Table for Five

Well, I finally did it.

I took the high chair out to the garage (just skip to the last paragraph of that post to get to the bit about the high chair. The rest of it is long winded and whiny.)
It was tough but maybe not as much as I thought it would be.
After all, it was slightly unsightly sitting in the kitchen being used as a catch all for folded laundry and various paper products that haven't made their way into my filing system. The good news: I found Gage's permission slip to his field trip to Pike Lake. The bad news: the field trip was three months ago.
Whoops.

So I've taken out the leaf in the table and added an extra chair, turning it from a table for four into a table for five. Just like that.
I feel, for some reason, immensely proud of my table for five. Despite the fact that it looks rather shabby-- the once pristine white fabric cushioned chairs are now heavily soiled with spaghetti sauce and alphaghetti.

Maybe it's not despite the stains, maybe it's precisely because of the stains.

I've spent a lot of time reading other blogs. My new favorite: Mommy Wants Vodka. I have just come across it recently, which really pisses me off. I don't know how many times I've typed those exact words into my search engine (that means you, Google, I know you hate me) and gotten nothing but advertisements for discount vodka. Which was actually helpful all the same. But the website is even better. No actual vodka there, though. Just so you know.

Anyways, the one thing that I come away with from reading other peoples blogs is that we shouldn't take our children for granted. And that Lindsay Lohan is out of jail. Which worries me.
Lock your doors.
But Lindsay Lohan aside, people are gracious and courageous enough to post their trials and tribulations and sometimes triumphs over infertility, IVF, the illness of a child.
It brings me back to my reality that my table could just easily have been be a table for four.

But after:
-twenty four months of "trying"
-four positive pregnancy tests
-two first trimester miscarriages
-The delivery of Reid-one hundred plus negative pregnancy tests (I know what your thinking. One hundred pregancy tests in twenty four months?? What gives?? I had a problem, OK.)
-twelve vials of blood for genetic screening
-twenty some serial blood tests for HCG monitoring
-twenty one weeks of exogenous progesterone
-ten early obstetrical ultrasounds
-one post partum check up during which I should have been seven months pregnant instead of six weeks post partum, where my health care provider kindly suggested I "see someone" when I burst into tears at the mere sight of a baby in the waiting room. (Notice how people cloak certain words with other words around me?? She carefully sidestepped the term "therapist", although I'm pretty sure that's what she was getting at.)

Alex Reid Makepeace finally became a member of our family.
And even though, yes, he does have the propensity to spill red sauces on my white chairs, and get bubble gum tooth paste caked in my sink, and he has, yes, thrown the odd sippy cup at my head, I could not for a single moment imagine my life without him.
And when people used to ask me why I kept on trying for that third child when it all seemed in vain, I know now that THIS is exactly what I kept trying for:
To set my table for five.
Although I am not sure how much setting is required for the meal I am prepared to serve tonight: tacos (kids choice).
But anyways. The point is I am immensely grateful for these beautiful children.
Well, at least, usually.
Because it's not that awesome getting hit in the head with a Sippee Cup.
Or when they feed your Mac lipglass to the dog, who then has diarrhea for the next ten days.
And when I say "Mac lip gloss" you know I mean "Blistex" because I ain't spending no sixty dollars to have shiny lips.

Don't use the "O" word.

Yikes.
Jane is out there and she's been reading this blog.
This I know because the "I am Jane" response has been checked off in my poll, presumably by Jane herself.

How she has found the time to read this blog, though, is completely beyond me. Clearly she is swamped and can't indulge in frivolous and indulgent hobbies like reading, like some people do: AKA me.
So I guess it's fair to say that I can definitely count myself out of those Christmas chocolate molds.
Although, quite honestly Jane, I think you and I both know that the ship has already long sailed on that one.

Anyways, I was quite glad to see that no one clicked the 'no you're over reacting' button.
At least, not yet.
Which must mean that my husband hasn't yet stumbled across this blog. Because that's exactly what he would say. And I have to say that this entirely the wrong approach. Regardless of the circumstances or the situation.
I. Never. Over react. Period. And even when I do, I don't.
I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but it makes perfect sense to me.
Because when I'm mad and upset and frothing at the mouth, the last thing you want to tell me is that I'm over reacting.
Because then you will see me over react to being told that I'm over reacting.

Geoff, now wise to my moods, carefully avoids the word "over reacting" and cloaks in language that makes me think, for a second, that he's actually siding with me.

Example: "I think maybe, if we put things in perspective, it might not be that, that bad."
or "I think this might be getting blown out of proportion a little bit"

And at first it's like "Well, I guess maybe."
But then it's like "Wait a minute: Are you saying that I'm over reacting? Is that what you're getting at here? Because I'm not. And further more: I'm not too stupid to read between the lines. You think that you can throw a big word like 'proportion' in there or 'perspective' and it will completely lost of me that you're implying that I'm over reacting. Well it won't. Because now, apparently, you think I'm over reacting and stupid on top of that.

I just don't see what would be so hard about saying "Yes. You are absolutely right. Putting that saucer in the dishwasher without rinsing it was a really stupid and insensitive thing to do, possibly one of the worst things I could have ever done. How shall I begin to make things up to you?"
Honestly.

Even Adsense (Adsense! I thought we were friends) has been on my case about this. I got this for an ad one day: "Prone to angry outbursts? Get a free Alzheimer test today at whatever-whatever-whatever.com-slash-url"

Like really. No, I am not prone to angry outbursts and no I do not want a free Alzheimer assessment. Why they would even suggest this is beyond me. But it pisses me off.
And no, I am not over reacting.

Adsense Nonsense

Google Ad sense is way cool. Maybe not for you, I don't know. I hope those pesky ads aren't annoying you. But for me they're pretty awesome. So far I've earned myself a net profit of four cents.

But that's not what impresses me about Google Ad Sense.

What impresses me is that it's like a little tiny robot that gets inside my head and just like knows what I'm writing about.

I think it understands me better than my husband.
I could tell my husband a story about my day and his only response will be to ask if we have any more corn dogs, which is nine times out of ten completely irrelevant to anything I've said.
But Google Ad sense is attentive. It listens. And it responds with flashy adds and links.



Like the other day when I was writing about getting my tires changed, I looked at my blog and there it stood, next to my post: a picture of a nice, shiny new tire! I loved it.

And when I was writing about getting the kids off the juice (actual juice, not meth), and an ad magically appeared for Tropicana pure apple juice.

I was like WOW- Google Ad sense is all seeing and all knowing. I think baby Jesus just reinvented himself into a Google marketing tool. Why he would do that, I don't know. I would think that the turning water into wine gig was pretty good, but I don't know. That's just me.



But then it turned on me. One day I was writing about something that Alex said and the ad that popped up said: "Teach your Autistic child how to speak."

And I was like WHAT THE FUCK?!

Alex isn't autistic (not that there's anything wrong with that- I mean, look at Rain Man. He was a movie star.) And then I thought, what if it knows something I don't?? It's mother F'ing Baby Jesus in there.

So now I'm going to start tweaking my posts to make Alex less autistic sounding.

Except now I have to research intelligent sounding conversations, but nothing useful comes up when I enter that into Google, because I think it knows I'm trying to outsmart it.

So I'm screwed here.