Milestone #1 (Mine, Not Josie’s)

Personal 1 Response »
Mar 172009

What is the opposite of a gym rat?

Whatever it it is, I’m that.

I used to be so uncomfortable that I could barely even force myself to go without massive stress and fear, even tears sometimes. I apparently look vaguely athletic, but psychologically, I’m the kid who was afraid of the ball and always got picked last for any team sport.

Having actually gone to a hospital gym in Atlanta, and now to the Y a few times, I no longer feel like the dorky ignorant kid among the cool kids. Indeed, both places were far more densely populated by women old enough to be my grandmother than by anyone whom I could classify as a cool kid.

Three weeks ago, I signed us up for a family membership at the Y. Because even though I am not a fan of the gym, I am a fan of good health and longevity, and of being a good example for Noah and Josie.

Also, I want to fit back into my professional looking clothes. Because I do believe I will get a job one of these days.

For the last 2 weeks, I went swimming every other day for 20 minutes. Every time I got out of the water, I felt like all of the muscles in my entire body were made from melted butter.

Today, I was surprised to see that the 20 minutes were up! And when I got out of the water, I didn’t feel like I was made from melted butter! Woot!

My plan is to stick with the 20 minutes, 3x/week, through the end of March. Then I plan to increase to 25 minutes, and in April, I plan to increase it again to 30 minutes. I have no plans further out than April. We’ll see.

I need your help. My usual fitness program retention rate is about 6 weeks. Would you mind holding me to account in April and May?

Thanks!

Posted by Liza at 11:07 am

The Sleep Deprivation Is Officially Killing Me

The Real Live Girl 5 Responses »
Mar 152009

When Noah was a baby, I hit the sleep deprivation wall around 10 months. But since we now know that having more than one child is logarithmically more difficult than having just 1, I’ve hit that wall a lot sooner.

So far, Josie has slept through the night twice, I think. I only remember the most recent one, which was mercifully the night before my last job interview.

At the moment, the poor girl has a rough cold and cough. I know that’s why she has been sleeping so poorly, but that doesn’t make me any less bleary and exhausted.

We also know that her crying doesn’t wake up Noah, or at least it hasn’t so far. Some middle of the nights I’m faster at getting up and going to her than other middle of the nights.

So.

When this cold is better and she is breathing well, sleep training begins.

With Noah, when we hit that wall, we did some sort of modified ferberizing. And it worked pretty well, over the course of less than a week. Please God, let us have similar results with Josie.

Posted by Liza at 7:05 am Tagged with: ,

Bad Week for Blogging

Personal No Responses »
Mar 112009

It’s been a bad week for blogging, at least so far, although not a bad week in general.

Monday was pretty productive, although I ended up having a very nice, unplanned, and long lunch with my Aunt. Which ate into blogging time.

Yesterday I was on the road all day, for an interview. The job would be awesome, but the location bites. If I get it, hopefully they’ll let me work from home or from their Milwaukee office 3 days/week.

Today started off well, but deterioriated quickly. Too much time at home in the morning, and then the cafe Internet access was slow and cranky, so nothing major done in the afternoon.

The upside of the whole week so far is that we joined a gym, and I am swimming again! I’m on track to do a full mile this week. My plan is to keep the pace easy and low key for now. I’m doing 20 minutes each time, and 3 of the 4 times I made the full 1/3 mile.

I want to up to 45 minutes, but slowly, adding ~5 minutes per month.

Posted by Liza at 10:36 pm

Retirement Fund Denial

Personal 5 Responses »
Mar 082009

Like a lot of people, we have only semi-consolidated retirement accounts. So it takes a bit of work to get to review everything.

And given the nearly daily bad news about the stock market, I have had zero motivation to see how bad it is.

But somehow yesterday I decided that I had to know, and I had to know now.

It was ugly. Thank goodness we’re still young enough that we have time to save. We are down a bit over 50%. A year or so ago, I was vey pleased with where we were, and now, well…like I said, thankfully we anticipated working for another 25 years. I worry about our friends who already depend on their retirement savings, or who hoped to retire in the next 5 or 10 years.

Have you looked? Or are you pretending that IRA means Instant Rock Art? 401(k) means you have $401 dollars and (k)=kiss retirement goodbye?

Posted by Liza at 8:46 am

Bye Bye VOIP

Moving, Opinion, TV No Responses »
Mar 072009

We have had a lot of technical difficulties with our home land line here in Wisconsin.

I know, a land line? We aren’t using it for phone service, so if you would normally think of calling us at home, please don’t be offended that we didn’t give you the number. Jill needs a land line for faxing for work.

First we went the traditional route: AT&T. Somehow I managed not to sign up for long distance with anyone, and so Jill wasn’t able to send 90% of the faxes she needed  to send.

Then someone came along selling a Time Warner Cable cheapo deal where we would get everything including free Showtime for about $5 more than we were paying for basic cable and fast Internet already. So we agreed to try VOIP/digital phone.

It has been a very difficult 12 days.

We have not gone 3 days without a service call, although to be fair, some of those calls were for cable or Internet problems, not only phone. But 3 were because we didn’t have any dial tone. Three separate technicians have come to our house.

Two calls ago, TWC credited our account with a free month. At that point, we thought we would use that month and then go back to analog phone service.

Yesterday, when the dial tone wasn’t working again, Jill’s head exploded.

The soonest we can have analog service again is Wednesday. We thought we might try to catch up on all of the episodes of The L Word that we haven’t seen this season — which is all of them — before we cancelled.

Unfortunately, Showtime On Demand didn’t work last night either. So we have watched two episodes, and the prospects of our fitting the rest in before Wednesday are dim. At least we already heard that Jenny dies.

Posted by Liza at 7:58 am

Yikes!

Ancient History 7 Responses »
Mar 052009

Ok, I really did think that I had no embarassing clothing pictures, because my taste in clothing is generally too conservative and boring to provide much hilarity.

I was wrong.

Liza at Prom, 1987

Can you imagine a less flattering dress? Wide shiny band at the waist, giant bubble to make your hips, butt, and legs look big, strange hemline…. And even though my shoulders look as white as my legs, I assure you, I was wearing white nylons but not a white bodysuit.

Also? I am loving my obvious mad curling iron skillz. I was too lazy to do that every day, but apparently I could pull it off as needed.

Thanks to FaceBook, thanks to Jennifer Sommers and her picture taking skills, thanks to date Matt for the awesome yellow corsage, and thanks to senior prom in 1987.

Heeheehee. Hope you enjoyed the laugh as much as I did.

Posted by Liza at 10:18 pm Tagged with: ,

Seriously?

Current Affairs, Opinion 9 Responses »
Mar 022009

Have you seen the news story about the Ohio woman arrested for child endangerment, because she was driving, breast feeding, and talking on her cell phone at the same time?

Normally, I try not to be too judgmental about other moms, but I can’t seem to stop myself from making an exception here. ARE YOU KIDDING? Nursing while driving??????

Maybe I’m the freak. I usually won’t even start driving until Jill’s seatbelt is all the way fastened, much less Noah’s or Josie’s. And yeah, I also admit that I’ve made mistakes on buckling them in, so on about 2 occasions each, they’ve been driven somewhere when I thought they were buckled in, but I was wrong.

And of the two times when I discovered my error en route, I pulled over to buckle Noah in properly.

Incidentally, when I first heard this story, I assumed the driver had an infant. Who among us who is a parent can’t relate to the heartbreaking cry of an infant who is hungry and OVER being in the car seat? It is awful.

I admit to endangering myself while Jill was driving, once, about 45 minutes before the end of a ~4 hour road trip with Noah while he was 7 months old.

I climbed into the back seat and contorted myself into a crazy yoga-esque position so that I could nurse him while he remained securely locked in his car seat.

But this child wasn’t an infant. He or she was almost 2 years old. That’s old enough to be told that you have to wait, or to be offered a solid food snack.

That’s also a larger sized child, not an infant who could concievably fit into a sling while being driven somewhere. I don’t advocate that, I’m just able to envision it making nursing while driving physically possible.

That’s the other thing. Maybe I’m just uncoordinated, but I don’t think I COULD drive, talk on the cell phone, and nurse at the same time. It seems like one of those crazy tricks, like rubbing your tummy, patting your head, and blowing a bubble at the same time. Only dangerous, and dangerous to your child, not just yourself!

Apparently this mom could get up to 180 days of jail time for what she did. While I have no problem with extended nursing, and think that weaning because mommy had to go to jail would be awful for a child, I find myself hoping that she does get jail time for her reckless behavior. All those beneficial immunities in breastmilk don’t protect children from being killed in car crashes! And what would she have said if that happened? At least s/he didn’t die hungry?

Ok, I’m done ranting. For now.

Posted by Liza at 9:59 am
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