Apparently, Pretty Nameless is still alive and kicking! I just checked my Google Analytics after a long absence from the site, and I’m still rocking over 500 hits a month! Okay, that’s nothing to get excited about, considering I would burst into tears, fall on the ground, and kick my feet in despair if my other site only got that many hits, but hey, considering I haven’t been here in months, that’s not too shabby! Why haven’t I been here in months? Well, it could be all the work I’ve been doing on Pretty Opinionated, or the freelance writing gigs I’ve been working on, or the seasonal jobs. The most likely reason, though, is that I’ve finally gotten a life. Yes, kind Pretty Nameless readers, the not-so-nameless face behind the blog is actually leaving her house on a regular basis and interacting with real people. Not that you aren’t all real or anything. Then again, for all I know, you exist solely in my head. Hey, anything is possible.

For those of you who have been around from the beginning (or the insanely bored, or just plain insane, among you who actually went back and read all my previous posts in an effort to get to know me better, although why anyone would want to do that I don’t know), I’m happy to report that things are going much better in my life these days. Jacob is doing fantastic in school. Remember last year how he was getting in trouble just about every other week? Well, this year he has an amazing teacher that has really helped get him into shape. He’s in advanced reading and he rocks at all his other subjects too.

As for me, I’m really happy these days too. I’m working my butt off on Pretty Opinionated, scoring some great freelance writing gigs with clients that are a complete joy to work with, and dating the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. I’m also working on another completely different site for guys dealing with crazy psycho exes and women who like to play games. It’s still in the works, but I’ll keep you updated on its progress. Life is going pretty fantastic for me. Sure, I deal with more than a fair amount of crazy, but it’s all worth it.  So if you’re still checking in, it may be a ghost town around here occasionally, but just know that I’m doing well and will be back every now and then to check in or share some random bit of awesomeness.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I recently wrote an article on breastfeeding for another site, and one of the comments thanked me for not demonizing formula-feeding moms. I think it’s pretty sad that there are women out there who will tear apart another mom for something so personal as the decision whether to use formula or breastfeed her own baby. I was so shamed by my decision (note I said shamed, not ashamed) that I just started telling people it wasn’t possible for me to breastfeed because Jacob was a preemie and I was really sick. While this did play a large role in it (I had originally planned to at least pump for a few weeks), my decision was made long before I even saw two lines on the little “hey, you’re pregnant!” pee stick.

My reasons for that decision are my own, and I’m not comfortable sharing them with others, but the fact it, it was MY decision to make. Before Jake was born, a member of some sort of local breastfeeding advocacy group called my house and basically told me I would be breastfeeding and they would be there to support me. When I told her I was planning to formula feed, she was outraged. Literally outraged. She asked me why and I told her my reasons were personal. She told me “get over it then!” I stuck to my decision, and she basically screamed at me, telling me that my baby was more likely to get sick and die because of my decision. By the end of the conversation, I was practically bawling on the floor and feeling like the crappiest mom alive, and my kid wasn’t even born yet! What a horrible, rotten, crappy thing to do to anyone, let alone a hormonal pregnant woman! That incident alone caused me to run and hide from anyone who even mentioned the word “breastfeeding.”

When I was in the hospital after giving birth to Jake at 32 weeks, I was on medication for my preeclampsia and blood pressure, pain killers for the c-section (although I only took them at night) and anti-anxiety medication when I flew into a massive panic attack over the whole situation. One of the techs in charge of monitoring my vital signs asked me what I planned to do. I told her I was going to formula feed and practically cowed under my blankets waiting for the backlash that I imagined was coming. She was the first person who told me my decision was perfectly fine and my son would survive it unscathed. He was on special formula at the time, so I didn’t even end up pumping because I was concerned about all the meds I was on and what not.

Six years later, Jacob remains a happy, healthy child. He’s normal weight, normal height, and exhibits an above-average intelligence in many areas. In these past six years, he’s had a grand total of two minor ear infections, a bought of seasonal allergies that lasted a few months last year, and about three colds, none of which were severe enough to put even the slightest damper on his massive amount of energy. Oh, and the stomach bug once. When he goes for his annual physical, his doctor always says “we’ll see him next year since he never gets sick!” I want to throw his nearly perfect medical record in the face of that nasty wench who had me bawling on the floor all those years ago and scream “you were wrong!”

The point is, all you moms out there who chose or will choose to formula feed- don’t let anyone put you down or make you feel less adequate for it.  Anyone who would put your down for your decision isn’t worth your time anyway.

Jacob joined Cub Scouts this week, and at the first meeting they were talking about all the really fun activities that he would get to do. One of those activities is the Pinewood Derby. The only thing I know about this is that they race little wooden cars. Or something, I’m sketchy on the details. I came home and told my mom, and she said “you’re going to need a guy for that.” I said “But they come in a kit! How hard can it be to paint and glue wheels on?” Imagine my shock and horror when I discovered that the “kit” is a freaking block of wood, and I’m supposed to, like, carve it or something. Anyone who has met me knows that I shouldn’t be allowed within 50 yards of any sort of tool. Still, I said “I don’t need a guy. I’m a single mom to a little boy, I’m just going to have to learn how to do these things.” My mom was adamant though, she once again sternly said “no, you really need a guy for that. I got a guy to make your brother’s.” She said these Pinewood Derby things are pretty competitive, and although I’m mildly offended at her lack of confidence in my woodworking skills (of which I don’t actually have any), I suppose I’ll just have to trust her on that one. I called up my friend and enlisted her boyfriend and son. Her kid builds race bikes from random parts, so a wooden car can’t be all that hard.

So this of course got me to thinking, what other areas will I be lacking in when it comes to raising Jake on my own? I’m told there’s camping involved in Cub Scouts. Like real camping, the kind where you actually sleep in the woods, on the ground, and not on a blow-up mattress 50 feet from an indoor, heated bathroom. Will I be up for that task when the time comes? I love the idea of camping, it’s great in theory, but like cooking and crafts, I’m not so good on the follow through. What about sports? I suck at sports! You know how they yell at kids and say “come on, don’t be afraid of the ball!” Well, I’m afraid of it. It moves very fast and can knock out my teeth, so you bet I’m downright terrified of it.

On the plus side, I rock at video games and although I don’t know all the Marvel and DC superheroes the way Jake already does, I bought an encyclopedia so I can learn. I know more about Star Wars than I ever thought I would. So maybe I won’t suck to bad at this single parenting. I figure when things like the Pinewood Derby come up, I can always bribe one of my guy friends to help me, right? Okay, panic attack averted! I’m totally going to rock this single Mommyhood thing!

The school nurse called today, and I was really grateful that she started with “your son is fine…” before getting into the part where he bumped his head on the monkey bars. Funny that it was those damned monkey bars because less than a week ago, I was talking to my mom about how paranoid they made me, despite the fact that I used to swing around on them like crazy. This phone call got me thinking about other phone calls from the school and how they really all need to change their lead-in. For example:

The Weather Closings and Delays Message

The weather delay or closing message actually goes something like this. The stuff in parenthesis are mine: “Good morning (insert your area) school district. This is (some guy who’s name you really don’t care about at 4 in the morning) with an important announcement. Due to the inclement weather that is affecting parts of our region, resulting in impassable roadways and knocking out power to many homes in our district , all of our schools in the (insert your area) district (in case you forgot which district you belong to) will be closed today. – Notice how it took an entire paragraph to get to the part about schools closing? Imagine this message spoken in the slowest manner possible. Now slow that down about ten more times. That’s what I hear at 4am when school is closed.

This is what I want to hear: “Turn off your alarm clock and go back to bed, school is closed today. Oh, by the way, this is some guy who’s name you could care less about calling from the school in which your child attends, blah blah blah, you’ve already hung up, haven’t you? – Seriously, I could care less about the who, why, and where. I just want to know the what and when. If the school calls at 4am, it’s either closed or operating on a delay. Tell me which and let me go back to sleep.

The “Your Child Was in the Principal’s Office” Message

Usually it goes like this: Good afternoon Mrs. (my last name), this is (the last person I want to hear from) from (my son’s school). I just had Jacob in the office because he (insert something really inane that you never would have gotten in trouble for when you were little, but given our state of over protectiveness and total paranoia, we now consider a capitol offense). Blah, blah, blah, blah, can’t have this blah blah blah other student involved blah blah blah your son is suspended from the bus for one day. – Note that the blah blah blah’s aren’t an indication that I don’t want to know what kind of trouble my precious bundle of joy has gotten into now, but because I’m so anxious about the punishment that I can’t focus on the rest of the conversation.

This is how it should go: “Hello parent of Jacob, you’ll need to drive you son to and from school tomorrow because he’s gotten himself thrown off the bus. This is why…”- At least then, I can focus on the actual issue rather than worrying that the last words out of his mouth will be “expelled.”

Sadly, those are the only reasons the school ever calls me. If they ever did call me for some sort of nice reason, I would like them to start with “he’s not injured and he hasn’t done anything wrong.” Is that really too much to ask?

I was just messing around on Stumbleupon and I came across this site that tells you what you were in your past life. Usually I don’t put much stock in that stuff, because I highly double the internet is psychic, but I’m fairly bored right now and can’t concentrate on other stuff because I’m sneezing my head off, (evil allergies) so I figured I’d give it a try. All you have to do is enter your birth date, and some mysterious algorithm determines who you were long ago. This is what it came up with for me:

I don’t know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern North Japan around the year 1600. Your profession was that of a jeweler or watch-maker.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Such people are always involved with all new. You have always loved changes, especially in art, music, cooking.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your lesson is to learn discretion and moderation and then to teach others to do the same. Your life will be happier if you help those who lack reasoning.

Okay, so most of that is totally not me. I mean, I barely practice discretion (I’m a blogger, after all, and a totally open book most of the time), and I totally lack any sense of reasoning, so I can hardly help others with that. I hate change, and I can’t cook for squat. But the part that made me go “oooooh, spooky!” is the part about how I was some guy who lived in Northern Japan. I mean, of all the places this thing could have picked, it picked the one place that I actually lived for over two years. I really can’t picture myself ever having the manual dexterity to be a watchmaker though. I mean, I can barely tie my own shoes because my hand-eye coordination sucks. But I did always want to be an international jewel thief, and that’s kind of like a jeweler! I also can’t imagine myself as a guy, but that’s a whole different issue. Plus, I think I’ve lived since 1600. I’m pretty sure I’ve had to live since clowns were invented, and subsequently been killed by one, because my fear of them is not really rational otherwise.

So what do you think? Weird coincidence, or did the internet actually develop psychic powers when I wasn’t paying attention?

Goodness gracious, I thought this day would never arrive! Jake started first grade yesterday, two days later than he was supposed to. Hurricane Irene knocked out power all over the area for days and flooded a few roads, so they couldn’t open on schedule. We were without power for two days, and MetEd was atrocious about the whole thing. I understand that they are busy and overwhelmed with customers calling, but they were downright rude at times. They basically told my elderly, widowed neighbor to suck it up because New Jersey was much worse. But it’s all over and done with, the power is back, and the boy started school.

He reported that he had a wonderful first day, loves his new teacher, and even got double recess! Considering that they only get 15 minutes a day for recess as it is, that’s pretty good news. He even earned two gold stars! I so hope this is the start to a much better school year. He’s excited, ready to learn, and looking forward to further mastering his reading skills. They have health class this year, I’m wondering what they cover in first grade health. We haven’t done the whole ‘where babies come from” talk yet, they don’t cover that at age six, do they? I just need a heads up if they do!

I still can’t believe my baby is in first grade. He gets really annoyed when I tell him how I used to rock him and squish his little baby cheeks and change his diaper. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I do it in a baby-talk voice, something I never used when he was a baby because I figured if I wanted him to learn the proper way to speak, I should start teaching him right away. He pushes me away (I’m usually trying to cradle him like a baby to fully illustrate the point when I do this) and tells me to knock it off. (Insert big sigh here). Soon he wont think I’m cool anymore and will make me walk ten paces behind him in public. That brings on a whole new slew of emotions. I mean, I think I’m still cool! Of course, half the time I forget I’m getting closer to 40 than 30 already. Time just moves so fast. Today, first grade, tomorrow college graduation. But for now, everything is going great and I’m just hoping it stays that way.

Yeah, I know, I suck. I haven’t written on this blog for like a month. That fake-dead possum’s been sitting up there staring at those of you still kind enough to check in and see if I’ve had anything interesting to say for what seems like an eternity. Insert numerous valid excuses here and we’ll move on.

So, the boy child starts first grade in two weeks. What the heck happened to the summer? One second it was here, the next *POOF* gone. Okay, on the one hand, I’m looking forward to Jake going back to school, because as much as I love him to individual bite-size little pieces, he’s kind of driving me batty. He’s bored and I have to work, so to get back at me, he attempts to set the house on fire. Okay, not really, but he did decide that he would turn up all the heat in every room, and in doing so nearly melted the massive bins of toys sitting up against his heater (because to me, summer equals extra wall space!). It could have ended badly. I sent him to summer camp three days a week, but that’s over now because I’m running out of funds, but even then, I still had to work the other days that he was home. Those articles on why you shouldn’t pop hardcore sleeping pills to cure anxiety aren’t going to write themselves!

So while I’m looking forward to having more time to work, which means more time to play with Jake when he gets home (when he interrupts me 50 times a minute to ask if I’m done yet, I lose my train of thought and it takes me twice as long to write an article), I’m also dreading it. If you followed last year, you may recall the two dozen or so posts about what a nightmare school has been for us. Jake doesn’t conform properly (thank the gods for that!), so he’s labeled a trouble-maker, and if he breathes the wrong way, he gets suspended. One time, he didn’t even do anything, they couldn’t prove he did anything, but the principal used some sort of interrogation tactics to get Jake to admit to doing something he didn’t do, then suspended him. I asked to see the evidence, but the bus tape mysteriously went blank during those five minutes. I argued that there was no proof, the principal argued that Jake admitted to it, I argued that he turned my son into a liar, he got pissed and said “well, he’s still suspended from the bus tomorrow!” So I’m totally not looking forward to a repeat of that.

The thing that gets me is that at summer camp, every day they tell me how well behaved Jake is, what an awesome little boy he is, and so on. They think he’s an angel, while his school thinks he’s the devil. I think this year I’ll just start saying “please don’t speak to my kid without his attorney present.” I wonder if my brother knows a good elementary school criminal lawyer in PA?

Today, my beloved “attack” dogs, Tasha and Cooper (the German Shepherd and the, well, Cooper) were scurrying back and forth doing their high-pitched “danger, human, danger!” bark beneath the tarp covering the wood pile in our backyard. At first, we thought Cooper was stuck under there, because we didn’t hear Tasha, and Cooper isn’t the brightest bulb in the box sometimes, so it was feasible. I lifted the tarp to let him out, only to discover both dogs with their noses pressed against the wood, pacing back and forth. I tried to get them to back off, scared that it was a snake that would suddenly smell human blood and slither through to swallow me whole. Yes, I fear this possibility even with simple garter snakes, those things freak me out. Then I thought “what if it’s a kittem?” because we have a lot of those around here. The dogs would not back off though, and I started to hear a low growl, and suddenly something furry dashed out from under the wood pile.

Now, I would have assumed this to be the opossum’s fatal mistake. It left a spot where it couldn’t be reached and ran straight into the face of danger- Tasha’s face to be precise. Before I could finish scream “leave it be!” Tasha dove in for the kill. She’s fast. I’ve seen her take out renegade chipmunks before they could even blink. I thought for sure the poor little guy was done for. Of course, Tasha was just doing her duty and protecting me from a potentially deadly foe, but it was still disturbing to see this huge dead rat-like animal up close.

My mom came over to see what was going on, and I asked her if perhaps it was just playing dead. So she did what any civilized person would do- she poked it with a long stick. Nothing. She even stuck the stick in its mouth. Still nothing. Tasha and Cooper were staring at it, but even they thought their job was over. Not sure what else to do, my mom used a garbage bag to pick it up and put it in a bigger garbage bag. It still didn’t move. She threw the bag over the fence and onto the paved driveway. Nothing. The sucker was dead!

Fast forward three hours later, when my mom comes in the house to tell me that she was going to move the bag down the hill, but it was empty. Empty! Where the heck did the damn thing go? Seriously, when Opossums play dead, they really pull out all the stops. They’ve got to be the best actors in the animal kingdom. Of course, I googled it when I came in, and read that they actually go comatose, so I guess that explains everything. But still, he has to be one very concussed little guy right about now. I hope he found a better place to sleep than the wood pile, I’m not so sure Tasha would get it wrong the next time. She looked slightly livid that the bag was empty.

I’ve been a bit sickly lately. Nothing to drastic, just a bug going around. I can’t stand summer bugs because, for one thing, the heat always makes me feel worse. I’m not a big fan of the hot months. I don’t understand how anyone can love sticky, humid weather. At least in the winter, I can put MORE clothes on to get comfortable, but you can only take so much off before you’re arrested for indecent exposure. Summer has always been a rough time of year for me though, because I’m one of those rare people cursed with reverse-SAD. During the winter, when the sun goes down early, darkness settles across the land, and all the bugs die off, I’m happy as the proverbial central nervous system-free clam while everyone else is huddling around their heat lamps popping antidepressants. During the summer, when those same people are emerging from their shells, singing the praises of the return of the long, bright days, I’m huddled around my dehumidifier in a dark room not popping antidepressants because they make things worse for me. Isn’t than nice? Not only do I get the weird summer blues, but I have a weird system on top of it that rebels against any sort of medication that may make it better.

On the plus side, since having Jacob, my summer grumps haven’t been quite so severe, but they are still there. On the downside, I’m so stressed about money lately that, on top of being grumpy, I swear I’m developing an ulcer. I kid you not. Someone accused me of being dramatic, but I’m not. I seriously think there is a big, giant hole burning through my stomach. Bright side, I can now scream “stop stressing me out, you’re agitating my bleeding ulcer!” As for the drama, I’m a Leo (despite what some random change in astrology signs said, and did anyone notice how quickly all that hoopla died off? What ever happened to that random extra sign that was discovered?) Despite everything though, I’m actually in a fairly chipper mood. It’s all part of my attempt to maintain a slightly optimistic attitude. My awesome therapist told me that worrying constantly would cause me to miss out on opportunities that may come my way, because worrying turn your focus inward too much. I have a strange fear of optimism though. I think I’m afraid that if I’m optimistic, or experience a moment of sheer stress-free joy, everything will come crashing down around me. Like I’ll jinx myself or something. I’m working on that, but it’s not easy to completely change your way of thinking.