A Realization.

Recently, I was on a plane—the first time in three years without Seth—and actually enjoying it. Hehe. Matt and I were both like, woo hoo! How did we ever think flying was lame? We can sit here and watch movies! And get snacks! This is the greatest!

(After several hours and a miserable layover in a miserable airport, with a miserable delay on the tarmac, we had changed our tune.... :))

I watched a variety of movies, and was particularly conscious of my sensitivities because Marley and Me was one of the options. Haha! Yes. Marley and Me. I had not heard a single person talk about it without mentioning that they cried their eyes out. Not one. This intrigued me. I wondered—deeply—if I, too, would succumb...? I strategized when I would watch it (I had to be in tip-top shape :)) and challenged myself to see if I could withstand what, apparently, no human being with a soul can withstand! Hehe. Mostly because I was fairly confident it was only a tear-jerker for being cheesy. 

Well, I'm happy to report that Marley and Me did not make me cry! HA HA! Not one bit! I enjoyed the movie more than I expected—it was actually the "tear-jerky" stuff at the end that finally had me going, "come on! This was a decent story!" I was highly dissatisfied with the points they decided to make at the end. No crying. Hehe.

But I did cry in other various cheesy moments in other cheesy movies. And as I sat there with a tear rolling viciously down my hotly embarrassed cheek, it occurred to me that I have a trend. More than a trend.... A 100% predictable rule. And it's hilarious!!

When I cry for something cheesy—when I just can't resist the emotional manipulation—I . . . only cry from one eye. 

HAHAHAHAHA!! 

That kills me. Really.... It kills me. So, everyone, let it be known, if you see me crying from both eyes, it's legit. But one eye...? I'm a victim of cheese!

Happy 24/7!

This might sound neurotic, but I've always had a fascination with timelines. Even as a kid, I'd calculate out how far I was from something exciting in the future (like school ending, or my birthday, or Christmas) by counting that many weeks BEHIND me—giving me an idea of the time involved. When I say things to people like, "hey! There's been as much time between meeting Matt and now, as between 1st grade and knowing Matt!," I always expect it will make perfect sense. And, instead, people always say something like, "HUH? ... Whatever THAT means." What do you mean, whatever that means? Anyway, apparently I'm totally bizarre and eccentric and nonsensical about this. But I love to know how far I am from various events—whether in the past or future.

Which is why my phone is AWESOME to me!! It has a...ooohhhh.... Sit down for this.... A day-counter. [Oooooh.... AHHHH....] It's the coolest thing ever!! You can put in a date, and it will tell you how far you are from it—in either direction! You can also ask it, what date is 43 days from now...? And it will tell you. It's totally sublime.

Upon discovering this function, I immediately plugged in a bunch of milestones. For instance, whenever I even LOOK at my phone, it now tells me how many days before Jordan comes home from El Salvador—421, by the way. When I open the application, I can look at a larger variety of statistics: how long Jordan has been gone, how long I've been alive, how long Matt's been alive, how long random people I think of have been alive (don't be surprised when I call to wish you a happy 12,000th day... :)), how long we've been married, how many days between being married and Seth's birth (if we were going to have a baby on February 3, 2010, it would be the exact number of days between Seth and the new baby as between our wedding and Seth, making Seth the exact midpoint between wedding and baby #2! hehe. But we're not. But if we WERE.... See? These are the kinds of stats I actually enjoy calculating...), how many days my parents have been married, etc., etc. Ad nauseum. :)

Which brings me to the story of today!

When I first got my phone, I noted we had been married approximately 2250 days. And, of course, as many of you know, 24 is beyond a great number. It's THE number. I thought, AWWWWWE-SOMMMMMMME!!! Our 2400th day of marriage is coming! I told Matt. He, of course, was ecstatic. Hehe. I said, "Matt! We've GOT to celebrate our 2400th day!" He said, "YEAH!! TOTALLY!! I can't wait!!" Or something to that effect.... ;)

I calculated what day it would be.... 

And it just so turned out to be...

June 22nd.

I did a double-take. I gasped. I calculated it again. I passed out from shock. I woke up thinking how all of my timeline-numbers-stats dreams came true with this one...! Hehe. 

June 22 is not only our 2400th day of marriage, it is ALSO the 7th anniversary of the day we got engaged! And, as every Hebrew enthusiast knows, seven is the "perfect" number. Having these two things coincide was SO unthinkably cool, I briefly wondered if Matt had actually planned it in advance (so that's why he wanted to be married in November...!). Ha ha! No, it was just fate.... :) YES!

We've had a fun day celebrating. We thought about going out to a nice dinner or something, but then I was thinking about the day we got engaged and decided we should pay more homage to it than just going out to dinner. :) On the day Matt popped the question, he had chased down a very late FedEx truck, (with the ring in it! He waited and waited and then, while pacing in front of the window, saw it leaving the street without having stopped at the address! Whew!! Poor freaking-out Matt...), packed a picnic lunch, got stuck in traffic behind some silly parade of some po-dunk silly Utah town, picked me up, took me up into the mountains for a little hike, found a nice little log to sit for our picnic lunch (oh yeah, and also to ask me to marry him and kiss me :)), bought some shakes, and took me to a little park where we sat on the grass eating our shakes, staring at my ring, and saying things like, "woo hoo!! We're engaged!!" 

So, for our 24/7 anniversary, I packed a picnic lunch and took us to a canyon park nearby that we've always wanted to hike through. I couldn't think of a way to have to chase down a FedEx truck.... But I tried. Hehe. I also couldn't find a parade in town to get stuck in traffic behind—but maybe it can count that, very recently, we were thwarted in a billion different places when the San Diego Marathon took over our exact routes to every place we want to go (grrr...). The memory still stings enough for it to have happened today. ;) So we went to the San Clemente Canyon trails near our house, hoping to find a log to sit on for our picnic lunch. Instead, what we found was.... POISON OAK!! Tons, and TONS of poison oak! I've seen a lot of poison oak in my life—but NEVER this overgrown. It was truly awe-inspiring. And intimidating. Especially with Seth around, and especially since we'll be seeing my mom several times in the next few years—which is about how long it takes for the oil to leave clothing enough that her skin won't blow up upon contact. Anyway, we were thwarted. Fitting. Hehe.

We considered going to another hiking place, but decided our events would just fail to coincide perfectly, and went to the park for our picnic lunch instead of milkshakes. Let me just say.... Our life situation has improved immensely in the last seven years. Ha ha ha! We weren't at no park in Provo, people. :) And it wasn't no hundred degrees. (And we were also about to discover a chocolate malt so far superior to the one 7 years ago from the famed Provo "Malt Shoppe" that they really shouldn't get to be called the same thing. Mmmm!!!!) We went to one of our favorite parks in Mission Beach. It's super-quiet, right in the tiny isthmus between the ocean, the bay, and the river. Coolest place ever. (Literally, the bay at your front, the river at your back, and the ocean maybe 100 yards off to the side.) Seth played on toys, and we watched sailboats and the sunset while munching our yummy picnic.

And then it was off to Ocean Beach for that amazing chocolate malt. Which we just ate in the car on the way home.... (Did I mention it was amazing? :))

All in all, a fun day! So Happy 24/7 to us! 

Because Happy 24/7 is what I am when it comes to spending life with Matt. (Aw.... ;))

My Name, Part Two:

Ok, this isn't really about my name.... But for all you people who took the baby names survey, there are a couple more on the list now. First of all.... Tess! Oooh, I love it. Seth, Maren, and Tess. Those could totally be our kids. 

Actually, that's the only one. Hehe. We've also talked Evan a little.... But I don't know.... What are people's thoughts on Evan and Ian? Evan Williams. Ian Williams. Eh. 

I'd rather have Maren and Tess. :) 

Oh, help our poor little boy #2 if he ever exists. We can't find any more names!

What does this make you think?

I'll tell you what it makes me think: don't screw this up, don't screw this up! Auburn, so help me, if you even think about taking your eyes off that light...!

I enjoy creating several "rules of thumb" for life. Hehe. They probably deserve their own blog post! (I'll put it on the docket. :)) Things like: if you had time to make a complete stop, and the light is still yellow.... You chose poorly, friend.... :)

BUT, rule of thumb when you see a photo-enforcement sign?! If you see a yellow light—a glowing yellow orb of death—and you don't slam on your brakes and sit patiently behind the limit line...? You fool! (It's time to go see the doctor about that brain transplant....) Sure, when you're right about to enter the intersection and the light barely turns yellow, chances are you'll make it through. But if you don't...? That $485 ticket is gonna hurt.

Yes! You heard me correctly! $485!

Second rule of thumb at a photo light: don't you dare enter the intersection when there's even the slightest possibility you'll get stalled by the traffic in front of you.

That's gotta be an awful feeling to be stuck behind a row of cars, watching the light above you turn yellow, then red, and seeing the flashes of cameras documenting your stupidity.

So, San Diego has a fair number of these photo lights. I think about 10 or so. I see one or two of them most every day. And...! Without fail!! Can you believe it? I always see people running red lights! Are they insane?! Did you not notice the very prominent signs, warning you that you're about to lose five hundred bucks?! You really want to get through the intersection that badly...? 500 bucks?

Sometimes I think, well, maybe someone is in labor or something. But then I remember Matt trying to get me to the hospital while I was in transition, running red lights all across Denver, and I think... no.... No way would Matt have run that red light. Five hundred bucks? No way. And me.... Sure, I couldn't say two words at the time, but I swear I would have jumped at him, pulled him by the collar, and yelled something like, "cross this line and we're through!!" if that photo sign had come at us. ;)

Five hundred bucks!!

So.... People! What are you thinking?

My Name, Part One:

Brigham Young University and the BYU Humanities Department keep sending things to: Auburn Golding Williams; or Auburn G. Williams. Ugh! That's not my name! And Auburn G. Williams looks positively atrocious. 

A Survey...

So, if you had his permission, would you feel ok about slapping your father in the face as part of a comedy skit or something...?

And another question, which may or may not sound related: does the faucet in a public restroom give you germy heebie-jeebies?

I read in an article in the New York Times that these questions can identify your political leanings! I want to see more! Apparently, conservatives are far more likely than liberals to NOT be willing to slap their father in the face, even with permission—and liberals are likely to think that's just fine (with permission... :)). Also, liberals are far more likely to say the faucet doesn't bother them, while conservatives worry about its germs. 

My answers? I had said no, no way to the slapping my father in the face. It's unthinkable! Maybe my dad before my grandma, or something, but still.... And to the faucet heebie-jeebies...? Also a no. I don't think about it one second. Big deal. I've even been in some pretty germy bathrooms (world traveling has its price :)), and I never once worried that, what? Some germs are gonna.... What...? 

Just give me some soap or hand sanitizer, and back in the fresh air, and I'm good. 

Anyway, I was pleased that with this huge sample of TWO WHOLE QUESTIONS :), I came out as a moderate. Hehe. Which I'm pretty sure I actually am. I'm at least dang sure I'm not a liberal, and sometimes even more sure I'm not a conservative. And now this proves it, right? Ha ha!

As for Matt, he answered "moderately" as well.... Though with the opposite answers! A reflection of our political compatibility...? Haha! It amused me. Even if the thought of Matt slapping his dad is downright horrifying. The gall!

How do you answer? 

Say what?

I love Seth being so creative with talking! Hahahaha! The better he is at talking, the funnier life is. Yesterday, coming home from church, he really surprised me with this one:

Seth— "Ugh, I'm REAL tired, Mom."

Me— "Do you want to go to bed when we get home?"

Seth— "Yeah. I want to eat something ['tea-ting'] first, and then I wanna go to bed.... YAWWWWWNNNNNNNNN."

Me— "Oh. You sound really tired, Mister. Maybe when we get home, you should just have a big drink of milk, and then go to bed."

Seth— "Ummmm....  How about not....  There's another choice.  It's called 'eating.'  And that's what I'm going to do.  Alright...?"

HAHAHAHAHAHA!! I swear I'm not making this up! HAHAHA!! Who could refute such an argument? :)

When in London...

DO enjoy the theatre! London has the best theatre in the world! I'm pretty sure that's generally accepted, too, but it's at the very least my conviction. Hehe. Pretty much anything you can see in the U.S. is going to be better if you see it in London. Some of the explanations I've been able to come up with are:

1) People don't clap over the top of songs. (Thank you!!! You see, they must actually like theatre, and aren't just trying to convince themselves they're enthusiastic. They actually want to—oh, how novel—hear the best part of a song.)

2) U.S. theatre is very sensational. Which can be SUPER-fun. But I love, love, LOVE how British theatre takes everything back a notch. They aren't afraid of a little dead time here and there, or to sing in falsetto for an entire song, or to slow something down. Fantastic.

3) They sometimes surprise with something totally out of the box. For instance, eight years ago I saw Les Miserables in London after seeing it a million times in the U.S. And to this day I don't know how they did it—same set, same songs, same staging, same everything, but they actually made Javert the lead character, not Jean Valjean. It was incredible. Amazing! Kristin and I went back, what was it, Kristin? Like three days later or something? We just had to see it again. Totally changed the profundity of the show. I'd love to see it that way again.

Now, the point of this post is to warn you about what you don't need to see in London! I thought I had found the one show that stinks in Britain, but it turns out there's another. Eight years ago, I discovered it's worthless to see The Lion King. My favorite musical! I couldn't wait. But, hahahaha! It had no soul! A real travesty.... People running around all proper-like, calling Simba "Simbur" just didn't do it for me. So give me our soulful American performers in that show, please, please.

This trip, we discovered another! Can you guess? Which show can you imagine just wouldn't work in Britain? Wicked! It wasn't as bad as Lion King, but it definitely needed help. Galinda was never, ever meant to be British. Ha ha! Just wrong! :) Maybe—maybe—the rest of the cast, but you've just gotta get a valley girl to play Galinda. Also, all the main characters were missing a tremendous amount of attitude. Every one seemed so. . .mature. . . . Which might have been interesting.... Except that it wasn't. 

My other great disappointment in Wicked was Elphaba's singing. She was ok. I even warmed up to her a little by the second act. But my favorite thing about Elphaba has been my hope that she'll destroy the whiny, nasally, pinched belting that Eponine made popular about 10 years ago. For years, you couldn't watch a woman sing on stage without her singing entirely out of her nose. And then Elphaba comes along.... YES! Biggest voice ever! And when she sings the pretty stuff, nothing nasally about it. Thank you, Elphaba!! (It's been great that the nasally voice Galinda has, which is exactly what everyone else has been doing in seriousness, is a caricature in Wicked. My hopes have been high that Wicked will change the tide!) In London, I don't know—maybe it was just an accidental casting, but the Elphaba was total nasal-girl all over again. Bleh. Which is funny, considering that London is typically a respite from nasal-girls. But in the one show where you don't find nasal-girl in the U.S., she suddenly shows up in Britain. Strange!

Anyway, we saw some other great shows, and actually still enjoyed Wicked. (They did have an interesting mood, with things a little slowed down and such. The characters were just too . . . desassified! :)) But even if Wicked and Lion King are the coolest shows ever, and London has the best theatre ever, be warned! Enjoy something else! You'll be so glad you did, too, because it's gonna be AMAZING. :)

Evolution of a Model

I recently saw this on someone's blog, and thought it was kind of interesting.... (And not just to gawk at the hideous eye makeup. Yikes.) How great is Dove's campaign? I really hope it has some kind of impact.

Happy Days are Here!

Vacation begins in T minus 90 minutes. And counting! Oh, are we counting.

Sunday School

:) Why having church classes for 2-year-olds is either a really bad or totally awesome idea:

Seth: "Heavenly Father and Jesus love us. They do! They love us! Heavenly Father and Jesus are up, up, up in the sky. They're in the oven."

HAHAHAHA!!

Seven Pounds *SPOILER ALERT*

A few questions about this totally stupid movie (it was actually so stupid it was enjoyable :)).

• Why only save vegetarians? Did you notice? Hehe. I guess vegetarians aren't cruel. I bet that guy at the nursing home was a total meat-eater.

• HA HA HA!! They changed the color of Ezra's eyes! HA HA HA HA HA!!! What, did he have a full eyeball replacement? HAHAHAHA!

• Ok, so fierce jellyfish neurotoxins are going to make you a good organ donor, how...? Poor recipients.

• Did anyone else want to scream, "NO! DON'T! You're going to kill her!" when Will Smith decided to sleep with dying girl...? Because, seriously, he would have killed her. 

• They fell deeply, deeply in love in two weeks...? Ha ha! Ok. Whatever.

• Did this movie make you forget that Will Smith can make more than one face? That pained staring at people thing got soooooo... OLD. (He was so good in Pursuit of Happyness. And then there's this and I Am Legend...? What happened?)

• So, Will's irresponsible, flagrant texting causes the deaths of six totally random people (plus his wife, of course). And to make up for it, he's going to give life to, not totally random people, but people he can qualify as "good people." Wha...? That's kind of disgusting. 

• He promises abused lady that her boyfriend will never be able to find her, then has her promptly assume ownership of his house under her own name? Not smart, Will. Not smart.... (Beware of the sequel when boyfriend guy finds her in like, two weeks.)

• It's worth saying again: that face he kept making was ridiculous.

• What was so special about Ezra and what's-her-face getting together? Presumably there were lots of other transplant beneficiaries.... Why those two? Oh, yeah, because now she can look into his eyes once more. HA HA HA HA HA!!!

• So Will Smith wants to do something charitable for good person with the bad heart, and then makes her fall in love with him just in time for him to off himself? That wasn't very nice, Will....

• You know, he sure killed himself AWFULLY slowly for a guy who had already tipped the authorities off to his plans. I'm not thinking that would have worked out for him.... (And, again, the jellyfish was a bad enough idea that he must not have thought through this whole thing as smartly as he thought....)

• Moral of the story, then?: people with rare blood types owe it to the world to exchange their pathetic, jellyfish-fixated, guilt-ridden lives for the greater good. It's the only reasonable thing to do. What a hero. Ah, makes me feel at least as warm and fuzzy as what's-her-face looking into Ezra's Will Smith eyes. :)

(It at least got the organ-donation-is-the-only-reasonable-thing-to-do part of it right! Not that anything else went right, though. What a delightfully terrible movie! HA HA HA!)

Capitalization

What does it mean when people like to type things with no capitals? Whole emails or blog posts with no capital letters. It's gotta mean something—be connected to some kind of personality trait or attitude or something. :) 

i, for one, find it completely jarring. and i'm not sure what's most jarring.... the sentences beginning with lower-case letters, or the word i in the lower-case. unlike the sentence-openers, the word i doesn't even exist in lower-case, so it's pretty unsettling, no?

Anyway, whenever I see this strange thing, I wonder where it's coming from.... There needs to be a typing analysis science to go along with handwriting analysis! :) (The only thing I remember about handwriting analysis—other than the fact that my handwriting leans the opposite direction you'd expect, though I've forgotten what it all means—is the egocentrism that goes along with "inflated middle-zone." I notice it all the time now! Especially when people inexplicably have capital R's in the middle of lower-case letters. Inflated middle-zone. Hehe. Don't worry, if you're reading this and you do such things, I don't actually remember that you do. ;)) 

You know, reading back over my sans-capitals paragraph, I think I see a type style where double-spacing after a period in our post-typewriters-with-fixed-character-width computer world could actually be appropriate.... (That's one hot mess!)

Swine Flu

So, these days, Matt is working in the clinic with the first case that identified this new swine flu. I just think that's interesting.... 

(Also, the San Diegans with swine flu haven't been very sick at all. The kind of thing where they had a sore throat and found out later it was swine flu.... Apparently, all the U.S. cases have been very mild. I wonder why...? But the CDC is requiring swabs from any and all patients with respiratory symptoms (!!!). Whoa. That's a lot of patients to be swabbing!)

A funny conversation. :)

I thought Seth had been napping, but then he timidly opened his door (I think he knew he was supposed to not come out... :)) and from two separate rooms we had this amusing little exchange.

"Momma . . . ? I need to go pee...."

"Ok, go ahead and go by yourself and then go back to bed."

"I go in mine? Or go in yours...?" (meaning his bathroom or our bathroom)

"Go in yours."

"Yours?"

"No. Not mine."

"Not mine?"

"...Yours."

"Mine?"

"Yes, go in yours."

"Go in mine...? Ok. I'll go in yours."

(Hehe, I think he wanted to go in ours all along. :))

Sorry, my old abodes. Again....

Why Spring snow always made me cry even more than Winter snow:

Oh, the sadness!!

Need an Immune System Boost?

So Matt was working with some "Vitamin D expert" last week, and came home analyzing my life for me. :) Apparently, Vitamin D is the key to happiness. Hehe. I don't know all the little scientific details, but those of you interested might enjoy a bit of research—Vitamin D is supposed to be hugely beneficial to immune health. And it all made sense to Matt that I was an extraordinarily healthy person all my life until . . . my first Winter in Provo. And then my immune system tanked. Big time. Is the timing a coincidence? Hmmm.... All my life I'm outside practically all day long, and I'm healthy, and then there's no sun and I'm a disaster...? Anyone else have a similar pattern...?

And I guess my milk addiction couldn't get me very far. I'm probably getting these numbers wrong (check back for when Matt corrects me and I change them :)), but it was something like 150 units of Vitamin D in a glass of milk, while 10-15 minutes out in the sunshine gets you 15,000. Anyway, so on top of our current sunshine time, we're going on a Vitamin D-3 supplement experiment! I'll let you know how it goes. (Supposedly, it wouldn't be effective short-term, but in a couple months should start to make life even better. We'll see! :))

If this turns out awesome, I might just forgive Matt for getting hot glue all over the ironing board. ;-) 

(I was going to make curtains today, but the hot glue is a little intimidating!)

Natural Birth

There's a childbirth tag going around that I've almost filled out (since, you know, I'm enamored with forms :)), but I keep getting hung-up on a pet-peeve and end up wanting to write about it instead. :) My pet peeve rears its ultra-silly head in two questions on this tag:

1) c-section or natural?

2) drugs or natural?

To human beings everywhere, I've got to insist we were all born naturally! If you think having drugs makes it unnatural, then so do all your other unnatural resources. Maybe for the true "natural" birth you should go all primitive (as some societies in corners of this world still do...). I've heard of places where a woman will just disappear off into the wilderness and return hours or days later after giving birth by herself into a little hole she dug by a tree. Problem with a birth that "natural," though, is how frequently she has to return with no baby.... (Or doesn't return at all.) I don't recommend it. Not with our great resources available to give your baby a decidedly better chance.

And how is a c-section unnatural? Ha! Last I checked, there's still a real-live person growing in another real-live person. Sounds natural to me. Maybe if they went in with a robot doctor to extract a robot baby.... That might be venturing into unnatural territory.

I propose different questions. C-section or vaginal? Yes, that requires you use the word vaginal. It's very childbirthy, though. Even natural sounding. :) 

And as for the drugs question, how about "your pain required drugs, your pain didn't require drugs, or you were clever and used drugs to preempt pain entirely?" News flash, world: childbirth causes all sorts of types and intensities of pain. It's not predictable like stubbing your toe or something. The conversation as to whether everyone should or should not use drugs—or which route allows a more "beautiful" or "natural" experience—is totally irrelevant and off-the-mark. Even ridiculous. I've known people who have had an array of experiences even just on their own—who have had a drug-free labor that was also relatively pain-free and beautiful, another labor that threatened to destroy their soul for pain, another labor that was glorious because an epidural allowed them to enjoy the process and feel connected to their baby, another where pain-relief made them feel less connected—not to mention the differences between people. I can say, just from my one experience, there was nothing beautiful or natural or earthy or lovely about the few hours that labor was ripping my soul apart. (You know when multiple nurses—independent of each other—come in to fix the monitor they think is broken because they've never seen such contractions, and look at each other in disbelief when it isn't broken, and say things to you like "I've never seen contractions like this! You're a contractions machine!" that you're not in a good place.... ;)) Want to know when childbirth felt natural and mother-y and touchy-feely happy? When they were able to reduce my pain to something halfway manageable! I kind of feel like I experienced two kinds of labors in one shot. And, still, I can't say what I'd do next, because I don't know what it will be like. Maybe I'll get lucky and have more "normal" contractions, or even "easy" contractions, and can avoid the whole gross thing in the spine (UGH!! a miracle... but UGH!!). :) One thing I'd love to avoid, but never would allow myself to forego, is being in a hospital tethered to an IV and fetal monitor. No matter how wonderfully comfortable I would be without all that (I hate hospitals and IVs and monitors...), I'm such a huge believer in giving my baby the best chance. I think I'd even have qualms about delivering in a hospital without a NICU.... Here's this baby with no power to take care of itself—totally helpless. It's all up to the parent to give that baby the best chance, even if they have to sacrifice some small comforts. It's comforts . . . versus life. No-brainer for me. So give me that IV (I never realized until Seth came how important it is to have an open line for emergency drugs! I thought the saline thing was totally stupid until I heard Matt explain how critical it is to get that line when you know you can, and then ended up needing emergency pitocin myself to not hemorrhage...), and give me that monitor (which can save a baby's life... like Seth's...), and for the love of God (really...), give me that hospital with trained professionals who can do amazing things like take a baby (Seth) who would have died at home, and resuscitate him to near-perfection in moments (and actual-perfection in days... :)). Birth has always been natural and it still is, however it happens. :) And while there are many things we could do to further improve childbirth medical practices (malpractice reform! Ob/Gyn has an insane lawsuit threat that ties doctors' hands.... Midwives [if they know to use IVs] in a hospital-setting have a valuable place, too), the fact that we're so much better at keeping everyone involved alive now is a miracle we should never take for granted. Or, for heaven's sake, insult with the definition "unnatural."

So, thank you, to all our moms. Who gave birth to us naturally. :)

A Shocking Confession.

I have a deep, dark secret. It may spoil my reputation as a loving mother and child advocate forever. But I'm going to let it out anyway. I... hate... (and I mean hate) ... bathtime. [Boo! Boo!! Throw tomatoes on her!] I know, I know! Bathtime is supposed to be one of the joys of child care. But to me, all I experience is a back that wants to break—souring my good humor over things like tremendous splashes of bubbles everywhere. Is there any task more uncomfortable? Bending over a bathtub, scrubbing a kid...? Ugh. It kills me. I detest it. I've always hated it—and having my own cute kid did nothing to lighten my feelings. :) (Even though he IS really cute in the bath! I can appreciate with a little distance.... :))

Luckily for me, or maybe because of me, Seth has always loved the shower. I don't think we gave him a single bath as a baby (no cute pictures of a baby screaming in their little bathtub... darn :)). But, ah, shower time was so pleasant! He loved to just lay on someone's chest with the water on his back, and I would nap with him in the tub until the hot water ran out. Nice, too, that in the shower the poor baby never has to feel cold (though I realize some babies love the bath anyway...). I miss baby-shower time! (That was years ago now! Wow.... It'll be fun to have another one someday and do some of the fun baby stuff all over again.) Anyway, I was just thinking of this again when Seth was, unusually, asking for a bath today and I thought, HA! Not a chance.... Not until Dad gets home, at least. :)

Ugly Dogs

Ha ha! A few days ago we were playing at one of the small playgrounds on Mission Bay Park. Well, Seth was. We followed him around talking about how funny he is. :) It was that awesome hour before sunset—which is now late enough in the day that people actually get home from work to enjoy it—and there were tons of people jogging and biking and walking their dogs. Seth was loving all the dogs! And people were so nice—they'd stop when they'd hear him yell "dog!" from across the path, and let him catch up for a few moments to play with their pet. After having lots of fun petting several dogs, he started just acknowledging them while he ran around.... He's throwing sticks, he's dancing, he's spinning in circles, he's jumping or running—and whenever he passed a dog he'd just say "hi, Dog!" and keep on with what he was doing. He said hi to about a gazillion dogs (probably 20 :)) that way. Until he passed by this:

Ha ha! Now, this story would be so much better if I had the perfect pictures to show you, but I trust you get the gist.... He passes by this ugly creature (seriously, how can anyone stand to look at that every day? And take care of it...? :)) and says, "Hi, Cat!" 

Ha ha!! The looks on the owners' faces! We were dying. Matt said (not to the owners :)), "well, that's when you know something has gone seriously wrong in your species...." Seth was too busy rolling across the grass to notice he had said anything unusual. :) (A side note: he learned how to roll down hills recently, and loves it so much that now he'll drop on grass anywhere to "roll down." Which is hilarious when it's not a hill, and he's working so hard to just roll across, all the while maintaining a conversation with one of us. "How are you doing, Dad?" [roll, roll, roll] Fine, how are YOU doing, Seth? "FUN. I'm rolling down the grass." [roll, roll] :))

So anyway, we thought we had our blog post for the day. But then.... THEN!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! He's running along the path singing a song or something, and something like this walks by:

I say "walks" but I really mean "struts." This little pooch was freshly groomed. The lady walking it was coming straight from a salon or something, and was herself strutting. Poochie had a cute little bow on the top of her head that made her long hair stick out, and a perky little hairy tail. It was a silly little sight. And Seth.... He ran by, stopped dead in his tracks just long enough to say, matter-of-factly but with a happy little sound of surprise: "Oh! A rooster." And off he went again...! 

Ha ha! I'm not sure if the lady heard him because we were laughing too hard to notice. :)