mamajoan

After several nights in a row of waking up quite soon after going to sleep (like 11:30-midnight, ugh), Ruthie slept this morning until 6:15! ZOMG!

And when she did wake up, she only fussed to herself for a moment before realizing that she could get up out of bed herself and come find me in my bed. So she did that, wearing a huge proud-of-self grin. ;) I think the reason she hadn't done that much sooner is that she was waking up while it was still dark outside. Now that it's lighter in the mornings -- and since she was waking so late (for her) -- she could see better and that probably motivated her to get up on her own.

Anyway, so she got into bed with me and we nursed for about half an hour and then got up. She sure was full of beans this morning, and chattering up a storm.

Oops, I meant to write more on this, but got busy with work and now it's time to go. Ah well, stay tuned for more later!

(BTW you may have noticed / be about to notice that I signed up to have my Twitter posts, called "tweets", automatically posted to my LJ every day. I've been tweeting a lot lately, as I mentioned before, so you'll have that to look forward to. ;) )

Hee hee, so I have myself on my friends-list, and that means that this morning I got a cheery email from LJ saying "Hi mamajoan, mamajoan's birthday is coming up!" LOL.

Here I am at the office with my lime pie. woohoo! It seems to have set up firmer than the first one I did a couple of weeks ago, so yay for that. At least five of my coworkers brought in pies for Pi Day, and one of them brought two pies, so it's going to be a fun afternoon :)

In related news, big thanks to hawkeye7 for pointing out that 34 is a Fibonacci number! I continue my string of mathematically-interesting ages after all. Yay!

more later...

Hi! It's still me, the LJ user formerly known as chlaal. Thanks (perhaps) to some of your "votes" for me on the news post, I was gifted with a rename token from the LJ staff. So I am now mamajoan!

As I wrote recently, I had been considering a rename for a while. The name "chlaal," which I invented back in high school when I was a silly teenager, increasingly meant little to me and its particular uniqueness had become annoying. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a username that is guaranteed never to be taken on any website where you're signing up for a new account...but OTOH people always misspell it and no one knows how to pronounce it, yadda yadda, it just gets tiresome after a while.

In the aforementioned post, I also mentioned that I wasn't sure about switching to a name that defines me purely via my kids. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that a) everyone chooses a username that expresses only a small percentage of their selves. I mean, it might be the name of a band you like or a sports team, it might be your astrological sign or your cat's nickname or what your given name means in Sanskrit or whatever; but a username, which can be a maximum of fifteen characters, can never fully capture you in your entirety. So you choose what matters most at the time you choose the name. And b) at this time in my life, when my kids are so little, my "mama-ness" really DOES define me primarily. I mean, I'm many other things, but these days I'm a mama first.

And then, this morning after I found out that I had the rename token, I thought about it some more and realized that "mamajoan" actually does represent an enormous amount of choice in my life. Those of you who are new to my journal may not know that "Joan" was not my given name. I have a different first name on my birth certificate, and Joan is my given middle name; I started going by Joan in approx. sixth grade. And, of course, anyone who has read my userinfo knows that I had my kids as a single-mom-by-choice. So, in some ways, "mamajoan" is like an encapsulation of the person I have chosen to make myself into. And I think that's awesome.

So anyway ... here I am! "chlaal" is dead, long live mamajoan. ;) Love me or leave me! :)

Mmmmm. Did I mention yet how much I love delicata squash? Also, squash is fun to say. I'm just sayin'.

I am giving serious thought to renaming my journal 'mamajoan'. I just don't really feel any connection to the name 'chlaal' any more. (Since I know someone will ask, here's a link to a post wherein I explain the meaning, origin, and pronunciation of 'chlaal'.) On the other hand, will I come to regret choosing a name that defines me only through my kids? Must ponder. In my copious free pondering time, of course.

In other redefining-myself news, I've been pining for Stacey and Clinton of "What Not to Wear." I feel like my wardrobe needs a total overhaul and I don't have the money, but more importantly, the know-how to do it. I'm frustrated with my current dearth of pants that fit properly, and with how hard it is to find ones that do. Apparently I'm a weird shape with my belly-pooch and my wide hips and short legs. Jeans seem to come in "just the tiniest bit too tight to be comfortable" and "will sag halfway off my butt" and nothing else. I just wish I had some clue of what kinds of styles I should be buying, and then I could find one place that had those, and I could buy a bunch of them in different colors, and then there I would be. You know? But of course, part of my problem is the utter lack of time for trying things on. Last night I actually left chorus rehearsal an hour early to sneak some jeans-shopping time...tried on five pairs and none of them fit. I ended up buying two sweaters even though I had walked in saying "I'm not going to look at anything except pants." SIGH.

Anyway...just another thing that's on my mind. Stupid clothes. Stupid body. Stupid culture insisting that I cover up the stupid body with stupid clothes. ;)

In totally unrelated news, I tried buying some bubblegum on the theory that the reason I always get the munchies at the office is just my mouth needing something to do. That didn't work out. I chewed for a bit, blew a few bubbles, then my tongue got tired (insert boring lewd joke here) and I tossed the gum and got some pretzels. heh. mmm, pretzels.

( update on the preschool situation )

Are my posts the boringest ever? Srsly? Is my life the boringest ever? Discuss. If you're still awake, that is.

Mom just came and took the kids away, and I have a ton to do before we leave for our trip. I probably will not post again for a bit -- not sure whether we'll have teh internets in Vermont.

But before I go, lemme just weigh in on the news that LJ is deleting/suspending user accounts again -- the apparent crime being drawing naughty pictures of HP characters. You can see at least one of the offending images, which one of the deleted users has posted on her GreatestJournal, here.

You'll also notice that LJ has quietly changed their code such that deleted accounts, when you use the "lj user=" tag, no longer show up with the little head icon and a line through the name. Now they show up merely in boldface, like so: ponderosa121 Is this LJ's way of trying to smack people down for using the moniker "Strikethrough 07" to refer to the last round of deletions? Not cool. Seriously, now it's like they're just TRYING to make large swathes of fandom leave.

I'm not even a Harry Potter fan, AT ALL, as many of you know. And yet...if anyone would care to point me in the direction of those tools that let you download/export your entire LJ? I'm going to give serious consideration to abandoning ship. This shit is just not okay.

Gotta go pack now. Laters.

Happy Solstice, everyone!

Ruthie update: Last night I squirted some breastmilk into her goopy eye (breastmilk has amazing antibacterial properties, you know -- I use it often for things like that). I also put a little bit into her other eye just in case. Then this morning she woke up with the other eye crusted shut. D'oh! But she managed to get it open herself without my help, and after I got her cleaned up, it was clear that both eyes were a bit puffy/swollen but much less so than the one eye was yesterday.

I went and picked up the erythromicin anyway, and put it in both eyes; she barely fought it at all, which was good. We're supposed to do it 3x/day, so sandykidd will do it this afternoon and I'll do it again tonight before bed. I may also do another breastmilk treatment depending on how the eyes are looking. As of this morning, though, they were both looking not-so-bad and Ruthie was her normal self, temperament-wise, so I'm thinking it's not going to be a big deal.

Tomorrow sandykidd and Bastian are leaving to fly down to Arizona and visit her family, so I'll be staying home with Ruthie. I didn't try too hard to find a babysitter, because of the eyes. Hopefully I'll find someone to watch her on Monday though. They're coming back late Monday night.

CSA: This week's haul had stuff other than leafy greens!! We got some turnips, beets, and sugar snap peas! *DROOL* We also got more greens (a new kind of chard, more kale, bibb lettuce, romaine, arugula) and some baby fennel. I am a little scared of the fennel. I have no idea what to do with it. I'm not even sure whether I like it (I hate licorice).

PSA: In case you missed the announcement, LJ will be selling Permanent Accounts for a limited time, starting tomorrow. Here's the news post about that. A permanent account costs $150 and gets you a bunch of nifty features. I already have one, thanks to the LJ Fairy (whom I have a pretty good idea who it is, but I don't know for sure). LJ only does Permanent Account sales once in a blue moon, so if you want one and have the cash, now is your chance!

PSA part 2: For those who knew and loved the late thamiris (and who could know her without loving her?), you may be interested to know that there's an effort underway to raise money to convert her LJ account to a Permanent account. You can check out the community tham_preserved for details.

Well, Isaac coughed a few more times overnight but never woke up. Around 7am (when my alarm goes off, but an hour before he usually gets up), I heard him crying/whimpering a bit, and I got up, thinking he was awake, but apparently he went back to sleep. So I got all ready for the day and so forth, and by 8 he still wasn't up and I couldn't decide whether to wake him up. I didn't know whether to consider him sick (and thus let him sleep) or assume that all was well (and thus wake him, as I normally would at 8). I booted up the computer intending to post that same dithering here. ;) But as I was skimming my friends-page before posting, he woke up for real.

And he was his normal self. Which is to say, he was groggy and grumpy for the first few minutes but then perked up. He didn't feel feverish, and he only coughed a teeny bit once awake, and his nose only ran a little bit. So, whatever. I got us ready and he had some yogurt and we went off to daycare and work. I hope he's not getting sick, but OTOH, I'm not really sure what to do about the coughing overnight and all that. I already run the humidifier in his room all night and it gets pretty darn humid in there. Maybe I'll run it in the living room this evening while he's playing before bed.

I titled last night's post "kitties and kiddies" intending for it to include a little Cosmo update-age too, but then I got distracted by my worries over Isaac's coughing, so I forgot to put in the Cosmo stuff. Here's what I basically would have said: We have reached the point where I can pull up my shirt and watch the bumps and ripples move across my belly as Cosmo moves. This is endlessly fascinating and never ceases to entertain. Here is a post that I wrote on this topic during my pregnancy with Isaac. I've been going back and reading my LJ posts from that pregnancy (and marking a bunch of them with my "pregnancy" tag for easier finding). It's kind of fun to see what I had to say about the whole thing back then.

But getting back to Cosmo, s/he continues to be very active throughout the day and often at night too. Sometimes I wake up at night and feel him/her moving and think that my waking woke him/her (even though I didn't move or anything), although it seems more likely that actually it was his/her movement that woke me. Anyway, this is supposed to be the most active time -- the period when the baby is big enough to pack a wallop but not yet so big that s/he runs out of room to move around -- and Cosmo is certainly living up to that. Next week we'll be at 28 weeks (the beginning of the third trimester! OMG) which supposedly is when movements start to slow down, but we'll see.

I'm interested to note that I haven't had any dreams about Cosmo per se. Supposedly during pregnancy you have more vivid and intense dreams, although I'm not sure that's exactly true for me because I always tend to have pretty vivid dreams. And I have been having them this time, but not specifically about Cosmo. I feel like by this time with Isaac, I had already dreamt numerous times about what he (or she; I didn't know) would be like. I seem to recall that Chickpea (Isaac's nickname in utero) was male and female in pretty much equal proportions in my dreams. Cosmo, on the other hand, hasn't appeared at all that I can remember. Maybe it's because the having-a-newborn-baby aspect of things isn't as much a mystery to me as it was back then, although of course Cosmo's particular personality (and gender) is still a mystery. Anyway, I still have plenty of time to start dreaming about Cosmo, heh.

Well, our actual Thanksgiving day was, uh, weird. We pretty much just hung out and then took the bus to Harvard Square and wandered around looking for an open restaurant. The only one open was the kinda crappy Chinese place, so finally we gave up and got kinda crappy Chinese, took it home and ate, then home and bed.

Today, being Black Friday to the rest of the country but Thanksgiving Day to us, ( much drama ensued but in the end it was a pretty good day. )

Anyway, after all of that, the one cousin left to go back home, and the three elderly relatives are staying at my mom's place, and Isaac and I came home. Tomorrow morning we'll go back over there first thing. Per tradition, on the morning after Thanksgiving, we have waffles for breakfast -- the one day of the year that my mom's waffle iron sees any action. ;)

So that's basically my Thanksgiving report ... tune in tomorrow for the waffle update. ;)

If you're like me, you check "Joule" regularly to see who on LJ has friended and unfriended you. (To use Joule, just go to http://marnanel.org/joule?user=chlaal but replace "chlaal" with your username.) And if you're like me, when someone unfriends you, you wonder why. (Especially if it's someone you know in RL!) You wonder whether you did something to upset them, or said something on your LJ that pissed them off, or what. Maybe you even click on their username to see whether they made a post about it (like, "I'm unfriending a bunch of people who pissed me off" or "I'm too busy to read my whole flist so I'm cutting down" or whatever). And then you wonder whether you should unfriend them.

And then there are the people who will friend you and unfriend you repeatedly. Why do people do that? I'm not asking rhetorically, I really want to know.

In case you aren't aware, LJ has things called filters. Filters can be used for two purposes: to control who sees your posts, and to control which posts you see on your friend-page. You can set up a "default" filter that controls whose posts will appear when you go to www.livejournal.com/users/[yourname]/friends. So if you get annoyed with a particular person and want to stop reading them for a while -- why not just remove them from your default filter? It's a lot easier than unfriending and refriending. And the beauty of it is, they will never know. Some of you reading this are not on my default filter, meaning I don't read your journals every day. But you can't know who. And everyone's happier that way, don't you think?

I just don't get it. I don't get the constant unfriend-refriend-unfriend game. Why?