Old entries. Below cut.

03/30/01

I’ve been busying myself trying to learn how to do more in Photoshop. I love to figure out computer programs without ever referring to, say, an instruction manual. Somehow makes it more adventurous. In any case, you may have noticed some changes in my titles and I imagine they’ll change again eventually when I figure out other aspects of the program.

Katie thinks I should maybe give up on her agent taking on my book. I haven’t heard anything in nearly three months and I guess that’s too long to sustain hope. So I wrote the agent to make sure she was rejecting it (awkward, to say the least, but it’s good etiquette to do that if you haven’t heard anything). On to the next phase of the plan! I’ll send the proposal out to someone else, not sure who yet. Meanwhile, I sent out a query for another book idea and am starting research on that proposal. And I’ve sent some $1-a-word article queries out, too. Unfortunately, all I’ve been writing lately is these letters. I seem to have lost all gung-ho’ness. Part of it, I think, is this nasty cold I haven’t been able to kick. Being up all night coughing seems to suck the very life out of a person.

Quick! Go to Jane Siberry’s page *immediately* so you can hear her sing (and see the gorgeous flower–must be spring)!! That’s her added right above the song listings. Have I mentioned lately how much I love her?

(Hi Justin!)

03/27/01

I watched part of South Pacific last night. I love musicals. I have the CD to the original Broadway cast recording of South Pacific and the soundtrack to the movie. Anyway, I thought Glenn Close was pretty good but Harry Connick Jr. somehow got on my nerves.

I understand why people don’t like musicals but I think they just haven’t found the right musical for their tastes. People who don’t care for the way folks in musicals tend to burst into spontaneous song (something I happen to *like* about them; I love a tap-dancing sailor, especially if he dances like Gene Kelly) should check out Cabaret. Liza Minelli gives me *chills* in that one. Man, I need to get that on DVD.

03/23/01

On a much cheerier note today, I finished Peanut’s web page. Check it out!

I hung out with Betsy Gartrell-Judd yesterday. She’s terrific! Not only do she and Nancy Price run a multitude of parenting sites *and* publish a glossy magazine, she’s also a very nice person. I had a great time.

03/22/01

So I woke up today and realized (for the 16th month in a row) that I’m not pregnant. It sucks being not pregnant. It’s a great big nasty, awful thing to deal with especially when you make a (meager) living by writing about stuff like pregnancy and then you volunteer by hanging out with a bunch of pregnant women talking about breastfeeding.

I’m sick of the whole fertile world.

Noah’s peer group have all welcomed siblings into their wee lives by now. The few that haven’t have pregnant mothers. (sigh)

Part of me thinks, well, so we only have one kid. He’s a pretty amazing child and we’re awfully damn lucky. Then I wonder if I would be doing anything differently if I knew for a fact that we wouldn’t be able to have more children. About the only thing I know for sure is that I wouldn’t be going for my La Leche League leadership. So should I quit? Should I move on to non-reproductively-minded activities? Maybe. But that seems like giving up. I really want to believe that at least one more child is waiting to join our family.

People can be very insensitive about infertility. They can’t help it. There’s no way to know what’s painful for a trying-to-get-pregnant woman and what’s not unless you’ve been there. And there are some days when *everything* baby-related is painful and then no matter how much those people love you, they can’t help but accidentally hurt you. It’s not their fault.

Of course some people are ridiculously thoughtless. The worst thing anyone ever said to me came from a woman who is majestically fertile. She has a house full of kids and isn’t done yet. I told her about our troubles (after she asked, brightly, “So when are you going to give that poor husband of yours a baby?” Hint: never assume that a person doesn’t want more children. When asking about having more, proceed with caution.) and her response was this: (giggle) “Well, maybe I’ll have enough kids to make up for you!”

Oh yeah, that made me feel SWELL. It was a nasty thing to say and I’ve never really forgiven her for it, or for the playful little giggle that preceded it.

03/19/01

There were a few things I wanted to accomplish today:

–do some laundry and hang it on the line (done)

–transplant some ivy a very nice friend gave me (done)

–do something with the 5 lbs of bananas I got for $.50 (done)

–call the parks and rec department about teaching parenting classes (not done)

I have this weird thing about making phone calls; I hate to do it. I mean I *hate* to do it. I do just about everything to avoid making most non-friend-related phone calls and even many friend-related phone calls. I practically break out in hives when I need to cold-call someone.

Today I learned about a terrific blog at Debris focused on consumer privacy. My husband cherishes this kind of information. He’s a man who loves his shredder probably more than any other material good he owns.

03/16/01

Tomorrow is my baby brother’s 29th birthday. I’m also going to a graduation party for one of my very best friends. He was on the 11-year plan for graduation. He’s moving to New York in June and I’m going to miss the hell out of him.

I should be hearing from the agent about my book proposal sometime soon. Or sometime later. I’m not sure really but I am now officially in the waiting period and could reasonably expect it any day now. It’s a hellish place to be.

03/12/01

Every morning I wake up and while brushing my teeth, I check my email. Then I check the Bleat, Diary of a New Homemaker, and What’s in Rebecca’s Pocket. At this point if Noah is still sleeping and the puppy isn’t begging to go out, I check a couple of listservs that I have set up for Web delivery only. Oh and I also check out a bulletin board run by some seriously deluded people (I don’t link to it here because they don’t need more voyeuristic visitors). If my small charges aren’t up by this time, I work on my journal/blog.

Brett’s cousin had her third child on Saturday. Micah James is her third homebirth (although the first was an emergency transport) and her second waterbirth. Her first child, Ethan, will be 3 in May. Her daughter, Hosanna, will be 2 in August. She and her husband are of the “quiverfull” mindset.

Needless to say, she doesn’t have time for an early morning internet routine.

03/09/01

The megillah reading last night was great . Lots of fun shaking our noisemakers every time Haman’s name was mentioned, lots of fun laughing at the costumes. All the kids were cute, too. I also felt good knowing that I was *finally* celebrating a Jewish holiday within a Jewish community.

I’ve been thinking about whether or not Noah should wear a yarmulke. Most of the (boy) children do, some of the fathers do, and a very few women do. I need to ask my rabbi about this.

I’m still stymied about why this whole conversion thing is important to me, especially considering my ambivalence about some very important Jewish concepts.

03/08/01

Tonight we’re going to the synagogue for the reading of the megillah. I’ve never been; I hope it’s fun. Although it’s Purim, none of us will be enjoying the mitzvah of excessive drink.

(Now here’s something odd. Searching for good links to use in the paragraph above, I found an erotic Purim site. The net is a strange, strange place.)

I don’t know how to make kreplach so we’re having lentils tonight before we head over to Beth Tikvah.

03/07/01

I’ve noticed a nice change in Noah since we got the puppy a week ago. He’s been really cheerful lately and he’s getting more confident, too. This morning he and the puppy chased each other around the yard. They were playing hide-and-seek, peeking around our big cottonwood tree, and Noah was bubbling over with laughter.

I’m trying to decide what to do about the garden. Should I try to get a vegetable garden growing? Should I concentrate on flowers? Should I just grow some herbs in containers while I see what’s going to come up? The people who lived here before already did a bunch of landscaping work so I probably shouldn’t touch any of that the first year. The plot for the vegetable garden looks like it may be too shady but I don’t know if there’s a better place for it. I think that cottonwood tree is going to block a lot of the sun in the yard.

A friend of mine loaned me a book about gardening by Mrs. Greenthumbs and it’s not only informative, it’s hilarious. I never thought of seriously growing flowers ’til I read this book.

03/06/01

I got my copy of Moxie yesterday with my story happily established on page 31. There’s one typo in the very first sentence but the rest is what I wrote. Only now I’m not too pleased with it which is *always* the way of things for writers. It’s my first published piece of fiction; an accomplishment dimmed only by the fact that I wrote it about five years ago and haven’t written any fiction since.

03/05/01

Puppies are a lot of work.

On Saturday a friend of mine had a party for a bunch of LLL-ish moms. We sat around and talked about Waldorf education, selective vaccination, and organic gardening. No really, we did. We’re proof that breastfeeders are a cult. And then we started talking about who we used to know around town. It’s Columbus, OH so it’s pretty incestuous and basically we figured out that we all dated the same people.

03/04/01

Oh my gosh, I love this dog. We think that she may actually be part greyhound now. She’s got a brindle coat just like a greyhound and she’s quiet, calm, and obedient in a way that’s kinda odd for a puppy. I’ve heard her bark exactly twice. “Woof woof” very subdued.

Moms Online just laid off most of their producers. Really rotten news. Besides being the loss of a market (albeit it a market I hadn’t really considered lately since I knew they weren’t doing well), it’s a real blow to their telecommuting mom-staff. I applied for (and didn’t get) a center producer job there (twice, actually) and now I’m positively thrilled I didn’t get it.

03/02/01

I’ve been a cat person all of my life. The names of my cats, in order of their apperance were: Pandora, Shian, Misty, Colette, and Milo. (Colette stuck around the longest. She now belongs to my friend Jodi and has a higher standard of living than I do.) However, despite my deep love of all things feline, we got ourselves a dog two days ago. We got her from a non-profit animal rescue place that poses as a pet shop. She’s a terrier/corgi/boxer mix (at least, that’s what we’re all guessing) and is a brindled, tigerish, laidback litle pup — not nippy or yappy at all. Noah named her Peanut. Rumor has it that she’s only 2 months old but she appears to be potty trained already so I’m guessing she’s older. Oh and she plays fetch, too, which seems like a more mature puppy thing to do. She’s keeping us up at night, though.

Everyone said that having a puppy is like having another kid and they’re right. Not only is there the sleeplessness thing (Brett even tried rocking her and I had a bad dream one night that Brett dropped her in my lap and asked me to nurse her) but there’s also the advice everyone is throwing at us. Crate training is all the rage but there are those that would argue this is Ferberizing for dogs. Others say this is attachment parenting for puppies because it ties into their instincts. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s what we’re doing.

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