Now with 97% more randomness

A snowplow just drove by our house at about 90 miles an hour. Yes, a snowplow. Because it's snowing out today. Why do I live in this effing state anyway?

When I took Joseph to see "Horton Hears a Who" I actually got weepy as all the Whos were chanting "We! Are! Here!". What the hell is wrong with me? Who does that? It's a good movie though so you should go see it. Let my know if you cried during that scene so that I won't feel so alone and pathetic in my weepyosity.

Guess what I made for dinner the other night!
Joseph said: I hate yolky!
Elle said: I love pinnochi!

The drug dealers across the street had one of their cars repossessed last week. I guess if you're going to have drug dealers living across the street from you I guess it's probably best to have ones that have not been able to achieve a lot of financial success. Because they're not very good drug dealers. I'm trying to look at this positively ok?

I miss my Sucks Sucks gang. Where my bitches at?

This morning I weighed myself immediately before and immediately after going to the bathroom. I weighed more after I went to the bathroom. That doesn't seem possible.

Here's a message board icon avatar I really like but will never have an occasion to use:

That's all for today.

I love to share

I'm over my embarrassment at the pants dropping incident of yesterday. It's not like it's the first time I waved bare ass in public.

My interview is this afternoon. I don't know what magazine it's going to end up in because (as I understand it) it's being written by an independent reporter. I guess we'll just have to see if someone decides to publish it. Rest assured that if it does get published I will find out and tell everyone about it. Then I'll get a copy of the article and frame it and wear it around my neck like a beautiful, lovely piece of me-pimping jewelry.

I got a heads up on some of the questions that they're going to ask me. That's a good thing since I have a tendency to babble like a brain damaged monkey (and you know how they go on) when I'm on the phone with someone I don't know very well. I've practiced my answers out loud because I also have the tendency (when I'm nervous) to start talking quickly and at a very high pitch. I want to sound like a normal person and not a chipmunk so I've practiced speaking slowly and clearly. My fear now is that I'm going to sound like that little girl that Stewie tried to teach to speak proper English that one time on the Family Guy. "HoooW DO Yoooou DOOOO?"

I think I need to stop drinking caffeine for the day now.

Update - I had the interview and I think it went really well. I on'y went into high-pitched-voice-and-dorky-giggle mode once or twice. We'll see when the article gets published if I get described as "cheerful" or "slightly manic".

Each bus ticket comes with a free mooning

This morning I was ready to throw in the towel on this whole blogging thing. My little word cloud wasn't showing up and my Flickr badge isn't working right and I've basically been locked out of my Flickr account forever and ever. I was ready to quit. Can you tell I don't handle minor frustrations very well?

Then I went out for coffee with a friend. I started to feel better about my very small blogging issues once I was sipping an insanely fattening coffee drink.

In preparation for going out for fattening coffee drinks and muffins I wore a pair of maternity pants. It's a pair that was too small for me when I was hugely pregnant but that actually fits me pretty well right now. At least I thought they did.

And then when I got home I bent over to get Elle out of her car seat.

And my pants slipped down off my butt.

And dragged my underwear along for the ride.

Just as a city bus drove by.

I guess I'll have time to fix all my blog problems now that I'm never leaving the house again.

I'm on the cover of a magazine!*

Ok, so I won't be on the cover. But I will be in the magazine. Maybe.

Someone from my agency called me today asking if they could give my name to a reporter looking to talk to surrogates for an article he was doing on illegal dog fighting. I mean surrogacy. I said "Awesome!" which I hope she took as a yes and in the next few days someone from the magazine will be getting in contact with me. Fun!

And don't worry. Once I'm in a magazine I won't forget all the little people I knew before. I mean, I'm sure once I'm in a magazine I'll be a lot busier than I used to be and I probably won't have as much time for you as I did before I was in a magazine but I'll always think of you fondly. And just think! You'll be able to look at me and say "I knew her before she was in a magazine!"**

*Who says this? Hint: Look at the fricken picture.
** This was totally said in jest but I know that now it's out there karma will come and bite me in the butt when the reporter calls me and says "Sorry, you're just too boring for our magazine.

Womb for rent - as a matter of fact

So, was I right? Yes and, much to my great surprise, no.

Saying goodbye to A was not hard. It never felt like I was giving anything up. It just felt right for him to be with his daddies. When the time came to say goodbye to him I was actually happy. When I kissed his little forehead and whispered "Goodbye little one." it was a kind of confirmation that I had done well and that everything was as it should be. The best part of my relationship with A was when I said goodbye to him. It's a little surreal but true.

It's been over a month now since A was born and I've never once felt like I missed him. I've never been sad that he's not here with me. I've never felt like I'm missing out on something by not having A with me. I do sometimes miss being pregnant and being pregnant as a surrogate but that's entirely separate from my feelings about A.

So I was right about not having a hard time with "giving up" A. What was I wrong about?

I was not prepared to love him. That took me totally by surprise. It's hard to describe the love I have for A because it's not comparable to the relationship I have with anyone else in the world. I've thought about this for a long time, trying to find the words to express how I feel about A but I haven't been able to put it together into anything that makes sense. I can only say that I love him like a surrochild. It's not a very good description but it is what it is.

Is it possible to love someone without being bonded to them? I guess it is. I went into this not knowing it was possible to separate the two. I figured if I didn't bond with him then I wouldn't love him. Maybe I over-estimated my ability to cut myself off emotionally. Maybe I under-estimated the capacity of my somewhat cynical heart.

Whatever it is, I'm happy to admit that I was wrong. Loving A was a surprise. A happy surprise. A surprise that makes me even more convinced that I want to do this again and again and again. And again.

Who needs a movie? - Make me laugh Monday

This is a real ad put out by these people to promote their video company. Enjoy won't you?

What about animation? What about more laughs?

Happy Easter!

The biggest winner

Elle likes to use the bathroom scale. Thr first time I saw her do it I kind of freaked out. For a minute I worried that I had somehow managed to give her all my weight and body issues. I worried that I was making her neurotic about herslef and the way she looked by weighing myself in front of her. Then I realized that she just likes to see the numbers pop up.

Every time she steps on the scale she says "Three tee tee nine" and looks very pleased. I have no idea what it means but it's what she always says. It's a routine. Every time I go into the bathroom she follows me in so that she can step on the scale and say "three tee tee nine."

Yesterday was a little different though. She stepped on the scale and screamed "Hooray! Three two points! I da winner! Hooray! Three two points! I da winner Mama! Three two points!" and she ran out of the room clapping with glee.

I wish I was that happy after I weighed myself.

Um, forget what I said

Forget what I said yesterday about not pumping anymore. On the advice of my commentors and an emailer and I doula/friend I am going to stop pumping gradually rather than go cold turkey. Of course that makes more sense, I just needed someone to point that out me.

For anyone who doesn't understand why J as acting this way about the whole thing, I have to say that I agree. I don't totally get it myself. I know that he likes the ideaof breast milk but I think the lack of an ingredient list is what makes him nervous. I've never in my whole life met someone so paranoid about toxins and contaminants. Let's not forget that this is the guy who didn't want me taking any pregnancy-approved, baby-safe stool softeners while I was pregnant. (I guess he prefered I just didn't poop for nine months.)

The thing is, I really like J. He's a nice guy. And now that A is here J and I have gotten a lot closer. Now that he doesn't have to be nervous about the whole pregnancy he and I have really become friends. There's no longer that tension that was caused by him always worrying that I might be doing something wrong and me always feeling like I wasn't being trusted. But now the breast milk has become something else for J to worry about and for me to feel bad about. So I still think it's time to stop. Just more slowly than I planned to.

B and I have always gotten along well but I've always had less contact with him than with J. Yesterday I got an email from B that had some pictures of A attachted*. The email was short. It just said "Thank you for giving life to A. We love him so much."

My heart jumped all over and remembered why I did all this and I decided it was all worth it.

*I've got a picture of A on my flickr account. You can check it out there but you have to be a contact of mine to see it. You can get to my flickr account by clicking on the pictures in the top of my sidebar.

Wordless Wednesday - Guess what we were watching

Time to kick back and relax

It is done. I am all finished with pumping. I didn't go as long as I hoped to originally but it felt right to stop. It was starting to become a negative thing. J has expressed some nervousness about using the milk I already gave them and it was starting to affect me. Every time I would pump I would think "Are they even going to use this? Am I just wasting my time here?" I didn't want to start feeling bad or resentful about the whole thing so I decided to just go ahead and stop.

J has expressed to me several times how grateful he is for the milk (and I believe him) but at the same time I think he's not totally comfortable using it. One day he gave some to A and he thought it made him really sleepy so he called to ask me if there way anything in the milk that would have done that. Of course there wasn't and I tried to reassure him of that but I could tell that he was still not convinced. Not that I think he thinks there really was something wrong with the milk. I just think that he fears the unknown (or at least the uncertain) and he probably prefers to use formula because he knows what's in it and he knows that it's always the same. With breast milk he probably worries that I might have had something to eat or drink that would make A sleepy or gassy or something.

It's still a little bit of a letdown for me because I know that there are parents out there who are desperate to get breast milk for their babies but who just don't have the access to it. The choice that J is making is not the one that I would make for my own child. The beauty of it is though that A is not my child and in the end I really don't have to worry about it. I can feel good knowing that I pumped about 1000 ounces of breast milk for A and I got him off to the very best start that I could have.

I guess if I was really committed I could become a milk donor to someone else and try to finish out the two month commitment that I made to myself. I don't think I have it in me though. Pumping for A was (as corny as this will sound) sort of an act of love and if I'm done with that situation then I probably just need to be done altogether. I'm ok with that. It didn't go exactly the way I wanted it to but I can deal with that. Everything else about this has been so good that I don't want to cry over a little spilt milk. (Haha, I'm so funny!)

Yesterday I got my final comp check from my agency. This surrogacy is really and truly done. I have no doubt that I will continue to have a relationship with B and J and A (J told me the other day that I'm like a member of the family) but now it's time to look forward to the the next step. All the research I've done on various agencies has pretty much led me back to the agency I was already with. I suppose in some ways it's better to stick with the devil you know.

But for tonight I'm going to kick back, relax, have a few glasses of wine and try not to let my massively engorged boobs brush up against anything because son of a bitch, these puppies hurt.

If he could turn back time

Ever so often Joseph brings home those worksheets he did in school where he they take a word and scramble up it's letters to make new words. The word to work with on the most recent sheet was "teacher". As I looked over Joseph's results I came across this:

Turns out my boy is a Cher fan. Who knew?

I've know for some time that Joseph is an old soul and that this is not his first go round on this earth but sometimes he likes to lay the proof right out in front of me. Also included in last weeks homework was a picture he drew:

Joseph told me that's a drawing of him living in the 50's. (Ok, so his timeline was a little off.) That's a tent on the right, a peace sign (or the best he could manage), a bird up above, a van on the left and in the middle is Joseph with long hair, sunglasses and a tie-dyed shirt. He told me he came up with this all on his own. I don't know what to make of this kid sometimes.

My Flickr account swells with pride

I was trying to get some pictures off of my new camera and onto the computer and in the process I discovered a ton of pictures that I totally forget we had. They're mostly of our "if anything can go wrong it will" trip to Disney World and of Elle when she was a little baby. What a fun suprise. And damn, I've got some cute kids.

Happy St Patrick's Day - Make Me Laugh Monday

Want more laughs? Of course you do!

Google hits of the week

mexicans doorbell

why men love milk balls of girl

I said what now?

What I said to Jesse: Go to Best Buy and get that camera we talked about.
What Jesse heard: Fall asleep on the floor for a while. When you wake up ask me if I want you to go and buy that camera since you weren't sure what we decided to do.

What I said to the kids: Please be extra quiet for a minute. I have to make an important phone call.
What they heard: For the next ten minutes try to be louder than a space shuttle lifting off. Elle, go and get your karaoke radio and squeal into the microphone. Joseph, start screaming because you just realized that you forgot to do your speech therapy exercises eight days ago.

What I said to the person taking my order: I want that without tomatoes please.
What they heard: Please put extra tomatoes on that. Make sure they're the juiciest tomatoes you have so that when you bring me my order and I pick all the tomatoes off (because I'm afraid that you'll spit in it if I send it back) there's still tons of tomato juice and seeds all over my food.

What I said to Jesse: Can you try to be home on time tonight?
What he heard: Don't bother to pay any attention to the time while you're at work today. Don't even worry about coming home until I call you an hour after you're supposed to be here and I call you because I'm wondering where you are. I'm really looking forward to letting dinner congeal on the table tonight.

What I said to Joseph: Time to turn off your Nintendo buddy-boy.
What he heard: I'm going to burn all your toys and make you sleep in the garage from now on. You're also not allowed to eat anything other than brussel sprouts for the next year. Every night before you go to bed this week I'm going to poke needles into your eyeballs. Please respond in an appropriate manner. Perhaps you could yell and flail around for 20 minutes.

What I said to the kids: I'm going to take a shower. I need you guys to play nicely in your rooms for five minutes.
What they heard: As soon as I step into the shower pick one stuffed animal out of your pile of 638 and start to fight over it. Scream frantically for me. When I come running to see what's wrong show me that you can bend your toy snake into an S shape. Continue to scream for me every 18 seconds. Scream at me to ask me why I'm yelling at you. When you get tired of screaming for me come into the bathroom and pull back both sides of the shower curtain so that you can peer at me and let water run all over the place. Ask me why my butt is so big.

What I said to J: I had a glass of wine last night.
What he heard: I'm drunk every time I pump and I'm storing the milk in crack vials. Be careful giving that milk to little A. To be on the safe side you might want to run a tox screen on every bag.

What I said to the Jehovah's Witnesses: No thank you.
What they heard: Yes! I would love your pamphlet! I'll probably wear our this copy in the next four days so be sure to send some of your friends around to give me another. Don't ever stop coming here. Ever.

What's eating Jen these days?

Right now I'm doing something that I haven't done since high school. Yes, I'm dieting. Ugh.

In the last couple years I have made changes to my eating habits because I wanted to try to eat healthier. Losing weight was never the goal. Now it is because I really want to lose this baby weight. And by "this baby weight" I mean "this weight I'm still carrying around from when I was pregnant with Elle."

I promised myself that I would not get pregnant again until I was at my goal weight. 22 pounds down, 26 to go. I think I can do it but it's not going to be easy. I have massive food issues that I wrestle with on a daily basis. (Or even an hourly basis.) I can't eat like a reasonable person so I have to set strict rules for myself. Nearly every morning since A was born I have started my day off the same way. It goes like this:

- Put 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed into a bowl.
- Put 3 heaping spoonfuls of Thick and Rough Cut oats into the bowl.
- Put a packet of microwavable oatmeal into the bowl.
- Add 1 cup and one splash of water to the bowl.
- Nuke the mixture for 1 minute and 30 seconds.
- While it's cooking get a glass of milk and a banana.
- Take out the oatmeal, add a splash of milk and a sprinkle of brown sugar.
- Eat the breakfast while fighting off a demanding toddler who thinks that every banana she sees is her banana.

If I don't follow that routine exactly then I run the risk of eating poorly the whole day. I find that if I don't get the day off to a good start then it's too easy for me to think things like "Well, I already blew today by not eating my oatmeal. I might as well eat half a chocolate cake now!"

I wish I knew how to find some kind of happy medium. I wish I could make good choices about food without having to impose a strict regiment on myself. How do people do that?

Decisions, decisions

As I was getting stitched up from my episiotomy after giving birth to A I asked my doctor "So when can I do this again?"

I was dead serious too. We're taking a family vacation in September so I won't be able to get pregnant before that but I am thinking that it's probably time to start the process again. Paperwork and getting everything in line can take a while and I want to have that all done so that when the time comes I can get started with the "fun" part right away.

Now I have a choice to make. Do I stick with the agency I used last time? I was mostly happy with them but I'm not entirely thrilled with certain aspects of their non-negotiable contract. I also found out today that if I work with them again I'll have to go through their entire screening process again. I don't see that being a problem but it is a little bit of a hassle. That means a minimum of three more trips to LA (psych eval, matching and transfer) and that's if everything goes ok.

Or do I try to find a new agency? Maybe one that lets me change around the contract a little bit? My current agency has a c-section comp that is insanely low and I'm really not comfortable with it. But what if I find another agency and they end up dropping the ball on things that my current agency has been good about?

Or do I try to pursue one of the two independent opportunities that have come my way? B and J know two couples who are currently looking into surrogacy and apparently B praised me so highly that they both asked about meeting me. I like certain things about the idea of an independent match but other parts about it scare me. If something goes wrong I'll be on my own without an experienced agency on my side. I don't know if I feel like I know the whole process well enough to do it on my own.

What to do, what to do?

No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is the movie you should be seeing instead of wasting your time and money on another boring (Vantage Point), predictable (Vantage Point!) and cliche (VANTAGE POINT!) action movie.

Don't worry, because I actually liked this movie I won't be spoiling it at all for anyone who hasn't seen it. I will say this though: This movie really took me by surprise. I was often caught of guard by what happened and sometimes by what didn't happen. Jesse saw this with some friends of his and they complained that the pacing was too slow. I disagree. I felt like the slower pace added to the tension. The movie had some downright creepy scenes where, strange as it sounds, almost nothing happened.

Don't go see No Country if you're looking for a big, happy Hollywood ending where everything gets neatly wrapped up and explained. You won't find it in this movie. What you will find is a good story, great acting (I was even impressed by Tommy Lee Jones who I don't usually like) and lots of unexpected twists. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes a movie that makes you think, who doesn't mind a little gore and who can sit through scenes that move a little slowly. Unlike Jesse's friends.

If you've seen this movie leave me a comment letting me know what you thought of it.

Don't waste your time on Vantage Point

The title pretty much sums it up. Don't bother with Vantage Point. There, I just saved you the $12 you could have spent seeing it. As a thank you you may purchase something for me off of my Amazon.com wishlist.

Anyway, Vantage Point. It's one of those movies that when it was over I sat there for a second and thought "Wow, that was kind of stupid" but a few days later my hatred for the movie has grown and every time I think about it I want to shake my fists and scream "Damn you Vantage Point!"

I thought it was going to be a cool who-done-it with lots of unexpected twists. It wasn't. I had the conclusion figured out about 10 minutes into the movie. All that was left to do was sit back and watch the indestructible hero of the movie run around and get into car accidents that would kill anyone else but somehow leave him with only a rugged looking scratch on his cheek. Also his handgun held 200 bullets.

When Jesse and I went to see the movie there was a couple there that we know and they said they liked the movie. Take that for what it's worth though because they're stupid. So maybe if you're stupid you'll like this movie. If you've got a brain in your head you won't enjoy this movie at all and you'll leave the theater thinking "Oh yeah, right. These people have a huge plot to kill the president and they kill goodness knows how many people in order to pull it off but then the whole plot gets foiled when the bad guy swerves to avoid hitting a little girl standing in the road even though he already almost killed her in the beginning of the movie by setting off a massive bomb right where she was? And what was with the president and his bodyguard looking like they were going to make out there at the end? Stupid!" At least that's what I was thinking.

Save your money or go see No Country for Old Men instead.

Another video for my brother to ignore

I don't know if anyone ever watches the videos that I post but this one is really worth it. I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard at this. It's an improve group (Improv Everywhere) acting out what life would be like if we all acted like we lived in a musical. Only it's a lot funnier than it sounds.

Survivor restores my faith in humanity

I got sick to my stomach watching Survivor last night. No, it wasn't all the shots of the all the fat lips or even the long, extended scene of the giant hole Johnathon got in his knee. (Great job on designing a challenge where nearly everyone got hurt by the way.) It was watching Joel drag Chet through the course. You know what's a really shitty thing to do? Drag someone through the mud and cause them to knock their head against several logs so that you can win a steak. And then, when they tell you that they hit their head, grunt back to them in your stupid caveman voice "I don't care". (For anyone who didn't see this, it was actually a lot more brutal than I'm making it sound.)

I seriously was nauseous watching it. But then this show did something that it rarely does. It made me feel good. Oh how happy it made me too see "ball of goo" Chet remain on the show while "I'm a big stupid asshole who was probably thisclose to killing someone for committing the crime of being old or a woman or gay and by the way call me Truck" Joel got voted out. It was a complete blindside and it was awesome.

Thank you Survivor. For teaching us to laugh about creepy beefy guys. Again.

I expect to be arrested any day now

Me to Joseph - "Your butt is so little! I can fit your entire butt in my hand!"

Joseph to his speech therapist - "My mom can fit her entire hand in my butt!"


Yes, I posted this on a Thursday but it's still making me laugh today.

If it comes out of my boobs it's mine forever

On Sunday Jesse and I went with the kids to go and visit with J and A. (B and Little B were home sick with the flu.) The main point of the visit was to drop off the 500 or so ounces of bresatmilk I had for little A. The other purpose of the visit was, of course, lots of cuddle time.

It was so neat to see A looking like a real baby and not just a squishy, raisiny newborn. he slept the entire time we were together but that didn't stop me from snuggling him and kissing him and soaking in as much of his new-babyishness as possible.

It's hard to describe how I feel about A. There's really nothing else I can compare it to. It feels so good to see him and to know that I helped to bring him here. It's a really awesome feeling and I really don't have the words to describe it. That's why I'm just now writing about this visit that happened on Sunday. I've been trying to find the right words to decribe the visit and I just can't.

J was thrilled with the milk and he thanked me many, many times. As I was giving him the run-down on how to store and thaw the milk J said something to the effect of still giving A formula at night so that he would sleep longer. I came thisclose to saying "No. Give him the breastmilk at night too."

I caught myself in time and didn't say it but the fact that it even occured to me to say it at all took my by suprise. I mean, A is not my child and it honestly would never occur to me to question the way J and B raise him. So why would I think it would be ok to tell J what to feed A?

After thinking about it for a while I figured it out. It's not about A and my feelings for him. It's about my feelings for that damned breastmilk. That stuff is hard won and I want it used to it's full potential. I put too much blood, sweat and tears into getting that milk for it to not be taken advantge of. It's not secret that I think breastmilk is superior to formula so I wonder why in the heck J would want to give A something not as good when he as access to the real deal.

Oh well. It's all good. It continues to be all good. I'm just happy that A is doing well and J and B are happy with their son. I can't complain about something as minor as what A eats at night. I did learn something about myself though. Apparently if it comes out of my vagina you're welcomed to have it. If it comes out of my boobs then I claim ownership of it forever.

Yes!

Back into my pre-pregnancy jeans!

And they're zipped!

And I can breath!

Almost!

Can you tell we don't go to church?

"Mommy, who's Jesus Cripes?" - Joseph