My Day at the Zoo

If you've ever held still long enough, I've probably told you the story of how my parents flew to San Diego when my nephew was born and left me behind. I was six. And yes I did get to spend the week with my grandmother which, as everyone knows, was delightful. Grandmothers do all sorts of things with kids that mothers don't allow or don't have the energy to do (like playing "hairdresser" for hours on end).

But that didn't stop me from being bitter. I wanted to go to sunny San Diego and go to the zoo. but my parents, in their infinite wisdom decided to make the trip sans child. And although they brought me back lots of presents, including a San Diego Zoo clipboard, lots of stickers, and a pair of Joe Cool scissors, I still would have rather gone on the trip.

Now my time has come.

My friend Charlie has been considerate enough to choose San Diego as the venue for his wedding (no doubt having my lifelong desire to see the zoo in mind when he made that decision). So this November Minh, Tai and I will be taking a family vacation to Southern California. We're stretching it into a pretty long vacation that will include visiting Minh's sister and grandmother. And we'll do some general sight seeing and I will finally get my day at the zoo. Oh, and I guess we'll go to the wedding while we're there.

Actually, we're in the wedding. Well, Minh and I are. Tai will still be a tad young for the role of ring bearer. But Minh and I are honored to have been asked to do a reading during the wedding ceremony. The title of the poem we've been asked to read is Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog. Presumably, Minh and I know a little something about love and a tad bit about owning a dog as well. Hopefully I won't mess up and swear on the altar like last time we were in a wedding....

Fuzzy Lunch

About once a year a couple co-workers and I drive to a local animal shelter during our lunch break to play with itty bitty kitties waiting to be adopted. Today was our annual trip and lemme tell you there is no better way to spend lunch hour than snuggling little fuzz balls.

I fell in love with a short-haired grey tabby named Chester. And I think he liked me too. At least, that's the impression I got when he licked my neck and then nibbled on my earring. I nearly melted.

Somehow I managed to keep my wallet in my purse and not adopt anyone. Chester was a member of a litter of five, three of whom were already spoken for. But Chester and his sister Ash were still in need of a loving home. And, the shelter is running a two kittens "fur" the price of one special this month....so I could have taken them both home! But I reminded myself that I already have a houseful. Too bad, as Tai would have squealed with delight at the sight of these two fluffy little ones.

Potter Blackout

So....the final Harry Potter book is out and I have not read it yet. In fact, I probably won't get to it for a month or so. I've decided to re-read the previous 6 first, so they are fresh in my mind. I'm a pretty slow reader to begin with and now that work, sleep, and Tai take up about 93% of my days, I have little time to devote to novels. So it may take me a while to get through those 2,000-ish pages.

But unlike those nine-year-olds who buy the book when it goes on sale at midnight and finish it by sunrise, I have no problem delaying my own gratification. The book will be just as good when I get around to reading it. The only problem is avoiding any *spoilers* between now and then. I would be horrified if I learned then ending before reading it myself.

Luckily my co-workers who are reading it know better than to say anything about it to me. So, if I can manage to stay away from Potter fan websites and loud-mouthed middle-schoolers for the next month or so, I should be OK. Wish me luck.

The Longest Day

We took Tai camping this past "weekend". Actually, we were only gone from the house for 25 hours. But it felt like a week.

Unfortunately, Tai did not enjoy himself as much as we thought he would. He was not exactly miserable and I wouldn't say that the trip was a disaster, but the jury is still out on whether we'll go on our 3-night Labor Day trip to the Berkshires. Tai was just a little crankier than usual and never quite pleased with his current situation (be it the ergo, his camp chair, or one of our laps, he always seemed to want to be elsewhere). It was difficult not to have his exersaucer for him to play in, or even a soft place for him to roll around on the ground.

And he was not terribly keen on sleeping between us on the air mattress, in 50-degree weather. I can't imagine why not. Actually, we think that Tai's fussiness during this trip might have been teething-related. His bottom chompers have arrived, so we assume the top ones are getting ready to make their appearance as well. So maybe that issue will have taken care of itself by early September and he'll be in a better mood for the next trip. I guess we'll see.

That said, the trip was indeed quite fun (albeit thoroughly exhausting). We took a lovely hike on Saturday morning, during which Tai got to sleep and Buttons got to run, sniff, and swim. Later that afternoon, while Minh and Buttons took a snooze in the tent Tai and I hit the beach and took a little dip. Tai enjoyed his first-ever cantaloupe and was a big fan of watching the campfire burn. Maybe we'll make a camper out of him yet! (click here for more pictures).

It was encouraging to see that nearly everyone at the campground had kids with them, though none as young as Tai. It seems like camping with a toddler must be lots of fun. The family at the site next to ours had a couple of young kids, one of whom was named Ty. All day and night we listened to the dad say his son's name and each time it made us flinch, like he was talking to our son. Of course, the ridiculous nickname that dad had for his son, "Ty-Guy" is nothing compared to the clever nickname we have for our baby ("Tai-Guy").

Where Have All The Thongs Gone?

The other day I was folding laundry on our bed, while Minh was laying on it watching TV (no judgement here, that's just how it went down). Anyway, I flung an item that was too small to fold onto the bed right near Minh and he picked it up with a sly little grin on his face and said something to the effect of "hey, hey, what's this?" (thinking it was a pair of red thong underwear).

Imagine his disappointment when, upon closer inspection, he realized that it was not a thong, but a red terry cloth bib with a giraffe and a penguin printed on it and the phrase "Let's be friends." Things sure have changed around here.

Roar!

Last night Minh and Tai and I attended a birthday party for a friend, at which we chatted with many friends of this friend. That's what you do at a party, right? Make small talk, eat some yummy food, and go home. Nothing terribly eventful.

But we have just now learned that one of the women we talked with is (was?) the basis for the Dawn the Dinosaur character in Dilbert. How this did not come up during our conversation last night is beyond me. If I were a cartoon dinosaur, I'd want the world to know. Roar.

Summer Stupidity

Last summer I was picking grass out of the herb garden, mistaking it for chives, and we blamed it on the pregnancy. Well, this summer I've done something equally stupid but have no fetus on which to blame it.

Our across-the-street neighbors have been away for months and were at first sub-letting their house. But now the sub-letters are gone and Minh and I have been tasked with merely keeping an eye on the place. They stopped their mail and they have no pets to feed or plants to water. So the job is an easy one...just make sure the place does not get robbed or burn down to the ground.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a package sitting on their doorstep, so I dutifully brought it inside, left it on the table, and locked the house back up. End of story, right? That's what I thought.

Meanwhile, Minh was anxiously checking the mailbox each day for his replacement cell phone (his was busted) and getting more and more pissed off each day that it did not arrive. (You already know where this is going, don't you?) After tracking the package online and seeing that it was marked as "delivered" he called up DHL to complain. DHL explained to him that they had indeed delivered it, and had left it outside the front door. When he told them that it was not there, they asked him to actually go outside and look around.

DHL said that they sometimes try to leave packages in inconspicuous places. So there he was, cordless phone to his ear, searching among the daylillies for his package when the light bulb went off over his head. His ditsy wife had locked his new cell phone in the neighbors house. He grabbed their house key, went inside and found that the package inside was clearly addressed to us, not them. Oops.

Of course, DHL had delivered it to the wrong house. But then I held it in my hands and didn't even notice my own name on the outside of the box. Something must happen to me in the summer. Let's blame the humidity for making my brain sweat. If only we lived in the Southwest where it's a dry heat....

Mix-n-Match, and a Little Flash

Bathing suit shopping is never fun. Anyone who says differently is lying. But I figured today was the perfect day for me to run out and get a new one for two very good reasons:

(1) It's after July 4th, so Old Navy should be selling swimsuits for next to nothing, to make room for corduroys and sweaters.
(2) Tai and I have a mamas-n-babies playdate at a local swimming hole on Monday, during which other people will actually have to see me in my bathing suit. This is a problem because my current bathing suit was purchased for my pre-pregnancy body. That body is gone. The pregnancy weight is off, but things are all shifted around and now my boobs are too big for the top and my ass cheeks hang out the back.

So today after work, I decided to run a bunch of errands. After I popped into one store unsuccessfully seeking waterproofing spray for our new tent, I decided to quickly run into Old Navy for a new bathing suit. But in today's mix-n-match society that proved impossible. They don't actually sell two-piece swimsuits anymore....they sell separate tops and bottoms to be mixed and matched. And that's great because you can get two different sizes for top and bottom. But it's not so great this time of year when the suits have been all picked over. Not only were the prices not marked down, but almost none of the tops and bottoms matched each other...and certainly none that did match were available in my sizes. All I could seem to find were small and extra small tops and XL bottoms, none of which was going to work for me. (So...are there lots of women running around out there with big boobs and small bottoms? I thought I was the only one....)

During the 15 minutes I spent pawing through the racks, I found a few very cute tops, in my size....and then matching bottoms in XL. The one or two bottoms I found that looked like they might fit had no matching tops left anywhere in sight. And I don't even mean strictly "matching"--I would have gladly paired a plain purple top with the multicolor-striped bottoms. But no, even that was not meant to be. I started out being selective, looking at the sizes only on the cute suits. But soon I grew desperate, nearly talking myself into trying on the ones with macrame straps or faux wood beads. I stopped just short of even looking at the sizes on the shiny silver suits that looked like they were made of tinfoil. I never even made it into the dressing room.

Leaving Old Navy, I felt defeated and started to wonder whether I am too old and mom-ish to even be shopping there...and for a skimpy two-piece bathing suit, no less. Wondering whether I could even pull a suit like that off, I decided to check out my profile in the window as I walked by. Looking pretty good in a shirt that artfully hides my squishy tummy and sporting my Skinny Jeans, I started to think, "Yeah, I may be a mom, but I still look good. I'm not an old fart one-piece-swimsuit-with-the-attached-skirt mom yet." Feeling better, I turned to head into EMS (still in search of the waterproofing spray) and looked at myself head-on in that window. That's when I noticed that the button on my shirt right between my boobs was undone...no doubt from my last pumping session at work. Oh, how very not cool. Oh, how not young and sexy and with-it at all. Oh, how very fuddy-duddy-scatterbrained-mom-ish.

So here I am, no new bathing suit. Just a word of warning....if you find yourself at Puffers Pond this coming Monday you may catch sight of far too much side-boob and ass cheek as I emerge from the water. Oh well, one good thing about mommy-hood is that I'm just to tired to care....much.