Forgot the grid meeting this month. I set it up, made sure the meeting place was open, near the month’s grid and wasn’t to be overcrowded at the designated time. Then, life happened and I didn’t make it.

Actually, I may have made it in a somewhat late fashion had I not been strapped to a baby under a pile of boxes and plants. Yes, it’s an excuse. I am calling uncle. I have too much on my plate.


List of things I have tried to keep on top of this month:

· Newborn (gotta be on the top of the list, right?)
· Moving abodes (within the same city but still a sweet sort of hell)
· Grid Project (with that comes a website and gallery showing)
· Childcare Subsidy argument (I lost)
· Taxes (what? I can’t hear you)
· Baptism for Eliza (had to find a church that wouldn't make Franklin break out in hives, don't ask)
· Bills (Telus and BC Hydro can suck my balls)
· House Guests (most of it a help, some of it not – no, I’m not telling you which was which)
· Selling of furniture (anyone want a vanity?)
· Buying of furniture (we are officially adults)
· Handling utility and address notice
· This blog (had to sneak it in here somewhere, don’t feel bad)
· Making of meals (Lordy, I made a Martha recipe the other night)
· Garden (we will supply the island with brussel sprouts this year)
· School (AEG grades rock my world)
· Keeping up on emails (everyone seems to afraid of bloody flickr)
· Thank-you notes (I can’t find them!)
· Baby announcements (still trying to correct those mofos)

Jesus and Mary Chain! Looking at that list makes me feel super human. Okay, I can officially cut myself a little slack. Last time I pushed out a human just making it through the night was an accomplishment.

And it’s not that Dickson is a low down dirty lay about either. He was finishing school and now he’s in MUST FIND JOB mode. Yes, he must because my maternity top-up ends in July and then, my dears, we are poor.

Not living on the street trying to find a cardboard box poor or trying to fight our way to get a cup of rice poor but we will be scrapping. On the bright side, there will be no more private school to pay for – except for the money we already owe them…

Fuck.

The thing about a second child, I find anyway, is that I expect myself to be competent. However, when I really think about it, I wasn’t all that competent with the first one. Why would I expect myself to be competent with the second?

Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t cause me much anxiety – my lack of competence. I am just a little surprised at my naivety this time around.

“What? This worked for Franklin! Why doesn’t it work for Eliza?”
Riiight, a totally different baby.
(hand slaps forehead)

As we round out the fourth trimester I can definitely say things are good. There are things that have gone definitely better this time around (breast-feeding), things that have been the same (haemorrhoids suck) and things that have been worse (the crying, oh the crying).

Ever heard of hyperlactation syndrome? It’s not something I ever thought I would have to worry about with my wonderful bouts of mastitis with Franklin. I avoided the mastitis problem this time and low and behold, too much milk?!? So much milk that Eliza gets too much for her little body too fast. So much foremilk that she fills up on it and doesn’t get to the hind milk. Too much foremilk means too much low-fat protein and gas build-up. This causes, hands down, the best projectile vomit I’ve ever seen in my life.

The vomiting is hilarious because she’s gassy and bothered and cranky and then she spews watery milk across the room (she seems to always to reach the teak wood on the heirloom rocking chair or my side of the bed) and then she looks at my shocked face and seems to say, “What? Haven’t you seen the Exorcist?”

We are getting there. I can convince my breasts to produce a little less but I can’t do a thing about my let down - my massively powerful swoosh that, I swear to God, feels like I’m about to have an orgasm in my breasts. For Eliza, I think it may be a little like trying that plastic flamingo drinking game where someone pours a beer down the neck of the lawn ornament and you have to try to chug it down without wasting any of the precious Bud Light or whatever horrible beer that die hard asshole from the bush party who should have graduated years ago but still likes to be the cool guy and tries to feel you up as you wait for your boyfriend to get back from peeing in the bushes….

Sorry, where was I?

Anyway. Either Eliza will get the hang of the let-down at some point and by high school be able to master the flamingo chug or we will have a few more weeks/months of the milk version of Linda Blair.

And really, I’ve always loved that movie so whatever.

This is the baby announcement I designed this morning. This morning I deleted all other designs I had been working on. Now, people will be getting a postcard in the mail with our faces on the front along with a plethora of flower photoshop brushes that I know I overdid. I didn't know when to stop and once I looked up....well, crappola.

I’ve never watched as much television as I have while breastfeeding (I find it hard to juggle a book and feed because I'm uncoordinated in terms of breast sports). In fact, I was talking to a few friends the other day about this and how it can affect your state of mind. A good friend of mine had a son 9 days after September 11th, 2001. Her entire first few months with her baby were spent watching coverage of the twin towers over and over and over again. She will always remember how much she analyzed that tragedy and how she followed all the coverage – the conspiracy theories, the falling man, and the hunt for Bin Laden.

When Franklin was born I’m sure there was a lot going on in the world. I watched CBC News as it reeled its news loop over and over and over again. There isn’t much that I remember as there wasn’t anything as all encompassing as 911 but I do remember one specific news item – Michael Jackson dangling his son, Blanket, over the balcony.

I was horrified. What was even more perplexing than a sheltered superstar with no sense of reality showing off his latest acquirement was that no one in the media seemed to think it was a dangerous thing to do until the following day. It was like all the childless reporters were all, “Hey! Look at Wacko Jacko” and then those with children saw the clip and saw the reality of what was happening – a terrified child was dangled out of a balcony because his father had no sense of consequence.

This time around I’m still in front of the television while breastfeeding. I’m also in the company of a five year old boy with a dinosaur / shark / Ben 10 obsession so I watch a lot of this as well. However, there is one thing that sticks in my mind and it isn’t terrorism or child abuse. It is botox.

We were watching reality tv the other night – Hell’s Kitchen. (Wow. There is crap on telelvision, by the way, and this is one of them.) The masochistic junior chefs were cooking for a sweet sixteen party and the mother of the birthday girl was a stereotypical debutant mother – with the typical face of a person who lives in an alternate universe than mine. I suppose it was more noticeable because of the “reality” contestants and their “relaxed” faces. Her face was smooth and tight and cartoonish. I started noticing it in other television women. It was like when I started to see breast-implants as sore, engorged breasts on the verge of mastitis.

I suppose when you see this on a regular basis in your routine life, you don’t think you look all that different. Perhaps when you are used to watching women on television look this way one may think that this is just the way television looks. However, I can’t get over this now. Everywhere I look in the media… botoxed, poisoned women. I’m scared for them – and frankly, disgusted.

So, with Franklin I witnessed Wacko Jacko in a delirious fit of immaturity and with Eliza I see women walking around perpetually frozen and trying to stop time from appearing in their faces by paying people to inject botulism toxins into their bodies.

Ugh.