the baby and I make Italian beef and a giant fucking mess

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Marie

So I don’t normally post recipes anymore, but I was so proud of myself the other day for preparing this delicious meal that I just had to share it.

A lot of my “meals” lately have consisted of coffee and Pop-Tarts consumed while standing in the kitchen and holding the baby. (Delicious, healthy home-cooked meals every day while juggling a kid? Takes a better mom than me. Also, LIAR.) She is tolerant of the Moby wrap for no more than 15 or 20 minutes (still no dice with the chic hippy sling, sadly), so a lot of times, it’s easier to eat and cook when my husband is around, or when she’s asleep. The cats have proven wholly unreliable as nannies.

But I had to get this shit started, and the Booger did NOT want to happily drool the day away in her swing or sleep or go in the Moby or hang on the playmat, so I was forced to hold her the entire time. Okay, so I basically just threw a bunch of shit into the crock pot, but it was still rather trying. I didn’t even try to clean up afterward.

hot, wet meat.

Here’s the recipe for traditional Chicago-style Italian beef.

4-5 lb. rump roast (or other good beef roast, like sirloin tip)
10 oz. beef stock
1 can of beer (I used a cheap and unmemorable lager that was part of a mixed six pack I got at the grocery store. First rule of cooking with beer: Don’t waste expensive beer on cooking.)
1 (12 oz.) jar of Pepperoncini peppers
1-2 medium (white or yellow) onions, sliced
Salt, pepper, oregano and garlic powder to taste

Place beef in slow cooker. Put onion slices on top of meat. Pour broth, pepperoncinis (with the juice) and beer over meat and cover. Cook on low for 7-8 hours or until tender. Break apart with forks or slice. Serve on hard Italian rolls with giardiniera and/or raw onions.

obligatory old-timey photo of the recipe because for some reason, other people's handwriting is interesting and blogworthy.

I think the real way is that you roast it in the oven, then refrigerate and slice it, and then throw it in a pot and let it simmer in the juices some more. Or something like that. But the crock pot way is much easier.

My husband and his friends are always astounded by the lack of Italian delis in Indianapolis. In Chicago, there’s one on every street corner, and you can find giardiniera at fucking Walgreens. I had to go to three stores to find it here. Not cool, Indy. Not cool.

Anyway, it was well worth the effort.

I saved the good beer to drink with my superior dinner, a Rivertown Hop Bomber Pale Ale. It was only okay though. A little too bitey, none of the smooth floral hops to even it out. But it was beer, so I drank it up.

Read other installments of Food For Real People.

Posted in beer, Food & Drink, Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 21 Comments

Valentines Haiku

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Marie

Candle-lit dinner,
a romantic comedy,
a pearl necklace.

Nothing says love like
a hatchet, duct tape and a
reinforced trash bag.

Rachel McAdams
you aren’t; and your boyfriend’s got
the Clap. LOL.

“Kill yourself, loser”;
Is it any wonder that
has five syllables?

He stares, dreamily
into your eyes, imagines
you are prettier.

He stares, dreamily
into your eyes, yearning for
a Cleveland Steamer.

He stares, dreamily
into your eyes, which are glued
shut by moneyshot.

If you order the
Surf N Turf, the least you can
give him is anal.

Happy Valentines Day

Posted in blogging, Life | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

come with me and walk the longest mile

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Marie

Editor’s note: It’s 4:45 a.m. Please forgive this hastily thrown together post and see the bigger picture: you complete me.

Anyone catch the Walking Dead last night? If you were watching the Grammys instead, well, I just feel sorry for you because I bet no one even got killed. I made a pact with the baby that if she’d sleep through the whole thing and let mommy have a beer, I’d read her five stories and play “make retarded faces” with her all night long. It’s cool, she has no concept of time, anyway.

Anywhoozles, I’m writing this because I really want some help from you runner people. I can now officially “run” two miles again without stopping. I’m still ridiculously slow, but so far I haven’t lost my will to live or become injured. Knock on wood.

Feb 5: 1.26 @ 11:02 (outside)

Feb 8: 2.48 @ 11:37 (outside)

Feb 10: 2.6 @ 12:02 (treadmill) I actually did three miles, but the christing treadmills at the gym automatically bump you down to cool-down mode after 30 minutes. You have to manually stop the machine and restart it if you want to keep going. Really annoying when you’re in the zone. (And yes, for me “the zone” is an 11:00 mile. Screw off.)

Feb 12: Twoish @ 11:15ish. (I didn’t get one of the treadmills with the Nike+iPod hookup. Bah.)

So, in the interest of me not doing my own research, consulting a trainer or god forbid, READING, I’d love some guidance on how to be a runner again. Be specific. And remember, I’m retarded, so please use small words and short sentences.

I’m thinking I’ll continue to run/walk, building mileage slowly, but save one run a week where I just try to do a mile or two as reasonably fast as I can without getting hurt. Eventually, I can add some real speed work or tempo runs, but I think for now just going through the motions of running is safest. I’ve also been swimming again (but I need a new bathing suit! GAH), and when I can get the Booger on her playmat for 15 or 20 minutes, I do planks and pushups on the floor next to her.

So what’s up with you?

This was on at the end of Walking Dead; a great song for killing and for running 11:00 miles –>

Posted in music, Running, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

two month old, free to good home

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Marie

It’s been a rough week.

Last night, I was all set to make a funny, lighthearted “what I’m drinking” post to commemorate the Super Bowl and Kenzie’s 8-week birthday, except…I was on my feet all night, and all I ended up drinking was water. My darling little angel decided she wanted to cry for hours and hours and hours. The only thing that helped soothe her was endless laps around the house. I’d start to sit down and somehow she’d KNOW and start to wail again. We’ve worn ruts in the carpet.

Happy two month birthday, kiddo.

 

Remember a month ago how I said she was so, so good? Well, someone stole that baby and replaced her with one that hates me. In her defense, she does have these really cool episodes of happiness where she smiles, laughs and has conversations with me in baby chatter. But then she turns on me and starts wailing for no discernible reason.

She has different cries, and often we can tell a fucking-feed-me cry from an I-need-to-take-a-dump-so-bad-it-hurts cry from a you-should-have-put-me-to-bed-an-hour-ago cry, and these are somewhat easily resolved, but sometimes she’s fed, burped, diapered, rested and warm, and still screams like she’s getting paid for it. Someone please reassure me this doesn’t last forever…

Add to that the continued lack of sleep (up to 4-5 hours or so a night, but still seriously lacking), and the fact that my husband’s had to work a string of 12-hour days, and you have a mom on the brink of insanity. I sort of understand now why some people shake their babies and drown them in bathtubs and say the devil made them do it. (Because the BABY is the devil.) This is why I think all those “16 and Pregnant” chicks should have had abortions. It’s hard enough to be a good mom when your baby was wanted and planned. If you’re resentful and not very smart, a screaming baby can take the wind out of your sails real fucking fast.

Dude, but seriously? I love her so much it rips me apart. She’s the only person I’d jump in front of a train for. I’d MURDER any of you people to keep her from breaking a nail.

I’ve also realized a whole new kind of neurosis in motherhood. In my former life, I worried about nothing. I was probably too casual for my own good. I only worked hard enough to not get fired. I spent money like I had some. I drank beer whenever I wanted. I didn’t worry about getting fat. I didn’t ever make to-do lists or write down my goals or make vision boards or stress about my self-worth. I lived. I breathed. I was totally fucking zen without even trying. Now? I’m a bundle of nerves.

I still put my ear to the baby monitor 37 times a night to make sure it’s working. When she’s napping too soundly, I poke her to make sure she’s still alive. And the other day in Trader Joe’s, I heard a baby crying and nearly had a panic attack.

I haven’t even really wanted to go anywhere because it involves packing up the baby and all the miscellaneous crap she requires, but most of all, DRIVING with the baby in the car. I make excuses. It’s raining, the baby will get wet. It’s too sunny, the baby will go blind. It’s too cold, the baby will die. Neither I nor the baby breathed outside air for weeks on end. The only place we went was the doctor’s office for her one-month checkup.

Then finally I went batshit enough to venture out with her in her stroller. I fully anticipated her throwing a crying fit a mile from home and all our neighbors stepping out on their lawns to shake their heads at what a horrible mother I was. What happened? We got a mile from home and she sacked out in the stroller and slept the whole way back.

And the other day, I schlepped the baby out for coffee with another of my worthless unemployed mom friends. I insisted we go at 3:00 in the afternoon so nobody else would be there in the event she threw a crying fit, which I fully anticipated. And all the baristas behind the counter and all the patrons behind their laptops would stop and stare and shake their heads at what a horrible mother I was. What happened? We sat down and she sacked out in the carrier and slept the whole time.

Okay, now that I’ve vented, here are some of the good things:

As I said before, baby chatter. It’s calling cooing and that’s really the perfect word for it. She makes an “O” with her tiny little delicate lips, and goes “oooooh!” and then smiles like she knows she just did something brilliant. I can’t get enough and there’s no shortage of retarded things I will do to get her to make that sound.

I think my baby is going to be a redhead (which probably explains the attitude). Her eyes have so far stayed blue, but her hair is different and weirder every day. She was born with a full head of dark blonde hair that got wispy and kinda fell out (although we have no idea where it went). Now it’s coming back in very fine and kind of a strawberry blonde. (My husband has brown hair but his beard is kind of reddish.) Kenzie, a variation of MacKenzie, is Scottish for light-skinned (RACIST!), so clearly, the name fits. I’ve just been calling her the pale one.

I always said before I had a baby that I didn’t want to have one of those trashed baby houses where everything is a mess and there is baby stuff everywhere. Well, now I have one of those trashed baby houses and there is baby stuff everywhere…and I don’t give a fuuuuuck.

But for a few exceptions, she’s a fantastic sleeper. She goes to bed sometime between 10 p.m. and midnight and usually sleeps straight through until 4 or 5 in the morning. (The other night, I patted myself on the back for getting her down by 9:40. Then she woke up at 3 a.m. and I kicked myself in the crotch.) Hungry or not, she’s pretty much ready to get up by 7 a.m., but she will usually have a good nap in the late morning and again in the early evening. (These are the times when I hurry up and smoke crack, masturbate and mainline vodka.)

We did have a terrible string of days around week six when she had a growth spurt and woke up FAMISHED every 2-3 hours. It was rough because I had it in my head that she couldn’t possibly be hungry, so I wasted a lot of time trying to console a half-starved baby back to sleep. Finally I got smart and just let her guzzle milk to her heart’s desire. I’m glad that’s over, and so are my nipples.

Last, and best: when she sucks on her pacifier in her sleep and it makes this little clicking noise, my heart fucking melts.

Posted in beer, Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

because this blog’s sure as hell not going to write itself

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Marie

I’ve been trying to write a blog post for more than a week now. I sit down, type out a sentence or two, and am either interrupted by baby stuff or by baby-induced writer’s block. I feel like so little -yet so much- has been going on in my life, I don’t know where to start. Because why the fuck would you want me to reiterate -again- how grossly unfit I am for motherhood, or how grossly out of shape I am or how running still make me feel gross?

Then I read a post by my internet bestie, e-pen pal, nyan comrade and would-be lover Angry Runner, titled So Where The Fuck Have You Been and I realized what I had to do:  sit the fuck down and say what’s on my mind and not worry about whether or not I am coming off as clever or prolific or whether I even have a point.

Fuck it.

So, in no particular order, here are some things.

I’ve been drinking a lot of beer. My dear friend, fellow cat enthusiast and beer runner Shelby sent me a baby care package that included some hip and decidedly not paaaank baby digs and also (and this is more important) some beers from her current-soon-to-be-former home state, North Carolina. Aaaand they’re all gone. Already. And I only shared one of them. Because actually? It’s a lot easier to drink a beer with a baby in your arms than it is to eat a sandwich. And as they say, there’s a sandwich in every glass anyhow, so I’m probably breaking even.

Another casualty of motherhood: my sophisticated pallet. I like everything now! These beers might all have sucked ass, I’d never know it. They all tasted like heaven to me. (I guess the true test would be for me to drink a Bud Light Lime, but I can live without a control group for this experiment.)

Workouts, like I said, have been gross. I’ve been doing two mile run/walks and starting to dabble in strength work. The other day I tried to do Level 1 of Jillian’s Yoga Meltdown and I quit after 15 minutes. I can’t do a decent sun salutation anymore. I can’t do a fucking pushup. I can run a mile…at an 11:00 pace. Watch out, Special Olympics! And please also consider this portion of the post my official “FUCK YOU” to all the new moms out there who are all like, “I’m surprised how easy it was to get back into shape after the baby!” and, “I’m already running 30 miles a week!” and ”I gave birth five minutes ago and ran home from the hospital!”  Kiss my ass. Eat my shorts. Blow me. Die.

Here’s a recap of the “runs” that got logged. (Assume the ones that didn’t get logged are even worse.)

Jan 19: 1.73 @ 15:32

Jan 22: 1.72 @ 12:24

Jan 25: 2.33 @ 13:19

Jan 27: 2.24 @ 13:25

Jan 29: 2.11 @ 14:53

Feb 3: 1.11 @ 11:11 (SERIOUSLY)

And for comparison’s sake, the last “run” I logged BEFORE the baby was born was on Nov 12: 2.45 @ 17:44. Yay, progress?

Another big “FUCK YOU” goes out to all the new moms who are already back to their pre-baby weight. Suck it. Eat my ass. Fuck your mother. Burn. I’m back in the same awkward limbo of my first trimester: regular clothes are too tight, maternity clothes are too big. And I am NOT buying a larger size anything. I can wear yoga pants around the house and wherever the hell else I decide to go because I am a worthless waste of an unemployed human being), but all my comfy and stylish running clothes are uncomfy and unsightly now that I’m sporting a front butt. And I’m sick of improvising with big t-shirts and cotton pants that get soggy and smell like swamp ass after 45 seconds of exercising.

In case that last paragraph was not illustrative enough, I still hate the way my belly looks. I’m not looking for reassurance or sympathy, so please don’t tell me to give it some time or for the love of vodka, any shit about inner beauty. I never had that great a belly to begin with, but at least I could wear my running clothes without looking like I was hiding Paula Deen’s balled-up fist under there.

The silver lining to all of this fuckery is that I can wear the same sweatshirt every single day of my life and no one’s going to call me into HR for violating the dress code or (and this is more important), the code of common human decency. Now’s where you can finally seethe with envy, folks.

Dap.

Look how "brave" we are.

 

Posted in beer, fitness, Life, Running | Tagged , , , , , , | 36 Comments

running update part deux

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Marie

So I was starting to feel like a major badass this week after going to the gym and run/walking on the treadmill for two days in a row. (Doctor cleared me to run, just told me not to do anything stupid. I’m so glad he didn’t tell me to listen to my body.)

Then last night, as I lay snoozing with the baby in the recliner and watching the 49ers/Giants game, I started feeling ominously chilly. I sat there contemplating, not wanting to miss the end of the game, and REALLY not wanting to wake the baby. It didn’t take long before my entire body began to ache and I was visibly shivering. I climbed out of the chair -queue: baby scream- and teetered to the hall closet to dig out the thermometer. 100.4, and the evening continued in a downward spiral from there: I missed OT and royally pissed off the baby. She thought it would be the perfect time to play the game where she falls asleep with the pacifier in her mouth, spits it out, and then wakes up and screams until you put it back in there. Repeat 50x.

I finally brought her in bed with me (BAD MOM!) and made her a nest out of the Snoogle so I could at least lay down while we played the pacifier game. In three shirts, flannel pants and a heating pad shoved up against my back, I finally fell asleep (and so did she). When I woke up a few hours later, the fever was gone and I felt perfectly fine. So weird.

Now that you’re up to speed, let’s talk about the running, shall we?

Pale, fat and optimistic, I doubled up on the sports bras Saturday and went to the gym for the first time in more than six weeks. My running shorts “fit” me again, but they look a little obscene, plus my incision is still tender, so I opted for the maternity crops. BIG mistake. (Julia Roberts: “HUGE!”) I kept having to hitch them up to keep my unsightly belly from hanging out.

I  did a 2:2 run/walk for two miles and managed a 10:00-11:00 pace (mostly closer to 11s, if we’re being honest) on the running end. Then I walked another mile. It all felt pretty gnarly and awkward, but really not as bad as I thought. Oh, except my right boob started leaking milk halfway through. Luckily my shirt was black and it wasn’t too noticeable.

Sunday, I ran for 15 minutes without stopping at about a 10:40 pace. It still felt kind of awkward, but I’m not sore today at all, which I think is really promising. (Yeah, I did come down with that four-hour mystery fever, but at least my crotch doesn’t hurt!)

So anyway, obviously my immune system is weak from the lack of sleep and I probably need to ease it up a notch. Thankfully, Kenzie slept straight through until almost 5 a.m. this morning -a MAJOR milestone- and I got some decent sleep.

Right now, I’m wearing her in the Moby wrap and she’s out cold! So goddamn cute.

Posted in Life, Running | Tagged | 16 Comments

boozing with baby

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Marie

Friday night. As if we were posing for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, we cozied up next to a roaring fire while a gentle snow fell on our fair city, and proceeded to tie one on. Naturally, I thought this would make for a lovely blog post.

The boozing part. Not the gentle snow by a cozy fire part. Duh.

 

I broke out one of my coveted Dogfish Heads, a new mom gift from this guy. (Last year, DFH rudely pulled out of Indiana, much like your college boyfriend with the backwards hat and tribal armband pulled out and came all over your lower back tattoo.)

It occurred to me that drinking a beer is a hell of a lot more complicated than it used to be. Whereas once, I could just crack one open any time, day or night, now partaking of the good shit requires a little more foresight. But it’s worth it. And if you found this blog because you’re pregnant or someday plan to become pregnant, this is the most important blog post you will ever read. For everyone else: send me hatemail about how my blog sucks now.

Tips for safe boozing when you have a cuddly baby friend…

  • Plan ahead and store some milk. I have enough milk stored in my freezer to go on a two-day bender, give or take. (I also use this approach with my morning coffee!)
  • Benders are fun, but you might want to just start with one drink until you get the hang of it. If you have just one, your delicious milk is pretty much good to go after a couple-three hours. Two drinks, you’re looking at six hours. (And if you’re a fatty fat fat like me, it could take upward of eight hours.) Also keep in mind “one drink” does not mean any one drink. If you’re drinking a 12% ABV Palo Santo Marron, allow extra time accordingly.
  • At some point along your excellent journey of motherhood, you will hear the expression “pump and dump.” But it’s not as simple as just drinking your booze and then promptly pumping out the “contaminated” milk and dumping it. Since the alcohol isn’t stored in your milk, you could pump too early and the alcohol would still be making its way through your system. Or you could pump too late and throw out perfectly good milk. Really, you just need to wait until the booze has run it’s course. Pumping and dumping is only necessary to hold off that nasty engorgement troll that comes out every four hours or so.
  • Fail-safe: the alcohol test strip. My husband talked me out of adding these to our gift registry but I still think they are a brilliant idea.
  • Beware the cluster feed. Just when you think it’s safe to get tanked, your baby is going to have a growth spurt and demand to be fed every 45 minutes, and there goes your night.
  • Contrary to popular belief, there’s no hard evidence that beer stimulates lactation. (What does stimulate lactation is being at the grocery store in a light-colored shirt. Apparently.) But, I personally can offer anecdotal evidence that beer makes moms happy and happy moms make more milk.
  • Use the buddy system. Friday, my husband was the DP, or Designated Parent. For the first few months of your child’s life, probably at least one of you should be sober at all times. When your kid can hold her head up by herself, she’s on her own.

 

We're not there yet.

Note: I didn’t source any of this shit because I don’t care if you think I’m credible or not. This isn’t that kind of blog. But if you must know, I got a lot of information from the American Academy of Pediatrics New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding, as well as some tidbits from BabyCenter.com. Also, I made a lot of it up. 

Posted in beer, Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 25 Comments

every day I’m jigglin’

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Marie

So how’s that running going? The short answer: It’s still not. I see my doctor again Friday, when he will, with hope, clear me to do ACTIVITIES. (Please visualize the word “activities” in 148-point Myspace-esque animated glitter text.) Until then, I’m stuck walking.

But today I cheated, a little bit. I’ve been feeling really good on my daily walks, so I decided to see what a nice, slow jog would feel like. (I mean REALLY slow. Probably slower than most of you walk.) I jogged for about a minute for every five or six minutes of walking and it felt…dare I say…good?

I didn’t feel any of that disjointedness many postpartum runners complain of. My incision didn’t rip open. No massive hemorrhaging of golfball-sized blood clots. My crotch is a little sore, but not nearly as bad as it was when I was nine months pregnant. But again, what I did could barely even be called jogging.

There was a lot of bouncing, though. If I’m going to be a runner again, I’m going to need a serious overhaul in the sports bra department. Perhaps something in a stainless steel. My jugs are even bigger now than they were when I was pregnant (I swear to god they’re like double-Z’s) and my biggest, most supportive sports bra is still no match for them. (Oh, and the next girl who tells me “you’re so lucky, I’d LOVE to have big boobs!” is getting stabbed in the face.) Also, my fupa. It felt like there was a third boob bouncing around down there. Disgusting.

And, I’ve completely lost my tolerance for winter weather. It was breezy and cloudy today and in the mid-40s. Pretty spectacular for January. I was wearing insulated running pants, a long-sleeve top, sweatshirt, hat and gloves. Just when I was beginning to feel minorly badass for just being outdoors, I see a girl running in a tech shirt and shorts and realized that’s what I used to wear in January back before motherhood made me into a gigantic pussy.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I was going to complain, except that really, all things considered, a tiny bit of illegal jogging felt pretty damn good. I can’t wait to do it again for real.

I also can’t wait to take the snuggle muffin out with me in the jogging stroller and teach her how to blow snot rockets.

Posted in Life, Running, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

28 days later…

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Marie

What’s up, internet? My baby friend is a month old! Eight balls for everyone! (No really, who’s buying?)

So yeah, I no longer sleep, I wear nothing but sweat pants and I haven’t touched a comb or a hair dryer in more than a month. Ah, motherhood.

We’re starting to get used to the idea that we have this tiny baby and that by some catastrophic failure of the system, we were allowed to bring her home with us and care for her. We are falling into a routine, getting A LITTLE more sleep and starting to actually feel like competent parents. She’s really bulking up and starting to act more like a human, so I’m less scared I’ll somehow inadvertently kill her. (Although I have had to reconcile my fear of the soft spot with this bizarre urge to jam my finger in it and push…I’m KIDDING.)

No, but yeah: all those wretched clichés people say about babies? All true. She’s amazing, funny, beautiful and I love her so much it hurts. I’ve become such a sap.

Stolen hospital blanket. (Tip to pregnant bitches: steal everything from the hospital that's not bolted down.)

I’ve also done the unthinkable and turned into a smug bitch. I can’t stop myself from visiting all the pregnancy blogs I read and sharing the vast knowledge I’ve acquired during my four weeks of motherhood. I’m aware of this as it’s happening, but like a bad dream, I am helpless to make it stop.

I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you. But not really. Here are some more highlights…

Milk: is flowing like wine. But now I completely understand why so many people give up on breastfeeding within the first few weeks. It kind of sucks. In the hospital when I first started feeding her, she latched on right away and we thought everything was fine, but she lost too much weight (10% of her body weight) and they almost kept us an extra day. (Apparently you have to make sure they’re actually SWALLOWING the milk and not just happily gnawing away at your boob while they starve to death. Crazy, right?) Luckily, her weight shot up that following week, but it was really frustrating and nerve-wracking for a while. (She also tore my nipples to shreds.) But now, I am a milk fucking MASHEEN and have pumped enough to have an impressive arsenal in the fridge and freezer. (Which means I can have a beer now and then! Which I may or may not be having right now.)

Here’s a look at a typical feeding schedule:

AM and PM are irrelevant to my life now.

You’d think I could remember the last time I fed her without having to write it down. Yeah, wrong. Which brings us to…

Sleep: is happening more often. She currently goes 3-4 hours between feedings, which allows me to get some sleep at night. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s made a HUGE difference in my mental state.

I saw every hour on the clock for the first few weeks. I was starting to hallucinate, seeing shadows and junk darting around in my peripheral vision. It was like being on meth, but without the perks. I’d wake up and think the baby was in bed with me. This also happened to my husband a few times: we’d be in this delirious, semi-conscious state, stroking a blanket or cradling a pillow. It would have been funny had it not been so pathetic.

The actual baby: is so, so good. Aside from a nasty case of cradle cap whole body and a blocked tear duct, she is healthy, good-looking and well on her way to fame, adoration and popularity among the huddled masses of less attractive babies.

Things could change, but as of now, we are amazed by how easy and predictable she’s been. She hardly ever cries. She does get fussy and gassy, but she hasn’t had any of those psychotic screaming episodes you often hear about, and for that I am thankful as fuck. At worst, she’ll just go “eh! eh! eh!” for a couple hours and then zonk out. I can totally handle that.

We had planned for her to sleep in our room (the smug, all-knowing Academy of Pediatrics recommend babies room in with you for the first three months), but she hated the Pack N Play and she fussed and whined every time we put her in there. Which is a shame because my parents even bought us this nifty tent to keep the cats out of it:

Cruel and unusual.

So for a while, I slept in the glider in her room while she slept in the crib. (Tip to pregnant bitches: Don’t go cheap on the chair. Even if you have to get your crib out of a Dumpster, buy an obscenely expensive, cushiony, fluffy chair and a matching ottoman. Trust me, it’s worth it.) Now I sleep in my bed and she sleeps in hers and we keep the baby monitor on full blast so I can hear every little gurgle and murmur. I still wish she were in the room with us, but this seems to be working, so I’m not going to try to mess it up. When it’s 3 a.m. and you’re desperate, you’re more willing to break the “rules.” I’d hang her upside down by her toes if she liked it enough to go to sleep.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAANK

Beer: is slowing making it’s way back into my life. The last beer I had before I got knocked up was Pepe Nero, March 20, 2011. 284 days later on December 29 (don’t do the math), I broke my streak with a Three Floyd’s Pride and Joy, and was ridiculously close to being drunk when I finished it.

OH. OH. OHHHHH.

AND AND AND the other night, one of my SUPER AWESOME FRIENDS came over with a Sun King Johan the Barleywine and shared it with me (so I only got half drunk). Also I have four Dogfish Heads in my fridge that I’m saving for a special occasion…or what I like to call “Tuesday.”

So, life is pretty much back to normal.

…

Are you still reading this? Wow. Thanks to those four or five or you who stuck it out! I wish I had a reward for you. All I have is a promise that I’m not going to do these long, drawn out baby updates more than once a month (or even that because let’s face it, I’ve never been able to follow through with any other commitments I’ve made on this blog). And I also promise to keep blogging about beer and (some day) running, sharing witty observations and clever anecdotes and writing mean things about people who I think are stupid, because that’s really the lifeblood of this site. Thanks for reading, you guys. We just might live the good life yet.

Posted in beer, Life, Running, tv | Tagged , , , | 39 Comments

take apart your bones and put ‘em back together

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Marie

So this c-section thingy marks the first time in my life I’ve ever had any surgery beyond your everyday tonsillectomy or wisdom tooth extraction, and it turns out I don’t have the patience or the common sense to allow my body to properly heal.

I did a lot of reading about c-sections and received guidance from my doctor, so I do understand on some level that recovery time is going to be 6-8 weeks, but I was still surprised and pissed off when, after three weeks, activities like sitting down, standing up, getting out of bed, getting into bed, rolling over in bed, bending over, holding the baby, picking up the baby, carrying the baby, showering and walking were still causing pangs of agony deep inside my gut.

Somehow I thought I’d pop Percocets for a few days and then be as right as rain. I even called my doctor last week and asked if it was normal to still be hurting. He was very nice to me but probably laughed his ass off after hanging up. Um, you had a HOLE cut through you skin and uterus and then a baby got pulled out of there.

And in spite of all my efforts to delay recovery, I’m also ironically paranoid about getting some kind of infection and dying. Every day I anxiously examine the incision, expecting to see the telltale signs: angry red lines, weepage, the stench of death.

I selflessly relinquished my body to the growth of the kid for 10 months, and now it just seems unfair that I should be expected to wait two MORE months to let the incision heal. Today: A routine trip to the grocery store exhausted me. We had a few days of snow and tornado-force (ish) winds, and I was really looking forward to finally getting out in the cold sunshine and going for a short walk. (Like, really short. Fifteen minutes, tops.) But when I got home from the store I decided that was exercise enough for one day. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I want to do planks, goddamn it. I want to lift something heavier than 10 pounds. I want to run until I puke. I’m sick of waiting, and I’m sick of feeling like an invalid.

Oh, and I’m also sick of my blog SUCKING. (Like, more than usual.) I feel like when I’m able to start running again, I’ll have some new thoughts to share and maybe my brain won’t be quite so mushy anymore. But, no promises.

Posted in Life, music, Running, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments