punkin' center

We totally fell for the roadside pumpkin patch!

















I mean, how could you not?

mad as a hatter

I LOVE radiology. I have time to do all these things. The self-care, the shopping, the crossing off on little lists of things that have piled up in dusty corners of my mind (lots of those). Of course, the downside is that I now have time to do these things. Just got back from the dentist and sitting here with a thick and tingly lip, I'm thinking maybe I was happier on wards, crazed and mentally benumbed. I had to get a filling and, gasp, a crown. The dentists have been advising me to get a crown for NINE years now, since that hideous root canal I endured before leaving for Peace Corps. Apparently, the tooth will break off eventually. Seems a little, I don't know, catastrophic, but do I look like a dentist? Umm, no. But now the tooth has some decay and the gum is all irritated, and so this morning after emerging from a three hour X-ray viewing session, I willingly sat it in a chair as my very sweet, but no-nonsense, dentist ground the remainder of the tooth down to a wee nub. Oh. My. God. The drills! I kept reminding myself to relax and breathe, but I kept realizing that I had every possible muscle clenched in my entire body. I had a death grip on the "Good Housekeeping" magazine I failed to dispose of properly. All riight, deep breath, relax... CLENCH!
I opted for the amalgam filling, full of mercury as it is. It's in the back, for one, and no one will ever see it. Plus, it'll fit in with all my other fillings and not feel like the odd, you know, tooth out. Mostly though I love the sound of the stuff being packed into my head. Good ol' Dr. K, my childhood dentist, described it as the sound of walking in deep snow with moon boots, before I had my first filling 25 years ago. And it is. I am transported back to blindingly bright winter days, tromping out into the fresh snow. Trying to follow my dads footprints, scrunch, scrunch scrunch. Ah...

museum day

Yesterday, very keen to escape the house on a dreary grey day, we drove over the bridge to the very cool exploratorium -- half playhouse, half science fair project-land. Though Gabriel is somewhat younger than the target audience, we thought he might enjoy looking at people and bright shiny objects. This, however, was not the case, and a brief interlude of ecstasy brought about by the bubble chamber aside, he pretty much hated the whole exercise. Sigh. And then there was traffic all the way home. We took turns yelling: ba ba ba! and: ga ga ga! and: la la la! until I thought I would go mad.
They clip his fingernails at daycare. The first couple times he grew talons they mentioned that they needed to be clipped, a sort of gentle reminder to mother to get with the grooming, I guess. Now they just do it because they know I'm a hopeless case. I usually manage to get one or two nails clipped at a sitting, then I lose my grip. They must hold him down with something very heavy.
I've just been troubled, though, by this nagging feeling that Gabriel might be better cared for if I just left him at daycare all the time. He seems so happy and content there. Once I bring him home, he's typically bored and screaming within the hour. Isn't he supposed to LOVE being at home with mom! Ha!
I just started a two-week radiology rotation, today. It's self-directed. And so after lunch I directed myself home!

a new day dawning

Gabriel slept till the almost civilized hour of 7 this morning. I heard him start squawking and padded barefoot across the hall to his room. He stood at the crib rail in his fleece bag, jumping up and down, grinning madly. I picked him up and gave him a big hug, then set him on the floor to change him. As soon as I had his diapers and jammies off the flipped over on his belly, like a cat or a navy seal, and scooted over to the short table by the rocker. He pulled himself up and played with his binkies. I pulled out some clothes for him to wear and looked back over at him to find him on the floor, poking tentatively at a pile of something. I didn't have my glasses on and so crawled over myself and got real close. Poop. A little turd in a lake of diarrhea. Gabriel looked perplexed and somewhat charmed as he examined his handiwork. My clever little guy! I picked him up, getting poo all over me in the process, and handed him off to M, who ran an impromptu morning bath. I commenced the scooping and the scrubbing. I worked at it a while, but t still smells like poo in there.
I'm so over this motherhood thing...

Grr...

Have been in something of a blogging slump, obviously. Have been in something of a life slump too. No no, have not suddenly taken to drinking 40s on the stoop and watching daytime tv when I really should have been at the hospital making superfluous notes in charts. Although, now that I've written it, that does have a certain appeal. I've just been a bit, well, down, and not really feeling like doing much except crabbing at my husband, kicking the dog and watching CSI reruns on Spike. I know. That bad. I have tried to create a little bubble of sanity around the peekin. It's funny how one can ACT happy and all when the audience goes to bed at 7. I haven't been so great at holding my shit together after 7, however. Furthermore, I have accepted that I cannot reasonably keep this up and am now committed to fixing myself. Oh, fucking, boy. I'm totally gritting my teeth and seeing a therapist. Because that's the best attitude to affect in pursuing help. I HATE sitting across from somebody and talking about my problems. Which is ironic, of course, given the activity I'm involved in right this second, i.e. exposing my problems to all and sundry via the magnificent internet. It all feels like a colossal waste of time and money. And I had to look up how to spell "colossal," because it's a weird word, with the vowels making different sounds. Anyway. I should really go make something for dinner. Ugh...

life imitating blog? or something even more disturbing?

So this morning, we were puttering around the house to the tune of a cranky and possibly inebriated infant (staggering, crashing around), when the doorbell rang. Fili lunged out the miniscule crack of daylight, as usual, as I tried to spy who it was without releasing the hellhound. It was the Wondertwins from the apartment in back. They're lovely nine year-olds who dress identically everyday. "There's a dead bird on the sidewalk outside," they chorused. "We can't get our car out. Can you come move it?" Um, sure. I walked down the stairs with P & A giggling and twittering behind me. Out on the sidewalk, in front of their garage door, there was indeed a bird. Very clearly dead. It was a pheasant. And, it seems to me, not shot down over the city, as it's feet were stretched out neatly behind as if once bound together with twine. It also had an odd plastic cone afixed somehow over its beak. I picked it up by the feet with a plastic bag and stuffed it into another before tossing it into the dumpster. Done. The girls were shrieking with horror and delight. I turned around to see their mother, J, standing on the steps with her hand over her eyes. "I owe you one," she says, "I couldn't face that before coffee." "No worries," I said, "I love creepy shit like that." All right, I kept that last part to myself.

So there's my "pheasant" revision. Perhaps I should revisit "suede" as well. I saw the cutest jacket in a catalog the other day....