So apparently my new thing for 2009 is not blogging. As my grandmother once said, my “blog is growing mold.” So here is my attempt to bring it back from the dead. Since I last blogged (in December!) a lot of things have changed in my life, most notably being my going back to work full-time. I was looking forward to it and dreading it with equal parts of my being, and truly, it kicked my ass. I have mostly been commuting by bus, which adds an extra couple hours to my day, and by the time I get home all I can think about is getting in bed. I can’t even relate to the Alexia from years past who used to go out every night…now it is all I can do to get my laundry done and make Holland her bottles for daycare before passing out around 9:30pm. Yeah, I am pretty awesome. Anyway, what are my other excuses…work has been crazy. No, beyond crazy. But I am enjoying myself there more than I ever have before, which is nice. My two year anniversary with Pop Art was January 8th, and that is the longest I have been at any job since college, and I am really pretty proud of that. Holland is getting huge and even more fun and talky and wonderful, and requiring more and more of me everyday…but I am due a five AND six month update next week, so I will save the baby stuff for then. Until later, internet! Ta.
In an effort to get myself writing, here is a list of five random things about me. This is a total cop-out, but my brain doesn’t work very well anymore.
1. I salt my grilled cheese sandwiches. A habit I picked up from an ex-boyfriend. It sounds weird but is sooo good. Because the butter and cheese just aren’t enough…
2. My views on abortion changed drastically after getting pregnant. I am a true liberal at heart and would still NEVER vote pro-life, but I definitely have a different opinion on when life “begins.”
3. I would never wear shoes if I didn’t have to. I am barefoot most of the time, and prefer that to having anything on my feet. Being on maternity leave is great because I am always in my pajamas. I have a HUGE collection of shoes that I haven’t worn in months, and it is going to take some getting used to when I have to start wearing them again.
4. When I was in kindergarten I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. I used to spend hours digging around looking for “fossils” because someone told me that rocks were really dinosour eggs. This older boy at our apartment complex playground used to make fun of me about it constantly and successfully squashed my dreams. I am pretty sure he a drug addict now.
5. I AM REALLY EXCITED TO GO BACK TO WORK! I always thought that being a stay-at-home-mom would be the most fun job ever…but I am getting bored in a big way. I love my baby a lot, but I am looking forward to the day that I can pay someone else to watch her for a few hours so I can go interact with grown-ups and use my brain.
So…it’s been a while. I don’t know why I stopped writing here. It’s definitely not because I am too busy. Sure, I have a newborn, but if anything that keeps me home and doing even less than before. Holland and I do a lot of sitting around…watching tv…eating…drinking wine (okay, that’s me, not her). And we are online a lot. So really, I have no excuse. I just feel a lot less interesting now that I am no longer pregnant. Now I am just regular Alexia, with an unusually cute baby.
Holland will be one month on Sunday, which is unbelievable. The past month has gone by really fast, and I feel like she has been here forever. September has been possibly the least productive month of my entire life. Besides the months after I graduated from college in 2004 and did nothing but sunbathe during the day and go out at night. Ah, youth. Funny, I was also living at home during that time. And not working. Just like now! Not working is not good for me. I get really lazy. I am really bad at staying on a schedule and staying structured on my own, which I think is something that might be important when one has a newborn. Excuse me, a four-week-old. But loosely, this is our day: Wake up around 4am, Holland chatters away in her bassinet until I wake up and feed her. At that point she gets to sleep with me, because I am too tired to put her back to bed. We wake up at some point during The Today Show, and stay in bed until The View comes on. Then we get up, let the dogs out, and go to room we call “the great room” at my house. Because it’s so great? Ask my mom about that one. Anyway, I go online for a while, and at some point we go to McDonald’s so I can get a diet coke. Then we come home and I make something like a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. I eat a lot of grilled cheese. I have rediscovered my hatred of cooking, and very often will go without eating rather than exert the energy necessary to make a meal for myself. Afternoons are often spent visiting people in Portland or running errands in Portland, or generally finding an excuse to go to Portland, because Vancouver bores us. Evenings we usually hang out at home, with my mom and brother (bonus points when they cook for us). I tend to either fall asleep at 7pm or stay up until 2am, depending on how much Holland is sleeping and/or letting me sleep that day. Sometimes people come to visit us in the evenings, although that is starting to die off.
Sometimes I go three days without showering. Sometimes I look at myself and at Holland, decide we look like a couple of ragamuffins, and get us both cleaned and dressed cute and leave the house, just to feel like a human being. Luckily for me, Holland is super easy to transport, and really doesn’t mind all the field trips I take her on. Getting out of the house is my saving grace these days, as I feel like I am in some weird state of limbo, like my life is on hold. I live with my mom. I am not working. I have this huge responsibility of a newborn, and at the same time, no responsibility at all.
I am going to start blogging again, on what will hopefully be a regular basis. I have no excuse, and Holland is starting to get really judgemental about how unproductive I am (”Mom, you suck!” Love, Holland.)
I am doing this instead of thinking of something to write about on my own because it is TOO HOT to think. I am tagging Alana and Jen to do it in their blogs too. Also, anyone out there lurking who has a blog and is reading mine, you should do it too. Have fun!
Four jobs I have had in my life:
Papa Murphy’s! I worked there in high school and for the first half of my freshman year of college. It was a blast. Our store was completely ran by teenagers. Word of advice to business owners: don’t put teenagers in charge of your business. One of the funny things about this job was that we were the corporate store, so they did all the filming of the training videos there. I am in some of the videos. One that I remember is that I show how to properly wash your hands while on the job. It involves singing Happy Birthday to yourself. A lot of other funny things happened at that job, but I should probably not broadcast my youthful indiscretions on the internet for all to see.
The Limited: Ah, retail jobs. This was one of several I have had in my life. I worked at the store at Lloyd Center my senior year of college. I spent most of my money on clothes. A LOT of drama went down at that store, and we ended up closing. I wasn’t very impressed by how that company treated its employees–a lot of people who had been working there for a long time got screwed. It didn’t really affect me though, and I quit right before graduation rather than stick around and deal with it. I still have some clothes from there. I also developed an addiction to food court food at that job.
Nordstrom: I worked at Nordstrom for a while after I graduated from college, in Handbags out at Clackamas. This job taught me how to spend more than I earn and the importance of accessorizing in threes. After taking my “Future Nordstrom Leaders” class I looked into my own future and decided I saw more than folding boxes and lying to women about how much they needed a $400 bag, and quit. Just like the Limited, this job was nothing but DRAMA.
I was so desperate to get out of Nordstrom I accepted a receptionist position at this small company in NW Portland (it will remain unnamed.) They were involved in stocks or bonds or something, but I could soon tell that something was REALLY sketchy about the way things were being ran. My job was mostly answering phones, running errands and putting together information kits for potential clients. Towards the end, creditors started calling A LOT about unpaid bills and our paychecks started bouncing. One day I showed up and was told we would no longer be getting paid. My co-workers and I spent the afternoon at Miu-Mius and 21st Bar and Grill instead of working. That was the end of my college/post-college streak of bad luck with weird jobs, as I started working as a Legal Assistant at LORSK soon after.
B) Four movies I would watch over and over again:
Beaches
Pretty Woman
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
When Harry Met Sally
C) Four places I have lived:
In Vancouver, WA for the first 18 years of my life, and sporadically here and there in years following (and starting again in August!)
In the house on N. Portsmouth with Quinn and Alana (and Coconut) from September 2004 to February 2005. Brief but very memorable.
Stadium Station Apartments next to PGE park from July 2005 to May 2006. Just me and Coconut. My attempt at living alone. Verdict: not for me.
The house on NE 14th & Ainsworth with Joe, Max and Aaron, and the animals (Emma, Basil and Mia and Coconut), from May 2006 to May 2007. A very, very fun year.
D) Shows that I watch:
Law and Order SVU
Anything on E!
Jon and Kate Plus 8
So You Think You Can Dance
E) People that e-mail me regularly:
My mom
Alana
Jen (email christmas!)
Nobody else regularly, although I get emails from Quinn and my grandma on a semi-regular basis.
F) Four places I have been:
Cancun
New York City
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
G) Four of my favorite foods:
Ice Cream x10,000
Ham the way my dad cooks it for me. Fried and delicious.
Deep fried spicy tuna roll at Yuki
My mom’s tuna fish casserole. I can’t replicate it, no matter how hard I try.
H) Four places I would rather be right now:
Not pregnant, at a bar downtown, drinking margaritas or dancing or doing anything that pregnant people can’t do.
Disneyland. Again, not pregnant.
At Good Samartian, post-birth of my baby.
Cancun.
I) Four things I am looking forward to next year:
Not being pregnant.
Living with my mom (no, really!)
Going to Cancun in the fall of 2009 with my mom and Holland.
So Jamie Lynn Spears had her baby…I am sooo jealous. Why does everyone else get to have their babies and yet, I CONTINUE TO BE PREGNANT? I feel like I am enduring the longest pregnancy ever. Ugh. Jen and I have g-chat discussed in length today Jamie Lynn’s choice of name for her daughter: Maddie Briann. Hmm. It has a nice ring to it if you say it with a mock southern accent…I probably would have extended Maddie into Madeline and stuck an “e” at the end of Briann, but whatevs. I like it more than Honor Marie, that’s for sure. That’s what Jessica Alba named her daughter, for those of you who aren’t in The Know. Yours truly, Judgy McJudgement Pants. Anyway. Tonight for dinner I had mini-pancakes and velveeta shells and cheese. I feel like velveeta cheese should be spelled Cheez. Delish. I am going to microwave some more pancakes (they are so mini! Just like me!) and then probably head to bed like a big, pregnant loser, on this, a beautiful, warm, thursday night in June (I should be at a bar, drinking margaritas). I have my 31 week pre-natal appointment tomorrow. I don’t know what that means. I never know what my doctor appointments will entail until I am actually there. Last time I walked in and saw this long, toothbrush looking contraption sitting on the counter next to the thing my doctor uses to listen to Holland’s heartbeat. I must have look frightened because the nurse said “oh, don’t worry, that’s not for you. We don’t start checking your cervix for a few more weeks.” GREAT! So that means I have something to look forward to. Anyway, pancakes call. Ta.
If I could sleep all the way until August I would. I have barely gotten out of bed this weekend. My doctor’s recommendation of taking Dramamine for my evening nausea has worked for me…also, just eating less has made me feel a lot better. It has also made me lose five pounds! Maybe I won’t take the record for weight gain in a pregnancy after all. Hopefully I won’t have to fill the prescription for the real nausea medication my doctor wrote me…still debating whether or not to fill the vicodin he prescribed for my tendonitis (which, he thinks is also the culprit of the pain in my foot). I can’t exactly take it during the day, which is when I need it the most. I might just tough it out until august when I can take ibuprofen again. I am also going to be seeing a podiatrist soon, so I want to see what he has to say about my foot. I am sure it will be something along the lines of “Your foot is hurt and you are pregnant so we can’t do anything for you. Sorry!”
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this weather. I know it is crappy and rainy and I am sure everyone is so sad that the weather isn’t nice for the holiday weekend (wah), but you know what? If I can’t have fun, no one else should be able to either. It also makes sleeping all day easier when it is dark and rainy out. I love it!
And finally: I posted this a couple years ago on my myspace blog and thought I would repost it to see if anyone new wanted to do it. I think it is kind of interesting.
What makes a photo “interesting” on Flickr? I have no idea, but apparently, this picture ranks at the very top of that list for my flickr pictures.
This was Thanksgiving 2007. We were in Grant’s Pass at my grandparents house and I can’t remember why we decided to put my parka on Emma, but I think it was a decision made after quite a bit of wine was consumed. Look how well she obeys, standing still like that while I take her picture. The hood fell over her eyes after this and she kept bumping into things as we were trying to take it off of her. Joe watched in horror as we laughed and laughed…(”You guys are mean! Mean!”)
I am what some might call “messy” or “unorganized” in my personal life. I move around a lot and I tend to pack up my stuff, store it somewhere and not get around to unpacking it for a couple years. I accumulate a lot of stuff, so I never really notice if I am missing something. This impending baby has been making me feel like I should, perhaps, get my shit together. This evening, for some reason, I felt inspired to go look at the contents of the trunk of my car, and it was like a TREASURE chest of fun things I had forgotten all about. This is what I found (and this is just what I could carry inside in one trip):
Two of my favorite jackets
A pair of awesome heels I thought I had lost
Two pairs of flip flops i haven’t seen since Mexico
A Pippi Longstocking DVD (?????)
Some random christmas presents I meant to give out in 2006 (guess they are mine now!)
A tote FULL of toiletries (including my Be Delicious fragrance back from when I worked AT NORDSTROM, some expensive skin products, the Amor Amor fragrance Quinn gave me for valentine’s day like, senior year or something and a kind of ridiculous amount of hair products)
About a third of my MASSIVE (and missing) accessories collection (I know you are out there, other two-thirds! I will find you!)
I can’t wait to delve into the rest of my packed up belongings and see what I find.
Today’s Special was my favorite tv show when I was little (like, pre-kindergarten). I don’t remember a ton about it, but I watched it everyday, and watching this video of the theme song still makes me a little anxious and excited, because I loved it SO much. I was traumatized by the way they ended the show–they bulldozed the mall where the mannequins lived. I don’t remember the fate of the mannequins though. I hope they made it out safely…
JK. I am sitting here on my couch watching the cats lick eachother. They are friends! They never do it when I have my camera handy, though. I had to leave work early today because I have felt sick all week and today it finally caught up with me. According to the internet, my uterus is the size of a soccer ball. I can feel said uterus under my rib cage and it makes me naseous. Literally, it makes me naseous, not just the thought of it. I am a month away from my third trimester. Can’t wait!
In other news, I finally got a computer of my very own, which is pretty much the most exciting thing that has happend to me in, oh, about 6 months. I made chili this week and it turned out AMAZING. Oh, and the Office is on tonight. Wow, i lead an exciting life.
To close, I would like to introduce a new feature called “Rude Things Complete Strangers Have Said to Me This Week.”
“What does your husband do?” Oh, I am not married, but thanks old man I don’t know. Please pray for my illegitimate child!
“You are due in AUGUST?! But you are SO BIG! Are you having TWINS?” Thanks Safeway Checker Lady. I appreciate your concern. Please rot in hell.
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