In Seach Of...

Out-going, talkative 2 year old ISO childcare, 4- 8 hours a week. Mama will bring a lovely lunch and snack. I will do my best to resist the urge to hide your TV remote. Still in diapers, but working on the potty.

Greg, Eamon, and I went to a lovely daycare facility today to try to find childcare for 1 day a week and possible drop-in hours (in case of birth) for little E. The price is $92 for one day and $156 for two days. Yikes! The fee does not change if I leave him there for 2 hours or for 12. Insane, no?

So now I've posted to Sarah's schools parent list to see if someone does home daycare or knows of someone who does. I'd much rather pay someone $8 an hour for 4 hours than one hundred buckaroos! I'm stunned. Yowza.

I'm getting tired of doing the senior care thing in the evenings. I'm trying not to be self-pitying, because it's really easy work. It's just so hard staying up until eleven. And I hate not being home to read stories and put the kids to bed. But trying not to think about it. We need the extra money and until I have at least one client a month, I'll have to keep up with this work.

Bleh.

I'm neglecting computer duties I have to do while Eamon naps. Greg is home today, drinking tea and reading his book. I'm bored and feel utterly distracted with nothing to do (yet lots of things needing to be done!).

http://kshitijl.blogspot.com/2006/10/smells-like-teen-embarrassment.html


While blatantly neglecting my to-do list while E napped, I came across this boys blog. He's 15, living in India and is pretty damn funny. He's seemingly well-read for a 15 year old of anywhere.
In a slightly pretentious but silly way that reminds me of myself and V.O. at 15.

IUD and ME

That's what I had put inside me this morning. Weird, huh? It is really so teeny-tiny. This picture makes it look huge, but I guess my midwife brain is used to envisioning the uterus as much larger than this (with a baby inside).

I'm feeling strangely empowered by this move. A small grin on my face as if I have some fabulous secret. **ssh! I can have sex and NOT think about when I'm ovulating, or wonder if my husband pulled out in time!**

wahoo! a new lease on my reproductive life, I tell ya.

feeling only ever-so-mildly crampy right now with a little spotting, but that's it. Why didn't I do this 2 years ago?

Meanwhile,my sister is in surgery right now. As is a good friend. So prayers to them both for no complications and an easy recovery.

snowing in October

It's a balmy 43 degrees today in Hipsilanti. It was much warmer this morning when I dropped Sarah off at school. Of course, she was only wearing a hoodie for a jacket and scarf (for accessory purposes only). As the temperature rapidly dropped by mid-morning, it snowed and I felt like a bad mom. I was wondering why all the kids at school were decked out in new winter coats, hats and mittens. Apparently, they have parents that check the weather before packing their kid off for the day.
Greg took the day off for the time in weeks. It would've been nice to see him, but I spent the first part of the morning visiting with my mom who came to deliver her yearly fall apple pie. Then I was off to do a prenatal with my December Mama. She's 45 minutes away, so I didn't get back home until 2:15. Then Greg was out the door to go to Lowe's for floor insulation (we're tucking insulation beneath the floor boards in hopes of keeping the heat in our sieve of a house).
After that, he's off to pick up Sarah from school.

I haven't worked for my senior guy for my last 4 scheduled days since he's been sick. I am working tonight though. As grateful I am for the employment, I so easily accept and like not working any job but birth work. Ah well. It's fine once I am there. And the paychecks are nice.

I got hired by a couple due at the end of May '07. They too are 4o minutes away, but in another direction. 3rd baby, 1st homebirth. Nice folks.
Have a consult with some people due mid-May that live about 15 minutes away.
So a huge gap between due dates: December and then May. Hopefully I will get some work in between those dates.

Exciting though. Its nice being called whether people hire me or not. I think that was one of the hardest things: waiting. Feeling like I had done all I could say LOOK! MIDWIFE!

I looked in the freezer this morning for some kind of frozen animal to thaw out and found I had bought chicken LEGS last month. I do not eat meat off of bones, so I don't know what I was thinking. I have to look up how to fry chicken. The kids will like that. I'll have to eat my leftover curried butternut soup and rice again. I had it last night, just had some for lunch and will finish it up for dinner. It is yummy. And very spicy. Totally cleared up my sinuses. I'm a hair away from buying one of the fruitty neti pots.

Other news: my poor sister is going in to have her uterus abdominally removed Monday. She'll be released from the hospital either Wednesday or Thursday. Trying to figure out meals to bring during her recovery time.
Also that day, I will be getting my own IUD inserted. This feels good for now. I like that it does not contain synthetic hormones of any kind. I'm a bit creeped out about some foreign object resided in my uterus for up to 10 years if all goes well. But I also like that whenever I decided to take it out we can, and I don't have to worry about my hormones catching up/levelling off as you would have to do with any hormone releasing birth control.

Wow. Snowing again. It is so strange to see snow falling while we have so many green leaves and green, green grass around.

all right, off to figure out how to make Ypsi-Fried-Chicken.

Celebrity dreaming

Isn't he dreamy? I dreamed last night that I was down south somewhere with Sarah and we stopped at this psychic kind of clinic/rehab. I'm not sure what it was all about, but it seemed that you checked in and stayed a while. Ewan McGregor came out in a white doctor's coat and all charm and introduced himself as one of the staff doctors. My heart was pounding. He then excused himself and the receptionist/nurse said she wanted to test us. She asked Sarah and I to put our tongue between our front teeth, to close our eyes and call out what we thought the doctor's birth date was.

I did as instructed, closed my eyes and shouted out: May 15, 1970!

Then I woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep thanks to the weight of Eamon sleeping on my chest and knowing the alarm clock would ring in 6 minutes. I wanted to Google Ewan McGregor straight away but had no time.

Went to Ikea this morning with Elizabeth and Eamon and had fun. It's not at all crowded now that school is back in. As soon as I came in, I Googled McGregor and found his birthday to be March 31, 1971. Just was wondering if I was the least bit right on. Nope.

It's very creepy even looking up celebrities like this. I'm not one to do it, but rather drool over a small few in my dreams or the days following a movie I've watched with them in.

I don't like many celebrities at all. Not in this crazy idol way. But Ewan McGregor is lovely. Especially when smoking. Which is doubly sick for me to drool over. Enough!

E and I overheard the funniest conversation between two older women at the Ikea Bistro this morning. They were all done up in full makeup, maybe in their mid60s, upper middle class, but gawdy. One was saying to the other how she thought how every teenager in America should be forced to watch the scene in Pulp Fiction (!!) where Uma Thurman is dancing, then snorts some coke and then the next scene is when she's about to die and they lay her on the floor and mark the spot on her chest with a red Sharpie of where to plunge the syringe to shock her ass back up.

We laughed. I remember seeing that movie and loving it and also thinking that part was hilarious. It certainly didn't scare me from contemplating snorting coke, which I've never done (for other reasons, certainly not for the scene from Pulp Fiction!). To this day I cannot watch that movie through because doing so makes me want to smoke soooo badly. Every character, every scene, cigarettes burning. When that movie came out I was in my smoke-like-a-chimney years.

friday

I had good plans for being wonderfully productive this morning and its just not happening. Well, not as much as I'd like.
I've spent a good deal of time on the phone (doing somewhat productive talking), planning a CPR workshop, figuring out this weekend's many plans, catching up with Elizabeth whom I haven't spoke to in 14 hours or so! ;)

I was called off from work with my senior guy last night because he was feeling poorly and wanted his sweet girlfriend with him. An usexpected surprise. It was weird being home. Greg immediately went to bed once he heard I was staying home. (Poor guy is so tired staying up til -9 each night.) So me and the kids played, knitted, bathed, did bedtime.

I just got a call saying they just took the old guy and said he's being taken to the ER for dehydration. I pray he's okay. He's very sweet. I might be able to work tonight if he's home and needs me.

Gotta go.

Saturday at the Historical Museum

Here's Elizabeth, Eamon, and Sarah on our Saturday trip to the new and improved Detroit Historical Museum. It was so fun. Very crowded, but with the kids in tow, I wouldn't have been able to read all I wanted anyway. It was a great day out.
Downstairs in the museum, they've recreated the streets of Detroit. First it's brick streets from the 1900s. Then it turns to wood streets (amazing!) for the 1870s. Lastly, there is cobblestones for the 1840s. Oh, and the stree lamps get dimmer as you go back in time, so that by the time we reached the cobblestone part of the "city" there were squawking toddlers falling down on the rocks because it was dimly lit and the rocks made you feel drunk!
We went to Mannogian Hall (sp?) at Wayne States Ethnic Studies building to see their various country-themed rooms. This Polack girl was pleased to see the Polish room, which was lovely. Here is a huge floor to ceiling mosaic made of all marble.
Here is a sample of the wood streets.

Saturday night I went for drinks down at the Corner Brewery with some good friends. Oddly enough there was a full-on wedding reception going on, complete with foo-foo bride and groom, cake, white table cloths and candles, a jazz band and a photo collage on a screen of the bride and groom. We made way for the bar despite this and asked if the bar was open to the public. The bartenders are so young there! We were given the: Yeah, I guess so... answer that was good enough for us. We got some up and down, who-the-hell-are-you? glances but kept quiet at the bar and didn't try to get any wedding cake, despite how good it looked.

I wonder how much they paid for that place and surely, they wanted it to be closed to the public. But no one said a thing, which is good. I do this twice a year. I drank 3 beers and felt hungover in the morning. Crazy. I used to drink mad amounts of booze and be fine on 2 hours of sleep. I slept for 9 hours and was dehydrated and headachey in the morning.

I have a consult for someone due in May this Sunday coming. Seems like a nice woman. Had a nice, long phone conversation. Feels good.

All right, little E is napping and I need to study and figure out dinner before getting Sarah, going to the foot doctors (we are in the middle of weeks long plantar wart therapy~my secret is OUT! It's taking forever!), then home for 1/2 hour for dinner and out the door for work tonight.

I really want bean soup and might just make it now so we can have it when I get in.