I had such a good online shopping trip this morning! Old Navy is having one of their stuff-and-save sales, which are my favorite: 20% off everything, even clearance. You have to have an Old Navy card to get the deal, but I highly recommend having one anyway, because if you do you can also get free shipping (use coupon code SPECIAL–they don’t go out of their way to remind you) on $50+.

When I shop at The Children’s Place I tend to buy mostly girl stuff, but when I shop Old Navy I buy almost all boy stuff. I bought Rob and William some pigment-dyed polo shirts (all three colors) and dark-tint jeans. I also bought a whole pile of long-sleeved bodysuit three-packs for Henry: I had those for the twins and they’re so soft and so nice under overalls or for extra warmth under a long-sleeved outfit. What I don’t understand is why I only bought them in size 6-12 and size 12-18. What was I thinking? I should have gotten 3-6 for this fall. And when he’s in 12-18 months, it’ll probably be summertime. Well, I lost my mind, that’s all. But I lost it in cute colors! I got the gray combo (brown, gray, white) and the blue haze combo (dark blue, light blue, white), and also plain white. They have cute girl colors, too. Damn it, why didn’t I get them in size 3-6? I think I forgot how old my baby was, I think that’s what happened. Oh come on, like I can be expected to remember EVERYTHING.

I did buy one shirt for Elizabeth, a green floral one. I don’t even know if I like it; I just couldn’t resist $1.99 plus another 20% off.

Rob and William and I did our third day of running. We might repeat Week One next week, because we were still struggling. When I say “struggling,” I mean “begging the gods to spare our lives.” It definitely helped, though, to take your advice about running heel-first, running slower, lacing our shoes less tightly (I was thinking they were supposed to be MORE tight for running), and stretching more afterward. Also helpful: drinking a leeeeeetle too much coffee beforehand; and, once we were at the halfway point and heading back home, reminding myself that there was a pan of brownies waiting for us. (I’m running for my health!)

Maybe I should just place another order with Old Navy. It’s really bothering me that I didn’t get the bodysuits in 3-6 months. And maybe I should have gotten the uni combo (yellow, light green, white) too. I wonder if the stuff-and-save code can be used more than once? I wonder if I can find a full $50 worth so I can get the free shipping? Well, it’s only $5 flat-rate if I can’t. I hate this kind of thing! I’m going to be agitating about this all day, and then I’ll finally decide to just DO it–and they’ll be out of stock.

Grr. Well, if any of you buy anything, tell me what you bought and maybe I’ll love it and want it and be happier about placing another order.

Stacie over at The Twinkies had a clever idea: First write a nauseatingly perky paragraph about your life, the type of paragraph you see in alumni newsletters. Then write a franker, funnier one. Here are her paragraphs. And here are mine:

Swistle and Paul welcomed their fifth bundle of joy this May: baby Henry joins older siblings Robert, 8; William, 6; and twins Elizabeth and Edward, 2. Swistle is a stay-at-home mom and loving every precious minute of it! What a privilege to see the miracle of childhood close up, and in so many versions, and for so many hours a day! Paul can barely stand to leave for work in the morning, knowing that his happy family is farther behind him with every mile he drives.

If you people hold our old college friendships in any regard at all, you will get your asses on a plane and come HELP US. For the love of god, we are dying here. There are children on every surface, like those news stories you see about old ladies who have so many cats the entire house is disgusting. The squalor, it is unthinkable! The diapers alone will bury us! Bring food! Bring cleaning supplies! And bring a car, so you can drive away with one or more of our excess children! Toddler twins AND a newborn, do you understand what I am saying here??

Stacie is making this a new meme–and with new memes, the way to get them going is to threaten everyone with bad luck and/or ancient curses if they don’t participate ask everyone to consider themselves tagged.

To The Boys:

We totally notice it when you haul out “I love you” and “You’re beautiful” only when you are also panting and groping. We totally notice. Furthermore, we hate it. Get a clue, morons.

Love, The Girls

Huge Fisher-Price / Mattel recall due to lead paint:

http://www.service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod=

It took me a few tries to get to the site because it’s so busy right now.

I did this week’s second day of running yesterday, and what I would like to know is, where is my parade? There is nothing–NOTHING–quite like the smug and self-congratulatory feeling you can get from doing some truly revolting exercise. It feels GREAT! Today I am strutting around thinking, “I exercised yesterday! Yes indeed! That was me, out there exercising!” Even through this fog of righteousness, one thing remains painfully clear: it still feels better NOT to exercise. The after-exercise is great, but so is the after-going-to-the-dentist: if it feels so good to be DONE, we are not talking about an enjoyable experience.

The second day was worse than the first. My shins hurt from the first time, which tells me I’m probably doing something wrong, and they did not feel better when I ran on them. The weather was miserable. The boys were less enthusiastic. And in the back of my mind I was hearing all the people who said they ENJOYED it! And that it got EASY! But we did it, and I’m glad.

While I was counting out how many more minutes of hell remained to me, I had a thought. In the comments section, there was a discussion of how FAST you need to be running/walking. And what I think is that your speed doesn’t matter. I think all that matters is how trampled you’re getting. If you’re running along at 15 miles an hour but you feel all free and breezy (test: are you using words such as “enjoy” and “easy”?), you need to pick up your pace. If molasses is gliding past you but you’re seeing a tunnel of light and hearing beloved ancestors calling your name, you need to slow down. We will not be passing out medals for speed, only for misery.

Time for a diaper report! We went through 184 diapers this month, if I include what I estimate we’ll use for the rest of today. Henry wears size 1 diapers now, which are sold 56 diapers in a package for $5.75 (we use the Target brand). That’s 10.27 cents per diaper, and we went through 184, so that’s $18.90 to put him in disposable diapers for a month between the ages of 1 month and 2 months old.

It’s less expensive than last month, because last month he wore the newborn size, and the newborn diapers are more expensive per diaper.

Is he TWO MONTHS OLD? Yikes.

Will no one return this child’s stolen eyebrows?

Day One of the Couch to 5K running program, and I am off to a good start. It’s three days a week, so you wouldn’t HAVE to start this very day, but I did and I’m glad because it’s nicer to have six days to do two more days of exercise than having six days to do three more. Um, duh. So, here is my report:

Good: I did it, rather than finking out before even doing it one single time, which is what I’d feared might happen.

Bad: The whole “doing it” part.

Good: It was a good idea to bring Rob and William, because it was more like doing a difficult game: “Okay, now we run for 60 seconds! Okay, now walk for 90!” I think if I’d gone out by myself, I would have turned around after a few minutes and said forget this crap.

Bad: Not only did I have to keep my own motivation up, I had to keep THEIRS up. “Come on, you can do it! Come on, keep running!”

Bad: Also, they kept wanting to TALK when I was working on DYING. “How many more seconds?” they’d ask again and again during the minute-long runnings, while I was wondering if I should be trying to draw another breath or just lying down and skipping the whole breathing thing entirely. And then Rob would want to start complicated conversations: “How many calories do we eat in a day? And how many calories does this burn? So how many more do I have to eat when I run like this? And what percentage of…” Me: “Let’s … *gasp* … talk … *gag* … later … *pant pant*”

Good: The way Rob and William struggled and complained tells me they could really use the exercise too.

Bad: Aesthetic considerations aside, can it really be good for me to JIGGLE that much?

Bad: I mean seriously, my FAT hurts more than my muscles do.

Good: Doing it even ONE TIME makes me feel like I’m starting on the road to better health.

Bad: The road to health sucks, and is full of alligators and mud and burrs and taxes and dog poop.

Good: After running, I no longer felt like eating the Hershey bar that was waiting for me.

Bad: Nor did I feel like continuing to live. And when the will to live returned, so did the will to eat the Hershey bar.

Good: I shower in the evenings usually anyway, so I showered early (while Paul had to take care of the kids) instead of at my usual time (when it cuts into my kid-free evening).

Bad: Even after the cool refreshing shower, I still felt–and looked–as if something had stepped on me.

Good: With just one session of running, I have learned things about myself and about my body.

Bad: Those things are that I hate exercise, that I hate the WHOLE EXERCISE THING—the changing in and out of clothes, the sweating, the need to shower afterward, the stretching, the warming up and cooling down, ALL of it. Hate! it!

So, how about you? Did anyone do it today? It seems as if we ought to keep a tally or something: people who have done one session, people who have done two sessions—I won’t bother to continue that sentence until we know if we even need to go on.

I filled my prescription for the mini-pill, so the experiment starts tomorrow. You’ll have to let me know if I seem crazier or crabbier than usual.

Perhaps you are wondering, “Why the rush to fill it? Why the very first Sunday after seeing the OB?” Well, when Paul was headed for the grocery store, I asked him to bring me a pint of Dove “Give in to Mint” ice cream if it was still on sale–and he came home with four pints.

So. Hey. Do you realize that tomorrow is the first day of the first week of the running program we’re supposedly doing? I feel partly excited (something new! maybe slimming and energizing!), and partly heavy with dread (maybe unpleasant and exhausting! maybe yet another failure in the quest for health and fitness!).

The shopping part is fun, though. I have some nearly new all-purpose exercise shoes from the last time I kidded myself that I was going to exercise and I’m going to start off with those–but then if I do this for “awhile” (two weeks? three? a month?) I’ll buy some running shoes. But Rob and William had only slip-on shoes, so they needed something they could run in, and they need that for the new school year anyway. Today we went to Target (*choir of angels sound effect*) and I found a pair for Rob at 50% off and a pair for William at 75% off. “Woo,” and also: “hoo.”

Also, we bought a pedometer. We don’t NEED one, but….well, it’s a fun toy. And Rob learned that “10,000 Steps A Day” thing at school, so he is wildly enthusiastic about it and asked if he could have his own pedometer as a Christmas present, and then William asked if he could have one for Christmas too. That is a pitiful request. If this one seems good (it was $6-something, and maybe it’ll be craptastic and we’ll need one that costs a little more than that), I’m going to buy one for each of them.

I can already tell that this particular pedometer is not going to work for finding out how many steps I walk in a typical day back and forth between the recliner and the brownies: at around 200 steps I sat down for awhile, and when I got up it was over 300. I thought it was an anomaly, but then I went down to cycle the laundry, and when I looked again afterward it was over 500. Hmm.

I’ve been thinking about Devan, whose husband is in trouble right now for seeing dishes in the sink and asking her, “What did you DO all day?” Devan has a toddler and a newborn. Devan’s husband still has all his parts attached, but it may be just a matter of time.

What I’VE been doing all day is thinking about that question. I think of it as living on the list of questions and comments that are never under any circumstances okay to use. It doesn’t seem as if we would have to come out and say that these were Forbidden; it seems like at this point it would be understood by everyone in the entire human race that these are the things you say right before rotten produce starts flying through the air toward your face. And yet no.

So for the sake of those who are still struggling with this, claiming angrily not to be mind-readers, I think we should compose a cheat sheet: a list of all the things no one should ever, ever say. I’ve made a start on it:

1. What did you DO all day?
2. I work all day.
3. Is that on your diet?
4. Have you been putting on weight?
5. Sure, you could stand to lose a few pounds.
6. Is that what you’re wearing?
7. This isn’t rocket science.
8. I hope we can still be friends.
9. I love you, I’m just not “in love” with you.
10. I have a new co-worker—younger than us, but she’s already had a highly successful career as a porn star! Smart, too! We talked for hours today about [insert boring work problem here] and she was so interested and had such great ideas!