Archive for May, 2009
Vegas!
The boys and their Vegas Maystaches. Commentary withheld.
If you follow me on the Twitters, you know SB and I went to Vegas over the weekend with a really fun group of friends. Clark stayed with his grandma. It was a big step for everyone!
I was really worried that Clark would be sad, or that I would be so too sad to have any fun. Or worse, that I WOULDN’T be sad to be away from him.
But everyone had a fabulous time, and I think it was good for all of us. Clark was perfectly fine without us, better probably, because his Grandma puts more effort into entertaining him 24/7 than we do. And it was good for SB and I as a couple to have some time away.
It was also good for us as parents. I didn’t NOT miss Clark as I’d feared. I missed him a ton. I was afraid I might party like crazy and and be all, “WOO HOO! SCREW BABIES! YEAH!” but that didn’t happen. I had a great time in Vegas, did plenty of partying, but I longed to be back home, being a mom, and that made me very happy. This trip reminded me that I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing right now. As much as I dislike this about myself, I can be a “grass is greener”-type sometimes, so this was a lovely reminder to have.
As far as Vegas is concerned, I do not recommend going over a holiday weekend. It was crazy crowded and you had to wait for everything. But of course, we were in good company and the weather was DELICIOUS, so we had a wonderful time. There was much pool sitting and cocktail sipping, and we got to go see Cirque du Soleil, which blew my goddamn mind. Blew. My. Mind. I kept saying, I think I know JUST enough about yoga and pliates to know that what they did was freaking IMPOSSIBLE. When you have to stop and remind yourself that it’s real people and not CGI, you know it’s a good show.
Anyway, we’re back to reality and I’m happy. This morning, I was noisily kissing Clark’s neck and making him giggle, when he grabbed a hunk of my hair with one hand, my tender neck skin with his pointy claws on the other, and used his shockingly sharp teeth to bite my cheek, all at the same time. Yes. It’s good to be home with lovely, and abusive, little boy.
Posted by Jenny @
1:18 pm |
My Jesus Year
Today is my 33rd birthday. It’s been lovely. This morning, Clark was up at seven. SB took him away and gave me two blissful hours of earplug-cocoon sleep. When I got up, I found Clark napping and SB mopping, so I took a shower. (Clark sleeping, SB mopping, me bathing? What a miraculous trifecta!) Normally such a detail in someone’s day would not be worth sharing, but I’m sure the moms among you can attest to the noteworthy naure of getting a shower.
SB was able to get away from work for a little while in the middle of the day, so I got to get away. I got a mani, my first in a million years. Then I went to the mall (I will never again go to the mall without thinking about Robin Sparkles.) where I did one large, efficient, sweep through Macy’s, combing through rack after rack, loading my arms with about 35 shirts. I waited until the attendant was distacted and darted into the 4 garment limit changing room, where I tried on all 35 of them in about 3.5 minutes. (Always returning them properly to their hangers, of course. I worked retail.)
Anyway, there was some shopping. Then I went home and took a nap with Clark. It was very warm and snuggly.
We were about to leave for dinner at my parent’s house when all of a sudden I felt like making people meet us for drinks later. I called my mom and asked her if she would watch Clark. She said yes, though I did notice a weird pause. Then I started sending a text to about 10 people and SB had to tell me to Stop It, Please Ms Cruise Director, that it was already planned, my mom was in, and some pals were already meeting us at The Tempest and there were going to be cupcakes. Nice, eh? He’s a good one.
So then there was dinner at my parent’s house. It was lovely as always to hang out with my parents and sister, my SB, and my baby. I’m so lucky. And then drinks and cupcakes with fun friends.
So. Lucky.
It was a great day! I do plan to do my annual Birthday Goal Post, hopefully tomorrow.
Posted by Jenny @
12:00 am |
Flotsam Pt. 6
Lucy writes:
I have another question! Since leaving college, what jobs have you held? эротическое телевидение в интернете
Little does Lucy know what an interesting question this is for me! Most folks might, you know, get a job in whatever they majored in, then live out the rest of their days happily working in their chosen field. Not so much me. I’ve re-invented myself quite a few times. It all started when I had the BRILLIANT idea to major in Spanish. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, despite taking 7 years to finish my Bachelors, so I decided that since plenty of people end up switching careers or working in different fields anyway, I may as well just major in something I enjoy. Besides, I had ALL KINDS OF ASSURANCE that employers were falling all over themselves to hire Spanish speakers.
Yes, well. This was 2001 don’t you see, and the recent college grad had quite a tough time finding a job, whilst competing with all the unemployed folks with Experience. So, of course, I ended up in retail.
My first job out of college was selling fancy olive oils and vinegars to tourists at The Pike Place Market. This was perhaps a better retail gig than being trapped in a mall somewhere, what with all the people watching, views of the water, and of handsome fish-throwing lads, but it had it’s definite drawbacks. Firstly, it was outdoor and COLD in the winter. Secondly, I was super bored and surrounded by lots of delicious foods. Combine boredom + too many treats + large parka and one doesn’t really notice her rapidly expanding ass. No good. Also, do you have ANY idea how boring it is to sell TWO products? Just two? If you work in a proper store, I imagine you have more to talk about than just Two. Little. Products. About the five millionth time you explain what extra-virgin means, your head explodes and your eyeballs go shooting out into the bay. These were dark times.
Well, surprise, surprise, I was eventually fired from that job. The owner, who was my friend (bad news), called me one day to say that he had received a complaint from a customer who said that I wouldn’t put down my book when she came into the store. This didn’t surprise me because we had free samples, so people who never really intended to buy anything would chat me up all the time, just so they could stand there snacking. I ignored MOST of our “customers”, really. Well, suddenly I felt terrible for being such an awful employee to my friend and quit on the spot.
This led to an even darker time involving further customer service, which you may be gathering is NOT my strong suit, at The Whole Foods Market. I worked in the bakery and had to wear a white jacket and an embarrassing little hat. I mostly worked at the coffee bar. This, in a city (Seattle) of people who are picky about their coffee, in a store for people who are picky about their food. It was no good. I lasted a year, though, and had my first ever health insurance. For the record, Whole Foods is a pretty good place to work, if, you know, you like people and can handle it when some lady tells you the bubbles in your foam aren’t tight enough.
So, just before I got the job at Whole Foods, I got my dream job. It was exciting! It was using my degree! It was, no shit, translating and transcribing surveillance for the DEA. (The details of getting this job are here. Good story!) The whole reason I took such a lame job at Whole Foods in the first place was because ANY MINUTE they were going to be done with my background check and I would be fighting crime and earning the big bucks. Well, again with the 2001, it took like a year and a half for them to finish it. In this year, I slung coffee for Whole Foods, then moved back to Tacoma and returned to waiting tables at the restaurant I worked at in college, From The Bayou, may it rest in peace. Needless to say, these were indeed dark days. I hated my jobs and felt like I should be using my brain and earning a decent wage, instead of taking shit from the general public.
I’ll pause here to say that should you work in customer service and you manage NOT to hate the human race, I commend you, and I APPLAUD you. I’m just NOT cut out for it. I can’t just shrug it off when someone treats me like I’m less than. I want to punch them in the mouth, and usually employers frown upon this type of behavior.
So! I finally got called one day by the DEA and I started immediately! That job was the scariest-assed, most stressful scenario I could ever possibly imagine, but I got some good stories out of the deal. I would come home from work every day literally soaked in sweat, I was so stressed out. It went like this. I would be sitting at a computer, leisurely translating an old call, when my screen would turn red and it would immediately switch to live audio, because the Bad Guy who’s phone was tapped would be making a call. The agents with their badges and guns would start pacing behind me, watching my screen, waiting for me to produce some English. Meanwhile, I’m listening to rapid fire Colombian ghetto slang, trying desperately to recognize ANYTHING, because surprisingly enough, I didn’t learn a whole lot of Colombian Ghetto Slang at my private liberal arts university. The call would end, and I would either turn around and deliver a report of the gist of what happened to the agents, or I would *shudder* apologize and tell them I needed to listen to it again. OH. MY. GOD. STR-ESS-FUL.
So, I did that job for about a year and then my dear SB decided to get his Master’s Degree in Liverpool England at the prestigious Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. I thought about sticking around for my career and whatnot, but in the end I was up for a European adventure so off we went to Liverpool. I had two jobs there. One was more stress due to under-staffing and further customer service abuse at a property management company, or “Lettings Agent” in Britspeak. The silver lining there was that I loved my boss and he remains my friend to this day. The other was at the front desk of a Youth Hostel, which as far as jobs go, I liked, it was just that it was my second job on top of my full time job, so I was pretty wiped whenever I was there. I’m still friends with my boss from that job, too. Unfortunatley for both of these jobs, I was just MISERABLE there. I was lonely and sad and cold and poor. POOR. Do you know how sad it is to be so close to so many wonderful European destinations and not be able to afford to go see them? One thing about the Brits, though, they are SO NICE to their employees at Christmas time. It’s nuts. I’ve never before or since received the kinds of bonuses I got there, even as a crummy little minumum wage employee.
Good lord this post is long. Are you still with me? No matter if not. This is good for Posterity’s Sake.
SO, we got home from England and I was unemployed and it was fall of 04, so I threw myself into the John Kerry campaign. HA HA ha ha. Heh. Once I recovered from my depression, I took another lame job out of desperation. I didn’t feel like I could go back to the DEA after not speaking Spanish for so long, plus it required a lot of travel, which after being away from my friends and family for a year, I didn’t want to do. The Theater in town which had previously employed like 40 staff had closed down and gone bankrupt. An investor reopened it and hired me and three other people to do all 40 jobs. I actually managed pretty well, though, GAH, more customer service.
Some time in the year I worked at the Theater. I started to think, Jesus H. You’re about to turn 30. Get your shit together, woman. So I started to look for something I could do that got me out of dealing with the public and paid a decent wage. A friend of ours, whom I privately refer to as Our Personal Lord and Savior offered to train me up on tech-type stuff. I spent about 6 months independently studying and then ta da! He got a friend to do him a favor and hire me as a contractor at Microsoft. I don’t need to tell you that this was equally as scary as the DEA, pretending I knew what I was doing all the time, swimming with the sharks. But it got less and less scary, and I moved onto different contracts, and it turned out that I was good at it, and I liked it. I *LIKE* sitting in my little office all day futzing around with code, being super detail oriented, talking to NO ONE.
Then I became a mom. And now I’m a photographer. And if you’re still reading, you are a true true friend indeed.
фото порно тетки чaт
Posted by Jenny @
9:21 pm |
Touched By a Gangsta
Yesterday morning, Clark was up way too early as ususal. After he’d kicked and babbled and smiled his toothy grin at me from the side car for long enough that it was clear we weren’t going back to sleep, I finally scooped him up and headed downstairs to make coffee. As I blearily started grinding the beans, I realized that these lyrics were bouncing around in my sleepy head:
I love it when you call me me Big Pop-pa
Throw your hands in the a-ir
If you’re a true play-ah
I love it when you call me Big Pop-pa
etc.
I paused to to wonder at the utter random-ness of that song being stuck in my little, white, mom-head, bopped along with it, and went about my day.
But then later, I was in the car. I have a pattern I follow in order, of 6 radio station presets until a good song makes me stay. I usually end up staying with the first one or two stations, but that time, commercials and bad music had me on choice number 5, which happens to be KUBE. This is the station that all the kids listen to, the one with the current pop music on it. And I shit you not, they were PLAYING THAT SONG. Really! How random is it that I was in the car, listening to the radio, that I got five deep in my station rotation, and that the hot pop station was playing a song from 15 years ago?
And then, AND THEN, the song ended and they said it was the Notorious B. I. G’s birthday.
Can you believe it? Isn’t that crazy? So, perhaps I was visited in the night by Biggie Smalls. Let’s hope his message wasn’t too important, because apparently, I’m too fatigued to remember it.
Posted by Jenny @
12:35 am |
4th Annual Birthday Goal Post
Firstly, please enjoy this hilarious picture, because I’m about to get all navel-gazey on you. Caption suggestions are welcome in the comments.
A little late, but it’s that time of year again. I make my resolutions on my birthday instead of in the dead of winter, when I’m more likely to be couch surfing with a pint of icecream and an entire season of some show. Now then. Let’s see how we did. Here are last year’s goals:
1. Continue learning to be a proper geek. Specifically, not just learn complicated stuff at work, but try to apply these skills to things I like to do, like design and whatnot. I’d like to get over my fear of Photoshop, and also, perhaps tackle redesigning this blog.
Wellll… hmm. I’d say I did fairly well on this front. As you can see, the blog is still the same, but I did manage to finish out another contract at Microsoft without breaking anything. Recently, I’ve been doing all kinds of scary techie-type things related to photography, so I’d say my geekiness is coming along quite nicely. I still hate all things Sci-Fi related, however, much to SB’s dismay.
2. Figure out how to keep this job or get a different one in IT, but improve my quality of life. Do I need to spell this one out? GET OUT OF THE FREAKING CAR. Get back some of those 20 hours a week, 32.5 days a year I spend sitting in traffic.
Christ on a cracker, I feel so badly for the me of last year with that STOOPID commute. Four hours a day, dude. I really can’t believe I did that. Well, needless to say, my quality of life has GREATLY improved.
3. Keep up the fitness regime. Achieving number 2 will greatly improve the odds of this.
I will say I definitely did well on this one, until Clark was born, that is. (We’ll get to my current sloth later.) Let us not forget that I am crazy insane and actually trained for a marathon whilst pregnant. I walked 20 miles at 26 weeks pregnant, and completed a half marathon at 30 weeks. I walked an hour on the treadmill the day before Clark was born. I’m actually quite proud of myself for all that! Yay me.
4. Complete a couple of fitness events. SB and I plan to do the ALS DoubleDay, an 85mile bikeride in July, (Dude. We need to start training. Kristina? When do you start kicking my ass in gear?) and also… three friends and I plan to walk the Portland Marathon in October. There I said it.
Check and check! *high fives*
5. Get pregnant. Have easy pregnancy. Birth beautiful child. Be perfect mother. That should be easy.
Well, now. I DID get pregnant. And in retrospect, my pregnancy WAS easy. This is not the amnesia hormones talking, I seriously lucked out. Once I got the lower back issues sorted, I was fine. He came a week early, even, so I never got that uncomfortable in the end. And I DID birth a beautiful child. He’s so SO beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I trip out on just his eyelashes or his porcelain skin.
About the perfect mother part. I’m doing my best. I think I do okay.
6. And what kind of goal list would this be if I didn’t put Spanish and the guitar on here? Maybe this is the year!
FAIL. I was busy.
So! 2009. My 33rd year.
1. Keep improving my photography. Not just the quality of my images, but all the related technical aspects. I want to know how to use everything in Lightroom, and to continue rocking my Manual Mode. Keep learning, too. Attend as many seminars or workshops as I can. And always remember that I love it. Trust my eye. And if I say it’s a good picture, it is. Don’t get stuck imagining the criticism of my peers.
2. By this time next year, I want to be in the height of fitness again. And I want to appreciate it. I think back to the time, around the fall before I got pregnant, when I was going to Bikram 3-5 times a week and being asked to DEMONSTRATE POSES TO THE CLASS. Did I appreciate my awesomeness? No! And I probably still would have told you I needed to lose weight, because I am a stoopid stoopid girl. If I ever get back there again, I’m going to KNOW I’m strong and powerful, and I’m going to be kind to my body.
3. I want to become a more positive person. Lately, I’ve been trying to repeat to myself over and over that I’m too blessed to be stressed. It’s SO TRUE. I mean seriously, on a global scale, you , me, and everyone we know has hit the freaking jackpot. Again with the awareness. I want to always appreciate how incredibly awesome my life is. Also, negative thoughts cause wrinkles. It’s true.
4. Be the best mother I can be. I don’t mean this in a ’setting expectations too high’ kind of way, or a ‘never letting him eat dirt’ kind of way, just that he deserves my best effort always. Ensuring his health, well-being, and prosperity as a human are my most important jobs in this life. I hope to always remember this. My alma matter, PLU’s mission statement is “educating for lives of service”, and without sounding to matyr-y or like I’m always going to let him have his way, I want to think of parenting as service to the person I want him to grow into.
5. So, Spanish and the Guitar. I’m hoping that we do some traveling in the next year where I can get some practice on the Spanish. And as for the guitar, as much as I wanted my kids to grow up in a musical household, it may just have to be when he’s a little older. So, consider the slack cut on that one for this year.
As always, if you’re still with me after all that navel-gazing, thanks so much. That’s what blogs are for, right?
Posted by Jenny @
7:43 pm |
Month Five
May 18, 2009 | Clark
Dear Clark,
This is the month where you became much more portable. We took you on a plane for the first time, (For the record, A- on the way there, B-/C+ on the way home) and also, you learned to love your Ergo carrier, which RULES. It’s so fun to wear you, all close and snuggly. I also feel, in general, like now we could take you almost anywhere and you’d be able to hang.
You have two teeth now, and man, those suckers are sharp. (Sidebar for those reading along in 2009, you know that video on the Youtubes with the cute brittish kids? Charlie! It huuuuhrts! We say that all the time.) There’ve been some rough days, with the teething. Only 18 more to go, kid!
You’ve become a whiz at bouncing in your doorway jumping chair thing. I have no pictures of this, because you bounce bounce bounce so much that you’re always blurry. You’ll have to take my word for it, but it’s the cutest thing ever. Especially when you tire of it and start to cry, but you can’t stop bouncing.
Hanging out on your tummy and holding your head up, is no big whoop for you now, either. It’s still not your favorite thing, though.
Clark, my boy, I can’t believe how much I love you! You may be thinking, yes, duh, of course you do, but I really feel like this month something changed. You’ve become such a nice little companion. I miss you so much when we leave you with Grandma. I ache to have your little body in my arms. People are always telling me how fast this all goes, and how much I’ll miss this time, but I have to say, I’m loving you getting bigger, older, and more alert. I want so badly to know what’s going on in there, behind that twinkle.
Love, Mama
Posted by Jenny @
10:43 pm |
Pie
If I’m going to keep posting once in a blue moon I guess my posts will continue to be random hodge podges. You don’t mind, do you?
The first thing I’d like to discuss is the fact that we’re moving! It all happened so fast. We’d sort of been looking at houses with our Realtor extraordinaire, Marguerite, but nothing too serious. Then one day, SB, who is usually just luke warm about houses, came home with a flyer, declaring his love for a house he’d seen. We went and looked at it the next day, and less than 30 days later we closed. Whoosh! But not so fast. There was a tenant in it. So now we have to wait until she’s out on October 1st. But soon! Soon we will be out of the ‘hood.
The ‘hood has been on our last nerve lately, now that we’re moving. For instance, yesterday morning, I awoke to a tweaker on my lawn smoking crack. Doesn’t that sound like I’m kidding? I’m so not. This is something I NEVER would have blogged about before we were moving. I’m always so quick to defend Hilltop, so quick to tell you that our neighborhood is GREAT! But the fact is, this is a tough place to live sometimes. We’ve never had anything too bad happen to us, besides, you know, tweakers, fights on our lawn, etc, but many of our friends have been burgled and had cars stolen. After four years here, I’m very happy to be crossing the tracks, or Division St., more accurately.
In related news, we found a family of Missionaries to rent our current house. No shit!
Sleep, or my lack of it, is still a pretty big issue right now. We’re down from an average of eight wakings per night, (10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 2:30, 4:30, 5:30, and up for good at 6:30) to around four. (10:30, 1:30, 4:30, 6:30) I can live with four, after suffering through eight, but three? Three would be heaven. Because of all this, I have some pretty effed up dreams. Crazy stuff.
We started watching The Wire (OMG SO GOOD) and I’ve been afflicted with the DVD-series-addiction disease. You know when you start powering through a show on DVD, and soon it totally invades your thoughts and you think about the characters all the time? The other night I was dreaming about it when Clark woke up, and I started shaking SB awake, telling him he had to go in because “He’s seen me! I’m burnt!” In my Wire dream I was apparently surveil-ing Clark.
The universe sent me a message yesterday. I have this photography-business-related idea wherein I decided I needed funky little bowls and goblets and such. I figured I might find these things at a thrift store. Yesterday afternoon I had some Clark free time, so I got a coffee and set about on my Value Village treasure hunt. I found EXACTLY what I was looking for. I was so stoked! It’s super exciting when you find what you need at a thrift store. It feels like you won a prize! I headed home with my stash, picking up Clark on the way. Well, here comes the message. SB and I joke about me being The Queen of One Trip. I often carry all 10 grocery bags in at once, fingers be damned. Or I’ll use my old waitressing skillz to carry both of our plates plus two beers, napkins, silverware, and the butter dish to the table. I almost never drop anything, but now the ante is upped in my Queen of One Trip-ness since one of the items I’m usually carrying is a baby. *sigh* Can you see where this is going? So, I was on my way in from the car, carrying Clark in his bucket and my box of pretty pretty goblets, when I started to lose it right before the gate. I suppose I should be happy that I chose to drop the box and not the baby, but KERSMASH, the box flipped in the air and crashed on the sidewalk, shards of green, blue, and red glass flying in all directions. I lost all my scores, plus $37.12 of my precious photo biz money. Boo.
So, the universe was either trying to remind me not to be attached to Things, or else it was saying, it’s time to step down as the Queen of One Trip.
Speaking of the photography biz, though, part of the reason I’m here so infrequently is that I’ve been busy! Check out my photography blog for some fun slideshows and whatnot, should you be interested.
As always, thanks for reading, peeps. Here’s a picture of my delicious boy, your reward for sticking around.
Posted by Jenny @
3:36 pm |
Epic.
So, I haven’t gotten around to that Goal Post yet, but I will. First I have to tell you about the AMAZING past few days we’ve had. Believe it or not, we took Clark with us to San Francisco. On an airplane. Dude has never been to the mall, he’s only been to the grocery store once, but we took him to San Francisco. On the way to the airport, after accomplishing the feat that is packing for yourself AND your baby, I kept thinking, this is no big deal. And then I’d be like, Um, No, it’s a HUGE DEAL. HUGE.
And you know what? We survived. Not only that, it went really well! Clark exceeded expectations left and right. He was great on the plane. He only fussed a little on the hot, longass airporter ride. He slept just as he usually does, on a queen size bed further away from me than he’s ever slept. He learned to love his Ergo carrier. I’m telling you, it really feels like we turned a corner.
We went to San Fran so that I could attend a photography workshop. I could go on and on, and I probably will in future posts, but should you be interested in such things, Me Ra Koh, the photographer who put it on, did a post about the first day here. It’s a great post with lovely pictures detailing our first day of the workshop, and also the first night meet and greet, seen below:
Yep.
It was called the “Discovery Workshop” and boy, do I have some discovery to do. That picture just kind of says it all. Who the heck am I? Sorry to get all navel-gazey on you, but this thing really had me “discovering” to say the least.
I can’t seem to figure out who I’m supposed to be now. I’ll preface by saying, every mom must go through this, so bring on the thoughts in the comments. It’s just that I used to define myself by my career, by my extreme fitness routines, by my cruise director-y social life…and I don’t have any of those things anymore. I have different things, better things, but now that we’re coming out of the newborn fog, who am I supposed to be? Am I supposed to try to recapture the old me, or make a new me? And if it’s a new me, who is she?
Anyway, the workshop helped me to articulate all that for the first time. I’d been feeling it, but hadn’t been specific about what was bugging me. SO, the Goal Post is coming, as well as a New Career, but I have some mulling to do.
Posted by Jenny @
11:37 am |
