Milk Without Cookies

My friend Cara, perhaps the only reader of this blog, talked the other day about simple pleasures in life.

Being a mom, some really simple things begin to look luxurious:
*going to the bathroom by yourself
*going anywhere by yourself
*eating with two hands
*long hot baths.... after the kid goes to bed!

Thanks to my wonderful husband, I am about to indulge in the last one on the list right now. He's filling the tub for me right now, bubbles & all!

So today is the first day in about 8 weeks that I have felt normal. Morning sickness has been a cruel mistress, so cruel that I hardly knew what do do with myself today.

To celebrate I took my 19 month old son out to the park, and allowed him to play for as long as he wanted, instead of allowing him to play until I felt too nauseated or exhausted to carry-on in the sun.

We stopped at Starbucks, and I had an iced latte, while the smell of coffee a few weeks ago made my stomach turn.

During his nap, I did some light cleaning, called a friend, played on the computer, and read some of my Madeleine Albright autobiography--instead of passing out myself, praying he would sleep just a little longer.

And this is the big highlight of the day: for the first time in 2 months, I went grocery shopping, and I bought not only the things that I thought I could stand, but ingredients for actual meals. Then I came home, and made a special family meal for my husband, one that nearly brought him to tears (no kidding).

So this evening when Andrew called to say he was on his way home, I was tired, but today, it was from actually doing something, instead of from being tired and sick all day.

This may sound stupid, but really, the world feels brand new. I'm praying this feeling lasts.

Thank you to my millions of readers who patiently awaited my return from morning sickness hell. I am still sick quite often, but I cannot disappoint my audience any longer.

Perhaps I am an unlikely reader of Madeleine Albright's memoir entitled Madame Secretary, as a conservative who is gernally not a fan of the Clintons, that is. But I am a biography addict, and I must admit that 100 pages into this 500+ page monster of a summer leisure read, I am rivetted!

Albright has proven herself to be honest, open and self-depracating. Her family journey from pre-WWII Chzechoslovakia is a fascinating and heroic story.

I'll keep you posted on how things end up.

It's that time again in our home. I am about 6 or 7 weeks pregnant with baby #2. I spent a considerable amount of my first pregnancy leaning over a toilet bowl (or sink, whichever was available) vomitting. So much so, that I spent a day in the ER receiving fluids via IV, and lost 6 pounds during my first trimester.

Given my significant investment into morning sickness, I did some reading last time around. What I found is that no one really knows what causes morning sickness, and given the small amount of the population afflicted at any given time, there really isn't any motivation to find out or to find a cure! Thanks, Doc!!

Here's what nobody tells you about morning sickness:

At its worst, MS (morning sickness) is not just nausea in your stomach, but also in your head, a dull dizzying ache, that seems like it will never ever go away.

Unlike other times of nausea, throwing up generally does not make you feel better.

Medical advice to eat before you get out of bed sometimes helps to absorb acid, and sometimes just gives you something to puke up. Sexy!

Eating is also pretty much the last thing you want to do anyway.

Saltine crackers have a sweet and disgusting aftertaste.

MS is accompanied by exhaustion.

MS can of course occur at any time of the day when the acid accumulates in your stomach, but for me, it's usually worst in the morning.

MS is often followed by bizarre cravings to fill the ever growing pit in your stomach: pizza, french toast sticks, hash browns, and french fries are some of this body's favorites!

Last time around the magical cure for me was a drug called Zofran. Our friend Kevin pointed out that he had to take this when he was undergoing cancer treatments so that he could keep down some nutrition. This is an expensive solution, and what pregnant woman wants to take hardcore medication anyway?

So here I am, suffering an illness that no one can or cares to cure, hoping that it won't last as long as it did last time around (like 16 weeks!). I suppose the big cure is the birth of our next baby, which is scheduled for sometime around Christmas Eve!

I wonder if this generation of women will be known as the Oprah generation.

Like her or not, this woman is a driving cultural force. She has made it her business to effect cultural change. She started with things like her Book Club, and this year, she has actually enlisted her viewers in catching sexual predators, and paid them healthy rewards for their participation.

She has been open over the years about her weight loss struggles, and recently she has taken on the Great American Debt Diet, encouraging Americans to get out of debt, and reach financial freedom.

Yesterday, her buddy, Dr. Oz was on talking about the evils of the American diet, including partially hydrogenated oils (which are in pretty much everything), enriched flour (that should be called un-enriched flour), and the American favorite high fructose corn syrup (liquid sugar).

So instead of hitting Aldi today, where I can find everything fast, cheap, and full of the above ingredients, I visited Aldi's granola big brother Trader Joe's. I bought all of the stuff the Dr. Oz recommended including Salmon, natural peanut butter, good oils, greens, etc. I was delighted to find that even the chips were free of the evil ingredients above.

Seriously, I couldn't help but wonder how many of the other members of the shopping throng were influenced by Oprah's show yesterday. It seemed awfully crowded for a Tuesday morning.

I got a phone call today from a good friend who gave me very good news about someone who I thought hated me for telling her the truth. At first she hated me, and I couldn't handle it, so I ran away too. But it sounds like that truth is getting to her now, and she is opening her heart just a little.

When the Bible is said to be a double-edged sword, it sounds like the truth will attack you violently. In a way, it does. The truth of God is RADICAL, and can rock you to your core.

The cutting edge of His Word can be painful if you fight it, but I think that when you let it work, the Word cuts like a scalpel in the gentle hand of a surgeon, who leaves behind a scar to remind you of the cancer that once rotted your soul, and of the God who loves you and couldn't let you die.

This week's read has brought to my attention a new term. I am reading Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True, which was another of Oprah's Book Club selections back in the nineties.

The lead character is one half of a pair of twins, Dominick Birdsey, and he has endured a fair share of pain in his lifetime:

Schizophrenic, delusional brother who dominiates the family attention, and Dominick feels obligated to care for him.

Daughter dies of crib death.

Abusive step-father, missing actual father, and dead mother.

Wife leaves after death of daughter.

Girlfriend cheats on him with her so-called "gay" friend (later revealed as her 1/2 uncle) and conceives a child with him too, but tries to convince the sterile Dominick that the baby is his.

So those are pretty much the highlights of Dominick's painful journey. It's not surprising that he's in therapy, and at one point his therapist calls him a curator in his own museum of pain, with monuments of righteous indignation.

What she means is that Dominick has made it his life's work to maintain the anger and bitterness that he feels in regard to his difficult life. Not only can he not let go of his "righteous indination," but he feeds his anger and resentment, cares for it like a fine piece of art.

This made me wonder about my own museum. Although I would like to consider myself a person who easily forgives, I definitely have a list in my mind of people who've wronged me, and I have built walls around myself so that these people can't hurt me again. When I'm really honest with myself, these people include people are I love very much, and that I want to be close to, but my righteous indignation keeps them at bay.

And then I got to thinking, that who among us truly has the right to be indignant? I think that none of us is truly innocent, as we have all fallen short and hurt SOMEONE at some point, even if we are innocent in certain situations. If anyone has a right to be righteously indignant, it is God, but he is always faithful to forgive us, and love us and pour his grace on us.

So maybe it's time I quit my job at the Museum and focus on eBay.

Well, I finally had to see what all the fuss was about and read James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. His is a disturbing, powerful account of addiction that includes graphic images of the physical consequences he suffered and a horrifying look into the world of Alcoholics, Drug Addicts, and Criminals.

Readers hear Frey's mantra of self loathing, "I am an Alcoholic. I am a Drug Addict. I am a Criminal," as he detoxes, against his will at first in the legendary Hazeldon rehab center in Minnesota. We watch his parents come to grips with the suffering of their son, and the pain of the knowledge of his extremely destructive lifestyle. At Hazeldon (though Frey never reveals the name of the clinic until after the book's publication) we meet Frey's ironic cronies that include a mafia boss, a New Orleans judge, and his true love, Lily, the crack-whore with a heart of gold.

From page 1 of this book I was gripped. I cried for James Frey, for his parents, and for addicts everywhere. "Is this possible?" I wondered. How can there be people who actually live like this?

After devouring the hefty hardback in just a couple of days, I then allowed myself to read The Smoking Gun's Report revealing the inconsistencies in Frey's personal memoirs. In short, TSG calls into question Frey's criminal record, the idea that he has ever spent any time in any jail for more than 24 hours (a key point in the conclusion of the story), and most disturbingly Frey's memory of the death of one of his high school classmates.

We were talking with Kyle & Erika over the weekend about Frey, and the merits of his book in regard to its truth. Kyle seemed to say that what was most important was that it is well-written, which I agree with mostly.

I suppose all the controversy arose when James is on Oprah, and everyone is crying to him about how his book has changed their lives. I wonder if that is what he intended, or if he just wanted to tell his story as he remembers it. Frey WAS in rehab. He was an addict, and God-willing, he continues in his recovery for over a decade now, and I pray for his entire life.

Overall, I have to say that I recommend this book, if for no other reason, than for everyone to have the chance to form his or her own opinion of the book's merit both from a literary standpoint and from the social importance of books like this.

Sometimes it's a little unnerving to hear our 18 month old son build his vocabulary so quickly. Around Christmastime, when he was about 14 months old, it was like someone turned on a light switch and he started talking. Baby, bye-bye, hi, mama, dada, and a few other common ones were among the first. Pretty normal, I guess.

So lately, he has been repeating a lot of words. In the past few weeks he has learned cookie, Elmo, eyes, nose, mouth, and has mimicked other words here and there.

One day while he was watching A Bug's Life, he picked up on a scene in which the little bugs create a mural depicting the warrior (circus) bugs' defeat of the grasshoppers. They added a death, just for dramatic effect, yelling, "Die, die!" during their presentation of the painting.

So now, one of our son's favorite phrases is "Die, die!" which he repeats with the same cadence as the little bugs. Nice.

Seriously, what the heck is the deal with this crappy show Deal or No Deal. I think it is the lowest of the low in terms of American entertainment. My husband and I are innocently awaiting the beginning of The Apprentice and we are being exposed to this, the crappiest of the crap!

If you enjoy this show, maybe you can shed some light on a game show that asks no questions, and has no point except to depend on the excessive greed and overly acted personalities of its guests. I mean, at least on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, there is some semblance of accomplishment.

I'm not sure if people really know this about me, but I am not much of a music person anymore. I like some worship music, and I enjoy singing at church. But I do not CD shop, and I do not really listen to music on the radio. And I never listen to CD's unless Andrew picks them out and turns them up. High praise from me regarding one of Andrew's CD's is saying, "Oh, I don't hate this."

But recently, I've gotten into a little Johnny Cash. I suppose the movie Walk the Line really inspired me becauase now I feel like I know John, and I can hear the stories behind his music.

So today after church, we came home, and I was about to turn on Aidan's They Might be Giants CD, but instead, I said, "How about a little Johnny?"

Andrew said that was a great idea, and pretty much the sexiest thing I've ever uttered. How about that.

About a year and a half ago, Andrew and I said good-bye to a church that we'd been attending for about a year. We discovered some serious theological aberrations, though if we had been really honest with ourselves prior to the "discovery" it was something that had been niggling at us for awhile.

It was about 6 weeks before our baby was born, and we even had to cancel a baby shower that they had planned for us. We had hoped that maybe we could retain some of the friendships that we had formed there, and there were many intense friendships, but we later found that it was just too hard.

For one thing, we felt that they had deceived us, and not shared with us the whole truth about their belief system intentionally, and for another, the leadership style of this church is such that it is impossible to be connected to its members without being connected to the church itself.

Our close friends know that this turned our life upside down for a long time, and the fact that our baby was born during this difficult time of transition made it even more painful. But I'm not sure that anyone not directly connected can understand how it can still hurt so much.

Today while shopping, we nearly bumped into one of our former friends from the church, in fact she is the wife in the couple that was our most intimate friendship, our ex-best friends. And instead of saying hi, we avoided her and the beautiful child in her grocery card that we have never met. I'm nearly certain she saw us too. Of all our friends there, we tried longest and hardest with them, until Andrew and I realized that it really couldn't go anywhere. It just hurt too much.

And it hurts now, knowing that a person who I love so much is no longer a part of our life. In the car, I prayed for her and her family, that they could be loosed from the untruths upon which they have built their lives. And maybe, I finally know for sure that this is good-bye.

Why are kids so cool? I think it's because they are so honest.

The above photo is a picture of my son enjoying his lunch consisting of pre-packaged peanut butter crackers.

When was the last time you enjoyed something so much that you wanted to just make a mess while eating it? And then when your friends joined you, you couldn't wait to share it? This is exactly how my son eats something he likes. It's just so real and so honest, as are all the emotions of a 1 year old.

Sometimes he is frustrated because he can't get something he wants, or misses me so much he cries. I feel these things sometimes too, and it must be nice to just let loose at times. It's also great as an adult to have control of these emotions. But the raw honesty of a child discovering his world just knocks me over some days.

This is the subject of a daily email that I receive (by choice) from an online group called www.flylady.net. Flylady is a resource for stay at home moms, career moms, or anyone who wants to get a handle on the clutter in their homes, cars, offices and lives.

Kelly, the Flylady herself, encourages us to embrace routine as a way of overcoming the overwhelming task of keeping house and caring for a family. Hence, the daily question about laundry.

So where is my laundry? Well, before typing this, it was on the bedroom floor, and the laundry baskets were full. There was some in the dryer getting wrinkled and a few items on the drying rack downstairs. Now it has all been gathered, a load is washing, and the dryer contents are sitting next to me, crying out to be folded and put away (hate that last part).

But the point is that if I keep up on the laundry every day, it won't come to a head on Sunday morning, when I'm looking for my black pants and something to put on the baby. This seems simple, but hundreds of my flying friends know that this is something that is easy to put off, and then it becomes overwhelming.

Another routine is the daily swish & swipe in the bathroom (figure it out for yourself), and shining the kitchen sink. I love both of these routines because it prevents these areas from becoming disgusting so that I really DON'T want to clean them, but have to because someone could catch a disease.

It's possible that this all sounds crazy. But it really is one of the most sane things I do. I was upstairs completing my morning routine which includes getting dressed to my shoes, and I felt so good about myself. As a stay at home mom, it's easy to put things off until you can get them done just perfectly, but when you have a screaming one year old, that time is NEVER going to come.

Flylady reminds us that cleaning your home in 15 minute bursts, as well as you can in that moment, is just as much a blessing as doing the task "just right". With flylady at my side, I can see a light at the end of the crazy mess tunnel, knowing that I can do anything for 15 minutes, and then get back to all the other demands of my day.

It has been a strange winter in Chicago, bringing, most recently, a vicious cold front, at a time when we most desire the sun to show his face.

But today it is close to 60 degrees, even though it is quite cloudy. This allowed my son & I to meet our friends at Cosley Zoo, where we saw various animals, including chickens, ducks, and doves, goats, bunnies, sheep, coyotes and even a couple of llamas.

The stroller-moms were definitely out today, and the place was pretty packed, even though we arrived right when it opened. So this must mean that spring is finally here, and we will finally be able to get our rambunctious boy out of the house more often, so that he feels a little less like a caged animal himself.

When I started selling on eBay, I discovered an awesome resource in the website www.herecomesthestork.com, that was started by a woman named Kendra who made a bundle selling children's clothing on eBay.

On HCTS, I have learned from the storks all manner of things about running your own eBay business with an emphasis on children's clothing. I have learned the difference between boutique and department store, which is much more important than you can possibly imagine, and I have gone there when I've had trouble with a sale.

At the same time, I have discovered an awesome group of ladies, mostly stay at home moms like myself, who "get me" and my daily experiences, both as an eBay powerseller, and as a mommy. So if you are at all interested in starting an eBay business, you might be interested in HCTS, and there is a link on the right side of this blog where you can "Meet My Stork Friends" and learn all kinds of inside information about selling children's clothing.

There are a lot of things you can sell on eBay, but I have found that children's clothing is both accessible and fun. Of course, it's easier to ship t-shirts, than it is to ship pool tables, so that helps too!

I am Melanie, a stay at home wife and mother, and also an eBay entrepreneur.

Like most, I started this blog so that I have a self-sponsored forum in which to write about my thoughts on everyday life. One of the things that you can expect to see here is a lot of talk about marriage, motherhood, and of course, eBay.

My husband and I started our eBay business about six months ago. Since then, it has become MY eBay business, as I have now changed the User ID, and have made it my life's work. I definitely love shopping, and I am a confirmed bargain hunter. eBay has given me a way to share those bargains with other families, while earning a little extra money for my own.

Well, I hope you will enjoy your visits to my blog, and that you will become a regular reader and participant.