Autumn at Oak Hollow

One weekend about a year ago Nathan and I were keeping busy doing random household chores. I was in the kitchen loading our no-good-soon-to-be-replaced-dishwasher and he was outside on the pool deck sucking up leaves with a wet/dry vac (because we haven’t sprung for an actual leaf blower yet).

It was a nice spring day and the windows were open. I heard Nathan call out my name.

“Yeah?” I called back.

“Heather!” he shouted again.

“Ye-es” I called again, this time inserting a little inflection of impatience and irritation.

“Heather, come here, quick!” he shouted.

Since we’ve been married for almost nine years, Nathan and I have found unique ways to irritate each other. I irritate him by correcting his grammar and singing to the piped-in music at the grocery store. He irritates me by leaving his dirty socks on the kitchen island and expecting me to come running every time he has something to show me.

I opened the slider door and poked my head out. I was ready to unleash my inner bitch until I saw there was something…wrong.

It looked as though Nathan was being eaten by our deck. In the process of cleaning, one of the deck planks broke in half underneath him and one of his legs fell through. He was caught in an awkward pose; one leg folded against his chest and the other dangling above the rocks underneath the deck.

“I need a little help,” he said.

Well duh. Except I was newly pregnant and figured trying to get a six foot five, 260 pound man out of a hole probably fell into the category of “heavy lifting.” So I asked him what he wanted me to do.

“Well come here and give me a hand,” he said.

I sighed and slowly made my way toward him down the deck stairs. I figured if I took my time he might figure out I wasn’t going to be any help at all and he’d try to get himself out. And that’s exactly what happened. By the time I reached him, he had managed to stand back up and was examining the rip in his jeans and taking stock of any cuts and bruises. He was in one piece and we didn’t have to call 911.

Since then, another plank has broken (no one fell through that time) and numerous others buckle underneath us every time we walk over them. In short, the deck is falling apart.

I really, really didn’t want to buy a house with a pool. I grew up with a pool and knew how much work they were and knew I would have to actually do some of it if I was the pool’s owner. When I was a kid, I could get away with enjoying the fruits of my dad’s labor without contributing because he never trusted me or my brother to clean the pool correctly. But it was all over when we first looked at this house and stepped out on the deck to see this:



I remember showing this picture to my friends. They were surprised. “Wow, that’s a big yard,” they’d say. Um, no. That swingset you see there is the neighbor’s yard. Our backyard is the pool, two small fruit trees, some shrubs and about four square feet of grass for Molly to poop on. Makes for easy mowing, though.

Nathan was smitten right away. I warned him that pools were expensive and a pain in the neck to cover and uncover every year. If you don’t get the chemicals right you’re either going to have problems with algae or burn your eyeballs out while cheating at Marco Polo. Not to mention we live in Michigan where you get three whole months use out of a swimming pool each year. However, since the rest of the house suited our needs perfectly, we bought it, pool and all.

So back to the deck. As you can see in the above photo, the deck was already pretty worn when we bought the house two years ago. We’d talked about replacing it completely, but since we’re spending our money on such indulgences as a mortgage, groceries and daycare, we really don’t have the bucks for a brand new deck. So what are we going to do instead? Destroy it, most likely.

Actually, we just want to make it less of a hazard. Plus we wanted to re-claim a little bit of our yard so we decided to take down the east side of the deck that border’s our neighbor’s yard in back of us (the one with the swingset).

The thing is, neither of us are handy people. Nathan spent some time in the Air Force, but the Air Force really didn’t teach him practical uses for a hammer. He can guard nuclear weapons like nobody’s business, but when it comes to home repair he frequently calls upon his engineer buddy Ryan for help. Ryan has installed four ceiling fans in our house so far. Ryan rocks as a handyman but wants nothing to do with our deck project, not that I can blame him.

Me? I have a degree in English. I think that says it all.

So far, Nathan has completed some modest demolition on the deck wall. He still wants to get Ryan over here to at least judge whether we’re jeopardizing the structural integrity of the deck. My guess is that it’s going to be okay.

In the meantime, Nathan wanted me to post a few pictures so his friends can see how the project is progressing:



He’s planning on using the planks he’s taken off here to replace some of the ones rotting beneath our feet.



More loosened deck planks. He made a lot of noise doing this. I’m sure our neighbors were ready to call the cops seeing as it was a weeknight and all.



Here’s the hole Nathan fell through. There’s another one like it a few feet away.



Here you can see the corner where we plan to keep the deck and where we plan to pull it apart. I asked Nathan if we were going to put a new railing up. He said no. So instead of falling through our deck you’ll just fall off. It’ll be easier to get to the filter though.



This is what the pool looks like now. Makes you want to jump right in, doesn’t it?

It’s getting to be that time of year when things are picking up at work. Most people think that summers are relatively laid back when you work at a university, but that’s just not true unless you’re faculty and aren’t required to set foot on campus between the months of May and August. When I was an undergrad I told my faculty advisor once how much vacation time I received each year when I was working at the factory. He shuddered and said, “I couldn’t handle that.”

Anyway, since coming back to work I’ve been pumping the breast milk out so that Autumn can have something to eat at Carol’s house the next day. The office has been pretty cool about me leaving my desk three times a day, but still it’s a bit embarrassing when you have to pick up the phone and tell someone “I gotta go pump” because then you’re sure they’re imagining what you look like with your shirt hiked up and your boobs hanging out with the plastic cones attached and your nipples getting sucked in and out and in and out with the milk dripping into the bottles kind of like this:



So I’ve been toying with the notion of whether to wean Autumn at the sixth month mark. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, babies should be breast fed a minimum of six months. That was my goal at first. Make it to six months and then decide if I want to continue.

Another thing is I’m really, really beginning to despise the pump. I have a good one, a Medela Pump in Style that has pretty much paid for itself since I haven’t had to buy formula. I do have some on hand for emergencies, but thankfully it isn’t a staple. That shit’s expensive as hell.

One aspect of the whole pumping process is the extra baggage it adds to my morning commute. Every day I walk into the office, weighed down with the pump strapped to my back, my lunch bag in one hand and my mom-sized purse/diaper bag in the other, because you know I can’t go anywhere without an extra outfit, baby wipes, diapers and a burp cloth. So if you see me walking into the building in the morning, I look and feel a lot like this:



The only thing that keeps me going is Autumn. I just love the look on her face when she knows she’s going to get fed. In the beginning we had such a hard time perfecting her latch. I was always worried that she wasn’t opening her mouth wide enough, but now she sees the boob coming and opens wide. If I don’t get it to her fast enough she’ll cry out as if to say, “Get that thing over here NOW!”

You can tell she’s in heaven when the milk starts to flow. Her eyes roll up inside her head and she’s oblivious to everything else. If I don’t give her a burp cloth or blanket to grab while she’s nursing, she’ll grab at my skin and leave tiny little welts from her nails. Okay, so that part’s not so fun.

I guess now I’m more inclined to continue for another six months or whenever the girl is ready to stop, whichever comes first. All I know is that she’s not going to be one of those kids who drag mommy’s teat to kindergarten.

Just in the past two days Autumn has started doing this cry that's a combination of a squeal and a gargle. We call it her Aquaman call.

Autumn’s been eating a couple of servings a day of rice cereal since her pediatrician gave us the green light at her four-month appointment. Actually, she only gets a couple of servings during the week because Carol feeds her cereal at daycare and I feed her in the evening after work. During the weekends I’m just way too lazy to feed her cereal in the morning because, hey, I like to sleep in. But you know what sleeping in for me is now? That’s right, 7:00 am. But I digress…

A couple of days ago we decided to delve further into the land of solid food by offering Autumn some banana. Nathan cut up half of a banana and mixed it up in the Magic Bullet until it resembled something more like the head off a mug of Killian’s. I was in the process of feeding Autumn her cereal anyway and decided to see how she’d like the banana. I held the spoon up to her lips and you’d have thought I was offering her a used gym sock soaked in cat pee by the look on her face. Okay, so the first spoonful wasn’t a complete success.

I ended up mixing the rest of the banana with what was left of her cereal and she ate it without a problem. Yesterday, however, I had the nerve to mix more banana than was apparently necessary because the first bite brought out the horrified expression of culinary betrayal again. She ate, albeit reluctantly and it was pretty much hit or miss from then on. I’d try to stick the spoon in her mouth while she babbled and let the mushy mixture dribble down her chin. I’d scoop it off her chin and offer it to her again while she continued to grunt her dissatisfaction with the whole process.

At this point I have no idea if she likes banana or not or if she’s just not used to it. Nathan and I are hoping she’ll grow up to be one of those open minded kids who’ll try just about anything, but who are we kidding? Kids are bizarre creatures. Raymond exists on hot dogs and processed chicken shaped like dinosaurs and won’t eat pizza with anything but cheese on it. When I was a kid I loved canned mushrooms but couldn’t stand fresh ones. Now it’s the opposite. And don’t get me started on green beans. I’ll only eat them if they’re pickled or smothered in oil and garlic and sitting in a steam tray at the Chinese buffet. Peas? Never!

I guess we’ll just have to face the fact that the girl is not going to like everything we do. We’ll probably fret over what she eats and how much of it she eats and will eventually die of embarrassment when we visit our favorite sushi restaurant and she has a tantrum because there’s nothing on the menu with the word “nugget” in it.

Most mornings are hectic since I’m now responsible for not only for remembering everything I need to bring to work but everything Autumn needs for daycare. I get up at 6:00 am every morning to feed and dress Autumn and myself and every morning I fail to make my goal to get out the door by 7:30 am. Nathan has started helping out by fixing me breakfast. He still doesn’t get up before 7:00 am, but he makes me breakfast and that helps.

Yesterday I earned the bad mother award for sending my daughter to daycare in heavy corduroy overalls and a long sleeve t-shirt. She’s starting to fit into some of her 6-9 months sizes and I thought, “Oh, this is cute. You should wear this today because pretty soon it’s going to be warm out and you won’t be able to wear it at all.” Apparently Mommy spends too much time watching cable TV and not enough time watching the local weather report because we had a beautiful, warm day yesterday during which the temps reached the 70s.

Carol usually takes the kids outside to play when it’s nice and told me she had to take the overalls off because Autumn was sweating. I pictured my little girl sitting outside in her t-shirt, diaper and little purple socks and vowed to be more prepared today. Of course I still forgot to send the sunscreen with her, but she was dressed in a cute little ensemble that bared her chunky legs and arms and promised to be much more comfortable than yesterday’s corduroy disaster. I even included a backup pair of jeans and a jacket in case this freaky Michigan weather decides to turn on us. Yeah, I’m still not watching the weather report.

Since Nathan had to leave early this morning, I lost my short order cook and had to fix my own breakfast. I fried an egg and toasted some bread while I dried my hair and Autumn sat in her cradle swing transfixed by The Wiggles, who, I might add, are the TV equivalent to crack. Apparently kids go nuts for them and I have to admit I had the “Hot Potato” song running trough my head to the point where I would have killed to hear the “Macarena” just to switch my inner frequency to another tune.

I was running five minutes late as usual, and as I picked Autumn up out of her swing to put her in the car seat the most foul smell wafted up to me. This was not the normal, sour milky smell I’ve gotten used to over the past five months. Autumn’s eating cereal now and producing some seriously smelly diapers. For a few seconds I considered pretending to be unaware of the problem and let Carol deal with it, but anyone with a nose could tell the girl was carrying a load in her pants. In an effort to avoid a visit from Child Protective Services for making bad wardrobe decisions and dropping a soiled child off at daycare, I changed the diaper. I phoned Nathan later to say we might want to consider switching to the heavy duty stage 2 Diaper Genie liners or else our house will start smelling like the restrooms at Wal-Mart.

And this time last year I was sleeping in until 7:00 am.

In a fit of lunacy and because, you know, I have nothing else going on, I created a blog for Molly here.

We missed our nightly walk last night and I was feeling guilty. I know there are other ways to make up for that, but I think she's earned her little spot on the internet.

In spite of the title, I can't guarantee she'll post every day. Her schedule is quite packed, you know.

She played with this thing until I got the camera out, at which time the ceiling held more interest.

Originally uploaded by Heather N..

This is what remains of the second package of Snackwell's cookies I've eaten today. Rather than buy two packages at once, I took a risk and hoped the person who rang me up the first time wouldn't be the same person to ring me up the second time and recognize the fat lady buying Snackwell's yet again.

I can't buy a whole box of these because all 24 (yes I know how many come in a box) will be gone before you can say "eating disorder." While I was on my maternity leave, I bought a box during my weekly shopping trip and consumed it in one afternoon. I actually packed Autumn in the car and drove down to the grocery store to replace the box I'd eaten so Nathan wouldn't know how much of a pig I am (even though we've been married for almost nine years and he knows exactly how much of a pig I am).

These should be registered as a controlled substance. I mean, really...

The first thing Carol said to me when I stopped to pick Autumn up yesterday was, “we got some owies today.” Apparently Carol went to do some dishes and left Autumn in the play room with 9 month-old Brooke. Autumn was on one end of the room on her back and Brooke was on the other side happily playing with some toys. All of the sudden Carol hears screaming coming from my child and rushes back into the room to see Brooke pawing at Autumn like a grizzly bear. Never having been abused in such a manner, Autumn was quite inconsolable for a good half hour. She came out of the tussle with a few scratches on her face that still looked pretty red when I picked her up. By the evening her face looked much better but I took a picture anyway in case Autumn decides to press charges:



Carol felt awful, of course, and vowed to keep Bruiser Brooke sequestered in an Exersaucer from now on whenever she leaves the play room. I think Brooke felt a little guilty too because she started crying when Carol explained what happened. I told Brooke it was okay, but I don’t think Autumn is willing to be so forgiving. Carol said for the rest of the afternoon Autumn would cry any time Brooke came near her.

For the rest of the evening we joked about Nathan having to teach Autumn some self defense moves. We’d bob and weave and punch our fists into the air saying, “Brooke! Brooke! Brooke! Brooke!” Autumn thought it was a hoot, but I hope she was taking notes. I really don’t want to have to send extra lunch money with her to school some day.

When I was pregnant, I read a lot about being pregnant. I read about infant health problems, sleep deprivation and what it might feel like to push an entire human being out of my nether regions. One thing I didn’t research was having a c-section. It’s not that I didn’t want to be informed, but I thought if I remained happily ignorant then I’d have a successful “natural” delivery. Of course now I know that’s a crock of shit.

The same thing can be said for postpartum depression. I read nothing about it because I was so sure it wasn’t going to happen to me. I have a wonderful, easygoing child who started sleeping through the night at 11 weeks, a great support system and a husband who would do anything for me. For awhile things were fine and I was pretty content.

Since I had read nothing about PPD, I ended up telling my loving husband that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about when he had the nerve to suggest I might have it. “You can’t get postpartum depression after five months,” I snapped. When Nathan told me it is possible and that he’d been doing some research, I demanded he cite his sources and all but called him a liar when he couldn’t instantly produce the name of a web site he’d visited. Did I mention one of the symptoms of PPD is irritability?

The easiest explanation I can give is that a switch seems to have gone off in my head. Last week I was fine, this week I’m not. I’m not very happy at work, and that unhappiness came to a head last Friday when I found out I didn’t get a job I applied for in another department. Over the past four years I’ve applied for six other jobs. That’s seven jobs, seven interviews and seven rejections.

I went home this weekend and tried to brush it off, but Sunday I woke up with the worst headache I’d had in a long time. I was tired, achy and so weak I could barely lift Autumn out of her crib. I spent the rest of the day collapsed on the couch, watching bad TV and fighting off a fever. At the time I thought it might have been the Chinese buffet. Now I’m not so sure.

I’ve been in bad moods before, but those usually last a half day to a day at the most. These bad feelings aren’t going away, but I’ve been to the doctor and am trying to work through it.

I know most of the people who read this are people I know and work with. Since I haven’t talked about it at all, this is probably a surprise but a nonetheless welcome explanation as to why I’ve been so mental lately. I still don’t feel like talking about it, but writing about it does make me feel a little better.

Last summer Nathan and I noticed a lot of ants. Big honking mutant THEM! ants that invaded our house and creeped me out to no end. I can handle bugs most of the time, but these ants had were insidious invaders that had the ability to pop up out of nowhere. I’d be watching TV and catch one creeping on the carpet next to the entertainment center or crawling on the living room wall. The worst was when I stepped into the bathroom to find a half dozen or so congregating around the toilet. We sprayed but they kept coming back.

A couple of weeks ago I saw my first mutant ant again. I shrieked a very girlish shriek and squashed him with a square of paper towel. After receiving visits from a couple of his friends, I finally decided to call these guys. Marla and Ryan recommended them after they took care of a carpenter ant problem they had a couple of years ago.

I did a little Googling and found out that our mutant ants were most likely carpenter ants as well. Carpenter ants like moisture and I found most of the ants last year in the bathroom and laundry room. Last week I found an ant inside a Ziploc baggie I had left on the counter. I sealed the bag up and left him to die whatever horrible death he deserved for trying to eat my house. I also wanted to show him to the bug guy when he came over for an inspection.

In spite of my best efforts to keep my specimen for the bug guy to see, the ant in the bag made it into the trash before our inspection. The good news is, thanks to my lax housekeeping, we had a few dead ants in the track of our downstairs sliding door. So it would seem the ants we have are not the benign worker ants that like to play with sand and steal the contents of your picnic basket. Yep, they’re carpenter ants. “How much damage can these things do in a year?” I asked, thinking back to last summer’s infestation.

“A lot,” said the bug guy.

Let’s just hope the damage is minimal.

Today was a crummy day, so I decided to fix it with Chinese food. Nathan and I went to our favorite buffet after work. The bill came with the usual two fortune cookies. I cracked one open and read "Tonight will be your lucky night."

"I think I opened yours," I said and handed it to Nathan. He got a kick out of it because, of course, we have to tack "in bed" onto the end of every time.

Later on at home, we were visited by a Scwan's dealer who gave us a catalog and a free half gallon of vanilla ice cream. After the dealer left, Nathan held the ice cream up to me and said, "See, hon, tonight is your lucky night!"

I was on my way to work today and listening to a local radio station that plays everything from Roxette to Nirvana. It’s my favorite station because it plays a lot of the songs I loved during my formidable years. One morning I was listening to the station while nursing Autumn and they played “La Bamba”; not the original Ritchie Valens version, but the Los Lobos version from the movie with Lou Diamond Phillips, you know, back before he became perp-of-the-week on “Law and Order: SVU.”

So this morning I again heard a blast from the past; Lisa Loeb’s “Stay.” I love that song because it’s actually in my range and I can warble along pretty decently until she gets to the “I can leave, I can leave” part. At that point the notes start getting caught in my throat and I either need voice lessons or a drink of water. As I was singing along this morning, I started flashing back to when this song was popular and for a minute I felt as though I was 22 years-old again. I was in the car by myself, having just dropped Autumn off at daycare. For just that minute I felt all the possibilities of being 22 and how foreign it all felt to my 34 year-old self.

One of the benefits of being that young is that you really think anything is possible, so much so that it’s impossible to believe otherwise. When I was 22, I just knew I was going to make things happen for myself. Like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, I was going to shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and see the world.

Wow. Was I really that person? Needless to day, I didn’t do everything I thought I’d do. This crummy little town is still my home, but that's not the tragedy I thought it would be. This is actually an ok place to raise a family.

So I’m not 22 anymore. In twelve years 34 will look a hell of a lot better than 46.

It was just really strange, feeling 22 again.

You really need your sound on for this:

I don't really like to complain about work here. If you're sitting in a cube under flourescent lights surrounded by mounds of paperwork and a constantly ringing phone, your job pretty much sucks and there's not much more you can say about it.

Fran gave me this pretty gerber daisy yesterday. It would seem this office is not just sucking the life out of me. This is just pathetic. It looks like it's pleading to the flowers on my calendar for a quick and painless death.

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Feed me, Seymour!

Saturday night we were all sitting around watching TV when all of the sudden it hit me: Daylight Savings Time.

“Crap,” I said, “Autumn should be in bed.” Even though it was only just past 9 pm, I wasn’t sure how she was going to handle losing an hour of sleep. I knew how I was going to handle it and wasn’t really looking forward to rising early for church. The gambler in me decided to rely on my internal clock rather than my alarm. I figured I’d face the possible consequences of eternal damnation for choosing sleep over God.

The next morning, however, Autumn woke promptly at 7:15 am. I was imagining having to pull her out of a sound sleep, but she was awake, happy and hungry. Going to bed that night was a different story. While I put her down at 9 pm, her little internal clock was saying, “Wait a minute…it’s only 8:00!” We played the “insert the binky” game for about 20 minutes, something we hadn’t done since she started sleeping through the night. Id’ put the binky in, she’d spit it out and cry. Nathan would put it in, she’d spit it out and cry. Every time we’d go into her room she’d greet us with a smile that said, “I know you want to pick me up. Why don’t we hang out for awhile?”

The time in between waking and sleeping was pretty fun. We fed Autumn in her high chair for the first time yesterday. At her 4-month appointment the doctor told us we could start feeding her rice cereal. We tried a very soupy mixture of cereal and breast milk in a bottle a couple of weeks ago, but she threw up the entire contents of her stomach afterwards which left us thinking she wasn’t quite ready. Lately we’ve noticed her making a lot of chewing motions with her mouth which could be a developmental sign that she’s now ready. I say “could” because the chewing motions could also be a result of teething or mean that she’s ready to wean. At this point it’s a crap shoot, really.

So last night we mixed up another soupy mixture of cereal and breast milk and sat the girl in her never-before-used high chair. This time I fed her with a spoon instead of the bottle. What a laugh riot! As soon as she realized the spoon held yummy goodness, she attacked it with vigor every time it came near. Of course not much got into her tummy. She still has a bit of that tongue thrust reflex that wants to push things out. Tonight we’ll try a thicker mixture and see how that goes.