Saturday, June 4, 2011

Oh yeah, I forgot I had a blog

Sometimes I feel like there's just so much to write about.  Events I go to, bits of news in my life, photos I've taken ... not that I'm sure any of those things is interesting to the outside observer, but they're all good things to catalog for posterity.

And then there are weeks like this past one, where it feels like eight million little mundane things happened, but there's nothing really worthy of note.  The phrase nothing to write home about comes to mind, because I guess a blog is kind of the modern-day version of one big, all-encompassing letter to everybody I know (and some people I don't).

And so, with nothing to write about, I found myself posting pictures or just incoherently ranting, or just skipping a day of posting altogether.  

But maybe someday I'll actually want to go back and read an account of all those boring little things I did ... ?  Maybe?  I'm stretching here. 

So, this was my week:

The public pool opened.  This should not come as a surprise to you, but I love the pool.  When it's the middle of January and I'm scrambling to find gloves and coats so I can get my stir-crazy kid out the door to go to some overpriced, crowded, hot indoor play area, I think, Why can't it just be summer so we can throw on our bathing suits and go to the pool for entertainment? 

My friend Sarah laughs at me because once pool seasons starts, I try to be at the pool as much as humanly possible.  So far we've been able to go twice in the 6 days the pool has been opened, the other 4 days being either too cold, too rainy, or too busy. 

Wednesday was one of those non-pool days.  Wednesday afternoon Nathan and I drove up to the north side of Chicago to be in a focus group being run by my bloggy friends Caitlin and Sara.  The focus group was at Little Beans Cafe, which is a coffee shop with a full kids' play area in it.  Nathan played with his friends Caden and Lucas (who are Farrah's sons), and he had so much fun that he was reluctant to leave.  (And by "reluctant to leave" I mean "kind of had a meltdown.")  While the kids were playing, the moms and I gave our feedback on Kidgrade, a new website where parents rate the kid-friendliness of various stores, restaurants, and attractions.  (The site is still pretty new, so there aren't that many establishments in their database yet.) 

I had rehearsal three nights this past week.  In case you forgot, I am an emcee for the park district Beatles tribute concert.  We're doing two shows at an art fair this weekend, two at a street fair in July, and some other outdoor thing in August.  I am seriously bored to death by the script I have to read, and I'm the one who wrote it.  It is so not funny. 

In other news, I did manage to hammer out a post for Technorati yesterday.  The post is about breastfeeding in public, about how we're getting mixed messages like "breast is best" and "but don't do it here."  I always get a little nervous when I write about hot-button issues like breastfeeding because I don't want to make it seem like I'm at all judge-y of people who make any particular choices.

As for my own personal experience, I nursed Nathan for a year, but (1) for awhile his doctor said I needed to supplement with formula because he wasn't gaining weight, and (2) I felt horrifically guilty about this one bottle of formula a day for one month of his life, and also (3) I agonized on so many occasions about how little I was pumping out at work, plus (4) I refused to go on medication for my depression because I just had to breastfeed for a year, and in the end (5) I realized that there were very few people who never fed formula and that I shouldn't have spent so much time feeling guilty about Items (1)-(4).  So, my point is, on the whole Breast vs. Bottle debate, my attitude is kind of like, whatever you pick is fine.  I just wrote that article because I find it frustrating that new moms have the whole "breast is best" message drilled into them, and yet then they encounter some people who make breastfeeding difficult in public.  (I should note that most women do not encounter obstacles to public breastfeeding, but when somebody does it gets a lot of media attention and thus the message reaches a wider audience.) 

Anyway my Technorati article got a lot of Facebook likes, so I hope that means a lot of people read it.  I hope so not only because I'm an attention whore, but also because I think it generates actual income in ad revenue for me.  (Not a lot of income, mind you, and to be perfectly honest I don't understand how any of that works.)

Overall this week has been frustrating.  I've found myself getting flustered by the smallest of tasks.  For example, I have decided I never want to empty the dishwasher again, even though I've been doing it for years and you'd think it wouldn't bother me.  The laundry?  UGH.  Cleaning and straightening?  Why bother?

I'm unhappy with my eating, and my lack of exercise.  So many days I eat so well all day, only to totally blow it at night by doing something dumb like eating peanut butter straight out of the jar.  And then I feel so dumb afterward because if you're going to eat something high in fat/calories, it should at least be some kind of fancy meal prepared by a professional chef.  But at the time when the food binge is going on, I can't possibly think of a single reason why I shouldn't just consume every form of carbohydrate I have in the house. 

Exercise-wise, I had two good sessions with Trainer Jill this past week.  And also I did the stationary bike once, seeing as my real bike got stolen.  I ran/walked at the park on one occasion, and then I did a tiny bit of swimming.  So, you know, my exercise wasn't terrible, but I just don't feel like it's up to the same standards as some of my previous exercise weeks. 

Between my poor eating, my lackluster exercise attempts, and my complete and total frustration with anything I've written in the past two weeks, I think I might be in a bit of a rut. 

The good news is, we are going on a small mid-week trip to an indoor waterpark hotel this week.  Bill decided he wanted to go, and then I was able to use my stellar blogging connections to get us a discount.  Or maybe everybody is eligible for that discount because it's not a weekend.  I don't know. 

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