who did my make-up?

I just got my faculty ID for my new job, and I look like Eddie Izzard. I'm not sure why nobody told me I look like Eddie Izzard (thanks family and friends! You know, it hurts more when you hide the truth.) I'm not sure what to do here.

Start copying looks in Vogue and Cosmo? Go to a Clinique or some other make-up counter and have them explain the ins and outs of subtle eye shade? Ok who am I kidding? None of those options could ever be associated with subtlety.

In all fairness, I had 2 hours of sleep followed by a 2-hour drive, then 2-hour plane ride followed by 1-hour train, then 1-hour bus...it was a long damn morning. But as a new mom, I'm not sure the day of travel is much different from just being a mom in terms of getting that authentic haggard look. As an example, while grooming my eyebrows the other night, I managed to start with two caterpillar-looking puffs and end with one-and-a-half differently shaped eyebrows. And really, what is the likelihood that a new mom with a new full-time job has the resources to make good, subtle eye make-up happen?

Maybe there's a beginner's make-up application tutorial on YouTube.

more from dove

These aren't from Martha, but Dove continues to put these silly things on their wrappers. I have no choice but to comment.

"You're gorgeous."
My husband tells me that every day, even when I look like crap. What else you got?

"Shut out the world for just one moment."
You know what, the effort it takes to shut out the WHOLE world, I'm going to do that for more than a moment.

"Make every day a holiday."
This is a great suggestion, but what do holidays mean? Candy in differently decorated wrappers - so that after a full year of holiDAILies, I can have a holiday just for my GIANT ass. A paid day off from work - right, except, work is going to stop paying me if I take every day off, and then how will I pay for all of my assorted holiday candies (and my new, larger pants?)

"Be spontaneous."
If you have to tell me to be spontaneous, and I start planning to be spontaneous in response, then I don't think it counts as spontaneous any more.

"Sing along with the elevator music."
First, not a whole lot of elevators where I live. Second, most of the elevator muzak I've heard lately does NOT have words. I could DANCE to the elevator music - sway softly with my eyes closed while others look at me and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.... I'll just stick with singing along with the music in the stores - at least there are words.

office-wide memo

To All Staff:

If you have reached this point in your life and you are unable to operate a simple piece of office equipment like a toilet paper holder, namely taking an empty roll off and putting a full roll on, please report to your supervisor immediately so you can be fired for incompetence.

If you are not incompetent and you had some other reason for just setting a new roll of toilet paper on top of the empty roll, please report to your supervisor so you can be fired for being a lazy sack.*


*Feeling that you are somehow above changing the toilet paper roll is also grounds for a good firing … see your supervisor.

when you're pregnant there are different rules around clothes.

I have reached a point where I just don't have the energy to seek out, wait in line for, and utilize a changing room. Not only does it suck my energy, but if there is a situation where I am removing my pants, my body has decided that it must be time to pee. It's important to be aware of this, especially when my freak out for the week was "I NEED a nightgown for the hospital - something that I can nurse with! Oh my god!"

While out shopping (at a crowded outlet mall, no less), I found it. My dream nightgown - soft, adjustable spaghetti straps, low cut, stretchy, and ugly as sin. I tried on the extra large right there at the rack - over my shirt and pants. It was perfect.

I showed my mom, my sister-in-law, and my husband just how perfect it was. "Look!" I exclaimed as I tugged in turn at each spaghetti strap exposing each covered breast, one at a time. My family members oohed and aahed and joined me in expressing how perfect the nightgown would be as I looked toward the days of expressing milk for our beautiful little girl. I haven't felt this good about shopping or trying on clothes in months.

And for those of you who were in the store, judging my choice NOT to use the changing room, I would refer you to the growing baby bump, and the sweet little girl inside who is shaking her fist (against my uterus) saying, "suck it."

you're a hard woman to find

I'm having a hard time believing that a person was unable to find my mom. I'm not expecting any results from a "GrammaNora" Google search, but in general, she's got a lot of identifiers working for her.

First, she's a high level administrator at an institute of higher learning.
Second, her last name is pretty distinct -- there aren't many of us running around. And even if you put in the first and last names of someone ELSE in the family, her name usually shows up on the first page.

So when GrammaNora said a representative from a state agency had to contact her via a board she was on, I was pretty surprised.
Rep: You're a hard woman to find.
GrammaNora: What?
Rep: I had a really hard time locating your phone number. I couldn't find it anywhere.
GrammaNora: Uh...did you Google me?

I think this state worker takes the agency's "No internet use at work" policy a little too seriously.

real pants have buttons

30 weeks and 2 days pregnant is not a good time to realize that real pants have buttons. It's also not a good time to wear real pants (altered with a hair-tie or not). I took for granted the ease of using the bathroom when there's a giant elastic waist band! Real pants are also not good into 30 weeks when you have back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings, and then you get pulled into two or three more meetings. I never realized how much time unbuttoning and unzipping and then buttoning and zipping takes. Those seconds add up, especially when you're late for a meeting.

I don't think I'm going back to real pants ever.

here's hoping the birth is less traumatic than the birthing plan

At 30 weeks, it seemed time to start working on the birthing plan.

When will we go to the hospital?
I'll have to talk to someone about how much time I have after my water breaks. I've also been wondering about what happens if I go into labor at work -- do I drive my car home from work while having contractions? Do I have someone else drive my car to my house? My husband picks me up at work, and I leave my car at work until I don't know when?

What can eat or drink during labor?
Don't they only give you ice chips?

Do you want to walk around during labor?
We'll have to see how my legs feel. I have enough trouble walking around NOT during labor.

Do you want to personalize the atmosphere with special music or lighting?
I'll have my ipod, and my droid phone with Pandora and the "Look Away" play list.

Will there be cameras?
Yes, and I made a list of the photos I want to make sure we get.

Do you want to use a mirror to see the birth?
HELL NO!

We're only about 1/6 of the way through, here, but pretty easy...

Do you want to use and IV (see page 372, which says you probably won't have a choice)?
No, but I probably won't have a choice.

Do you want to use pain medication, and what kind? (see page 301 for more information about Epidurals, etc.)
Haven't made up my mind about this, but can I just say that page 302 is the scariest thing I have read ... EVER. Stephen King has NOTHING on a description of an Epidural. That's a lot of needles and prep and potential catheterization. I suggested just not having pain meds at all because as I read further, I didn't like the other options either. When my husband said, "it'll be ok," I told him that I was scared, and then I totally lost it and cried hysterically.

He comforted me for a few minutes, and then he took away the book.

Birth plan is going to have to wait.

it was a rough kind of sunday

Last Sunday, my husband and I sported our New England Patriots tees and got ourselves worked up over one of the worst football games we have ever seen. It was just ugly. Goddamn Jets.

The saddest part is that was the day I finally got around to doing the family photo with the Patriots gear on for the pre-baby book. And now the memory is tainted by a crappy game...a crappy game and being blasted by freezing water in our basement.

With great sadness and heads hanging low, we climbed into bed. Tucked in nice and tight, we were reading happily (albeit sulkily) when we heard (and felt) a loud thud followed by a very strange noise that we were willing to chalk up to the heater doing something weird. So, here's what's stupid...if the heater WAS, in fact, doing something weird, we probably would have died (in a cloud of smoke, in a house fire, in some other furnace-related something), but we were perfectly content to just stay tucked in, reading.

It was when I had to pee that I finally decided to investigate.

In the front room the sound was far more menacing. It finally occurred to me that if we were dealing with a heating problem, it was most likely that said problem was going to result in the house blowing up. So, further investigation led me to the basement where I discovered that the problem was not the furnace but the water main. Sure that we were dealing with a frozen-pipe-burst, I started turning off valves that didn't require entering the splash zone. Finally, my husband was able to shut the valve off on the pipe that was blowing water all over the basement.

We are fortunate to have a good plumber who came over the next morning and fixed the pipe. And, as it turns out, it was not a frozen burst, but a poorly plumbed main line from the beginning of the house (read: easy fix, and "who I hate most today" trophy has to be shared between the goddamn Jets and the goddamn previous owners of this house). And we had two toilets with one flush each to pee before bed and again when we got up in the morning. Still, it was really cold standing in the basement in soaking wet jammies.

On the bright side, it snapped the serious Patriots fans in the house out of their "no superbowl this year" pity party.

as luck would have it

I'm not entirely sure how I managed to accomplish everything today given the number of things I forgot. At 5:45, as I drove to the Y to teach an aerobics class with a lot of 15- and 30-second intervals, I realized that I forgot my bag for class. The bag contains a stopwatch to time said intervals, as well as my shoes for said class, and my music for the planned routine. As luck would have it, I did have my I-pod, and the front desk had an audio cord I could borrow to connect it to the stereo. Little did I know just how much luck would need to be involved... the I-pod battery was nearly dead, so I couldn't use the stopwatch nor could I keep the screen lit for more than a few seconds at a time. I also forgot my wrist watch and the clock in the studio did not have a second-hand.

Luck, as it turns out, was also on my side when it came to shoe choice this morning. Instead of grabbing my large boots to plodded through the snow, I chose slip-ons that were sure to keep my fry warm. Not only a good choice for warm feet, but also an ideal shoe for this particular workout.

Except for a brief glitch when I pushed the wrong button trying to adjust settings on my I-pod resulting in a jarring switch from Lady Gaga to the Wicked soundtrack, I managed to get through the class, music and intervals included, with a few seconds of battery life to spare.

Having overcome nearly insurmountable odds, I thanked those who keep watch over me, and came to a new realization...I had left my work laptop at home, packed in my work bag and sitting out where I wouldn't forget it.

Speaking of work, on this day of forgetting and somehow managing to cobble together a solution, I left work (and aforementioned laptop) for a nice long weekend a mere 13 hours and 12 minutes after realizing I had forgotten my aerobics class bag - it had been a long day. I had stayed late to make sure I finished as much stuff as possible, and somehow I still got an email on my blackberry, 20 minutes after I left, requesting talking points for an interview. Bad news: talking points were on the laptop, on my desk, and my keycard doesn't work after hours. So, I point out my problem, and the next request is: I just need the reporter's number. Right, the number that is on the desk with the laptop. After 30 minutes of Web searches to try to find ANY contact info for this guy, I make one final desperate attempt to find the information - I check my work voicemail. As luck would have it, I didn't delete any of my voicemails today (keep in mind that in my little OCD world, not clearing messages immediately upon hearing them is unthinkable, so how I ended up with three messages, including the one I needed is beyond me). I was able to provide all the contact information necessary to complete the interview, and now I really can enjoy a nice long weekend.

Thank you, whoever you are, with the luck and the cobbled-together solutions. Please stay close!

our first Christmas tree

We got our first Christmas tree this year. This is our fourth Christmas together, but having a tree never made sense - we just aren't home during the holidays (usually a good recipe for trees drying out and causing fires).

But with a daughter on the way, my irrational fire fears took a backseat to my husband's desire for a real Christmas totem and a new tradition.

In the past, family Christmas trees have involved either the existing house plants or a trip to a cut-your-own tree farm. Said tree farms are typically in the middle of nowhere, and our favorite includes TruckGuy - a guy who comes out in his 1972 Subaru pick-up truck once you have selected and cut down your tree somewhere in the middle of a field.

So we headed out for a Christmas tree. We drove a whole quarter of a mile before locating a tree lot. We pulled in, told the guy we were looking for a tree on the small side. He asked, "How small?". My husband resonded' "that one."

The guy tied it on the roof and we drove home.

I think it took less time to drive there, pick out the tree, get it on the car, and drive home than it did to get the tree off the car.

The sort of sad part is: we just took the Christmas tree down. We took off the ornaments. We unwrapped the lights. We went to take the tree out of the tree stand and realized we didn't take any pictures of our first Christmas tree. I hope this isn't indicative of photographic evidence of our daughter's upbrining.