Mistaken Identity

NaBloPoMo prizes were announced, and I didn't win anything! Boo! But, I went to the website to check the winners list, and I was momentarily excited to see the first winner: Me and Boo. I thought that was me, then I remembered that my blog is not actually called Me and Boo. The come down was harsh. The fleece blanket she won looks cozy.

In other mistaken identity news, I semi-regularly get friend requests on Facebook from people I don't know because apparently there is a woman in San Francisco who not only has my name, but looks like me too. I mean, that's the only conclusion I can come up with, since you can clearly see my face when you try to add me as a friend. That is really creepy, right? Same name, same city, similar face? And LB is in my photo too, so does this other Lillian also have a kid? Does she get friend requests from people looking for me?

Anyway, some guy sent me a friend request, and the personal message in it told me to take a look at the pictures from his trip, and assured me he didn't hook up with as many girls as it seemed. I promptly replied to him and wrote that he had the wrong person, and that he probably should have hooked up with more girls.

So, no prizes for me, but I was able to encourage a stranger to be promiscuous. Not bad for a day's work.

School Picture

Here are LB's school photos, taken last month.





Our scanner quality isn't so great, but you get the idea: my kid is adorable. She could sell Vitasoy or something. I'm particularly impressed with the photographers, who were smart enough to position her feet in the 2nd picture in such a way that you can't tell that we cut the backs of those shoes open because they were too small.

While I love the pictures, the company's prices were exorbitant. Maybe it's been too long since I've purchased school pictures, but it's weird that they didn't offer packages, right? They just sold sheets of photos for some ungodly amount of money. But of course we bought some. What else could I do? We even bought the group class photo, featuring a woman who is no longer LB's teacher. We are obviously idiots.

Until Next Year, NaBloPoMo

It's my last NaBloPoMo day!! So what did we think of this little experiment? I'm dying to know what you all thought. It went pretty well for me, until I hit about day 20, and then it felt like I was grasping at straws.

There are some loose ends I wanted to wrap up from the month:

• I did the butt swab on Sunday. Honestly, I love my Microbiology class, but it feels borderline unethical to make us do this. I mean, what if I find something unusual under my microscope, and I ask my professor to look at it, and he has to tell me that I have gonorrhea on my ass? Then what? Is it really his place to tell me something like that? Is that really something I should discover in a community college laboratory?
• I finished all the Twilight books. While not the most challenging literature I've ever read, they were certainly fun, and I'm considering the benefits of switching to Young Adult books completely. Who needs Vonnegut? However, my biggest complaint is probably that there was not nearly enough sex in the Twilight books. As in, there was no sex. I could tear my hair out in frustration.
• I am SO Team Edward.
• All the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone, thank goodness, and I can get back to my diet. I've only lost 5 pounds since starting Weight Watchers, but it's made a huge difference in how my pants fit. As in, I can actually zip them up and I don't have to wear maternity jeans anymore. (Ok, I did wear them on Thanksgiving.) But before I get too excited, I still don't fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans yet. I've got a ways to go for those.
• Being on a diet, we eat at Subway a lot. (That Jared thing is no joke.) But we've always struggled with what to feed LB there. She's not a sandwich eater. I'm pleased to say we have finally found something that LB will eat at Subway. Salami. We were buying her 6 inch salami sandwiches, then we realized that all she ate was the salami. So now I get the salami sub, and ask them to put the salami in a bag, and that's what LB eats, while I still get the veggie that I wanted. And did you know that Subway is selling $4 foot longs? A steal.
• In an effort to incorporate more exercise in our lives, we've started going on low intensity hikes with LB at Fort Funston. She totally loves it. On Sunday, we brought Bode too, and LB loved that even more. For me, it was a bit too much, having the kid and the dog there. Too many wild things to keep track of. But when I say low intensity, I mean low intensity. I don't even break a sweat. So, I'm not exactly working off loads of calories, but at least the kid gets tuckered out.
  
• I never did a recap of Glee! I watched the one where Rachel has a crush on Mr. Shuester. I love this show, but this was a particularly hilarious episode. I could not stop laughing when Rachel and Will are singing Endless Love, and Will's face gets progressively more and more sketched out as Rachel's infatuation grows. And Finn decides to tell Quinn's parents about the pregnancy by singing "You're Having My Baby" to them??? The whole episode was this how-awkward-can-we-make-this tragedy that was beyond funny. My one great disappointment from this episode was the teaser that Kurt was going to sing "I Honestly Love You" to Finn, but we didn't get to see it. That would have been SO GOOD! But the bad- I'm getting really sick of this baby storyline. I mean, at what point is Finn going to figure out you can't get a girl pregnant from ejaculating in a hot tub?! And, now that Quinn isn't a Cheerio anymore, I barely recognize her without her signature ponytail! It always takes me a fuzzy brain moment to remember who she is. They need to get Rachel and Finn back on track. The sexual tension has cooled, and I want it back. And as someone who has been in show choir (I KNOW! I should be more embarrassed.), I find it completely implausible that EVERY WEEK they are rehearsing a new song. If you really have a competition coming up, you sing like 3 songs. Over and over again. You don't hem and haw and try new things all the time.
  

I have finals coming up for the next 3 weeks, so I'll be busy. I hope everyone has enjoyed this 30 day exercise in masochism. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but it was challenging and fun too. I think I'll do it again next year. What did you think? Fun for you, or too many boring entries?

House Calls

LB has started playing Pretend Doctor with me. Her pediatrician's name is Dr. B________, so she has insisted that we call her Dr. B________. I tried to explain to her that if she was actually a doctor, she would be Dr. OurLastName. But she's pretty clear that she is actually Dr. B________. Actually, what she said was, "I'm Dr. Dr. B________. Not Barack Obama." Whatever that means.

Meanwhile, I am the baby. She expresses a lot of concern for me, and always looks at me with sympathetic eyes. So far, I have had my diaper changed, and we've discovered 3 lumps in my head, cured swiftly by a prescription of soup. As a baby, I've also been instructed to breastfeed. I'm not sure how to handle this, since apparently she is my mother as well as my doctor. While I've been careful to promote breastfeeding as a baby's natural food source, it's always been with baby dolls. But now she wanted to breastfeed me, going so far as to tell me to put my mouth on her nipple. I'm afraid I had to beg off on that one, telling her I was full from the "soup" she had fed me earlier.

The rest of the night, she refused to cooperate with us unless we called her Dr. B________. As in, "It's time for Dr. B________ to take a bath now!" and "Come on, Dr. B________, let's brush your teeth!" She's been much more cooperative since we've acknowledged her true rank and medical degree.

Piñata

Some photos of LB from last week's birthday party. My instructions were "Hit it like you mean it!"

LB meets her first piñata:

Thankful

Food-wise, I consider this to be a pretty successful Thanksgiving. Last year, I tried two new recipes that bombed. This was, it was everything I wanted to eat, and it all tasted amazing. The ham looked excellent, though I didn't have any, and I took 3 bites of stuffing before I realized there was bacon in it. But otherwise, everything else was amazing.

The best part is that I was able to give away almost everything. I think the main problem with Holiday Bulge is leftovers. One day of overindulgence isn't a big deal, but 4 days is.

No Black Friday shopping for me. We went one year and quickly realized there was no deal we needed so badly to fight those crowds. I love a good deal, but I can't imagine waking LB up at 4 in the morning.

I'm having a hard time thinking of what I'm thankful for. It's been a shitty year. I'm thankful for my family and friends and our good health thus far. I'm thankful for pie, Weight Watchers, Twilight, flu vaccines, my Microbiology professor, fake meat, cherry kijafa*, Glee, Robert Pattinson, mechanical pencils, naps, online coupons, and Skype.

*One of our Thanksgiving guests brought us a bottle of cherry kijafa. It's a cherry wine liqeur, syrupy sweet, bu when you mix it with coke, it tastes just like a cherry coke. It sounds ghetto, but it's delicious! And dangerous.

Pumpkin Pecan Pie

Every Thanksgiving, I make this pumpkin pecan pie. With 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 pound of butter, it's amazing.

DB just calculated the Weight Watchers points value for it, and the whole pie is 150 points. To give you some perspective, I get 18 points for the whole day. If I can manage to cut it into 10 pieces, that's still 15 points for a single slice of pie. That leaves me 3 points for the rest of the day. And while I'm vegetarian this year, I don't think I'll be able to keep my mashed potato and stuffing consumption down to just a tablespoon of each.

Ugh, why can't I just have a naturally, freakishly high metabolism? That would solve everything.

This year, we are cooking a ham. DB has always tried to convince me that we should have ham for Thanksgiving, but I hate ham. But since I am the only person not partaking of meat this Thanksgiving, and therefore do not wield veto power, he decided to take advantage of the situation. I think it's unamerican not to have turkey on Thanksgiving, but the vegetarian doesn't get a vote.

God, I can't even believe that after 11 months, it's me who is still vegetarian, and not either my husband or child, who seemed way more invested when we started. Fickle family.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for butter and pumpkin pecan pie!

Dental Hygiene

Since I had nothing to blog about today, I decided to look through my archives to see if there was anything I had written that I decided not to post. I came across this from May 27th, 2009:

Words I actually had to say to my husband:
"You will not brush the dog's teeth with our toothbrushes. Are we clear?"

Come on! Why didn't I post that? That's hilarious.

I am not even making this up. DB actually suggested we brush Bode's teeth with one of our toothbrushes. I don't care WHO says dog mouths are cleaner than humans, I am NOT sharing a toothbrush with a dog, and I will NOT have a child who shares a toothbrush with a dog, and I sure as hell will NOT kiss a husband who shares a toothbrush with a dog. I really really really hope that nothing more came of this.

Sh*t

OH MY GOD. You won't believe what I have to do for Microbiology over the Thanksgiving weekend.

I have to take a fecal sample from my ass.

Yes, I brought home a swab and a sterile glass tube to store it. Apparently, I'm supposed to take a shit, and then not wipe myself, but instead swab my ass and store it in a test tube. And after that, I suppose I can wipe myself.

Per instructor: "The fresher the better. If you're regular and you know you go every morning, you can wait until Monday, and that's fine. If you're not regular, and you need to take your sample whenever you can, that's fine too. 2-3 days is fine for our purposes."

Guess which category I'm in. Yeah, the store-my-feces-for-2-to-3-days one.

I am EXTREMELY tempted to take a sample from LB instead of myself. I can't even tell you how humiliated I am at the thought of carrying my own poo-laden cotton swab to school on Monday. I DON'T CARE THAT EVERYONE ELSE WILL BE TOO! It's too mortifying. Plus, won't it be interesting to see what bacteria are in LB's poo? She's in preschool, so you know there's going to be good stuff.

There's A (Birthday) Party In My Tummy

We had back to back kids birthday parties this weekend, which tells me that a lot of people have sex and get pregnant around Valentine's Day. (9 months, do the math.) It being children's parties, I've eaten a lot of pizza this weekend. Apparently, pizza is the food of choice when feeding kids. LB, though, is not crazy about pizza. As I watched the other children chow down their pizza, while my daughter nibbled on the crust, sipped apple juice, and kept one eye on the cake at all times, I reflected quietly on the fact that if we ever threw a party for LB, we would have to feed the kids tofu-mushroom-celery stir fry, since it's what LB loves the most. I tried to imagine how well that would go over with the other kids. Hmm, not optimistic.

The first party was one of LB's friends at preschool, and that was really adorable because I don't get to see her often with her friends. When she arrived, the birthday girl ran toward her, screaming her name, and flung her arms around her in a big hug. It was ridiculously cute. The girl's mom rented out a kid's gym studio, so there was much tumbling and climbing.

The second party was for the son of a new friend of mine. They had a Yo Gabba Gabba theme and a pinata and cake and cupcakes and ice cream (and pizza). For Halloween, one of DB's friends dressed up as DJ Lance Rock, so I asked if my friend could borrow it for her son's birthday party. Her husband wore it, and it pretty much freaked her son out. For the record, it's the same costume that Brad Pitt wore for Halloween this year (except without the suspicious looking drink):


I felt like a real mom this weekend, shuttling my kid to her various appointments. Our whole weekend was essentially devoted to LB's good times, and it was fun. Well, except that LB was a complete and total a-hole all weekend long, and no amount of threatening that she couldn't go to her birthday parties would keep her calm for long. But nonetheless, we got out, we played, we had cake, and we partied in our tummies.

There's a party in my tummy,
So yummy, so yummy.
Yo Gabba Gabba