Monday again

As always, the weekend flew by. It was a nice weekend though. Saturday Leif slept for 3 hours and then played in his new pool with Cate. I bought the pool on clearance for half price. I was so excited about it, but it isn't living up to expectations. First off the slide floats all over the place, making it a touch dangerous, and there was no step included that we could find. The ring toss game does not stand up and the basketball hoop hardly stands up. Sunday morning one side was completely flat too and I have a hard time believing that it popped in that time. Overall, not the best $29 spent I suppose for this purpose. However, Leif loves the spraying frog, which as Hans put it will literally spray halfway across the yard. And he also likes crawling on the slide inside the house, although it is less easy to slide on when not wet... maybe a good thing. ;-)

After a playdate we went to a Caribbean restaurant and I was pleasantly surprised. I had ropa vieja, smash and Caribbean style mushrooms. All was great and Leif loved it too. The black bean soup before dinner was to die for though. Hans didn't make out quite as well. His plantains were awesome but he was less enthused by his jerk pork (disappointed in the quality of pork and the lack of spice), thought his dill pickle cheddar soup was mediocre (after the waiter raved about it) and just wasn't impressed. We will try it again and hopefully it was just his selection. Leif otoh, was a handful the entire dinner. He is just getting so difficult to take to restaurants where we might have to sit for longer than 20 minutes.

On Sunday Hans worked in the morning, then came home so I could go to a baby shower. By the time the baby shower rolled around I was regretting having RSVP'd I would go. I would have really rather had the afternoon to spend with Leif and Hans. Anyways, I headed out and arrived at the house. It was about 2/3's the mom to be's friends from high school. She is 30, but grew up in the area and never moved. I adore Brandy, and throughout her pregnancy, have actually become closer with her. But there are a few things that bug me about her.

I guess this goes back a few years ago when she told me that she was "from the popular crowd in high school" and she was quite happy and proud to exclaim this. I think it is probably different growing up and never leaving your hometown, and especially a small town, but this struck me as an odd thing to say. Or maybe it was just because I was *not* from the popular crowd, that it struck me as irritating. Nonetheless, I have grown to like her and have been enjoying following her pregnancy along. I was one of the first people to find out she had tested positive. She was told by her ob/gyn that she would have a hard time getting pregnant due to her ovarian cysts. Well 4 weeks later and blammo, she was sick at work and so excited about the prospect that she *could* maybe be pregnant, she went and bought a test, came back to work and peed on the stick in the women's bathroom. After much squealing she debated how to tell her new husband, who would be ecstatic.

I loved what she did, and her husband's denseness just cracks me up. She had put a "bun" (aka hamburger bun) in the oven and told her husband she couldn't cook dinner because the oven was broken. He said, "well we will go out". She had to practically pull him by the hand into the kitchen and open the oven by insisting that he check it out instantly. He thought she was a little nutso, but finally opened the oven... peered in and said, "I have no idea how to tell what's broken, I will call a repairman tomorrow". Brandy insisted "no, no if you just LOOK at it". He finally said, "fine! I will call a repairman now". Brandy, "no, no, no!" He thought she seriously flipped her lid. Finally he said, "well the repairman will think you were nuts for putting a hamburger bun in the oven". She was so excited he said it "bun in the oven", but did NOT get it. Finally she admitted failure and repeated until he got it... "bun in the oven, bun in the oven".

Anyways, so there were a few of us from work at the shower including two of THE most annoying women I work with. We all ended up sitting together - 6 of us from work. One annoying chick I work with, and have complained about before, just yapped and yapped and had a comment for everything.

I failed miserably at the babyfood contest. I should have won this, but evidently the nuances of the babyfood consistency and color evaded me. I will claim though that they were Beech Nut and Leif never ate Beech Nut, only Gerber. Annoying girl from work won it though and went on and on about how she doesn't even feed her son jarred food. Well la de da.

Next game I failed miserably at too, melted candybar in the diaper game. Guess what kind of candybar. I am not a candybar person, so it will come as no surprise that I got 0/10 correct. I mean what is an "Idaho Spud"? I have never even heard of one. Of course though, annoying girl is completely jipped by the fact that she misnumbered two, and she would have won had she not misnumbered them because if there is one thing she knows it is candybars as she proclaimed 48 times... and her ass shows it too.

Last game is the door prize. Bring a jar of food, diapers or wipes and be entered in a door prize. I realized this was on a card in the invitation as I was headed out the door to leave. I picked up one of Leif's old Stage One Squash containers and brought it with. Drum roll please, number 7 was picked and it was me. Ok, only like 3 people remembered to bring one of the three things, so not a big surprise that I won it. What did I win? Well I won a set of 5 Mary Kay creams. Oh yay.

This is probably bias carried over from working in a dermatologists office for 5 years and hearing the four dermatologists I work with repeatedly tell women not to use Mary Kay and recommended everything but. So here I am, sorry but I cannot do Mary Kay. I really should have just handed it over for a redraw. The person who brought the diapers should have won, she put more $$ into the door prize. I guess what I find most humorous is the girl in charge of the prizes is an Arbonne sales consultant and *hates* Mary Kay. Regift anyone? I am so not criticizing, because it will make another round of "re-gifting"!

I am not huge on etiquette, but there are things that you just don't do, IMO. Like handing out envelopes and making guests address their own thank you card envelopes. Tacky, tacky, tacky. I was *this* close to writing a snide remark on the envelope, but fear of being busted overcame me. Then I thought about addressing the envelope to the couple who never sent me a thank you card for the $50 in towels I bought them for their wedding 3 years ago... ok, I played sport and put my name and address on the envelope.

And while I am here, I am still tossed up on the whole 3rd baby shower thing. Yes, I went to the shower, and I am happy for Brandy. But just because one dumps all their baby stuff after #2 a couple years ago, does not mean that friends should pick up the tab. And her registry was extensive. I gave her a small newborn outfit and a Haba rattle. No one is there making a guest buy the gifts, people love to buy gifts for babies. And well sure, I can buy the "every baby deserves a party" argument, but maybe then it should be a "come meet the baby" party. I just can't help but feel that the shower was a ploy for "I need the new fun things that are on the market now".

I was disappointed that one friend opened the cards for Brandy (didn't even read them), while Brandy plowed through the gifts, half the time not sure who bought what. And that they didn't even pass the items around. Then they were adament about separating the cards into a stack and pulling out the gifts and putting them all into a box so that she didn't have all the bags to carry. Risky really. I guess she trusts that the person keeping track of gifts wrote everything down and got the names right.

Reciting to myself... "just because it isn't how I would have done it does not make it wrong"...

I blazed out of there once she said, "thank you" to everyone. Got home and Leif was just waking up from his 3 hour nap. Shortly after that one of my former students and her mom came by for a visit. Cynthia is in grad school at Harvard and was home for a week long visit. I adore her and her family, so it was great to see them. Leif entertained. He danced for them, provided refreshments (soggy graham crackers) and smiled. Cynthia is doing well, albeit struggling more with the catty, competitive students in grad school. Sounds like she is succeeding well at the classwork. This spring she was considering switching to get her Masters and leave asap she was so unhappy. This made me so sad. She is one of the smartest people I have ever met. She is finished with her 1st year in grad school and will turn 21 in October. Being young has been hard on her I think. She has been alienated by her fellow students because of her young age it sounds like - although she will not say that. I really hope she can stick it out for the next 4 years.

Well so that was the weekend. Hans made his fabulous flank steak burritos for dinner. We watched Rome, which was NOT a good trade fo Six Feet Under. It just didn't interest me. I read instead. Then we went to bed, Leif in his room, us in our room and had one of the worst, hellish, nights we have ever had since his birth.