Yesterday I accomplished nothing. Eric refused to either sleep or play on his own for more than ten minutes all day. I had trouble showering, and wasn't able to finish loading the dishwasher--a job that takes less than five minutes--until 5:30 p.m., despite making several attempts earlier in the day. Finally in the early afternoon I just surrendered to it, and spent most of my time in the rocking chair in the living room, dandling him on my knee and watching bad TV (why, oh why, don't we have TiVo? We all crave it). By evening, he had slept for about 10 minutes on four occasions. Very unlike him. And once, he actually kept crying for possibly as long as 10 seconds after I put a bottle in his mouth. This is unprecedented, and led me to suspect that he is a pod baby.
But he slept all night, and this morning he has been awake for only about an hour and has been sleeping like a log the rest of the time. Go figure. He and I are going to try to make up for yesterday's failure of productivity today. I have some laundry in, and as soon as he has eaten his next meal we are going to the grocery store.
Here's a funny story from the retreat I went to last weekend: we had silence from the end of programs on Saturday night until after breakfast on Sunday morning. So Sunday morning the breakfast bell rings, and we all troop over to the dining hall in silence, serve ourselves in silence, and eat together in silence. I had a couple of biscuits and some fruit, but this nice woman Flo served herself a big bowl of porridge, put butter and sugar on it, and ate the whole thing. It wasn't very good porridge, I guess. It had some kind of fruit in it that had been so cooked it was unidentifiable.
The mystery fruit was bits of sausage. The "porridge" was gravy for the biscuits. All the people around Flo knew this, but nobody told her because to do so would have been to break the silence. Fortunately Flo was not a vegetarian, and was the kind of person who could laugh cheerfully at her own folly.
I still think God would have wanted someone to quietly whisper the word "Gravy" to her, though.
I don't know when I'll be ready to fly again after this week's events. I told David and Scott last night that I think I should look into taking the train to Montana this winter. I actually worked out a plan in my head where I take the train out with Eric, David flies out to meet us, and then Eric flies back with David while I take the train back on my own. I know my fears of flying are irrational, and I don't worry about people I love flying. Only me. But then what do I see in the paper this morning? An Amtrak derailment. Sigh.
Just checked my laundry. The news is bad; we had a pen leak in the pen cup, and I ended up with a big black ink stain on one of my favorite shirts, and it isn't coming out. Fortunately it's one of my favorite old shirts, but still, very sad. I need to buy some new clothes, and am determined to buy some from Making It Big, my favorite catalog. Their stuff is pricey, but over the years I have noticed not only that I wear their stuff for years, but that all my favorite clothes come from them. The problem with making a purchase is two-fold: there's no extra money, and I'm not sure what size to buy. I've worn a size 2 for years, but I am now right on the border of a 2 and a 3. Most of the size 2 stuff I own still fits, but some of it is a tiny bit tight. And some size 3 things that used to be loose on me fit well now that my breasts are permanently enlarged from pregnancy (they won't get even bigger if I do this again, will they? Please God). But I also feel like my size is unsettled: first I had the baby and weighed almost exactly my pre-pregnancy weight, but it was all so re-arranged that it was hit-and-miss whether things still fit. And then I got all bloated from the steroids, and certain clothing items started feeling tight. But now I'm off the steroids, and beginning to de-bloat, and certain clothing items are getting comfortable again. I am seriously so firmly on the line between the sizes that two pounds in either direction would make a difference. So I can't bring myself to order either size right now, even though I am facing a desperate clothing shortage, now exacerbated by the Great Ink Crisis of 2001.
Better go eat my lunch so I'll be ready to give Eric his and get going when he wakes up. If he wakes up--so far, today is like the photographic negative of yesterday. What a silly baby.
Posted by Su Penn at September 14, 2003 09:32 AM | TrackBack