Goodbye dear blog, goodbye

My time on this blog has come to an end and I have started anew!

Check out my new mommy-centric blog at

http://iriemomma.wordpress.com/

The Indoor vs Outdoor Cat Debate

I’m about to make contradicting statements. I’m much more of a dog person than a cat person. However, of all our animals, kitty Arlo is probably my favorite. Arlo was my first pet after my sweet beagle Sydney (my favorite pet of all time) died, and that seemed to make me attach to Arlo much more than the other animals. Arlo is also the first cat I ever had, and until last year, I thought he would be the only cat I ever had. Then crazy ass Black Kitty (aka Blackitty) wandered into our yard in January 2008. That January was exceptionally cold for Denver and I was newly pregnant and feeling quite maternal (and crazy overly-emotional). I’ll spare all the details, but Black Kitty moved in. Amazingly my two male cats get along pretty well! Black Kitty uses the litter box (as long as I keep it clean) and has been a great playmate for Arlo. He loves Lily more than anything and I’m sure someday they will be best friends.

Now for the annoying things…Black Kitty has destroyed our stairs. Apparently he thinks they are a scratching post. The carpet is basically shredded. This could be a nice excuse to put hardwood on the stairs, but we don’t have the money in the budget for a few more years so for now I have horrific looking stairs. Another problem with Black Kitty is that he loves Lily. I know, I know I said that was a good thing so let me clarify. Black Kitty loves Lily sooooo much and wants to be sure everybody knows she is HIS baby. This means he rubs all over her and follows her around the house. He rubs her so hard he often knocks her down and the poor baby is constantly covered in cat hair. It’s frickin nasty. The final annoying thing with Black Kitty is that he’s constantly trying to run away. Arlo got loose back in Richmond and was gone for weeks. He never came home on his own but I eventually found him with a colony of crazy ass gutter cats and being host to about a million fleas, so now I’m overly paranoid about my Arlo getting outside. This has led me to believe that cats all need to stay indoors, and since Black Kitty came to live with us I’ve forced him to stay inside. He sneaks out as often as possible and I always chase him down and drag him back into the house.

Fast forward to this morning. Black Kitty ran outside at 5:30AM as I was leaving for work. Chris needed to finish up some homework and I needed to leave so we didn’t chase him down. When Chris put the dogs outside around 6:30AM, Black Kitty jumped into our back yard, apparently happy from his morning adventures and was ready to go back inside. Now I’m debating whether I should let Black Kitty become an indoor/outdoor cat. On one hand, I think he would be happier. On the other hand, I don’t want him to be hit by a car, killed by a coyote, hurt by a sicko human cat hater, attacked by a dog, or bring nasty disease home to my perfect Arlo. So does anybody out there have an indoor/outdoor cat? How does it work? Any tips?

Feeling Rejected? Jump on This Bandwagon!!

I read an article this morning about a guy who has filed a lawsuit against Match.com. The long and short of it is he felt the company left profiles of cancelled subscribers on the site, giving him false hope. He sent a bunch of message and winks to people who never responded. He felt sad, rejected…you get the idea. So he is asking for his money back plus damages for “time, labor and emotional investment”.

My first thought is that this guy is a douche and that’s why people didn’t respond to him. I tend to have a serious dislike for lawsuit-happy people so this guy didn’t start out with any support from me. But on the other hand, I’ve known a bunch of people who signed up for Match.com without any luck, and as I got more into the article this guy actually sounded pretty normal.

I truly don’t know much about the site and how it works but for anybody who has used it, what do you think? Did you write messages and send winks to which you never received a response? Do you think it is possible there are fake, cancelled, or expired subscribers still listed as active? Could your messages have never been received by the intended user?

I don’t think the guy deserves money for emotional damages but if Match.com is promising real people and being dishonest, well the guy does deserve his money back. Now let’s see how many other people jump on this bandwagon…

I would think most people who sign up for an online dating service  have been unsuccessful the “old fashioned way” and are probably feeling a bit rejected in the first place. I smell a class action suit in the works! Nobody wants to believe they are undesirable. What better way to feel good about yourself than to blame some big, bad internet company for your misfortunes in love? The rejected are going to be all over this.

Preoccupied With Death

For the past week or so I have had a bizarre preoccupation with death. Not just any death, but my own death. I have had moments of overwhelming fear that I am going to die…soon. Then I start to worry that maybe these are premonitions or instinct of some kind.  Or maybe it’s because we are going to be making a will soon and that put the idea of death into my head. Either way, it is quite upsetting and it makes me worry about a multitude of things.

I worry that if I were to die today my little girl would never know how much I love her. Yes, my husband would tell her that she was my whole world, but would she actually believe it? Since she wouldn’t be able to remember me she would never actually know what it felt like to be loved by her mommy. Would she know how I sat in her room at night and held her when she woke up crying? How I would fall asleep in the chair rocking her and wake up hours later with a stiff neck but with a huge smile on my face when I saw her little face. Would she know how I made major lifestyle changes (quitting smoking, eating better, exercising more, drinking less alcohol) not to make myself healthier but to set a good example for her? Would she know how sad I felt every day when I had to go to work and leave her for the day? Would she know how I raced home every day so I could pick her up just a few minutes early from daycare to see her smiling face? Would she remember the songs I made up and sang to her which would make her laugh out loud? Would she know how I took hundreds of pictures of her and hours of video so I could look back at her different stages? How I thought of her every minute of the day; so much that some days I couldn’t even get any work done? Would she remember our long walks and how I would point out ducks, geese, snakes, bunnies and prairie dogs? Sadly, she wouldn’t remember any of these things. Her daddy would tell her stories and she would have those fuzzy thoughts which make it hard to distinguish between actual memories and stories that have been told over and over that become kind of false memories.

I know my husband would take great care of her; he’s a wonderful daddy. He would guide her through her life and be an excellent father and friend. That is the least of my worries. What I worry about is that we would both miss out on so much. She would miss out on so many “mommy moments” and I would miss out on all her milestones.

I want to be there for all of her important moments. I want to walk her to school on her first day of kindergarten. I want to wipe her tears away the first time a boy breaks her heart. I want to cheer her on when she participates in sports or other activities. I want to sit in the bleachers and cry during her high school graduation and cry even harder when we leave her in the dorms her freshman year of college. I want her to always know she has a mommy and daddy who love and support her no matter what.

I hope my weird preoccupation with my own death will go away and I can stop obsessing. Right now it’s just making me feel really sad.

Why I Hate Sonic

I used to love Sonic. When I lived in Richmond I often complained of not having a local Sonic to visit. The tots, the malts…did I mention the tots? I loved all things Sonic and was thrilled when I moved to Colorado and had one just a few minutes from my house. All things Sonic made me happy – even the commercials.

So why do I now hate Sonic? Because they’re seriously SLOW. Not just a little slow, but extra slow. I’ve had this complaint for quite a while but have been able to over look it because I eat fast food so rarely. Maybe once every couple months I would visit Sonic and be annoyed by the slow service, but my visits were so infrequent that I would forget. Not this time.

I stopped at Sonic on my way out of town to go camping on Friday. I had a fussy baby in the back seat, who I knew would fall asleep as soon as I could get on the interstate, and two of my dogs in the back of the Jeep nervously pacing. I needed a quick snack and knew a drive-through would work better with the baby and dogs than running into 7-11. I pulled to the intersection and McDonalds was on one side and Sonic on the other. This was a no brainer; I went to Sonic. The drive-through was busy so I pulled into one of the handy ordering kiosks. I hit the red button and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally after a few minutes the guy asked for my order. All I wanted was poppers and a malt and he stated it would be out in just a few minutes. So I waited and waited again. Lily started screaming, the dogs were pacing and panting so their gross, hot breath was stinking up my car. I watched as the drive-through line disappeared and I could see the employees talking and laughing inside – obviously not busy at all.

I wanted to hit my red button again and ask where my food was but I was afraid I would get a nice wad of spit in my malt. So instead, after 15 minutes with my baby crying, I drove off and went to McDonalds. Within 90 seconds of pulling up to McDonalds I had my food and was on the road.

Was the McDonalds food as tasty as Sonic would have been? Maybe not. But being able to get on the road and not waste half my day at Sonic made it all worth it.

So now I must say goodbye to you, Sonic. We shared some great times, but you’re like the shitty friend whose drama outweighed any benefits gained from staying friends. Even after what seems like a lifetime of love and friendship, sometimes we need to cut our losses and say goodbye. So goodbye dear Sonic, goodbye.

Camping and the ER

This past weekend was our first camping trip of the year and our first time camping with Lily. We chose Horsetooth for the site of Lily’s first trip because it’s close to home, familiar, and the dogs like it. Camping last year was a bit of  a pain for me since I was pregnant so I was looking forward to being able to enjoy a few adult beverages this year and sleeping through the night without waking up five times to use the bathroom.

The trip started off well. Lily enjoyed playing on the big bed on one end of our pop up. She sat outside in her stroller and watched us set things up and was very interested in looking at the lake. There isn’t really a safe place in our pop-up for a baby her age to sleep so she cuddled in right between us and had a good night. I was ready to declare her first camping trip a success!!!

Saturday we woke up and went for a hike. Lily absolutely loved riding around in the backpack and looking at flowers, trees, and the hills. The dogs had fun but the little boys seemed out of shape and tired pretty quickly. We took just a short hike, around 30 minutes, and then headed back to the camper to eat lunch and let Lily take a nap before we headed out for a long hike in the afternoon.

Almost immediately after we returned to the camper Lily decided to dive head first off the bed onto the floor. Chris was standing right in front of her but she managed to fall into the small area in between him and the table. I was outside and was heading back to the camper and heard her screaming. When I walked inside Chris was holding her close and looked absolutely terrified. When he said “She fell off the bed”, my heart sank. She was screaming and had a giant red mark on her forehead. She seemed confused and a little loopy. I grabbed her and started nursing her, that always calms her down, and she still seemed confused for a moment but then started nursing like crazy and calming down. I checked out her head and a bump was forming. I know it may seem irrational, but all I could think about was Natasha Richardson. Then I started thinking about a family friend who’s baby was dropped by a baby sitter and suffered brain damage. I was panicked. Chris’s mom is a nurse so he grabbed the phone and called her, but the phone reception at Horsetooth is pretty spotty.

Lily finished nursing and seemed absolutely fine. Other than a bump on her forehead you wouldn’t have known she had fallen. She was laughing and smiling as soon as she finished eating. We decided to keep and eye on her and see how she acted. We started feeding her oatmeal but she was sleepy and obviously wanted a nap. Then we started worrying about a concussion. Should we let her sleep? It was nap time, but I didn’t want her to fall into a coma. At that point we realized we weren’t going to be able to stop worrying until we had her checked out so we loaded Lily and the dogs in the car and headed toward Ft. Collins. I called our insurance on the way and they said to take her in and that you can never be too careful with a head injury.

So Lily had her first ER visit at Poudre Valley Hospital. She was smiling and kicking around the whole time we were there. She checked out just fine and  it gave us a great deal of relief to have her examined. Had we not taken her in we would have been paranoid the rest of the trip. Instead we returned to our campsite and downed a couple beers and actually relaxed! We were able to enjoy the rest of the trip, although we did keep an extra close eye on Lily at all times.

Two days later  she barely has a mark on her head. Her nose is a little red and slightly skinned, but overall she looks fine. I know she’ll take a lot of falls and this will most likely not be her only ER visit, but I have never been as scared in my life as I was when Chris told me she fell. I’m just glad my baby girl is OK.

We’re going camping again next weekend and hopefully it will be drama free!

Don’t Make Me Punch You in the Nose!

There are a few common phrases that really bother me. “Do what now” is the most annoying question anyone could ever ask me. Each time I hear someone say that I want to punch that person in the nose. Why does it bother me so much? I have no idea, but it does.

Referring to the east coast as “back east” is another little phrase that drives me batty. I know it seems irrational but it bothers me so much I cringe when I hear it.

I was just in a meeting and one of the reps said “back east” seven times. Yes, I counted. She is probably a really nice girl but now I find her to be stupid and annoying. I was so distracted I could barely listen to her presentation.

 What common phrases do you find annoying?

Milk = Liquid Gold

Disclaimer: Guys will not want to read this post.

My little Lily Bug is almost 8 months old. We’ve been lucky to have a relatively easy time with breastfeeding up to this point. Not that finding time to pump three times a day at work is easy, but the day I returned to work I vowed my job would never come before Lily and her needs. I’m happy to say I have stuck to that promise and Lily hasn’t had a drop of formula.

Early on I had a ton of milk so producing enough to feed Lily was not a problem. When I returned to work full time in January I started pumping three times a day and whatever I produced is what Lily ate the following day while I was at work. Perfect! Her bottles were around 4.5 – 5.5 ounces each but she only actually ate around 4 ounces each feeding. The human body is super smart and over the next couple months my supply seemed to even out and I pumped around 12 ounces a day at work – exactly enough for three, four-ounce bottles. Lily was happy, I was happy, all was good.

At six months Lily started on rice cereal and now has oatmeal mid-morning and fruits and veggies in the evenings. She has the solid food in between bottles so she still consumes the exact same amount of milk that she did before we started her on solids. (Side note, I’m making her baby food and it is soooo easy and it makes me so happy that she is learning early on to eat fresh fruits and veggies rather than processed crap, but I’ll save that for another post).

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to get off my lazy butt and lose these 20 pounds I’ve been blaming on Lily. I’ve been watching what I eat and working out 6 days a week. I’ve been losing 2 pounds a week so I’ve been thrilled!!!!! Then I noticed my milk supply slowly decreasing. Because I’m a weird, analytical freak and love spreadsheets more than anything on the planet, naturally I track my milk supply. I know what I pumped each session every day I’ve been back at work. Weird, absolutely. But helpful? More than you can imagine. Now I’m able to pinpoint exactly when my milk supply started to decrease and see it correlates directly with my increased exercise & diet.

So suddenly I was down about an ounce a day from the three pumpings at work. That first week I just sent slightly smaller bottles to daycare for Lily and thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. The second week I was down about an ounce and a half a day so the bottles were even smaller than the previous week plus her daycare provider mentioned she seemed hungry and asked if she could have more cereal. This was the point where I started to worry. I spoke to a lactation consultant at work last week and she said to add another pumping session while I’m at work and extend my pumpings from 10 to 15 minutes. She also mentioned starting on Fenugreek but said to try to increased pumping first. This morning I spoke with an LC at the hospital where I delivered and she thinks I was dieting a bit too much and not eating enough calories. I’m bumping up my calories up slightly (two extra glasses of milk a day) in case that is the problem. Losing one pound a week would be great too so a slight decrease in weight loss doesn’t bother me one bit. The LC I spoke with today said if I’m not back to pumping 12 ounces a day by Wednesday I need to start on the Fenugreek.

So my question is…has anybody else had a dip in supply this far into nursing? What did you do to remedy the situation?

Hoss Backs Down

Little Hoss is a bad ass. For those of you who have never met him he has more attitude than any dog I’ve ever known. He is a super tough, snake killing little man who only does what he wants. When I call him to come in the house he gives me a look of disgust and turns his back on me. When we go for walks he aggressively lunges at all dogs – big or small – and barks his little head off. When there was a raccoon in our back yard, Rory & Shelby backed down but Hoss stood his ground to protect the yard. He is seriously a bad ass. 

However, there are two enemies Hoss will back down to. Only two, but they can definitely overpower the little guy. So much in fact that he will lie down and passively roll onto his back.

See below….

Compost Bin Part II

A few weeks ago I was whining about wanting to start a compost bin without spending a bunch of money on a stupid pre-made bin. I was all set to convert a trash can into a compost bin until I found this bin  on craigslist for $40. After a quick trip over to Boulder to pick it up, I now have a compost bin .

Now I’m realizing it’s going to take a really long time to make compost. I’m one of those instant gratification types of girls so I’m a little sad that it’s going to be a really long time before I have nice soil for my garden. I’m also realizing I have a ton of green material for my bin with kitchen scraps and grass clippings but at the moment I have almost zilch for brown materials. Anybody have any ideas for me? This fall I’ll be set when the leaves are off the trees. I plan to mulch the leaves and keep them in a large trash bin so I’ll have browns the rest of the year…but in the meantime what do I do about browns? We have a ton of shredded paper (bills, etc) but I’m reading mixed reviews on whether I can put that in the compost pile. Also, I have a TON of newspaper but am reading mixed reviews on whether I can only use black & white newsprint or if color is OK. Any ideas??