Fashion Funk

I will freely admit that I have no idea what is going on when it comes to fashion. Sometimes I feel like I'm riding the wave along with everyone else, and then I see someone in high-waisted denim cutoffs with a plaid shirt tied about their waist and I find myself exclaiming "What the hell year is this?!"

I can't, for the life of me, figure out why the 90's fashion came back. From the sloppy flannel shirts to the combat boots, the circle sunglasses to the dark purple lips. Why the fuck did that come back to haunt us? I thought the unshowered grunge days were over, but apparently I'm wrong. 

I have found that lately, with my (sadly)increased size - shut up, I'll work on losing this baby weight next month! - I have no direction when it comes to fashion. I've recently taken up decluttering my wardrobe because I have a closet and dresser and a huge plastic bin FULL of clothes, yet I find I am saying "I have nothing to wear". It doesn't help that I just plain don't want to put on some of my clothes for fear that I'll look like a potato in it. I've fallen into the mom habit of leggings and a t-shirt, with skechers slip ons for shoes. Or runners because my arches don't much care for the Skechers. 

So I'm looking at the very few sites I can shop from, and I'm completely spacing out on what clothes I could actually wear. I know for a fact that I don't need dress pants until I'm looking at jobs again, but on the other hand should I not have some in my closet for when I need to "dress up"? And what about casual pants? I've got leggings and one pair of yoga pants, and then pajama pants. I recently sold all of my jeans because I know that I feel like a frump when I wear them... but what am I going to wear outside now that it's colder? Why can there not be casual pants that aren't jeans and aren't leggings but are as comfortable as leggings but have the leg shape - read: bootcut or straight fit - of jeans? And if any of you chime in and say jeggings, I will be forced to come through the internet and punch you in the throat. I know that Old Navy sells plus-sized khakis... but would I look like an absolute idiot showing up to a casual friend gathering in khakis and a sweater? I can hear the comments now... "Oh, look who dressed up to come out" and "What, you off to church?"

Ugh. 

I promised my best friend that when I was on mat leave, I wouldn't fall into the mom-clothes trap. That I'd put in some effort and wear more than just yoga pants and a food-stained t-shirt. I have failed thus far. 

But I just don't know what my fashion is anymore! With nowhere to be specifically (like work), I feel like any effort is kind of wasted while I am at home with the kids. Why wear an uncomfortable bra - that's a whole other post - and jeans and a blouse when I'm just going to be chasing after kids and sitting on my ass? Why wouldn't I try to be as comfortable as possible?

And therein lies the rut, I think. Comfort. I just need to find comfortable clothes that don't look like I gave up on life. Unfortunately, that costs money. Money that we don't have. Yes, I've been clearing out my clothing left right and centre... but I'm cutting the cost on that because I want it out of my house more than anything. I'm selling shirts that I've only worn a handful of times for a fraction of what I paid, simply because I want it gone. 

When it comes to doing my hair, I laugh at that concept. Spending the hour it would take to blow dry & straighten is absolutely pointless unless I'm headed out for the night. And even then, I'm more likely to just toss it into a bun and say to hell with it. I've been growing it out for nearly 2 years and it still isn't quite long enough. 

Makeup, again, is another thing I laugh at. Which is fortunate because my Sephora spending was getting out of control when I was at work. Thankfully I have a fully stocked makeup drawer, I'll just need to replace a couple items within the next couple months - mascara, concealer, and powder. Everything else will be just fine, and I do use it on occasion when I have to run out for all of Mr. M's appointments. 

But let's get back to clothes. Help a sister out, how can I style this frump of a dump of a body? Especially just for the time being until I lose weight again and start feeling better about myself? 

IT'S ALIVE

Why yes, that title DID require all caps. I needed you to feel the sauciness flowing through my fingertips right into your eyeballs.

I dropped off the face of the earth for a bit there. Yes, admittedly, I was paying more attention to the younger blog and writing stuff there. But I needed to keep things separate for the time being - by things I obviously mean my mental state - just until I could keep a better handle on it. I'll probably merge blogs at some point because honestly, nobody reads this one so why would I have two blogs that nobody reads? Because of reasons that's why.

I like to be full of empty promises, but the ones I love the most are the promises I continually make and never keep. Such as this gem: I promise I'll update more in the future. As it's currently after 10pm and I'm going to be solo parenting again tomorrow (as Tyler goes to work because his company is garbage), I should really be getting to bed so I'm not a complete Mombie in the morning.

Tomorrow I will attempt a better update when the kids are sleeping.

Cue maniacal laughter at that idea.

Introducing...

The newest addition has arrived. Okay, he arrived (yes, HE) on April 7th but I don't know if you all realize this... babies are a huge time suck.

It has taken me a solid week to try to write his birth story and all of the hullabaloo that has followed, but I find it difficult to do so. It's not that it was a traumatic birth experience or anything, I'm just having difficulty getting the thoughts out.

I'm going to refer you to my new blog where I've begun writing about the troubles I've had since his birth, mentally. That's right, folks. This well-adjusted and normal human being is dealing with some serious post-partum depression and I feel like deep down, writing about it will help.

I'll keep this blog for recipes and stuff, and the other one will deal with the mental side of me.

Thanks, ya'll!

Shh, My Hormones Are Calling

Sometimes, being in a group of hormonal (read: pregnant and/or trying to be pregnant and/or done with kids but have a 3-year-old like I do who JUST WON'T LISTEN) women is just too much.

Or maybe it's all the time.

I'm having a hard time dealing with the repeat posts, the stupid questions, and the sheer idiocy of some of the women I deal with in my online groups. I know that's kind of a stupid thing to say, seeing as I said "Online groups" and everybody knows that the Internet is full of idiots. May as well call the thing Idiotnet and call it a day.

Please don't call it that. Or if you do, I do NOT want credit.

Anyway, I'm a snarky SOB. It's pretty much a given, especially if you've read any of my previous posts (wait, there are a total of 5 people who read this blog so it's pretty much assumed that they/you have read at least one prior post). It is EXTREMELY difficult to a) hold in the snark and/or b) convey the snark appropriately so as to not piss off these extremely delicate flowers. I already rocked the boat in one group by sharing some screen shots with a friend who left regarding what was being said about her after leaving. I owned up to it AND I told off some of the people for being bitches about it. Yes yes, anonymity is a great thing. But that doesn't mean that you have to be downright mean.

I know what you're thinking: hypocrite much?

And the answer is yes, I am a hypocrite. It doesn't make me any better to admit that willingly, except somehow my subconscious DOES think I am better because I own up to it. Stupid subconscious. What I mean is, I have made some good friends from both groups I belong to - the one from my daughter, and the one from this mystery spawn - and fortunately enough for me, they're just the right amount of bitchy/snarky/friendly/awesome that I am.

As I get older - and shut it with the remarks that 29 isn't "old" because I'll be 30 this year - I've realised that I really don't want to keep people in my life that I have literally nothing in common with. This becomes harder because there are people you WANT to keep in your life, but maybe they're feeling the same way - that there just isn't a common denominator anymore. Even if that common denominator used to be how much beer you could drink in one sitting or that your kids are the same age, you just can't force the issue. I would love to reconnect with some people and gave it a solid effort. But when the effort is one sided, it really isn't any fun.

This is why I have so many online friendships. Yes, they all come from different walks of life, but we all met for the same purpose - we were having kids around the same time and we know how to use the internet. My best friend is based out of Ontario, and we've yet to meet face to face because Canada is ginormous and it's incredibly expensive to travel anywhere unless you want it to take a week. Trust me on this one. Yes, I've got close friends in my general area that I DO see face to face, but it's not the same. But it's really been bumming me out lately because we haven't been talking as much as we used to. She's been dealt a shit hand within the last year, and where I say that I'm always here for her, it's a totally different dynamic to be literally over here for her versus right there in front of her. If I lived closer, I could have helped more or been more of a confidant. Instead, I'm the texting friend whose phone is always on but really would only be responding for about 16 hours a day.

I miss face to face interactions, but at the same time I don't. I like being able to sit on the toilet and have a conversation with someone without it being weird and/or them knowing that I'm sitting on the toilet while having the conversation (although, to be fair, I did sit on the toilet during a phone conversation with a good friend recently, but that was only because it was late at night and she was delivering bad news and i really had to pee. Lame excuse, but she didn't care). I like knowing that it could be 3am and I just need to let out a huge spurt of emotion and i can just text or email or message them, and they'll respond when they're willing/able. Most of all, I like that they know me for my personality first. It's the same thing with online dating, to an extent. I liked to have a lot of conversations before meeting face to face because I knew, every time, that there would be that moment of disappointment when they would see what I actually looked like. So I wanted to build up the fact that I am intelligent and funny first, and hoped that would tide me over in the looks department (thanks, brain, for almost writing "looks apartment"). It didn't always work, but hey that's how I met my husband so ... yeah.

Back to the bitchy idiotic women.

Not all of them are. It's not like I see flaws in each and every single person in my groups. But there are like... cliques of them. They're similar enough that I'm grouping them together in my head and labeling them because apparently that's just a thing that I do now. There are the ones who constantly need to be right; the ones that are always going into labour; the ones that are the 'been there done that' mentality and reeeeeally in your face about it; the ones who have no censor and/or no fucks left to give; the ones who are really clueless about everything and you kind of wonder how they got pregnant in the first place. A mixture of all of that. And to deal with it on a daily basis is kind of exhausting, but I love the drama of it. Plus I have fodder for chatting with friends later or telling my husband certain things. He doesn't care about any of it, and doesn't really let me tell him things that often, so I make sure to save the good things for him.

10 Ways How a Toddler is like a Bro

There have been a lot of these lists going around, and they're all true. But mine is more true (because I said so and I'm pregnant and do you really want to argue with a pregnant woman in her third trimester?!) because I'm living it ... IN A HOTEL.

1. They spill things. EVERYWHERE.
I honestly don't know how toddlers are so inept. Miss O likes to spill things like juice riiiiiiight beside the laptop as she watches Paw Patrol for the millionth time (so mommy can watch Food Network on TV) but then not tell me until I come over to clean up and notice that there is a little splotch of dried up OJ roughly millimetres away from the HDMI-in plug.

2. They eat things off the floor. 
There's no 5-second rule in this house - erm, hotel. There's a "Miss O noticed it on the floor so she's going to eat it" rule. On one hand, I'm okay with it because she's building immunities with all the floor germs she's eating AND this hotel is relatively new so there's logically not as many gross germs on there. On the other hand, GROSS HOTEL FLOOR. Last night she dropped some popcorn on the floor (see the above point) and then she hopped down from her chair and proceeded to eat it off the floor. Literally. As in, she acted like a puppy dog and had her mouth almost suctioned to the hotel carpet like one of those scum suckers you see in a fish tank. And like the winning mother I am, I ignored it and asked if the popcorn was good.

3. They're loud.
The concept of "inside voice" is completely lost on a 2 year old. Her whispers sound like the normal level that I talk at, and her normal level of talking is that of a screaming banshee. When we're at home, I could care less about how loud she is because our windows are closed and you can't really hear anything between the shared walls (unless you're our douchebag former neighbours who blast their music/TV so loud the glasses shake in the cabinet). Plus, it seems like she just wasn't as loud. At the hotel, however, it's like we're stuck in an eternal tunnel and everything echoes. She was coming back from breakfast this morning with my husband and I could hear her from down the hallway, laughing and screaming joyfully as she ran to our door. Sorry, hotel neighbours. My kid has no volume control.

4. They watch shitty TV shows.
Bros watch shit like reality TV or NASCAR or whatever. Toddlers watch shit like Caillou and Dora. OH MY FUCKING LORD do I hate Caillou. It is not allowed on in our house (or hotel) even though it's on Netflix. We went through phases of Super Why!, Bubble Guppies, and now it's Paw Patrol. I get why they're liked by kids... they're easy to watch, there's catchy music, and the characters are roughly the same size as a toddler. But fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck I don't know how much more I can take.

5. They wipe their mouth/nose/hand on whatever is handy.
Miss O likes to use her own clothes. If she gets food on her finger, rather than licking it off or wiping it on a cloth nearby, she'll just wipe it on her shirt and then alert me RIGHT AWAY that there's something on her shirt that needs to be cleaned off before she can continue eating. She's come up to me after I've gotten dressed and ready for work, and wiped her face on my shirt for no reason. And I was equally running late and too lazy to change my shirt, so I went to work with peanut butter smeared on it #likeaboss

6. They're both picky and not picky at the same time. 
Bros will pretend to be pretentious sometimes and require that their steak be ONLY prime rib, but then they'll eat a hot dog from a random cart by the bar and proclaim it's the best thing they've ever eaten. Toddlers are the same way. Miss O will have moments of not wanting to eat anything that we put in front of her, even if it's something we know that she's loved before, but then we plop a peanut butter sandwich in front of her and it's like it was covered in gold. She's even gone so far as to proclaim things as " so 'licious" which is both adorable and baffling.

7. They're okay to sit in dirty undergarments.
Okay. So this one might have a bit to do with parents slacking on diaper changes - for toddlers. Bros can just be lazy. After picking up Miss O from daycare, there are a lot of times that we just don't think to check her diaper or change it before bedtime comes some 5 hours later. Then we go to change it and it's like oh man.... that is one full diaper. With bros, there's no way I'm touching their undergarments wearing a hazmat suit.

8. They can nap at any time. 
This does change throughout the years, but Miss O can take a nap in the afternoon pretty much anywhere. She fell asleep at my parent's house on the couch and it was darn near impossible to wake her up, even though she decided 5pm was the good time to sleep. When she was smaller, she would take more naps pretty much whenever she felt it necessary, even if we had shit to do. Come to think of it, this point applies to my husband as well. That guy can fall asleep at any time and it drives me absolutely bonkers. Further to this, they talk in their sleep. I would have made this a point all on it's own, but... oh well.

9. Their mood can flip from amiable to angry in an instant.
Sure, with bros, their moods flip based on alcohol consumption. Toddler's change based on a number of things. It could be hungry, thirsty, bored, full diaper, you're not paying enough attention to them... the list goes on. Miss O will go from playful to shouting at me in the matter of minutes if I decide that I've had enough of her jumping all over me and ask her to stop. Seriously though, toddlers have pointy elbows and knees and when you combine that with a pregnant baby belly, it gets dangerous. But she doesn't care about that, all she cares about is playing.

10. They're adorable at the weirdest times. 
Sometimes, you just can't help hugging a bro. Their lost, absent look sometimes just strikes a chord and makes you go "awwww". I have that moment with my toddler, but usually it's when she's being nice. Such as sitting nicely and watching her shows quietly. That makes me want to just smoosh her with hugs. But then she tries to get away and we start the cycle of number 9 all over again.

Even though most of you knew that toddlers and bros were alike, you try dealing with all of the above in the confines of a small hotel room and then get back to me. Maybe a bro would actually help do the fucking dishes once in awhile...

I Done a Thing

Further to the whiny post where I claimed I was super boring (truth), I was commissioned by Message With a Bottle to write an article. He suggested I do one about gestational diabetes, as my previous posts in here have whined about it enough. 

View my entry here. 

I was so excited. And so proud. And goddamn scared because where, sure, blogging is public to an extent (I've selected to have this blog unsearchable but still public) this was a site with a lot of views. And a lot of people expecting funny things. I think I'm funny, but would random people on the internet? 

On the note of GD, I checked in with my dietician today and I think I'm going to be okay without insulin for the time being. But I managed to come across the spreadsheet I used last time to keep track of my sugars... and sweet baby Jesus, I'm about 90% sure I needed insulin last time but the dietician I was dealing with last time decided that I didn't need to or something. Like, all of my numbers were high. I had more high numbers than I did numbers under the recommended amounts. This time around, I've only had a couple overages and they're explainable by "I just didn't care what I was eating". Yes, I'm that person right now. 

Morning Sickness and Other Stories

If there is one phrase synonymous with pregnancy, it's "morning sickness". Everyone just assumes that once you become pregnant, you're going to be bed-ridden with the ante-meridian sickies but that you'll be totally fine once you pass the hump of the first trimester.

These "people" are either
a) men;
b) women who have never been pregnant;
c) women who somehow got amnesia after being pregnant before; or
d) the magical unicorns of pregnancy who just float by without any fucking symptoms and are adorable their entire pregnancy.

Morning sickness, as it is so called, is actually the biggest load of crap you'll deal with in pregnancy. And yes, I can actually say that with utmost certainty because a high percentage of women will deal with more puke coming out of them than poop. #constipation

It doesn't just last in the morning. It doesn't just last in the first trimester. It's not always just a case of feeling a little "off" and that you need some water or to lie to down. Or that crackers or dry toast or gingerale will help alleviate it. For some women, including a couple friends of mine and the Duchess of Cambridge, get it so bad that they literally have to be hospitalized. And this is how they feel the ENTIRE pregnancy.

With my first child, I was somewhat of a magical unicorn. I only had mild nausea in the first trimester, and it was always at night/suppertime. I wasn't working at the time so I was able to just lie down and take a nap whenever my body said it wanted to. And my husband didn't really care if he got home and I was comatose on the couch and he had to fend for himself for supper. This time around? I had to delve into the world of prescription anti-nausea pills (Diclectin) at roughly 10 weeks pregnant and here I am, 22 weeks later, and I'm still taking them daily. I work, I have a toddler to take care of, my husband is out of town working, and I'm dealing with all of this house re-building bullshit. My body is also 4 years older than it was when pregnant with my first, and it's like "HAHAHA FUCK YOU BITCH WHY DID YOU WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN" as I lie on the couch praying I don't lose whatever I just attempted to eat.

I told my workplace early - as in I was only like 8 weeks pregnant - because I came to work one morning with a box of junior mints, a coke slurpee, and gummy candies. At 830 in the morning. And they kind of stared at me like I was crazy. So, the cat was out of the bag and I just didn't care that they knew. If anything were to have happened, I would at least have a good explanation as to why I was moping around.

But all of that has absolutely nothing to do with why I'm writing today.

This post goes out to all of the women who willingly choose to keep going with the baby farming despite how shitty they feel.

I get it. Kids are pretty awesome, especially when you can grow them yourself. Some women (or men, for that matter) want a million kids to overpopulate the world with (shit, I sound bitter)so they just keep on doing "what God wants and allows them to do". I'm about 900% sure that God has nothing to do with you choosing to use your baby bucket so often that the kid is lucky it doesn't just fall out.

I am certainly and definitely grateful that I am able to create and carry life. But I also know that if I felt exponentially shittier this pregnancy compared to my last, that I am done with utilizing my baby bucket. I know women who have what seems like a million kids (enough to fill a Hutterite van at least) who feel like hot salty garbage every pregnancy... AND THEY KEEP GOING. Why. Why do they continue to do this to themselves? And further, why do they continue to complain about how shitty they feel?

"Ugggh. Morning sickness is so bad! How did I forget this from last time?" they moan, when their previous child is less than a year old. Sometimes I just want to tell them to shut the hell up, they did it to themselves.

But I much prefer being passive-aggressive and writing a blog post about them.