still summer…

It still very much feels like summer. The neighbors were saying “this is so un-labor-day-like” and I’m thinking, no it’s not – for the past several years it’s been gorgeous on labor day weekend – in fact it’s been gorgeous as long as I’ve ridden or sagged G. up on the DAL Mac (seven? eight years now?) So, that’s why I planned my beach vacation these two weeks. I love this time of year. LIfe, time is suspended. We’re at the beach.

I’m making milk (she’s just had a giant dinner and she didn’t nurse much this afternoon either). But I need to store milk up for day care, so it’s not a big deal. Then I get a few minutes to myself anyway. Actually I’ve gotten a lot of minutes to myself on this vacation – sewing during naptime, my mom and dad helping otherwise, no chores to do. It’s been great! I’ll miss it when I leave!

My magazines got a bit soggy from an errant glass of water, so they’re spread out in the hopes they’ll unstick themselves when they dry. I’ll grab some hangers shortly and hang them up  properly. Gotta keep the BWoF intact, after all.

So I have these white spots…

on my arms, in between the suntan. My dad has them too. It’s kind of creepy, actually. it’s OLD LADY skin! Oh my gawd! Anyway, so today, we’re out of the sun (it’s cloudy, windy and cool on the beach) and that’s a good thing. I have been wearing sunscreen, every day, but I still get sun – can’t help it, it’s superbly sunny up here. But what’s with the old lady skin? I’ve got to take better care of myself. But it looks so nice, sunkissed hair and skin. Hard to part with old habits, I guess (hey, I wore spf 45)

Vacation update

My office called. They didn’t recognize me. Which is good – I had just cracked open a beer, at 3pm, and  was feeling pretty relaxed. So far, I’ve been to two farm markets. total haul: cantelope, yellow watermelon, orange cherry tomatoes, swiss chard, corn, beefsteak tomatoes, beans, peppers, zucchini and these funny squash that look like a cross between a flying saucer and a pie crust.

Tomorrow, it’s garage sales (baby gear) with Mom and my baby. I’ve ridden the bike, walked on the beach, sat on a chaise lounge, played enumerable games with the baby involving a towel (playing ‘tent’) And loved every minute of watching the babe explore her world – seaweed? okay, it’s kind of icky, but WHY? no real reason, I guess, it seemed interesting when she was playing with it.

My friend called; her  2 month old daughter had to be resuscitated at the hospital. She’d had a few episodes of blue-baby apnea at home, so they admitted her, and while there, she flatlined. Can you imagine? I can’t. I’d have been hysterical (she was). I said several prayers for them all.

keepin’ up with my friends

I’ll have to x-post this to my sewing blog, but I’ll delve into more social-networking-psychology aspects here so I’ll start here. I was on my friend Sue’s blog. I like her blog – she posts what she sews and what she’s planning to sew. Plus she gives insight – she sews in the evening, with a glass of wine, and watches a DVD. No lie! I’d be on the couch, snoozing, if I had a DVD and a glass of wine! It’s a true wonder, because she is soooo good besides, how, exactly, she manages that.

But that got me thinking, I check on her blog (she does to mine too, I’m sure, but not this one, this is the one I do not link to.) So how many of us, friends, check out each others’ pages. And, that, my friends is how MySpace and FaceBook make it in this world. We’re always checking out the Joneses.

I on the other hand, am trying to get a busy toddler down to bed at a reasonable hour. Nursing is ensuing, and sleep is forthcoming. But we are not totally all the way asleep yet.

And then it’ll be 10pmish. Do I go forward on the Sugar Babe Jacket? Mom suggested I make it smaller. Which I did, when I sewed it, probably at least a size smaller maybe more, by using generous SAs.

Anyway, it’ll be what it is. The tunic came out fantastic. I’ll sew the hook & eye and post a pic of it. I’m glad I left out the pockets and I only slightly miss the lined yoke.

on vacation

My goals for vacation are:

relax

work out every day – either yoga or bike

enjoy baby time!

sew – one hour a day is 13 hours, 2 hours a day is 26. A top (I have two) are two hours each, a dress is four hours, a baby dress, three hours, a jacket, five hours, that’s a total of 16 hours on the generous side, say 20 conservatively, so I should sew two hours per day.

knit

be mindful

some of my silly goals would be to have nice hair. So this morning, I curled my wild locks and it now has that hollywood-beach touseled look. kind of farah fawcett meets rock and roll starlet.

Wear jewelry every day.

Get a nice, but very light tan (SPF 60, moderate shade in a very, very sunny place).

Hey you’ve gotta have silly goals IMHO. Really. Because otherwise this would be waaaay too serious of a vacation plan (even that’s an oxymoron)

I can hear the waves on the shoreline. I’m in the sewing room upstairs. Babe is tucked away on my bed across the house. It’s my own personal space – with the loft, the sewing room and the bath up here. That’s why I’m staying two weeks, it’s my own personal space.

my wild hair

Since about eight or nine months after pregnancy, my hair has been crappy. Dry, frizzy, flyaway, breaking. In Feb, my stylist chopped a bunch off into this Pat Benetar-inspired 80s shag. It was cute, but short, and high maintenance. So it’s finally grown out, but I get this tousely winged long bang look when it’s humid. As it turns out, this is a VERY fashionable look in my French online fashion catalog So I am just going to go with it, apply some AV gel to control the frizzies and go with it on those days when fighting isn’t worth it. So the only thing I think I do want to do while on vacation is schedule a color session with my stylist up north. No cut (or at least a very minimal grazing cut).

I was really trying to do something my hair isn’t wanting to do – it’s straight, but not really super slick straight (and really, it never was) and going with it’s natural tendencies, especially when humid, is what I think I have to do. Also since I’ve been amping up the vitamins, it’s better. Same, too, with the protein shakes.

I have all day to pack for the two weeks, and I hope I don’t forget anything. I have a good list though and I’m confident it will see me through. I’m planning to take less, so as I sew my last summer things (whee! trip to Florida to wear them some more!) I can integrate them into the two weeks’ wardrobe.

And I’m doing a lot of coordinates, not matching palette. It’ll be very nice. Very modern.

there are more of them

cancer mamas. Oh boy. It’s like a preview into my mother’s world. A side I never knew. I mean I knew my side. I felt abandoned, lost, disconnected. Still do in some ways. And it took the birth of my Peanut to show me just how awful it was for her, knowing that she was going to die, leaving her babies behind. But you know, in that photo, in the summer, just before she died, she looks happy, normal. My brother in the high chair, me standing at his side, the two of us grinning. She sits in that photo with a smile, but not a grin. That sort of “I’m soaking up the pleasure of this moment” kind of smile. That’s all I have. There are no letters, my father doesn’t talk about her. Ever. Nothing to tell me what she might have thought about her impending death, what she thought about us, about me.

So I read those blogs and I understand, as a mother does, what maybe she was thinking. One mother posts that she wants to see her son in high school. Or maybe just teach him to read.

I want to dodge this, I do. I am switching to a mediterranean diet, downing fish oil in every form I can tolerate (but the Starburst-like chews are so tasty, it’s hard not to eat the whole bag at once). I hope my NKs, so adept at killing off my embryo – and those embryonic cancer cells at the lab – are doing their job. If they fail me, I’ll be doubly pissed off.

I’m on vacation for TWO WEEKS! Yeah! Sewing, knitting, sandcastles, farm markets, tube tops, sun hats, baby toes in the sand. Oh! It’s the summer I dreamed about when I was flat on my back, my arms strapped down, as they stitched me closed hoping to save our baby. It’s what I saw, this week, this vacation. Wheee!

Peanut is sleeping

We’ve seemingly developed a habit – she falls asleep every night in the Ergo as I nurse her and work on my computer. It’s a good habit. I felt chained down by the endless nursing in bed at night – and this gets me what I want and what she needs. It’s a good trade off.

So we’re going to see the Mouse. A cafe au lait in Avignon it is not, but hey, there’s plenty of time for the South of France again in the years to come.

going to see the Mouse

So baby’s having her first trip to see the Mouse in Orlando! Yep, indeed. I didn’t think I was the Disney type, but hubs has a conference and he says it’s one of the more boring (and lonely) ones. So we’re staying at that old funky Contemporary, the one with the monorail. That was a new and fancy hotel when I was a 10-year old kid (and I’m crawling up on 40). And I’ll probably go take the babe to the Magic Kingdom and maybe a waterpark that has a kiddie area (besides the hotel pools). Its very Disnified, though, even the ‘Magic for the Little Ones’ site teared me up. No lie!

She went down fine at 9pm, and then just woke up (it’s 11pm). Faaaantastic. So I’m not giving in. She’s in the pack, the hood is up, and I’m not paying attention. The boob is out for her snacking, she can snack til she settles down to sleep again.

riding my way out of a funk

I bucked up and rode to  dinner and back (20 miles, it was in Holt) with G. and the babe in the trailer. And when I nursed her when I got home, I got that electric feeling again, same as when i do yoga and then nurse. An endorphin-fueled oxytocin rush. It was beautiful. This morning, it was chilly, and we snuggled together, her limbs splayed across mine, as she nursed in the wee hours. I have to remember this when she’s eight, or ten or thirteen. How snuggly and small she was next to me. I have to savor having that sweet baby head next to mine, her tiny arm flung across my neck.

so I felt better after riding. As I knew I would. I’m thinking about vacation. What to pack has me stumped. I have such a diverse group of things I want to take, so I guess I’ll term this ’summer brights with neutrals’ packing this year. Two weeks is a long time to be gone, but oh! such luxury – two weeks at the beach! Two weeks of farm markets, sandy feet, splashing in the waves…I can’t wait!