The Infertile Gourmet

Halloween

What does a mom say about Halloween?  Should I tell my kid how seriously she needs to plot which houses to hit up or how to calculate the speed in which her two year old legs can carry her.  This is about an ambush during a specific allowable time to acquire the goods.  Ultimately the candy was always going to be for us.  Tsk. Tsk.  I know.  Since we allow her very little sugar and usually on special occasions I surely was not going to let her eat it all.  But us....oh how I could not wait to marinate in the yummo goodness of crappy candy.   

and then there was the melamine scare...duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuu.  No worries I plowed through the m and m's and my kidney's are fine thank you.  And of course I let my sugared up kid indulge too much.  She lollipopped to her heart's content and danced to the tune of milk dud's.  Proudly, she held up her freshly caught prey. 

Her co-conspirator, who might I add had quite the halloween spirit, Leia urged her strongly to run Scarlett run to the next house and get more candy!  Oh the joie de vivre touched my Halloween heart. 

Halloween and Shabbat go hand in hand.  At least for me who plotted all week of switching the challah (ceremonial bread gorily sacrificed on Fridays) to a scary life size scary head named man.  Leia pulled the Challah cover off and instead of yummy bread-like butter transportation was a scare.  The kids cried.  Yeah that met my daily quota of bad mother moments for the day and I guess um it surpassed it.  Proud.  yes I was.

What would the night be without some pumpkin stories.  We got a bit carried away when the church across the street from our friend's house was giving away free pumpkins after 8.  Needing chicken food, decoration, and great compost material we bit.  Combine with the sugar high we were highly riding on it got scary.

It started innocently enough when we filled the trunk.  Up to the brim of a witche's hat.  Bur then the hysterical giggling started and it went downhill.  Out of control. 

Pumpkins were overflowing all orifices of the car.  We filled and filled and filled some more.  I will even admit to some stuffing and then some more stuffing.

In the pic to the right shall we play a little bit of Halloween Where's Waldo?  Find the little girl dressed in a pink ballerina costume.

My mother sent Scarlett a card for Halloween.  Sweet.  S walked around with that card for a week.  She even named all the characters in the card.  The mummy is Daddy.  The cute pumpkin is herself.  The witch?  Guess who?  Me.  Scary mommy witch.  Why did she choose that character for me?  Surely her two and  a half year old mind has not made the connection between witches and bitches.  As I always say.  Everyday every mother must fulfill her bad mother moments quota daily.  Apparently I meet mine.  

My Little Girl

       

Duggar Night

Duggar night at the Gourmet's.  Pull up your perm rollers and solution, tease the mall bangs(ok unfair of me this was so last season on the show), and plop your feet up on the couch made for 20.

Watching the Duggar show always gets me thinking.  Sure, there is the obvious thoughts like wow my uterus sucks, wow I hate their clothes, and the obligatory image of Michelle and Jim Bob having sex.....ugh...What? I cannot help it my mind just goes there. Trust me I dislike it more than your distaste for me even thinking this.

But usually my when I watch the show I have thougths that surprise me.  This time they actually are starting to grow on me!  I admire the way Michelle disciplines her children ...calm, discussing with the child, and telling what she expects from them.  Honestly, this is the way (on good days) I discipline Scarlett and it works very well.  I have a well behaved child.  I can take her almost anywhere.  Apparently the places that the Duggars visit like the grocery store and outings regularly state that the children are always well behaved.  So if there seventeen children are not axe murderers it is good enough for me and my family.  I guess I am not doing all wrong.

The next nice thing I can say is that Jim Bob seems to be nice, fun, and loving with the children.  I have to say the stereotype of this family runs rampant.  I think the most prevalent thing said about the family is that the inner workings must be off.  Michelle takes drugs and that is why she is so calm.  The children are passed of to an older child to raise and they are off to spawn more.  The jury is not completely out for me.  As a child of the Little House On The Prairie era I was indoctrinated with a "pure" and wholesome little life with ma and pa on the farm.  So of course there are aspects of the Duggar's I admire and others....well have you seen some of my other posts?

In all my snark about the Duggars I have some respect.  I know, I know, not a popular statement.  They are like a trainwreck of traincars carrying loads of candy spilled all over the track.  Trainwreck=bad  candy=good...  and I cannot look away. 

Fav Little House On the Prairie moment: They make there own laundry detergent from a bar of soap, water, and buffalo piss or something like that which last for two months and costs them ten dollars.  They do one hundred and eighty loads of laundry a month!  That totally knocks the socks off of my Trader Joes 9.99 special. 

One thing I know for sure...I am totally jealous of Michelle's uterus and laundry room.

Screwed

That's it.  I am screwed.

As I have discussed recently with a friend there is only so much fertility that goes around.  God makes a quota for the year and cuts it off once it is reached. 

Hence, those of us who have a hard time getting pregnant (not to name names) are screwed toward the end of the year. 

John and Kate plus 8 I will give some room.  They had some infertility..hard to write that with them having 8 kids in all but like I said they will get  a pass.

Have you met the Duggars?  Yeah, the tater tot casserole loving crowd who has seventeen children and one on the way.  They are bad enough.  But, I was warming to their family with all the cute clothing being worn, the laundry room any mom would give her slobbering child away for, and the gourmet cuisine.  and then.....and then the Duggar's made friends with the Bates at a homeschooling conference and invited them to Arkansas. They have 16 kids with one on the way. 

All of the world's  fertility mojo is camped up in Arkansas at the Duggars. How can I get some of that?

If you all see me wearing poofy sleeves, shunning the TV, talking with a twang, and getting arrested for trespassing on the lawn of the Duggars.  You know why.  Do you think it could rub off on me if I camped in the yard and rolled around in their grass? hey just trying to get my Duggar groove.

The other problem is that my husband is not the stud Jim-bob is.

I am screwed.

Honey Child

My litte honey girl.  One of the things we have done over the last year was to become beekeepers.  Scarlett refers to them as "my bees" like some kids refer to their adorable kitten Fluffy.  See the gleeful look in that honeycomb eating thing as she chomps down on its waxy sweet goodness! In the next pic notice the honey oozing down her legs :) 

Now I am playing catch-up for the past year.  The next pic is the obligatory Fourth of July parade-dogs-candy-sweaty-people-pic!

My daring Guatemalan girl who was lullabied to sleep by fireworks in Antigua is now  a bit more shy of the noise.  Demanding that we go inside when my pyromaniac-who-spends-his-annual-salary-on-fireworks-neighbor was setting of his pre-fourth of July display.  The dogs, however, loved the fireworks and would run around checking each one out as they went off.  One I am sure exploded directly into her mouth and she kept going with joie de vivre.  I had a heart attack as the rogue firework started shooting in our direction.  Screw the municipalities fireworks.  I am staying home from now on! 

What would a pic post be without the "yeah I went potty!"  pic that I can torture her with as an adult.  Come one honey let us sing the song....Pee-pee on the potty! Pee-pee on the potty!

Saturday morning cake making. This was her second birthday party and Passover combined.  And the next...ahhh the family photo.  We had a friend who is a photographer do a shoot.  We got some great photos but we also wanted to do a certain picture here but we did not get what we were going for.  The mosquitos were biting furiously two chickens ran off, the cats were chased back into the house by the neighbors dog, I sweated through my shirt and our little model was sick of taking photos.  However, in the effort to get the funny photo we were going for we happened to get a pretty accurate family photo strangely enough!  This just about sums up our life.  Chaotic.  Unkepmt. Funny. Fun. Goofy. Loving. 

Darling Consumer Girl

I have been studying for my broker's exam and ignoring my daughter.  I managed to get this time by plopping her down for the first time to watch TV.  As an intellectual elitist (on my good days and when I am not feeling stupid or when I have had no sleep or well almost never) I scoff at the practice of TV watching.  Oh no not my child!  Gasp!  Shocking neglectful practice.  Your child will never get into Harvard Med school and become president!  (I know as a int. elitist I should at least spell things correctly, proof-read, and/or correct my bad grammar ...too much damn work and trouble :) 

You get the picture, no?  Ok truth I do not let her watch alot of TV and she had never really asked for it until I made her a little monsterita this week by one Teletubby show after another.  Tinkywinky, La la, tipsy, POE!  I am singing this in my head right now. I hate these little teletubbies but at least it is not that purple dinosaur bastard.  Anyhoo.  So my child's pure mind has been infiltrated with crap. 

She has done what all consumeristic little children viewing (GASP!) commercials do.  They see a toy they must effing have NOW!!!!  Except for absent-mommy-with-nose-in-her-studies pawns this nagging (what the hell is this...I swear for all my tall-tales above of int. elitism....she was never a nagger  but a polite child) child off onto Grandma-ma.  Grandma was gone on  vacation so I kept saying everyday for a week to this alien child..."When Grandma gets home you can go and get the new baby in a carseat".  If not once a million times.  Now in the future I will not cave into every consumeristic need of my two year old but ohhhhh this was her first....quick honey get the camera....so of course the darling can have what she wants this time. 

The second point my little monsterita did was ban me from my show.  I needed a break.  Not one to watch alot of TV myself but it was on and I needed a break.  I put Oprah and Dr phil on.  (you are not believing me on the int. el. point anymore are you...damn...it was a good run while it lasted).  Do you know what that little Shitake mushroom said to me.  "NO MOMMY No Do not watch this show.  It is yucky.  (shaking her head side to side) this show is yucky!"

Sorry Dr Phil she has not read your Family book and how to treat one another.  I swear she is getting her own copy now. 

CATCHING MY BREATH

As always my readers swoop in when I most need it.  Thank you.  Thank you.  I appreciate you guys showing up in this ghostown with nothing to greet you but a shriveled old infertile woman whining about her town being gone.  Broken record much?  I mean how much can someone complain about the same thing over and over and over and....  You get the point.  I am typically a positive woman with vivacious energy but these here years have got me down.  If I were the drinking kind you would have found my new address was the saloon without a swinging door.  But I am not.  I am just the blogging kind not that you all would have known that due to my lack of existence and tumbleweed posts.

You know it was halfway uncomfortable to write what I wrote because most of the time things are so good here.  Having a child and being infertile is so much better than not having a child and being infertile.  I think the problem that came up last weekend and at other times is that so much happened in the past few years.  Infertility, a serious illness that kept me from Scarlett, my dog Curry dieing who was my stand in for a child, and now money issues.  It was once thing after another and no time to process each "bad thing".  So all of the emotions had to get swept under the rug just to get through the next day because there was no time catch my breath.  I was in a rush against time.  A rush to get the family I wanted so badly and then once in the rush the need to keep the balls flying through the air up and up without falling.  Whew!

So now I am thawing out.  I do not want to miss one moment of my child's life.  So sometimes I push those feelings of grief back under the rug until like last weekend I trip over that rug that should be flat but is now a mountain of unprocessed grief.  But damn, what is a girl to do...do you know how hard it is to do housekeeping with a toddler.  You should see my kitchen floor which does not even have a rug on it.  Filthy.  Much less cleaning underneath"those" rugs.

Right now (and I mean since the time I sat down to write this and hopefully the next 10 minutes) I am close to content and not feeling neurotic at all.  Yay!  (ok do not ask me how I was two hours ago :) 

I guess the question that still lies around waiting to remind me that this hamster wheel that I have been on will need to be dusted off again for the next round of acquire-the-child game.  First I need to get my ducks in a row, catch my breath, and make a move.

What will I do next you may ask?  What is behind door number one?  Why it is a cycle or two of monitored injectables.  What is behind door number two?  CCRM. Colorado.  But with this option my time is a ticking because I want to do the shared risk program and I have to be younger than 35 to do it.  I have three and a half years.  Tick tock.  But first, I need to get my finances in order.  Sell another building.  Then, hopefully, I will be able to afford more treatment.

oh yeah and vote too!  (token insertion of obligatory political blog speak)  Go Obama!

For now my heart cannot take another adoption.  I would rather deal with one liner tests than deal with leaving a beloved child.  Nope.  Sorry can't do it right now. 

Ok next post.,....pics  I swear.