousin’s wedding. It will be one full day of driving, one full day for the wedding, and then another full day of driving.

Some of you will think this is berserk, but consider for a moment:

• If I stay home, I will be exclusively in charge of five children: a fighting 8-year-old and 6-year-old, two 2-year-olds, and a newborn. If I go on the trip, there will be two additional adults and three fewer children.
• If I go on the trip, I will get to eat meals out three times a day, without having to cook or even open the fridge.
• If I go on the trip, I will be able to go to a wedding, and I love weddings. I will get to buy a wedding gift, and I love buying wedding gifts.
• I am fond of my cousin, and would like to be there on an important day like this.

Now I realize there is a flip side:

• If I go on the trip, we will have to stop every 2-3 hours so I can nurse a newborn.
• That newborn will probably spit up all over his car seat.
• Spit up IF WE’RE LUCKY.
• A toddler in a car for two days.
• A toddler in a hotel room.
• A toddler at a wedding reception.

But still! I think it will go okay. I think it might in fact be very nice: I tend to be a little overwhelmed and weepy at 3 weeks post-partum, feeling as if all the happy anticipation of life has drained away. A little trip like this might be great. I don’t have to do any driving, and can rest in the car. I can eat lots of nummy snacks. I can buy new postcards for my collection. I don’t have to look at a dirty house. I can show off the new baby to lots of relatives who, because of being related to the baby, will refrain from noting how rashy-cheeked and patchy-haired and generally unappealing he is.

I think I even have a dress I can wear. I was worried about that, because I’ll still be kind of puffy and pregnant-looking 3 weeks after the c-section. And it IS a little worrying, because it’s not as if I can try the dress on right NOW and see if it’ll fit: I’ll have to try it on after the baby is born and make a decision THEN if it’ll work or if I have to somehow drag myself out shopping. But I think it will work. It’s a dark blue floral print, and it’s a forgiving cut. If I remember correctly, it’s the kind that’s really loose and then there’s a string in the back to tie it the right tightness. It’s not high fashion, but who’s going to be looking at me anyway? It’s a wedding, so there’s the bride just for starters, but also I’ll have a newborn baby with me. I could wear nothing but a hospital johnny and an arch expression and no one would notice.

Oh! I nearly forgot the point of this post! Which is that I will have a toddler in the car for about 24 hours. And I’m going to buy some new toys for the trip, and I am hoping for recommendations. Edward will have just turned two years old. He likes things with buttons: an old TV remote was a big hit for awhile, until he realized the buttons didn’t do anything. I’m thinking along the lines of handheld battery-run toys that aren’t so annoying that an adult trapped in the car with them will go nuts. And of course if you know of any SILENT toys that are just as entrancing, TELL ME RIGHT NOW YOU MUST TELL ME RIGHT NOW.

There are few things as maddening as a confusing problem in the middle of the night. Periodically, maybe every four to six months, our thermostat does this: “Click click. *pause* Click click click. *pause* Click click click click click click click click click click click click. *pause* Click click click click click click click click click click click. *pause* Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click”–where each click is, individually, the sound the thermostat normally makes when it cues the furnace to come on or shut off. Meanwhile, the poor furnace is attempting to comply with the thermostat by swoofing on and then almost immediately turning off, and then swoofing on again, and then turning off.

Why is the thermostat doing this to us? Our loose working theory is that it happens when the batteries get low. We have to believe this or we will go mad, because clearly the actual explanation is that the thermostat is messing with us. This clicking thing only happens in the middle of the night, never in the day. Also, the thermostat has a “low battery” warning message, and we have seen that before, but it is not on before or during this clicking problem. Nevertheless, when it is 2:00 in the morning and the clicking and the swoofing are happening, I always change the batteries. Then I lie wide awake in the darkness, waiting for the clicking and the swoofing to continue or to stop.

Here is what that wily thermostat does then: it continues to click and it continues to make the furnace swoof, but it does it much less often. So then I think, “Well, I did just get those batteries out of the unheated basement. Don’t batteries work less well if they’re cold? Maybe they just need to warm up. It’s not clicking as much. I’ll just wait and see.” I think this way not because I am a woman of extraordinary patience who can take a “wait and see” attitude even at 2:00 in the morning, but because I am out of ideas. Changing the batteries is all I’ve got.

These are the times when I could seriously kick Paul out into the dark, monster-ridden night. Why is he sleeping through it? When I change the batteries, I have to go creaking down the stairs, and creaking back up. I have to turn on the hall lights. I don’t technically have to open our bedroom door wide to let the light wash over him while I do it, but I do–just to include him in my life. He snores on. I suspect that if a serial killer came into our house and made one single giveaway clicking sound, Paul would not awaken, leap from bed in fighting stance, and save the day. No, it would be me, leaping out of bed with fresh batteries already in hand.

John C. McGinley wove through my dreams last night, lucky girl that I am. Unfortunately he was there mostly as a background presence in various stressful situations (brought wrong child to pediatrician, discovered most of my teeth had cavities, late to class and can’t remember where the classroom is), rather than in the sort of situation where I could, for example, grab one of his biceps and give it a little squeeze.

I was looking in my old journals to see what pregnancy was like at this stage in other pregnancies, and I found that always at this stage I am doing very little reading. Too distracted, I think. I do continue to read People magazine, because, you know, I need to keep up with important current events. And this time around, I’m reading a ton of blogs. I think this is comparable to my last pregnancy, when I spent zillions of hours reading and posting to message boards in a group of women all due the same month as me: it’s not really reading, even though reading is involved–it’s more cruising for social interaction.

One thing I have noticed, as I cruise the bloggerhood, is that more blogs need a section like *ahem* mine. See up at the top righthand side, where it says my name and my husband’s name and the names and birth years of our kids? That would be a very handy thing to have in most blogs. Often I find a blog, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, but who are all these people? I’ve come into a room filled with strangers, and I don’t know who is the husband, who is the baby, who is the cat, who is the blogger. I need a list of the cast members. Once I read nearly an entire post before realizing that the code-named individual was a dog and not a child.

This morning has been our usual weekend routine: I try to set things up so that Paul realizes his help is required, and he cruises obliviously past. Today I was in my pajamas feeding the twins their breakfast, and he said that he and William were going down to the workshop to do a project. I said oh, that’s a great idea, but was he going to want the twins left in their high chairs, or put down in their playpen? because first I was going to take a shower (here I glanced so rapidly it was almost subliminal at his clean, dressed person) and have breakfast (another rapid glance at the crumby plate he was bringing to the sink).

Edited to add: Thanks to Coffee Stained for letting me know that comments were disabled–I thought nobody loved me anymore.

Kara of Baa Baa Black Sheep is clearly my comment-box muse these days. She left another comment that made me feel all chatty, so I thought I’d make a new post about it so we can all be chatty:

So, hey, you guys. This got me wondering–do any of you use cloth diapers? If so, can you talk about your experiences with them? We’re not planning on trying to start a family for 6 months to a year, but it’s nice to know about these things.

We used cloth diapers with our first baby. I had a great experience with it. For one thing, a cloth diaper service went out of business while I was pregnant, so we were able to buy heaps and heaps of diaper-service diapers for very cheap, plus we bought some of the pails they gave to customers to use for diaper collection.

Then, I bought a bunch of different kinds of plastic pants at a consignment shop for pennies (not a popular resale product, it turns out), and so I got to try all the kinds and see what I liked best. Hands down, my favorite were the Dappi pants. They used to sell them at Target; I don’t believe they do anymore. They were…nylon? I think. So they could be laundered (I think I hung them up to dry, though), and they didn’t rip anywhere near as quickly or as easily as the kind made of plastic. They were less crinkly, too. They were more expensive than the regular plastic, but I got a whole bunch on clearance, and also I thought they were worth it even at full price.

For wipes, I cut up cloth diapers that were getting tattered. The diaper service started us out with some of these as “hey, take these as freebies,” which really helped; if I hadn’t had those, I probably would have used washcloths. I do not sew in any skillful sense of the word, but I can thread a needle, so I used pretty colors of embroidery thread and did some crude round-and-round stitching to keep the edges from falling apart. I kept a bottle (it was one they gave us in the hospital) on the changing table filled with a baby-shampoo-and-water solution, for wetting the wipes. Then the wipes went into the laundry with the diapers.

I had a mental hurdle at first, with cloth. Rinsing the first few diapers in the toilet (I wore rubber gloves) was…unpleasant. After that, it was nothing. It felt totally normal. I got completely used to it, and felt satisfied with my system. We had a particularly excellent set-up: the washing machine was between the nursery and the bathroom, so I could take the diaper to the bathroom to rinse it, then drop it in the washer on my way back to the nursery with the bucket. I enjoyed taking all those clean fluffy diapers out of the dryer. And I liked it that when the baby peed in a fresh diaper, I didn’t hear the ching-ching of coins dropping into the trash can, the way I do with disposables.

Why did we stop using cloth? We moved to a new place, and it had coin-operated laundry. Also, one of the big parts of my cloth-diaper system was filling the washer and dropping each diaper into it to soak until I did a load of diapers. I couldn’t do that in the shared laundry facilities. I switched to disposable. Why am I not using cloth again, now that we are in our own home with our own washer? Part of it is that I was so, so stupid, and I gave away all our cloth diapers and Dappi pants when we went so long without our own washer, and I thought we wouldn’t be able to get a house before we were done having children. Then the thought of buying all those things again was…disheartening. And part of it is that stores like W@lmart and Target made their own brands of disposables that cost about half of the ones I’d had to buy before, which made it easier to stomach the cost element of the disposable disadvantage.

So! Weigh in, cloth diaper users! Your experiences! Your favorite products!

Obviously you guys need to check out Jonniker’s post about menstrual cups, because I found myself posting a lengthy response (which I then deleted and turned into this post) in my own comment section in response to Kara, who has also read Jonniker’s post. So that’s at least two of us here who feel like talking about it, and if the rest of you want to join in you’re going to have to visit Jonniker first so you know what we’re talking about. Read her comment section, too, because it’s pretty great and also gives more information on the topic.

Now. On to the discussion. I want to know who here has experience with these things, and, if you own one or you’ve ordered one, which of the dumb-named items did you choose? If you’ve read Jonniker’s comment section, you’ll have seen my comment, which was this:

I’m not grossed out by the CONCEPT of the cup, but I agree it needs an image makeover. First of all, the names, which are stoooopid. “Diva Cup”? I am not using ANY product that requires me to favor the diva concept, as if I am a 12-year-old with a rhinestone t-shirt. And “The Keeper” is both creepy (because of all the horror novels called The Keep) and also creepy (because of the implication that the point is to SAVE the contents, perhaps forever).

Secondly, the color. I agree that brown is gross, and that clear would also be gross, and so would white be gross. I think it needs to be available in a selection of patterns: a swirling paisley, a jungle floral, a pink camo, etc. I want CHOICES, and I want them NON-GROSS.

I agree with what Kara of Baa Baa Black Sheep said (in Jonniker’s comments) about doing your own small part for the environment, and in fact I have a partially-written post on this very topic (not in re menstrual products per se, but overall) that I keep not posting because it wavers between preachy/pious and uncaring/flippant, which in case you are wondering is not a pleasant combination and leaves me looking like a self-satisfied jackass, and so the post just sits there unfinished and unpostable.

Where was I? Oh yes! I agree with the concept of each of us doing the environmental pleasantries that we don’t mind doing, and this is one I don’t think I’d mind doing. I think there would initially be a mental hurdle involved in using such a product, but I had the same hurdle for using tampons, and in fact for my whole period in general. If this is not too much information, and I think maybe it is too much information, I personally would like tampons best but am too scared to use them because of TSS. I know, it’s rare, but I would feel so dumb if I died of it. And so I use pads, which are way worse for the environment, not that I would let that stop me from using them (and in fact, I do use them, so there you are) if I were truly grossed out by the menstrual cups. But speaking of grossness–and now this really is too much information but at least it isn’t about me personally–isn’t it just as gross to see it on a pad as to see it in a little cup? I think it might be, but that I’m just not used to the cup and I am used to the pad, and that gets us back to the mental hurdle thing from the beginning of the paragraph. See how beautifully that all ties together?

So! Please do tell. What with all the pregnancy and breastfeeding, I’ve only had my period four times in the last two and a half years, so I need information from people who are on the front lines of this issue, as it were.