Lacrosse Season Starts Again

Here is Weber High Lacrosse's littlest coach. The season starts again.

A Week Out

I had my baby last week and here's where I am at.

1. I lost 20 pounds - which is nice.
   
2. My bellybutton is now an innie again - it had been an outie for the last few months.
   
3. I can sleep on my back again.
   
4. I can sleep on my side without an extra pillow and my back doesn't hurt.
   
5. I can bend over without passing out.
6. I can use my laptop because most of that 20 pounds came off my stomach and I have a lap again.
7. I can walk around without getting tired.
8. I can lift my daughter again...

Update.
Well - being so far out from the pregnancy was great, I pushed it too hard, and now I am flat - where is that Perc script they gave me at the hospital???

More Matt Damon

Today while hanging with my new baby boy, What it Takes did a half hour blurb on Matt Damon. Happy Days.

Made me Laugh

Paul gets Esquire magazine and this edition has a beautiful picture of Matt Damon on the cover. For those of you who don't know, you could ask my best friend from college, my type of guy whom I find attractive is a type that looks like Matt Damon. I've made my fair share of mistakes with guys who look like Matt Damon. I have always thought Paul looks like Matt Damon - in fact I first kind of noticed him after I saw Good Will Hunting right before I had a grad school class with Paul.

Anyway - yesterday the Princess came across the Esquire magazine and said "Daddy!"

Made me laugh.

Fun Driving

I am huge. My stomach is ginormous and I have a baby inside who moves all over the place all the time. Today I had to drive to the doctor's office to have blood drawn (2nd time this week, 4th time this month) to see if I'm dying yet. I had to drive the little Mazda Protege with its steering wheel that won't move and it's standard transmission so I have to be close enough to push in the clutch and its low to the ground seat. It took forever to get in and maneuver my belly around and under the damn wheel. Then I'm driving and the baby is moving and kicking because he's uncomfortable with the wheel intruding in his space. Then I get to the office and can't get out of the damn car because I have no stomach muscles and can't pull myself up.

Then I get blood drawn and have to do the whole thing all over again. Next vehicle we buy will be a huge, automatic, gas guzzling pick up truck...

Home Visit

Elizabeth's teachers from pre-school came for a home visit tonight. They were supposed to arrive at 615pm. I fed her (why oh why did I not think about this more carefully) applesauce, corn and spaghettios at about 515pm. She decides to drop the spaghettios on the floor (have you ever dropped a bottle of beer on the floor just to watch the physics of how beer flies everywhere out of a bottle?) and they went EVERYWHERE. I mean, everywhere. Now, I am 9 days away from having a baby, huge, and haven't been able to bend over without falling down in weeks. I am mopping the floor, cleaning up spaghettios and picking up corn and wiping applesauce off the wall because the teachers are coming. She also got spaghettios on her Ted - which meant he had to be cleaned, which meant she complained he was wet.

Her teachers call at 545pm and say, can we come early, how about 5 minutes? I say, sure. I am dripping sweat, washing dishes feverishly so that my kitchen is clean. They arrive and I'm flush and hot and sweaty. My favorite way to receive callers.

But it was wonderful - they were very sweet and Elizabeth was so happy to have them. She showed them all her stuff and explained that Ted was wet because he was left out in the rain from the sky. She cried a little when they left, which I saw as a really good sign she likes them and they are very good.

Now I need to go pass out but I can't because I still have to get her ready for bed...smile...

End of Summer

When I first moved to Utah 7 years ago, my dad came to visit me in September. He pointed out that clearly I was meant to live in Utah because it was so yellow here. Yellow is my favorite color - always has been, always will be. And he was right - unlike New York where we kind of fade to orange and red during the autumnal months - Utah has this beautiful yellow season before the colors go. All sorts of yellow flowers.

Health Care

Yesterday I sat at a bar chatting with friends - this is my favorite kind of chatting. No gossip, no bitching, just good conversation covering everything from football to health care. During this conversation, people were commenting that older people or Americans who don't have a problem with Medicare should be totally on board with health care - and I thought at first blush, this is a legitimate argument. But this morning, while up at 4am because I am 2 weeks away from delivery, I decided it wasn't really all that legitimate. Here are my 2 points.

First, Medicare can be argued to have been designed (as was Social Security in some ways) to provide for women who chose not to have careers, never earned money for themselves and raised their families while their husbands went out and earned the bread. These women were fulfilling what had been known as the Republican Mother ideal - doing their job to raise the next generation of citizens rather than developing a career. Their husbands die first - as is often the case - and they have no independent means to take care of themselves. Or there are women who never married but were relegated to the pink ghetto for their entire lives which does not generally include good pensions. These women do not deserve to not have health care when they are old or to have to rely on the kindness of children or strangers to maintain their health. Thus the government steps in to provide for those whom society expected something else from.

Second, the unemployment rate today is 9.7% which means 90% of available people are working. These people will pay into Medicare their entire lives and they deserve to reap what they have sown. They hit 65 and they get to be rewarded for a lifetime of work by not having to work anymore but not having to worry about health care.

Neither of these options cover poor people or people who have children without having waited until they could afford them. Thus - being old and opposed to government health care and in favor of Medicare is not a double standard.

All this being said - I think government should provide a safety net for all its citizens, its poor and children most specifically and I would argue this has nothing to do with age or societal expectations - but that social rights should be as guaranteed as civil and political rights. But that's an entirely different argument.

13 Hours Left

For those of you who are in the know - I have 13 hours left until departure - I am beginning to understand Mr. Costanza -

SERENITY NOW!!!

Backup Outfit

Here is my beautiful baby. She's in a teepee at the Treehouse Museum, looking sweet and cute. In an outfit her father chose for her to be the backup outfit - if she gets a mess on her clothes, she has a backup. Which apparently he thought a gray and brown moose t-shirt matches a pink and purple plaid skirt. Seriously. I need to be extra vigilant.