Friday, December 13, 2013

Palm readers, cloth wipes and glorious neck rolls

When I was 18, I worked at the worst pizza place in Portland, Oregon.  It was on Hawthorne Blvd. and the pay was just as bad as the pizza, but the people that worked there were amazing.  And one of my dearest friends worked across the street at Ben and Jerry’s.  Free pizza and ice cream!  Madness!

I was working one day and one of the palm readers that hung out on Hawthorne came in.  He had a super bad headache and needed some ibuprofen, so I gave him some.  He was so grateful; he offered me a free palm reading when I had time.  He told me to just stop by.  He was normally sitting on the sidewalk across the street.

That weekend, I went to go see him before work.  I have had my palm read twice in my life.  That was the first time and he read my future.  The only part I really remember is when he told me I would have one child.  He said, “One child, maybe two, but definitely one and it’s going to be a boy.”  So I’ve known for a long time that Hamburglar would be born.  And maybe he will have a brother or sister.  We don’t know yet.

The second time I had my palm read was about 5 or 6 years later.  I was drunk in Dublin.  I refer to it as the night I was nearly kidnapped by a Pakistani Palm Reader.  Because that makes it sound really fancy and exciting.  I had been on a drinking adventure with one of my Irish friends, and we wound up at his friend’s house, who learned how to read palms from his mother, who had learned from her mother, who had learned from her mother and so on.  He told me he didn’t like to read the future in people’s hands; he preferred to read their past.  So, he read me my past as written on my palms and it was uncannily accurate.   It’s interesting how much of us is written on our hands.

I’m not sure why I woke up thinking about these palm readers this morning.  I just know that, when I think of one, the other tends to come with it.  I kind of want to find that first one again and ask him if my number of children have become more definitive.  But that’s because I hate making big decisions.  Well, it’s a love/hate thing.  When I first moved back to the country, I was thinking about joining a cult so I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job or making my own decisions, because living in the US has seemed far more complicated ever since I returned.  Part of that could also be due to excessive amounts of sobriety.

Anyway, enough of that.

I have started using cloth wipes to go with my cloth diapers.  I’m not sure why we didn’t do it from the beginning.  I mean, if we are going to be washing diapers anyway, why not wash other stuff, too?  I did a bunch of research and read everything I could find (of course) and I went to the co-op and bought two, 4-oz, glass bottles.  One blue and one brown.  The blue one holds water.  In the brown one I made a solution consisting of:

            4oz water
            1 tsp Dr. Bronner’s super sensitive/mild baby soap awesomeness
            1 Tbl olive oil
            And a little aloe vera gel, for funzies

I spray it on the baby and use baby wash cloths as wipes.  I received about ten million of them from baby showers and I bought a few more.  They are working super well.  Between the cloth wipes and diapers, our favorite baby hasn’t had diaper rash.  We use a disposable at night and, since he normally goes 8+ hours before being changed at night, I slather desitin on him as a preventative measure.  But, there you have it.  Cloth diapering and cloth wipes are working well for us.

In other news, Chumbawumba, aka Hamburglar McCloud, aka Fatty McFatfat, aka Chubs McBabylegs, weighs almost 17 pounds.  One of my coworkers has a son who is a year old and he weighs 18 pounds.  I’m pretty sure Hamburglar is full of dark matter.  Mr. Adventure is worried that the wee babe is too heavy, but I think once he starts crawling and moving more, he will slim down.

Speaking of moving… he is grabbing things other than my hair!  It’s all very exciting.  I bought him Sophie the Giraffe and he grabbed it out of my hand and was sucking on her face.

And, speaking of things that go in a baby’s mouth (whether they should or shouldn't), I read this hilarious list on Slate, Called “A 10 Month Old’s Christmas List”.  It starts with, "I am a 10-month-old baby, and I write because my mother has been sending out my Christmas list to people, and her list does not in any way represent the things I really want.  I could give two s#*ts about receiving stacking cups."  And it goes on to become really funny.

I feel like I am getting dumber.  I wonder if every new mom feels like this during the first year or so?  Will I get smarter, though?  Or will I just not miss the brain cells I am currently losing?  It's hard, though.  I work 40+ hours a week using my science brain, then I come home and basically feed the wee babe until I go to sleep.  Hence his nearly 17 pounds of glorious neck rolls and wrist fat.  He's still exclusively breastfed, and I keep reading that you can't over feed a breastfed baby, so...

Mr. Adventure told me the other night that I used to be witty.  And he’s right.  I was god damned hilarious and clever and all sorts of awesome.  Now I’m just so damn tired.  All the time.  There is not enough coffee in the world.


In the world.

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