ledlightsandpancakes

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29 is almost up. Man oh man, what a year. In many ways, I feel like I am at "peak me", so I guess I should stop feeling sorry for myself about the challenges ahead. If ever there was a version of me that could take it on, I am her. But seriously the donuts are garbage like what am I going to do 😭

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Yeah I recognize the problem with posting this after my last post shut up look at that fucking cookie dough we are living at the height of Rome right before the fall damn

You GUYS. 

New York City has a freaking COOKIE DOUGH CAFE so obviously we had to go.

And it was everything.

📷 : Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

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From Gemma Correll.

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Idea: rehab for people who have given themselves diabetes from bad eating habits. Basically treat it like the life-threatening addiction it is and rehabilitate the person instead of shaming them. These rehabs would have constant cooking classes and a small kitchen for every few people. At first, you are not responsible for making your own food and instead depend on others to make it for you. Maybe the people who share a kitchen are a little group, where the newbies are just helping out where they can and the senior members have the most responsibility but are slowly passing the torch as they begin transitioning out. As you attend more classes and information sessions/start gaining more mobility (for those who have become morbidly obese), more responsibility is shifted to you so you form lifelong skills that you can take home, where temptation is going to be constant. There could even be a recipe research/ingredient buying component with budgeting and such to make the cooking skills more practical and complete. I'm sure this is basically already a thing, but times have changed so much and people just don't know how to feed themselves. It's one thing to tell someone they're gonna die if they eat poorly, but it's exactly the same as a heroin addict: if you don't put them in an environment where they gain the skills to succeed, they're just going to do what they've always done. We are such creatures of habit... It'd be cool right? I feel like it'd be cool.

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Lmao

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And finally, because I feel like I have to address the bright orange dumpster fire in the room, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON WHY ARE THERE SO MANY RACIST ASS SELFISH SELF IMPORTANT IDIOTS WHO LOVE TO VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERESTS/THE INTERESTS OF ALL NON-BILLIONAIRES AND THE INTERESTS OF EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO RELIES ON EARTH BEING A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT FOR HUMAN BEINGS THEY MAKE NO GOD DAMN SENSE AT ALL AND WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN HAPPENINGGGGNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *sighs and puts head in hands*

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Also, while I’m in a writing mood, I’m going to talk about my baby. He’s three and a half months old now. He’s absurdly, wildly, ridiculously, over-the-top cute. He is so soft and cuddly, and his skin is the best thing I have ever felt. I recognize that he is literally bio-engineered to be the cutest thing I, personally, could possibly see, but it is still so overwhelming sometimes.

There are so many years to go before we will really know him. There is not a ton to go on now, but this is what we do know:

-His eyes are blue

-He prefers to stay in motion

-He really, really, really likes watching cars

-He really, really really hates riding in cars (or anything else that prevents him from moving around).

-He is interested in words and is picking up on conversational rhythms. We work on it during the day. I narrate what I’m doing and ask him questions. He realizes it’s his turn and babbles and laughs in delight when he gets the timing right. I love thinking about how he thinks I’m just babbling at him, and that all the world is full of people just taking turns making fun sounds at one another for the hell of it, but always sticking to the back and forth rhythm.

-He cannot stand pee in his diaper. Right on, buddy.

-He’s a good eater, and while his only food is boob milk, he observes people eating with great intensity. I sometimes see him practicing chewing.

-He loves big kids, and the little girl I nanny for has his endless attention.

-He wants to look at the TV. Two more years, mon petit boo!

-He likes his one furry blanket that’s not even the nicest furry blanket and sheds everywhere but god damn it it’s his favorite

-He has a freakishly strong neck

-He would prefer to be on an endless walk

-He has a surprisingly long attention span for books

-He’s very against his parents getting any sleep. Sometimes he slips up and gives us a 6-7 hours (maybe 5 times since being born), but mostly he likes to get in as much “snuggling with mom and gently sucking away her sanity bc she never ever gets to sleep” time as possible

Heh I’m kidding on that last one. It’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it’d be. I mean, he wakes up that much, but it doesn’t bother me quite like I thought it would. Sleeping had become so hard for me anyway. It’s nice to get baby snuggles in the night, as long as he goes back down easily. 

That’s another thing: breastfeeding. Who knew it’s awesome?? I had read so much about how it goes so wrong for everyone all the time. My Mom couldn’t do it, etc. etc. Yeah, it just worked perfectly for me, and it’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I read EVERYTHING and even went did an extra lactation consultant visit after he was born, just to be super sure. But yeah, it’s the best and I hope everyone who has a baby gets to do it. The bonding is amazing, and then you always have an excuse to take your baby back, especially in those first few weeks when you kind of feel like everyone is just there to steal all your happy baby time. 

We are going back to our home town soon for the first time as a family, and I am dreading it. The plane ride is going to be miserable (see: Everett hates confined spaces), and I know I’m a spoiled brat for saying this, but just once I’d like to go home and not have it be a whole...production. Then again, I’m incredibly grateful the grandmas are making it possible for us to see everyone without us having to go all over the place (see: Everett hates cars). I am not a party-thrower and they are going way above and beyond. It’s just that every time we’ve gone home since we moved, our home visits are these crazy whirlwinds surrounding huge events centered around our presence. I just want to chill at our old brewery, maybe sit around the fire in Andy’s backyard, have my mom make me a sandwich...you know, normal stuff. And if I did see people, it’d be nice if it could be intimate instead of one quick interaction after another, always with the nagging sense of guilt that I’m not being/giving enough to this person who may have driven hours just to be in a room of 60 people that happens to have me in it. It’s a lot of pressure and frankly I’m paranoid people will start to think I'm the one who thinks we are worth the fuss (see: we aren’t).

I guess my point is I wish I could have the time to go back and see everyone I want to see, take our time, have some real conversations, let people get to really meet Everett. But it’s absolutely my fault that our moms have to go through all this to make sure people get to see us: I can’t stand leaving Portland for more than a few days when the tradeoff is Chicago. It just feels like the opposite of a vacation, but we have to use vacation days and spend a ton of money to get there. So on the one hand, I need to go more regularly/for longer periods of time to make each time suck less. On the other hand, that’s expensive and who has that kind of vacation time and also FUCK THAT why would I want to deal with all that when I live in the best place on Earth? 

Anyway. I’ve been rambling long enough. Everett is awesome. Parenting is great. And I don’t say that to be braggy or something, that’s literally me just trying to share my truth and make sure that once in a while, people get to hear a positive narrative. We are out here, I swear. 

I’ll try to update more often...

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I’ve been up to my brainstem in lingerie with work this week, and it brought back a funny memory from childhood. I was maybe nine or so, and every year my Grandma would take me to Cape May, New Jersey, where her very best friend had a house on the beach. I loved my Grandma so, so much, and so I went on these trips despite the incredible distaste I had for her best friend, a woman I was made to call Aunt Helen. 

Aunt Helen was very pretty for a 70-something, which I guess I wasn’t conscious of until this moment. She and my Grandma had both aged well and found a way of dressing that was both stylish and age-appropriate. I wish I remembered more about how they met or what they’d done in so many decades of friendship, but Aunt Helen had a way of bringing out a version of my grandma that was unfamiliar to me. They were two bitches on the town, and they had a lot of fun.

One day, in-between ringing a bell to cause myself or one of her own granddaughters to spawn and wait on her (yeah. I didn’t like her.), I overheard her and my Grandma talking about their bras of all things. I turned red, but I was nine, so also turned up my inner dials of attention a the mention of a risque topic. 

“Oh, I just never know what bra to wear anymore. I suddenly can’t stand underwire,” my Grandma said to her, motioning to her ribs.

“But BARB. YOU told ME about underwire!” Helen gawked, “And frankly it’s changed my life!”

I believe this was the first time I had heard the word “underwire” and filed it away as something to figure out later.

It was a simple exchange, but I sat in shock as the following thoughts cascaded:

1. Old ladies had to wear bras still, which meant they had boobs still, which I guess I had known but had never given any thought to

2. They had preferences about said bras. There wasn’t a Standard Issue Grandma Bra. 

3. They not only had preferences, they had preferences that changed. As if they were real people or something. Women, even.

4. Old ladies talked about their fucking bras together. What the fuck. 

I don’t know why I remember it so well, but I think it goes along with fourth graders being my favorite age to teach because they are going through such a huge psychological leap: suddenly they can grasp philosophy but are also still so innocent. The leap that follows is the one that causes so many problems for a few years. 

I guess I’ve hit my Grandma’s same conclusion about 30 years early: I can no longer stand underwire, and it seemed to happen the actual minute I got pregnant. I was flabbergasted; I’d been a die-hard underwire-wearer since the moment I was allowed to wear one. They looked so grown up and made me look significantly more womanly than my body actually was. I definitely didn’t switch away from them because of any aesthetic, though. Underwire just felt like heaven one day and like miserable boob jail the next. 

Anyway, there was no point to this and I have no idea why I wrote it, other than I’m quite sick and lying down sucks and I’m stuck sleeping on the couch because my coughing sounds like shoveling broken concrete and I might as well take advantage of this rare private time.

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Oh, 2016. We're all talking to you like a person who let us down. An omniscient, all-powerful person who controls the great universal chess board. It's funny how far we've come, how much we've learned, and we still want to step out of our caves and shake our fist at the sun god for shitty weather. But maybe you're not an evil god. Maybe you were waiting for millennia to get your big chance to shine, and you're as dumbfounded and blindsided by all of this as the rest of us. Maybe it's us who let you down. I'm making it out alive this year with the world's most perfect baby, a husband I can't stop kissing who is KILLING IT as a dad, and a dog who is quite possibly magic, but is definitely a source of great companionship and joy. We may be huddled in the beautiful bubble that is the corner of a country we no longer understand or recognize. We may not be able to prevent the things we are afraid of, or keep our own parents sane, or predict our next steps. But we have one another, and for the first time in my life I really feel like that is enough. All the cliche bullshit is real. We started this family, so we are responsible for its happiness. It's a goal I can really get behind, and one I finally fully realized and understood in the world's most #cursed year. Sometimes it takes everything else falling apart to see the good stuff. What I'm saying is, god damn it, Kylie Jenner was right.

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this is so pure

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😍the teenage weeks

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My mom is here with me and Hüzbond, which is awesome. We are just kind of killing time and waiting for the small man to make his appearance, which he is taking his time with so far. The real question is who will pop first (me or the large bubble of water in my bathroom ceiling)?