Weirdness

Anybody who knows me well can corroborate this. I am weird. Fortunately for my own sanity, I have embraced my weirdness.

Here are a few of the weirder aspects of me...

• I am slightly OCD. I get twitchy when pictures hang crooked, or papers are not squared up before they are stapled. However, I am kind of a slob when it comes to house keeping. And have been since WAY before baby. So all the pictures in my house are perfectly straight, but there are dirty dishes in need of washing and more than a little cat hair rolling around like errant tumbleweeds. 

• I think snakes are cool and spiders (excluding Brown Recluse and Black Widow) are cute. However, a june bug crawling or landing on me will send me into hysterics. I'm not a whole lot better about grasshoppers... 

• I love hummus, but despise chick peas....

• I can quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Princess Bride all day long, but have to stop and think before I can give my birth date or phone number 

• I love shopping at thrift stores and flea markets, but absolutely despise shopping at the mall. Seriously hate it. I had a panic attack the last time I tried to shop at a mall. 

• I adore the smell of coffee but dislike the taste. Nothing disappoints me more than thinking I'm going to eat something chocolate flavored and then bite into it and find out it's mocha flavored. 

Bird is the Word

The other day I got crapped on by a bird. It was weird and bright green and I had drive with it on my arm a ways before I could wash it off because there were no napkins in the car. The end.

P.S. In atonement for this short, disgusting post, here's a YouTube video.

Word of the Day - Part 3

Interrobang - a nonstandard punctuation mark used in various written languages that combines the functions of the question mark and the exclamation mark. A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

The interrobang can be represented by putting in these 3 separate ways. 

1) ?!

2) !?

3) ‽ (this is my favorite!)

A popular use of the interrobang is as a stand-alone symbol in cartoons used to portray surprise. 

I am Pro Choice

I am a new mother. This fact has made me see so many things in the world in a new way. My own experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, coupled with the pregnancy and childbirth experiences that friends had during that time have made me realize something that never really crossed my mind before.

I am pro-choice. Now, this has absolutely nothing to do with the whole can-o-worms abortion debate. When I say I am pro-choice, I mean that I am 100% for letting women choose the type of prenatal and labor/delivery care that they want/need.

If you want to deliver your baby in the water with dolphins, I support that choice. If you want to deliver your baby in a hospital under the watchful eye of a medical team, I support that choice. If you want a happy medium between the crunchy-granola all-natural birth scenario and the more clinical hospital birth scenario and choose to give birth in a birthing center staffed by a nurse midwife with a backup doctor on call, I support that choice.

I believe that a pregnant woman has the right to choose a medical practitioner that is receptive to what the woman wants out of her pregnancy and childbirth. I believe that if a laboring mother wants no medication, some medication, or the whole shebang, it's her right to choose, without feeling pressured by ANYONE to go one way or another. I believe that should complicated circumstances arise that lead to less a less than ideal labor/delivery, that the only appropriate responses are joy for a successful delivery and grief for an unsuccessful one. I believe that no matter how a mother chooses to deliver her child, she shouldn't feel judged for the way she chose to do it.

One woman's choice in care may not work for her friend. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to having a baby. Every birth and birth story is different. But my sincere wish is that, no matter the scenario, when all is said and done, every mother could say that overall they are satisfied with their experiences in prenatal and labor/delivery care and that their wishes were met to the best of their caregiver's ability.

Photographic Proof of my Mini-Me

I finally got a pic of my daughter chewing on her lip. So without further ado, photographic evidence that I have my very own Mini-Me.

(L) my daugher (R) Me

Hi. I'm Bailey, and I am a geeky parent.

A few months ago, before my daughter was born, the hubby and I were having a conversation in the car about baby's first words. And both of us, completely without any suggestion from the other, had thought of the exact same word to be the first word to teach our unborn child after he or she learned to say “mama” and “dada.” What was that word? “Shiny.”

As a geek it just reinforces the knowledge you've found the perfect geek to be married to when you and your spouse agree that the first word your first child should be taught, after "mama" & "dada", is "shiny".

Why “shiny”? Well, “shiny”, in the way we will teach our daughter to use it, comes from the show 'Firefly' and is used to mean something is going great, or something is nifty. Kind of the future, space-cowboy equivalent of calling something or someone “cool.” For example: “How are things going today?” “Everything's shiny!”

Why will we do this? Because we want our child, from the very beginning, to learn that it is OK to be unique. OK to be an individual who likes, says and does things that popular culture may or may not understand. Let her know that whatever she wants to be as she grows up, whether it be a geek, a nerd, a princess, a rock star, a hockey player, etc., that it is OK to chase dreams, whether or not they end up coming true.

And someday, when she is old enough to understand, I will show her this video where Wil Wheaton explains why it is so fun, liberating, exhilarating to be a nerd, and to passionately pursue the things that you love. And maybe, just maybe, through my example to my daughter, she, and other children will see that it is OK to be you and not what advertisements say you should be.

Books are Better

I love books. I love to read them, smell them, collect them. Books are the closest thing that I've found in this world to a magic portal or time machine. A well written book can take you to distant lands, long past times, and fantastical realms.

Call me old fashioned, but I love real, physical books. E-books are ok. They have their place. But for me, they will never replace an actual, real book.

Real books have real pages to turn. Real books have wonderful smells; new ink, fresh paper and anticipation in new books & age, history and wonder in old books. Real books don't have screen glare. And if you drop one, you don't have to worry about a broken screen. 

After seeing a quote from King of the Nerds, Nathan Fillion, I feel that I am in pretty good company when I say that hands down, books are better.