Her Ladyship

Notes from the gutter.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Mindful breathing

Three weeks ago, I was trying to track down a BBQ that we were headed to and I couldn't find the street address that I'd written down. But I could hear the sound of people talking and laughing drifting from a backyard so I figured that that was the right place.  I headed toward the noise and was focused on figuring out which house it was coming from. I was so focused on listening that I failed to focus on, you know, walking.  The ground was super-wet from the previous night's storm and I ended up skidding, sliding, and eventually falling onto my knee.

Besides the indignity of showing up at a party (filled with work colleagues!) with muddy jeans, I over-bent my knee and by the end of the night, it was so swollen I could barely walk. I took a lot of ibuprofen for the inflammation, took it easy at dance class a few days later, and figured it would fix itself.

Shockingly, it did not. You know what helped? A yoga class that I took on Sunday.  Even though I had to be careful about which poses I did, by the end of it, my knee didn't hurt at all.  So I've been trying to work in a little yoga here and there to help speed up the process. I'm not sure if it's the tension-releasing aspects or if it's a specific stretch that helps or some combination thereof, but it seems to be doing the trick.

Only thing: very difficult to have mindful, peaceful breathing when your baby is in the same room. I have learned to kick the pets out when I do yoga or pilates because they tend to view the floor as their territory and thus if you're on it, they have the right to come check things out, and it's hard to relax when your cat is biting your feet or your cat and dog are having a rumble by your head. I guess I will have to do the same thing with the baby, at least until I can calm down about her a bit.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Feline fine

Haw haw.  I took the cat and the dog to the vet on Thursday (lost a coin toss with the Texan, who stayed home with the baby) so that they could both have bloodwork done and the cat could get some shots.  Shrapnel is going to be 22 years old in September and I am knocking every piece of wood as I type that. He impressed the hell out of the vet and vet tech, as he was the second oldest cat either of them had seen and all things considering, is in pretty good shape. He also apparently didn't embed any claws in their arms this time, something he's done in the past. (No exaggeration: the vet in San Antonio would get out her cow-birthing gloves to handle him, as they would mean her arm would be ensconced in rubber and thus protected from him all the way up to the shoulder.) (Although this vet did take one look at his claws and offer us an on-the-house claw-trimming.  I have to admit I can't remember the last time I clipped them.) (I HAVE A BABY.) (Best excuse for not doing things ever!)

Anyways.  Che of course charmed the entire office and in fact our departure was delayed because the vet techs were playing with him. This was a good thing because he's shedding his undercoat, which means that there was fur everywhere in the examination room. I also got a curt email from Zipcar warning me that I'd left the car "dirty," which I'm assuming means that the person after me is allergic to dogs and very particular about the car's interior, since I used a seat cover but that can only contain so much, you know? (BTW: I have this whole theory about the other person in our neighborhood who rents Zipcars. We're kind of out on the hinterlands for their customer base and thus I am pretty sure I know who it is. We are in a running battle about how close the seat needs to be to the steering wheel and where to leave the radio tuned.)

Anyways anyways. Today it's just me and La Principessa. The Texan is celebrating Father's Day by getting out of Dodge for a while. He went off for a long scooter ride, muttering something about West Virginia. Presumably he's coming back. He deserves a nice break, as he gave me one last night.  There was a work event with alcohol, and he agreed to stay home with the baby so I could partake in adult beverages as much as I wanted.  It was great! I came home, decided to continue the party there, poured myself a drink...and promptly fell asleep on the living room couch. And the Texan even got up early on Father's Day to take care of La Principessa's breakfast so I could sleep it off in. Thanks, Texan. Happy Father's Day! 

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I survived!

I'm sure many of you were at the edge of your seat after that last post, wondering how Her Ladyship fared as a single parent for a week.  Well, not going to lie, there were some rough times, but overall, it went okay.

One thing that I did go through was the dreaded day 3 freak-out. The Texan had noticed that La Principessa would be fine the first couple of days that I'd be gone on a business trip but absolutely lose it on the third day. This was my chance to experience it and hoo boy, did I.  The way that she expresses it is a complete meltdown at bedtime, necessitating holding her until she sobs herself to sleep in your arms, leaving you wrung out and exhausted from the previous hours of wailing.  The last day of The Texan's trip, I used some tips that he recommended which he found worked with her when I was gone on my trips. They worked for me too, so I sent him a text to his cell and iPad to let him know and thank him. He responded via the cell phone; then, I got a message from the iPad asking who this was.  I wrote back, "Ha ha," thinking he was being sarcastic because I'd sent the same message to two devices. Then I thought, what if that wasn't a joke? Turned out that the messages I'd been sending to his iPad had not been going to him. Some stranger got baby updates, baby pictures, and a shot of me looking exhausted on our couch. Thank god nothing too embarrassing was sent out but still, it does give you pause.

The other repercussion from this trip is that I used The Texan's absence to watch a bunch of TV shows and movies that I'd been saving up.  One of them was "Les Miserables."  Now, when I was in high school, I thought that that musical - oh, and Phantom of the Opera too, I admit it - was some classy entertainment. I even made a tape of a tape of the Les Mis soundtrack. Yes, I am old - that was back even before CDs were common.  Anyways, I had the soundtrack to Les Mis memorized and I was very much surprised by how much of it came back when I watched the movie. Like, all of it.  Unfortunately, I think it got the synapses in my brain firing and then just never got them to stop because, no joke, for the past 10 days, I have had some song from Les Mis running constantly in the background of my mind.  Constantly.  Without end.  The only way I have been able to make it stop is by inserting Vampire Weekend's "Oxford Comma" in its stead but that is a temporary solution.  I mean, it was a good movie, but there's only so much of it you can take.
 
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