Pink Prickly Pear

Assembling my cloth diaper command center...

I woke up far too early this morning.  Once it became apparent that going back to sleep wasn't an option, I resolved to make a cup of tea and read my book.  I did get that cup of tea, but then I stupidly decided to "just check my email" while I ate my bagel.  And then I thought I'd just finish reading that cloth diaper FAQ and before you know it, the internet made that sucking sound and everyone was awake and there was no quiet time to sit and read my book that has nothing to do with pregnancy or cloth diapers.

Poo.  I suppose the good thing is I think I've caught up on "cloth diapering advances over the past 6 years".  A lot to wrap one's head around.  There are flushable, compostable diapers with little reusable cloth covers!  My preference is to just use cloth pre-folds and covers, but there is definitely a time and a place (road trips!  visits to bewildered non-cloth diapering friends and family!) for flushable, compostable diapers.

Every time I look at the prices on some of these cloth diapering options, I have to catch myself and remember just how fast little ones blow through a package of disposables.  At the end of the day, cloth is less expensive than disposables, except you're paying the bulk of it up front.  However, there are some very fancy, artsy fartsy, organic wool, vegetable dyed diapers with ridiculous prices I just can't quite fathom.  Sixty or seventy bucks!  Just because it has felted mushrooms or sunbeams or what-have-you embroidered on the bottom?

The good news is that cloth diapering is a massive cottage industry for work at home moms.  Aside from pre-folds (and I'm still on the hunt - I'll bet I can find some made stateside), it looks like everything I need is made right here in the U.S.A. and you can't say that about much of anything anymore.

The bad news is that I'm spoiled for choice.  Too many shopping choices makes my head spin, but I'll try not to complain about that, because I feel like I complain about this all-in my-own-head non-issue too much as it is.  Still, the other day, when someone gaily gushed about how I must be doing all the really fun shopping for cute baby stuff, I almost hired her to do it for me.

I don't really care about the cute baby stuff, I just want the cute baby!

Speaking of cute babies, are they not everywhere?  We went to the pool over the weekend and everyone and their mother seemed to have cute little roly-poly half nekkid babies with them.  Lucky for me, they (the babies) no longer burst into tears when I smile at them.  This seemed to be happening very consistently last year, possibly when my baby fever was at its highest, most unmanageable pitch.  I suspect I was giving off some sort of, "Hey kid, given half the chance, I just might bundle you under my shirt and take off running!" vibe.  These days, I get nothing but happy gurgly baby smiles.  They must sense my super lactation powers have been activated.  "Form of milk bar!"

Technologically speaking...

...this week's been an annoying one.

I tried to burn a CD only to have the drive on my computer decide to stop recognizing CDs.  Then it decided to recognize a Netflix DVD as a recordable CD.  After much cajoling I was able to persuade my computer to eject!  Eject! Eject!  and not record a play list over a film I don't own - but it's not supposed to be able to do that, right?

Now I can't even watch films on there;(  Lugging my iMac to the Apple store is a chore I don't need to add to my list.

Then computer also failed to recognize my iPod!  This on a night when I could not sleep and badly needed someone to talk me to sleep in the dark of my bedroom.  I'm reading a couple of really interesting books this week and I knew turning on the light for a little put-me-to-sleep reading was not going to work.  And then my little iPod radio/speaker thingy in my room refused to recognize my iPod and then my iPod decided it wasn't going to turn on or respond to me in any meaningful fashion.  The following morning, it inexplicably turned on with no explanation for its extremely bad behavior.  It's been acting up and I'll be so sad if this is the end.  Having an ancient vehicle with no CD player (let's not even talk about having a little mps docking station or whatever they call them), I rely on my iPod being hooked up to one of those little magnetic cassette thingies to save me from our backwater NPR station and commercial radio while driving all over the place (yes, we do spend a lot of time in the car here in SoCal).  Plus, all those nights when I can't sleep!  And all those classes I sit and wait outside, knitting, but needing someone to whisper news of the outside world into my ears!  Sometimes when I go to the podcast menu, it just turns off and I have to start it up all over again and scroll through the menus 2 or 3 times before it will actually let me listen to what I want to;(  iPod drama.  How ridiculous to get this bent out of shape about something I totally didn't need a couple of years ago.

I also needed to scan in some photos - something I've done on numerous occasions with no problem.  And nothing worked.  The programs that normally just capture the scanned image wouldn't do so.  Since at this point I was ready to rip my sleek little computer from the wall and hurl it at the wall, I decided to take the dog for a walk instead.

Then yesterday something happened to the internets.  Was it the wireless router?  Maybe, because I wasn't able to print my transposed knitting instructions out on our wireless printer.  Mr. Pear had to come home and wrangle with it.  It's a mystery to me.  The internet is back...somehow...and now the printer is hooked up the old fashioned way.  Knitting instructions printed.

I have knitty picks to share (teeny tiny little boy baby cardigan to make you say "Awwwww," and just for braggin', the beginnings of my very delicate lacy shawl), but I'm loathe to hook up my camera because you know something would happen and my pictures would all delete themselves from my camera card or my fancy new camera would explode.

I think I will just ignore all this stuff that supposedly makes my life easier and go sit on the beach today. 

Who's legs are those?

Having finally recently mastered the art of riding a bicycle, Mini-Pear discovered this pair of hand-me-down skates in the dwindling box of "clothes to be grown into".  It seems we've hit some point where we're not on anyone's radar anymore with regard to outgrown clothing.  Actually, I take that back.  We're not getting any clothing for Mini-Pear, but Mr. Pear's co-worker's wife is pregnant with her third child (first girl), so she sent Mr. Pear home with enough baby boy clothes for this baby* to wear a different outfit every single day for the first year of his life at least.  Very handy, since you all know how much I hate the shopping.

You know, it's not so much how I hate the shopping as how inept I am.  I wrote recently about a disappointing search for maternity clothes.  My mother, who needs no excuse to shop, immediately took this on as a project.  She arrived with a complete summer wardrobe for me.  Would you believe that everything fit, with the exception of one pair of shorts which felt just slightly too snug around the waist?  I mean, here I go into a shop, with the actual body in need of clothing, try a million and one things on and none of it fits, and all my mother seems to need to do is hold it up on the hanger and squint at it.  It's been years since clothing me was her responsibility and as I've waxed and waned considerably in this time, I find this no small feat.

But this is about Mini-Pear and skating, isn't it?  She started out awkwardly clomping around the back patio large before discovering that concrete paving stones separated by 2" wide avenues of pebbles are not the best surface for skating.  Now she awkwardly clomps along the sidewalk - decidedly less awkward when someone (in this case, it's her granddaddy) agrees to pull her along.  I made the mistake of telling her how fast one can go down a hill when all tucked up like a little egg.  She immediately crouched into the position and shot down the driveway towards the street.  I saved the day by shoving her into the flower bed.  She probably has a different opinion about that one...

* Oh hey, yeah, it's a boy!

Ahhh... Eh.

The other morning I called to Mr. Pear from the kitchen, "You can't stay in bed all morning!"

The fact that I was already up and in the kitchen before he got out of bed is noteworthy in and of itself.  Close readers know that this teenage mommy does not get out of bed until Mr. Pear brings her a hot cup of something.  However, I was feeling extraordinarily well rested and therefore, rose quite cheerily and made my own hot cup of tea and hot buttered crumpets (I brave the Trader Joes parking lot for these and these alone).

"Oi!  Pear!!!" I called a little louder.

"It's not going to give me bedsores!"

It's true.  We have a new bed and, among other things, the new bed is engineered not to give one bedsores.  We could lay in it all day long, every day, if we wanted to, to no ill effect.

It is not organic.  Nor is it a futon.  Nor is it king-sized, but it is some ultra-cushy Swedish memory foam that makes me conk out practically the minute my head hits the pillow (which is also new and made of that cushy Swedish memory foam).

However, I think it might be too comfortable.  I fall asleep immediately and don't move for hours.  This makes my muscles feel a bit funny when I do get up.  And usually, I get up because my bladder is bursting because I haven't tossed and turned and gotten up to empty it before the bursting point.  Then I have to hobble to the toilet and hobbling makes me feel old and decrepit.  The new bed is also, we have discovered, not very conducive to cuddling.  Our fancy Swedish memory foam pillows are quite heavy, so I can't tuck my arm under them when I am the cuddler.  I have to lay with my arm sort of mushed in between my burgeoning torso and Mr. Pear's back.  It is clearly to one's advantage to be the cuddlee in this situation.  I can't lay all the blame on the pillows (especially when they cradle my head so gently and require no nocturnal punching and rearranging).  When we had our other bed, we would take advantage of the inevitable tossing and turning and switching sides to cuddle back in.  There is no tossing and turning in this bed, so no opportunities to cuddle back in.  Therefore, I wake up feeling...well, feeling not very cuddled.

And, even worse than the cuddling (is it?  the lack of cuddling is pretty bad), I think it may be too soft.  A familiar backache has reintroduced itself.  It is the same backache I get after sleeping for more than a couple of nights on the expensive cushy mattress at my parent's house, and the expensive cushy mattress at my father in law's house, and yikes!  the expensive cushy mattress I slept on when I lived with The Fridge many, many years ago and basically all the beds I ever slept on until I met Mr. Pear and his very firm futon. 

Or it could be the unfamiliar backache of a lady with a big expanding belly falling asleep on her back and crushing everything in between.  Yeah, it could be that.  Or it could be something else...

Bad time to buy a bed, I think.  I mean, it's a good time, because I really needed it and could not sleep on the crappy futon anymore, but a bad time, because what if this ultra comfortable bed is the right bed for me, but I just don't know it because my body is in a transitional phase at the moment and therefore, unable to judge my new bed.  What if????

We have 120 days to change our minds.  There was a bed just like this one at the friendly Swedish bed shop, but a little less cushy.  I think that one might be the perfect bed.  Or maybe it would be for a pregnant lady, but not so for a no longer pregnant lady.

The anguish.

ETA:  Duh!  Swiss, not Swedish!

Help!

Okay, we've watched The Story of Stuff (if you haven't, make a cup of tea, put your feet up for 20 minutes and watch it too, please) and while it's stimulating a little more conversation than usual about sustainability at our house, it sometimes seems as if nothing will stop the girl's unquenchable thirst to buy more stuff.

Other resources that will appeal to kids?  Repeated discussions aren't working.  I prefer modeling sustainable buying habits over guilt trips, but it's not driving the point home either.

I don't want to lay down the law.  I want to share information with her and guide her towards reconsidering her needs. 

If you have books, websites, ideas that work at your house, I would LOVE it if you shared them with us in comments.  I'm at my wits end stemming the tide of mass produced furry animals and American Girl Doll paraphernalia.  I feel like I spend my days dusting, laundering, organizing and finding homes for things as opposed to spending time with people I love.  And yes, I've tried to stress this in my obviously not very compelling argument.

A feeling like ennui

I know it's the modern condition and all, but I am bored out of my fucking mind right now.

I feel like all I've done all day is wash and fold laundry, try and find appropriate homes for recently acquired goods, and decide what to do with the ones that don't fit (either my body or my personality).  I put our emptied luggage back in the garage and I've broken down endless boxes for the recycling.  Periodically, I've shuffled into mini-pear's room, eyed the overflowing shelves and wondered where it's all going to go. 

In an effort to maintain sanity, I decided it was time to go sit in the sun and knit for a bit while mini-pear hurled herself around the playground.  We'd been there about ten minutes when some big grey clouds came and hid the sun.  I sat and felt cold and knit a bit, but then my fingers started getting too stiff for that, so I clutched my travel mug and people watched.

Then we came home and there was yet another big box on the front porch. 

Christmas was lovely, but I'd like it to end now please.  Can someone come and fold up our tree and recycle all these boxes and papers?