Odds and Ends

Nothing major going on today; I just really wanted to get a post up to continue my excellent January updating streak.

Our financial situation continues to be perilous. In fact, after I move money over to make our house payment tomorrow, we will have about $50 in our savings account. Can we all say, "Holy shit"? This is taking the whole living paycheck to paycheck thing to a whole new level. I may HAVE to work from home, whatever my feelings on that subject. There is good news, though. First, G gets paid Thursday, so the $50 situation is temporary. (Not that it will be a whole lot better after we pay all the bills, but it should be marginally so). Second, today G has a meeting with his boss's boss about getting a raise -- hopefully a signifcant one. If it doesn't pan out, he is willing to look elsewhere. G is, luckily, in a field where there are far more open positions than qualified people to fill them in this area. Anyway, I've been praying. Hard.

I wish someone would hire me to do research from home. I am an excellent researcher, if I do say so myself. More than once I was responsible for finding just that perfect, obscure little case that helped my old firm win its arguments. I even enjoyed it, to a point. Right now, though, I'm just not sure how to find a position like that. Or if such positions even exist.

In reading this, I've realized that I never even needed to go to law school. I should've just been a paralegal and called it a day. Would've saved me about a $100,000 if that had occurred to me 6 years ago.

Argh. Depressing.

Thirteen years ago today . . .

sitting in the back row at the most romantic movie ever made ("Alive" -- yeah, the one where they ate each other) my husband asked me to be his girlfriend. In a moment like that, what's a girl to do? No way could I resist!

Happy anniversary, G.

Worst Mom Ever

Someone is going to call DCFS on me, I'm sure of it.

The day started off with me going in to get P & E out of their cribs. They were so happy to see me. E was already standing up, holding onto the side of the crib, smiling as I came in.

That would change soon enough.

I reached in and took him out of bed, then headed downstairs with him in my arms. The next thing I remember, I was holding onto him for dear life, watching my mismatched slippers soar through the air out in front of me, as I bounced down the steps on my ass. When we came to rest at the bottom, I was still gripping E, but he was sobbing. He looked ok to me, no obvious bumps, bruises, scrapes, broken bones, etc., but he just wouldn't stop crying. That's not like him. I changed his diaper and gave him a bottle, but through it all, the crying continued. Finally, maybe a half hour later, I called the doctor. He assured me that since I had not let go of E, he was most likely fine, but there was still a chance he could've broken a wrist or an elbow or something. He told me to give him some Tylenol, then keep an eye on him for the next couple of hours to see if he resumed normal activity and stopped crying. If not, then I would need to bring him to the ER.

Well, luckily, within an hour or so of the Tylenol, E was acting completely back to his old self. Scooting around, chasing P, stealing her toys, laughing -- the whole deal. He'd even gone back to pulling up on anything and everything in sight. I started to relax a bit, and by lunchtime I was feeling ok about the situation again. Our kitchen is attached to the living room, so I figured it would be safe to run out and make a sandwich. I figured wrong. In that two minutes or so, E decided to pull up on the coffee table. He does that frequently, and had been no worse for the wear up to this point. Only today, for whatever reason, he didn't just pull up and then fall back down on his well-padded diapered butt. No, no, today, he fell face forward and hit his face on the damn thing. What happened? Black eye. Yes. Nine months old, and my son has his first official black eye. It is the most pitiful looking thing I have ever seen in all my days.

So, there you have it. Worst. Mom. Ever. They're in bed right now, safe, but I do have to get them up again sooner or later. Do I dare hope we all get through the rest of the day unscathed?

Update, already?

Finally, a new record I can be proud of. Only two days since my last post -- I'm hoping this is the start of something good.

Today was P & E's nine month appointment. The doctor pronounced them both "excellent." Doesn't get any better than that, does it? They're both still on the small side, with E not being on any chart at all except for head size (5th percentile) and P hanging out at the 20th and 25th for head size and weight, respectively. (Nothing doing for height yet, apparently, but that probably has more to do with being my daughter than with being a preemie). Anyway, after all the weighing and measuring was done, the kids got one shot and were sent on their merry way with instructions to come back at one year. Wow -- one year. When I think back on how long a year felt when we were trying to get pregnant, and how quickly 3/4 of a year has passed since they arrived, it's impossible to believe that time is moving at the same speed as ever. Back then, every month was an eternity. Now, two months go by without me even having time to update this blog.

On another subject, I was very excited to have a comment on my last post. Visitors here are rare (that'll happen when you're as lazy a blogger as I am) and comments are even more so. Anyway, I appreciated the suggestion that maybe I could find some way to practice law from home. I did primarily estate planning and family law before I quit to come home, so I probably would be able to do some work drafting wills and such if I were so inclined. But here's the problem: if I want to practice law, I need to keep malpractice insurance. It doesn't come cheap. I just don't know if I'd even have enough business to pay my premiums in the beginning. And I think I'd also be concerned about getting things done in any sort of timely fashion. P & E keep me so busy, especially with my husband working such long hours, that I'm not sure how quickly I could realistically get things together for my prospective clients. Last but not least, there is the tiny detail that I didn't much like practicing law when I was doing it. Nonetheless, it's still comforting to remember that it's something I could do if I absolutely had to for us to make ends meet.

I do think, once in a while, that it would be nice to have something to do besides take care of P & E. Especially on nights like tonight, when I get into a fight with my husband and he references me spending "his" money. There is something about being entirely dependent on someone else, even a husband I've been with for more than a decade, that is unsettling. I guess I'm just still undecided at this point about what I should do -- if anything -- to change the situation.

A new record!

Ok, this -- this -- is why I shut down my old blog. It has been a ridiculous, unheard of, absolutely asinine (I just learned how to spell that today!) amount of time since my last post. More than two months! Here at Blogger, that's no big deal. No harm done. On Typepad, however, these two plus months of silence would have cost me $10.00. Granted, that's not an enormous amount of money, but when you're living on one salary now and trying to feed two hungry new mouths, every little bit counts.

Where do I even begin? P & E have changed sooooo much since I last wrote. I don't know exactly how big they are, but I'll find out on Wednesday at their nine month appointment. Nine month appointment! Where has the time gone? Well, suffice it to say, they're big. Relatively big, anyway. No, not as big as your typical nine month olds, most likely, but big nonetheless. We were just looking at their newborn pictures today, all stuck full of needles and tubes in the NICU, and it's hard to believe they're the same babies.

They're both army crawling, and E can pull up. And let me tell you, pull up he does. On anything and everything he can get his little hands on. Nothing is safe. It's just that he hasn't quite mastered the art of getting back down, so his injury total is mounting by the day. By the hour, even. Tonight he got his first tiny goose egg, having let go of whatever he was holding onto and crashing down onto his ball popper -- headfirst, somehow. After spending sufficient time loving him and simultaneously berating myself for being a bad mom, I distracted him with baby lasagna. Ah, a new delicacy. He loved it! This was our first forray into stage 3 food, and it went off without a hitch. I was scared out of my mind that one or both of them would have a scary choking incident, but they both handled it like little champs. I was so proud. Hell, who am I kidding? I'm always so proud. They went through so much there in the beginning, and now they're 100% healthy, happy, and beautiful on top of it. What's not to be proud of?

The only downside, which I mentioned earlier, is the money issue. Things are tight. Really, really tight. Law school didn't come cheap, but it didn't bother me at the time when I assumed I'd come out with a big, fat salary to pay off all those loans. Problem is, even when I was working, that salary wasn't anywhere near as fat as I thought it would be. It was kind of pathetic, really. And now, of course, there's nothing. My poor, dear, husband is working his ass off, and we're getting by, but just barely. I live in constant fear of any sort of emergency that might arise. I don't have the slightest idea how we would handle it. For now, I just hope for the best and am thankful every night that another day has passed without anything bad happening. All that being said, though, I wouldn't trade one minute I've spent with my babies. I know how corny it sounds, but it has been and continues to be priceless.

Besides, even if I was working, do you have any idea how much it would cost to put two infants in daycare?