Month: February 2009 (Page 2 of 3)

today after church i mentioned that if i were to ever be on death row, my final meal would be macaroni grille’s pasta milano. hands down best dish. ever. apparently most people don’t think about what their death row dish would be.

i also think about funeral songs. if i were to die in the near future (and i hope i don’t!) i have a list of 3-4 songs i would like to be a part of my funeral.

so, in the vein of making weird lists, i can tell you that this weekend would make the cut for a chapter in the memoir of michele wingfield minehart. it started well with our first pictures of henry – so cute! they’ll be in by the end of the week. then mom and pops crashed at our pad for the night, so we had dinner with them and played the wii. we went to see alex’s hockey game with cousins rebecca and will, followed by brunch. i have such a wonderful time with my family, i cannot imagine not having them as a significant part of my regular social calendar.

jj and i had a low key evening on saturday, pizza and a movie. twas nice. the kid slept splendidly, as did mom.

this morning was church, and then “the friends” came over for breakfast. we’ve been making a regular outing of breakfast after church, but that puts a cramp in the pocketbook after a while, so i offered to put my heart shaped waffle iron to use. jj made eggs to order and the erfords had a ready supply of breakfast meats. bob evans has nothing on us.

there are lots of books out there (specifically in the world of church leaders) talking about building community, la de da, but it’s times like these that show me what the Body really looks like. it’s people who want to enjoy a homeade breakfast with you, even if you have to eat your waffles before your eggs are cooked. it’s handing off the baby so i can butter the toast. it’s the general chatter and excitement of waiting on jill to start having contractions. it’s the simple but demanding work of living life and letting others live it with you – not by looking through the window, but by joining you in the kitchen. they’ll find the forks, rinse the plates and let you serve them without feeling like they “have to return the favor.” it’s just part of who we are.

i love the peace that comes with knowing that i have friends and family that if i were to tell them the worst of news, there would be no fear of loosing their love.

Let me first say that H is a wonderful sleeper. in the world of new moms, i feel i’m toward the top of the well-rested pile, and for that i’m eternally grateful (i think God knows exactly what i can – and can’t – handle, and very little sleep isn’t high on my tolerance list). he naps through the day and goes to bed at night – he always has.

my problem is that there are lots of books out there on how to do it “right”. for every method there’s a countermethod. for every expert there’s a doctor. can a baby manipulate you? when? would they?

tonight we started to bed around 7 (our new bed time – that’s when the eyes get droopy and he starts doing his night night talk). got swaddled, into the crib. crying. lots of it. tried holding the pacifier in. tried swaddling one arm out (a goal of ours). thought maybe it was a dirty diaper. put him on the change table. instantly quiet. huh. diaper is dry. put him back in the crib. screams.

then it becomes a battle of the wills. i will not let someone who cannot use all 4 limbs manipulate me. but the crying! he was obviously, genuinely unhappy. back to the room.

so, he sounds a bit stuffy from the crying. saline up the nose, quick suction of the blue bulb (his favorite *sense the sarcasm*). shriek-like screaming. a little rocky. quiet.

in the crib again. silence.

WHAT THE HECK?! so i just spent some time on the blogs doing some self diagnosing, and if there’s one thing that will piss a mom off it’s to proclaim that her working method is bad for the baby. everyone had a different way of doing it. all of them said it works.

moral of the story? probably none. i’m sorry i’ve just wasted your last 5 minutes. but i think that i just have to learn that H is telling me something when he cries, so i should see what it is. my question is: when does a baby have both needs and wants? initially they just have needs. i have lots of wants. somewhere in the past 28.5 years i learned that i could get what i wanted by pretending it’s what i needed. does that happen at 6 months or 2 years? or 18? no, it’s before 18. i worked with youth and it was definately before jr. high :).

i also learned that there’s no “winner”. it’s not me against baby. we’re both learning how to live together, how to get the most out of our time in bed. i think the battle of the wills comes much later.

i know things like authority and control are issues parents face. i think they’re important for children. but when? i don’t think its now. i don’t think H actually believes he’s in control of anything. i told Ang once that i’m scared i’ll miss something because i don’t know i’m supposed to do it. like toys – i was afraid i wouldn’t give toys to the little guy because i would always just think he wasn’t old enough for it yet. she said, “no, you’ll just know.”

for now, i’m just going to bank on the “you’ll just know” philosophy for having some idea when my kid is trying to rule the roost. until then, i’m going to bed.

i watched a tidbit of the president’s address last night about the stimulus package. eh. i have a little trouble believing that what got us into this mess (overspending) can get us out… but i suppose something has to be done? all the while i was fighting my own battle which is reflective of why we’re in such a mess.

i’m a bank of america customer and they don’t care. about anything. about me, about what they’ve promised, about business. they don’t need me and the people who answer the phones could care less about the injustice – they’ll go pick up their kids at 5:00, make dinner and watch The Office. the people who should care (the ones making money off the business) , don’t, because they don’t know i exist. thus the problem.

i hung up the phone from the credit card people more than once feeling very small and insignificant. why? because to them, i am.

my husband hates when i say things like this, but our business is too big. i work for a company that used to be small and flat. we did amazing things, got great reviews from our clients and our employees were very happy. add a few levels to an org chart and it wrecks havoc for everybody but the 10 at the top. the same can be true for any organization.

if there’s one thing i’ve learned from my stint working within recruiting and HR, it’s the fact that our country employs a lot of people to do nothing. people employed just to watch people work. for instance, i’m working on a project, doing all kinds of grunt labor online so another guy can present it. he’s supposed to be “recruiting”. he’s not. he’s taking the list of people that i have found, researched, and presented to him in a nice neat excel spreadsheet and he’s calling them. he’s not recruiting, he’s a recording. but if you were to compare paychecks you’d see that he should be doing even more work.

pay people more money to do less. that seems to be the business philosophy of the day. give someone the title of “vice president” and a raise and you can surely bet that they’ll spend their day in “meetings” doing nothing of significance for their business or their world.

if all the large corporations were to slash even just their top 10% wage earners by even 20%… well, i don’t do math well, but i have a feeling that it would be enough that several of the bottom rung people would get to keep their jobs. and the people at the top would still be rich.

this, my friends, is why i say that we are not a “christian nation”. we may have lots of people who go to christian churches that live in our country, but our basic operating principles are not wholly christian. i can’t recall a single story told about or by Jesus that ended with “so, save yourself, take care of yourself, and let everyone else worry about themselves.” when faced with people on the down-and-out, i can’t recall a single time that Jesus said, “well, we live in a free enterprise society! pull yourself up by your little bootstraps!”

no, i’m not suggesting that socialism is the answer. but i am saying that we ought to be careful about what we proclaim. we live in a society that habitually treats people as small and insignificant and makes money doing so. i’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus had in mind for “kingdom come.”

to end the note on the positive, i will say that i found justice: when BOA decided that they didn’t want to give me my rewards points anymore (even after promising me them on the phone), they let their gatekeepers keep telling me no, and what else can you do? well, i’ll tell you. i emailed the haunchos at Norwegian cruise line (where i was to spend the points). When BOA doesn’t give me points, i don’t cruise, and thus i don’t buy expensive fruity drinks and other things that make NCL money. So i emailed any overpaid VP with “customer service” in the title and had a phone call within the hour. today i received an email saying i’ll get my voucher in the mail within 7-10 business days (observation: anytime you ask BOA for anything, it’ll take 7-10 business days). now, i’ll believe it when i see it, but i can’t tell you how much relief it brought that someone finally gave me a voice. let justice roll down (and send me on a cruise).