Hot Women American Perspective

This has been an incredibly busy week. I'm typing as fast as I can while baby A squirms in my lap, so this won't be long. The new gal is working out fine. She is super sweet. I have gotten caught up on lots of my errands and bill paying this week and my car is clean, so it feels nice. The furniture repair guy (and gal) came and did some work and I have been having roof repair people in for estimates as well. Typical home owner stuff. And now baby A is demanding you-know-what, so I gotta go.

My whole family is all better now. Yay! That was an un-fun flu, but it was over in about 24 hours. And baby A never got it, that I could detect. Score another one for MOMMA'S MILK! I keep explaining to people that breast milk offers some protection for babies against the common cold and other illnesses, but when it comes to gastrointestinal illness, the protection is incomparable. It makes sense. When momma becomes sick, she cranks out antibodies. One special type of antibody, secretory IgA, is secreted into the breast milk. So not only is baby's intestinal tract bathed in protective antibodies, but there are actual living cells, white blood cells called Macrophages, crawling around in there engulfing bad stuff. So warm, fresh breast milk is a living fluid. My new lady, Miss I, is super nice. I have taken the slow road with her training so as not to scare her off. And she has worked with children at schools in the past and already has a negative ppd test for tuberc

In between feeling nauseous and lying down, ds and I managed to watch the red carpet and Oscar stuff. Mostly I saw ordinary looking people wearing expensive clothes and jewelry. Occasionally there were people of exceptional beauty. The 3 most beautiful people last night, in my opinion were Katherine Heigl, Ann Hathaway, and George Clooney. I searched for red carpet photos of them but the ones I saw don't seem to do them justice. So I found some pictures which show more what I am trying to explain. Katherine Heigl looked so great in her fire-engine red dress. She was completely "old Hollywood" with a look that reminded me of Marilyn Monroe. And even prettier than I remember her. Here is a picture from a different event. Ann Hathaway, who has always been unbelievably gorgeous in my book, looked particularly wonderful. Her wine-red gown with cascading flowers set off her alabaster skin perfectly. George Clooney looked fabulous. He also looked handsome in the way of

The little ones have been taking turns throwing up. Now my teenage boy is throwing up. I don't feel so hot either. I'll update more later.

My heart skipped a beat when the housekeeping agency called this afternoon. They said that the new lady decided she did not want the job after all. HUH? And I thought it had gone so well. I asked what they thought the reason was, and they said it was probably because she tested positive for tuberculosis exposure. She was in shock. Yikes! I'm in shock too. So they are sending over another lady today or tomorrow for an interview. I'm insisting that everyone get tested. When my teenagers were preschool-age about 15 years ago, a couple of children at our church caught tuberculosis from one of the babysitting ladies. The lady fled the country. So it is definitely an issue in these parts.

I was nervous all day yesterday. I interviewed about 5 ladies, all with their own cars, for the position. I followed my instinct and hired the one lady , Mrs. T, based on my gut feeling. She struck me as calm, quiet, confident and dignified. Her English is not as good as some of the other ladies, but I had a good feeling from talking to her. She arrived slightly ahead of schedule this morning, and she was a workhorse all day. She was very concerned with anticipating my needs and pitching in wherever needed. I hope she enjoys working here. The worst part of the day was giving notice to Mrs. L. I explained that I need somebody 5 days instead of 2. It really is the truth. If she stopped bringing in her granddaughter, I would still not keep her for the 2 days. I want someone 5 days. I don't know how she took it. She got quiet. I will hopefully find out from my neighbor how she is doing, and if she wanted to be set up with another job or stay home with the little one for

I have been trying for days *not* to write this blog post, but it is screaming to get out. I think the problem is that I cannot communicate truthfully all of my feelings with the parties involved. And the issue is not resolved. It is about my housekeeper. I can't tell her exactly how I feel about everything because I need to preserve good feelings with her and also with my neighbor. My neighbor is the one who hired her in the first place 2 years ago. She had gone to a service and done some interviews and really liked Mrs. L. But she told me that she was worried Mrs. L would move on to find full-time employment since she was only having her come 3 days a week. I told her I thought I could help out with that and I would be happy to have her on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So Mrs. L started coming to my house. I got rid of the cleaning crew. She cleaned the upstairs on Tuesday when J. was napping and the downstairs on Thursday. I never had her do kitchen work or cooking because

I did it. I called a service and I'm interviewing new housekeepers on Tuesday. DH has always wanted me to get a live-in, but I never wanted to give up my privacy. I might be changing my mind. We'll see how the interviews go.

I know I won't get much sympathy about the housekeeper stuff, but here goes. My housekeeper called in sick again today. She normally works on Tuesday and Thursday cleaning and running/folding/putting away the laundry. She now brings her 1-y-o granddaughter with her to work as of the last few months, and the little girl has the flu. So no Mrs. L. WAAAAAAA! I had so much I wanted to get done today. I took out a week's worth of trash (it was time), emptied the diaper pails and got all the laundry sorted into piles and started the machines (2). Then I ran out to a mom's club at the park meeting I was determined to go to, but the WIMPY Californians decided it was too COLD at 60 degrees and windy. COWARDS! Luckily the organizer showed up and I was able to exchange emails and phone numbers with her. That is what I mostly wanted to accomplish anyway. So I went straight home to get the broken dining room chair and got it to the furniture store and they installed the repla

Why does my weight bump up a full pound one day and back down the next? Why does the baby spit up so much more right after he gets into a fresh outfit? Especially when he is not wearing a bib? Why isn't my son doing his homework yet? Why doesn't my appetite ever give it a rest? Why are there 24 valentines in each box, but 31 kids in my son's class? Why does my 3-y-o hate naps, but falls asleep randomly, ruining his early bedtime? Why do houses need so much maintenance? Holes in walls, trees in pools, leaks in roof. Why does my dh work late when I'm sleep deprived and feeling overwhelmed? Why do babies go back to waking every 3 hours after they have been sleeping 7 hours for weeks? Why does the button fall off of the sweater the week after you buy it? Why do kids insist on eating in rooms other than the kitchen? Why do I only remember my to-do list when I don't have the time to do anything?

Here are some recent pics of the baby and myself. The little guy weighs in around 13 pounds now. He loves to nurse and be held. Good thing I am getting good at babywearing. The top pic is a demo of the front wrap cross carry, and the bottom one shows an over-the-shoulder-baby-holder at the local zoo. Oh, and those are my size 6 Calvin Klein jeans. The fit is not so tight anymore. :-D

I have a strange man coming to my house today, lol. He is a handyman and I need his help to fix a hole in the wall that my boys made by slamming the door open from the garage after the door stop fell off the baseboard. So there is a nice 3 by 3-inch hole in the WALLPAPER. Luckily, the FANTASTIC home sellers we bought this house from left a bunch of stuff for us including rolls of all the wallpaper. This guy is charging a very reasonable amount. I hope he does good work because he is local and I need a good handyman. DH is great at earning, but handiness is not his strong suit. I'm handy with some tools. I actually own my own drill and bits. But patching drywall is not something I want to tackle. This will be a fun week. I have another babywearing group meeting to attend IRL tomorrow, so I will get to try on a bunch of new wraps and chat with the ladies. They can try on my wraps as well, now that I have a couple of desirable wraps in my stash. I am also attending a mom&

I can't believe it is Friday already. What a busy week. Almost every moment has been occupied, and I still have dishes to load and wash, as you can imagine. DD and I had an idyllic day together on Monday. She now has all of her Mondays off and wants to come and see me again in another week and a half. I'm so excited to spend time with her. I have as a dream that I'd like to plan some getaway vacations with her and perhaps the baby, just "girl time". He he. Gotta destress sometimes from the testosterone zone. ;-) Maybe I will have to plan something in a few months, like a weekend trip to my mother's house in Washington State. It may be too late to catch the ski season (I'm dying to downhill ski again), but maybe the spring will be a good time to see some sights. It will have to be only a weekend trip so DH can watch the older boys. Besides that, DH introduced me to a web page creation program that he heard about at his seminar last weekend. It so

I'm super busy today, so a short post. My daughter and I are spending the day together shopping and lunching. She has Mondays off with her new class schedule. Woohooo! She and I were playing with the settings on the camera last night trying to capture the beauty of the view from my backyard. Doesn't really do it justice, but it is a rather interesting picture, imo.

I saw an article on MSN recently about abortions. Who has them and for what reasons. Turns out it is not just scared little teenagers. I was sad that supposedly mature grown-ups would make the poor choices that got them into that situation. It brought me back to a turning point in my life. You may wish to stop reading here. What is to follow will be a graphic description of a biology lab experiment in college involving chicken embryos. I did not know what the lab was that day. I went to bio lab as usual. It was my freshman year at UCLA in the early 1980s. When I got there I saw a bunch of chicken eggs waiting. I was told that these were fertilized eggs, and that we were expected to follow the directions to observe them. We had to crack the eggshell without breaking the yolk. The 1-cm long embryos resided on one side of the egg yolk in a quarter-sized disk of blood vessels. We had to cut the disk off of the yolk using scissors and float it in a petri dish of clear ringers l