The Memes Stop Here

Have you noticed that this blog is where memes go to die?

It's nothing personal, of course - I'm always pleased to be tagged. But even when there is nothing blogworthy going on in my life, I can't seem to get around to completing what amounts to a cyber homework assignment.

I believe the term is, "lazy."

But the memes, they haunt and taunt me from the musty confines of my drafts folder. And so I am going to knock one out right here, right now - the "Six or Seven Random Facts About Me" meme, for which I was tagged by Melissa, Michele, and Candy sometime in the last century.

Three birds, one stone, people. Let's roll.

1. As a sixth grader, I won the "President's Physical Fitness Award" for, among other spectacular feats, hanging from the monkey bars in chin-up position for fifteen minutes. I still remember my entire class forming a half-circle around me and chanting, "Go Rima! Go Rima! Go Rima!"as I dangled nonchalantly above a pile of wood chips and mulch for what seemed like hours on end. It was a proud moment for Ronald Reagan and the United States of America.
   
   
2. I can pick out any basic melody on the piano without sheet music, and do so at every opportunity. As you might imagine, this makes me a most welcome Christmas party guest. While I'm up at the baby grand, picking out "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" with one hand, I will also be sure to plunk out "Chopsticks," the first few measures of "Fur Elise," one measure of "Sonata in C," as well as that spectacularly annoying ditty whereby one rolls one's fist loudly and repeatedly up and down on the black piano keys ad nauseum.
   
   
3. I cheated on my pregnancy glucose tolerance test by extending the time in which I imbibed the orange sugar beverage to seven minutes (instead of the recommended five), dumping exactly one ounce of unfinished liquid in my kitchen sink, then raising my heart rate by vacuuming the entire house in ten minutes flat before reporting to the clinic for my blood draw. I am the ultimate rebel and proof that the honor system does not work.
   
   
4. In retaliation for her staged hanging of my teddy bear, Puputis, from our dorm room's curtain rod (as well as other various offenses), I anonymously sent my freshman year college roommate/nemesis toenail clippings through campus mail, along with a menacing ransom style note.
   
   
5. I have never read anything by Jane Austen.
   
   
6. I competed in my state's spelling bee as an eight grader and lost on the word, "license." To this day, I cannot read or hear this word without mourning my missed opportunity to score a color TV and Encyclopedia Britannica set.
   
   
7. I am the number one Internet authoritay on "nostril skin tags." Go ahead and google it, my peeps.
   

I love reading random facts about my bloggy friends, so if you read this, consider yourself tagged.

About a Boy

When I became pregnant with you, I was darn near convinced I was carrying another girl.

I already had your sister, so it logically followed that my body was of the girl child producing variety.

The Chinese Gender Prediction Chart confirmed it.

The fact that I had scores of girls' names but none for boys swirling around in my hormone steeped brain was just another sign. (One day I hope you'll agree we picked a winner, though, and let it be said right here and now: Your father wanted to name you "Zenonas.")

But when your gender became apparent during my 18 month ultrasound appointment, Daddy and I were elated.

One of each! Healthy and perfect!

We would be a Hallmark family and there would be no need for a minivan.

But I must admit, little J, that I fretted. Not just about keeping you alive on the inside and then later, forever in the endless world, but about other stuff, too.

Would I be able to love this second boy child as much as my perfect baby girl?

Would you and the V-meister be friends?

What was the protocol for diapering your boy bits?

Would you be relegated to a life of sports and truck themed clothing for the lack of hip baby boy duds available for purchase at the local malls?

And what were the odds of going two for two in the cuteness lottery?

I'm ashamed to admit these were the questions I grappled with as I lay awake nights, tossing and turning on the trusty old body pillow, my hands and fingers achy and numb despite the wrist braces I wore nightly to keep my carpal tunnel pain at bay.

And, busy with a two-year-old V-meister, I'm sorry to say, little J, that I didn't track your every gestational milestone in the infernal What To Expect literature.

Oh, you were constantly on my mind and you reminded me of your presence daily with impressive jab, left hook, and side kick combos aimed at various parts of my anatomy, movements whose frequency and regularity I dutifully tracked towards the end of my pregnancy, ever vigilant and aware of the tenuous nature of the precious little life I was sustaining.

But despite our cozy living arrangement, you were an enigma, a bit of a stranger to me. A little boy stranger who I was at times unsure I could properly love.

One evening, wide awake again, I was playing and replaying possible birth scenario footage in my mind's eye. I was about eight months along, and the primal fear associated with childbirth had begun to creep up from the depths of my very own piece of the collective maternal unconscious.

On this night, for reasons unknown, I imagined what your first cry would sound like when you finally emerged.

I just kind of heard it in my head.

This thought alone was enough to trigger tears of my own.

All at once it hit me: you would have a voice, you would be a person. And imagining your first angry salutation to the world, little J, transformed you in my mind from the baby in my belly to the little boy I would love.

I began waiting for my son.

And you haven't disappointed - you had me at your first indignant wail.

It's hard to fathom that once, as the mother of one, I could have ever doubted my heart's elasticity or the ease with which you could take up residence there.

You are a greater gift than I could have ever imagined. I didn't know my life had a big J-sized hole in it before I laid eyes on you.

So happy second birthday and ilgiausiu metu, J!

Thank you for choosing us, and for your perfectly guileless little boy love.



P.S. I get it now, about mother and sons. I'm sorry, little dude, but your future wife is going to hate me.

Objects in Rearview are RELATED TO ME

Edited to Say: That unsuspecting couple was not so unsuspecting, after all. They did notice our lame one car detached garage and decided not to bid, the agent tells me. And now I shall go drown my sorrows in a bowl of cold beet soup with home fries.

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Dear readers, there is no time to blog when you are busy scouring the Internet for dream homes and scrubbing your hut for back-to-back showings.

(Also, I suspect that the Rama HouseQuest of 2008 is not particularly riveting blog material, and have thus refrained from boring you with the details here as much as possible.)

But the house that had my name on it walked away yesterday with someone else.

The original plan was to make our real estate agent work for her commission by making sure that she sells our hut before we bid on anything. So when she showed me my dream home last week, I feigned nonchalance and informed her that we may or may not want to look at it again, depending on how fast things are moving with the hut.

Yesterday, the P-Dawg and I were scheduled to go back for a second look when we found out it had sold, only a week after being listed.

So ever since that home was snatched right out from under my dilly-dallying nose, I have become a house hunting hoebag, ready to bid on the first property that bats an eyelash at me before it shacks up with the wrong buyer again.

Yesterday, an unsuspecting young couple looked at our hut for the second time in two days. They were still inside when the family Rama returned from dinner out at seven thirty. What could they possibly have been doing in there for a whole hour, P-Dawg and I wondered?

(I, for one, was praying fervently they wouldn't notice that 1) We only have one bathroom 2) The garage is not attached to the house 3) The kitchen cabinets are seventy years old and 4) Someone whose name begins with "V" and ends with "Meister" may or may not have remembered to flush after dropping the kids off at the pool before vacating the premises.)

Oh! And one more thing: You would think that once you're well into your thirties, your parental units would be a bit less involved in your major life choices.

And you would therefore not expect to see them, along with your mother-in-law, tailing you in the Lincoln Continental as you are performing a drive-by of a potential property.

Ah, but you would be wrong.

(My mom swears that P-Dawg's mom just happened to be over for dinner and they all just happened to get an urge to drive by the house we were interested in at the same time that we were going to be there. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.)

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P.S. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to comment on your blogs much this week. I may be out of the loop for a little while, but I am still reading.

Giving Peace a Chance

There are two kinds of people: those who lay on their car horn at every opportunity, and those who don't (but wish they had.)

I've always been a honker.

When stopped at a red light behind another motorist, I like to keep one hand poised just above the horn so I could bring it home the moment the signal changes.

If you cut me off as I'm driving, I will honk for a full minute, swear profusely, and follow you home.

If I think you are about to cut me off, I'll pump the horn with purpose until I'm right alongside of you, and then I will secretly flip you off by pretending to scratch an itch on the side of my face using my middle finger.

And, if you try to make a dangerously close left turn in front of me, I may just plow right into you.

While honking.

Yesterday, I was waiting to make a right turn onto a main road from a side street with no traffic light. The coast was clear to turn on several occasions, but I was trying to angle directly into the left turn lane, which was backed up. No one was letting me in, so I continued to patiently sit with my right turn signal on and wait for traffic to start moving.

It's like I said: I use my horn with discretion.

There happened to be a gentleman in the vehicle behind me who also wanted to turn right, and he was starting to get a bee in his bonnet over my inaction.

He went to town on his car horn.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!! BEEEP! BEEP! BEEP! MEEP! BEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I motioned for him to go around me, but he'd already worked himself up into quite a frenzy, honking with one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other.

At one point, he even threw both arms up in the air as if to say, "OMG, I GIVE UP, YOU CRAZY MINIVAN DRIVING B1TCH!!!"

However.

I ignored my very first instinct and chose not to engage him in a honking war. I knew in my heart of hearts that no one ever emerges victorious in a honking war.

Neither did I exit the Ramamobile to get all up in his grill with a piece of my mind, as I was itching to do.

And I did not flip him off or call him a hoary toad, as per Lithuanian tradition.

Instead, I composed myself and, while beaming angelically through my rear-view mirror, I held up two fingers in the universal sign of peace.

It felt positively awesome.

So gratifying, in fact, was this tranquil gesture, that when prompted by another barrage of furious beeps, I performed it again.

While the gentleman behind me was busy having an aneurysm, a space opened up in the turn lane and I calmly proceeded through.

It pays to give peace a chance.

Amazing Adventures of J-Dog Rama

Preparing to descend the Monster Slide.




"Oh, really? Is there a law?"


"Step off my rig, Mama."


"Tire swing, you crack my sh1t up."

Young and Hip is Overrated

The P-Dawg and I went out on Saturday night, sans enfants.

Four sips into my adult beverage, I was twirling a lock of hair around my index finger, talk, talk, talkin' 'bout how much I luuurve me a Moe-Hee-Toe, and poking gentle fun of the baby boomeresque ladies dining one table over. (Something about "lightweights with chardonnay" if memory, which is fuzzy, serves correctly.)

After dinner, I browsed around at Anthropologie while the P-Dawg patiently read Bartleby's Quote Book on a purple velvet couch.

(Reading material is available at this store for the discerning shopper's reluctant male companion. Merely stepping foot inside the whimsical and over-priced estrogen alley that is Anthropologie gives P-Dawg the heebie-jeebies. He simply does not understand the allure. "Why does everything in here look old and beat up?")

We ate dessert at Cold Stone Creamery, lingered at Barnes and Noble, and pulled into our driveway at 9:59 PM.

As soon as the sitter fled, I changed into pajamas and curled up on the couch with a cup of tea and my new reading materials.

"P-Dawg, I thoroughly enjoyed our date tonight, but next time, let's go for the early bird special. We'll save a buck AND be home five minutes after the kids are asleep."

"Deal."

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I think I've waited my whole life to be here, squarely in my thirties.

Back in the day, while out clubbing with friends, I often secretly wished to be in my dorm room, smoking Camels and reading Raymond Carver instead. At the time, I didn't have the self-assurance to opt out of these evenings and I didn't want to risk missing out on seeing and being seen.

I think I've always preferred board games and conversation with a small group of close friends to partying the night away (although I've been known to do both.)

I don't miss the awkward early stages of romantic relationships, getting the requisite talk of likes and dislikes, childhoods, and future aspirations out of the way.

I still care about my appearance, but I'm no longer loathe to be seen without makeup. Ironic, since now I have "laugh lines."

There are no more smokey treats around here, but the P-Dawg and I do try to keep things interesting with an occasional club concert or late night of revelry.

But coming home early to a warmly lit house, children sleeping safely in their beds, a cup of tea, a book, a soul mate, and an elastic waistband is pure, guilt-free bliss.

I do believe I'll be keeping happy company with the chardonnay drinking biddies in a few years' time.

And Now I So Happy, I Do the Dance of Joy

Readers, I am borderline ebullient today, and all because of my bathroom scale.

My bathroom scale, EggBeaters, and crab meat/avocado/cherry tomato salads with lime vinaigrette.

Apparently, all it takes for my funk to lift is a Friday morning weigh-in indicating a total weight loss of 2 pounds over the last week and a half - a week which included a mere one power walk and three Snickers ice cream drumsticks.

The secret, my friends, is EggBeaters. Every single morning for the past week and a half, I've eaten an EggBeater omelet cooked with olive oil spray with a pinch of cheddar cheese. This breakfast of People with Weak Will Power Who Can Only Diet Until 6:00 pm contains only about EIGHTY CALORIES and can tide me over well until mid-morning, at which time I eat a handful of blueberries or some such in order to prevent myself from gnawing my own fingers off.

For lunch, I have been eating either salad greens with avocado, grilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, radishes and one tablespoon of blue cheese dressing, or salad greens with imitation crab meat, cherry tomatoes, avocado, and lime/olive oil dressing.

Once dinnertime rolls around, it's a balls-out noshfest and I eat pretty much whatever I want (within reason - we are talking more like spaghetti noodles with turkey sausage and marinara sauce, not KFC, people.) On roughly three out of seven nights a week, I will even drink a box of Franzia glass of Rhone red.

Before bed, I have a cup of chamomile or vanilla rooibos tea with honey and I may or may not eat an entire full fat Snickers ice dream drumstick (280 calories). If I don't eat a full fat Snickers ice cream drumstick, then I will eat seven gingersnaps or a Skinny Cow ice cream drumstick (150 calories for either option).

I have no idea what my total daily caloric intake is, but I'm telling you, it's the Egg Beaters. You have to be careful because they come in a carton that looks suspiciously like coffee creamer and there have been some close calls in which I poured the raw egg whites into my morning cup of joe, thankfully realizing my error only seconds before imbibing.

But seriously, the EggBeaters keep me feeling full on way less calories than my usual breakfast and, as long as I stick to a salad that's high in protein for lunch, I feel like I can stop dieting at dinnertime so it's not as hard to start all over again the next morning. (I know this is kind of backwards, as you are supposed to reduce your calories as the day goes on. But whatevah, Dr. Phil. I don't see you fitting into a size four pair of jeans that you wore before you got pregnant with Number One.)

So there you have it. Things could change at any time (like if my scale cops an attitude with me tomorrow morning), but for now, I feel thinner, prettier, smarter, more confident in my parenting skillz/ability to sell my hut, and dammit, people like me! (Maybe. Probably. Most of the time, right? Don't answer that.)

Happy weekend, everyone!

I'm a Four Year Old Trapped in a Peri-Menopausal Body

3/4 sleeve brown yoga t-shirt
linen capris
black clogs
amber earrings


Dear Internets,

I've been in a bit of a funk for the past few days, which is why I haven't posted. Strangely, I'm usually only motivated to write when I'm feeling buoyant. A blog post when I'm feeling down would look an awful lot like my high school diary, except I probably wouldn't write what I wore that day in the upper left corner.

Speaking of clothing, did you know that, when you are four years old, you are not permitted to wear an item of clothing that bears "Size 3T" on the tag? Any birdbrain (except yours truly) knows that this is folly and goes against all laws of reason.

If the item of clothing in question bearing the "3T" tag also happens to be white ("White is not my color, Mama! Pink is my color!!!"), well now, this results in a Level Four Meltdown accompanied by the Whining Cry of Maximum Irritation.

Which is worse even than the sound of nails on a chalkboard and makes me want to run around in circles with my hands over my ears screaming, "MynameisRima!Ican'thearyoumynameisRima!" And then jump out the window.

Except what I actually do is bring out ye old Drill Sergeant of Doom persona and raise my voice ever so slightly, much in the same way I imagine a banshee might. A PMSssing banshee on an empty stomach who has a vague sense of malaise about her life in general and has not yet had her morning cup of joe.

Oh, ya. I can act like a four year old any damn day of the week.

It is important to note, however that if a pink plastic Ikea spoon should happen to be proffered as a breakfast eating implement mere minutes after the white size 3T clothing debacle, it will be thrown across the breakfast table in in a fit of rage because what fool doesn't know by now that only the dark blue plastic Ikea spoon is fit to eat Cheerios with?

Again, that would be me.

P.S. I told my ob/gyn last time I saw her that my PMS is getting totally out of hand lately. She said, "Oh, yeh, well you're thirty-four. It's peri-menopause." ACK!

(MynameisRimamynameisRimaMynameisRima!)

Wordless Wednesday

Getting Rid of the Junk in Your Trunk is Damn Hard if You Recycle

When the P-Dawg came home from work yesterday, I was sitting at the kitchen table, dejectedly staring out the window and eating potato chips.

"What's up, Rimster?"

"Man, I am sooooo depressed. I went dress shopping for D's wedding today and, holy crap, nothing fit! I got junk in the trunk, P-Dawg!" said I, shoving a mouthful of Dan-Dee rippled potato chips down my gullet and chasing them with a swig of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

(My situation necessitated emergency caloric fortification in preparation for the diet I planned to start the next day. Because there was rather a lot of trunk junk, to be honest - a whole slew of empty Ben and Jerry's pints, some Reese's chocolate peanut butter egg wrappers, and possibly even a couple of crushed beer cans. I was headed straight for an SUV in the pants.)

P-Dawg tactfully assessed it with a quick sidelong glance and said, "Don't worry, Rimster, your a$$ isn't that big. Pass those chips, please."

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I freely admit I have been eating more and moving less all winter.

It's been difficult to eat well since the P-Dawg, trying to recoup the twenty pounds he's lost over the last month as the result of his snore-no-more surgery, is now eating like Renee Zelwegger before her starring role in Bridget Jones' diary.

You may already know that I've been loathe to go back to Jazzercising after the J-dog's December freakout in the day care room. But what really sealed the deal was when a friend told me that when they start slacking off at her BodySlam class? The instructor bellows, "WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK THIS IS? JAZZERCISE???"

(I have to admit that, at times, Jazzercise did seem a bit too easy. I mean, when the blue haired lady with the walker and the housedress doesn't even break a sweat while doing crunches to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel, you kind of have to wonder.)

So, now that the weather is finally turning here in the frozen tundra, I've decided to hang up the crazy stripe leg warmers and leopard print leotard in favor of a J-dog approved exercise regimen: walking.

This morning, after dropping the V-meister off at school, the J-dog and I set off on a long walk over the hills and dales of our 'hood. I even weighed my pockets down with a bunch of rocks all Virgina Woolf style, having long ago read in some stupid baby magazine that this was a sure way to crank it up a notch while strollercizing.

(I am also deathly afraid of dogs, and felt that the rocks could double as ammunition if I were to find myself duking it out with the Rottweilers two blocks over.)

We had a nice long walk, even though, when all was said and done, I ended up chucking all the rocks out, piecemeal, onto my neighbors' lawns.

Not in self-defense, mind you. They were heavy and anyway, after about twenty minutes of vigorous walking, I felt sure that I was back to a size four already.

Indeed, I was feeling so good about my workout, that immediately after dropping the kids off at my parents' house for an afternoon of grandparent sanctioned Krispy Kreme and apple juice freebasing, I swung by H&M and bought myself two pairs of capris in the next size down.

Which I was able to squeeze into before lunch if I peed first and lay down while holding my breath to zip them, but not so much after.

Nevertheless, I have full confidence in my new fitness plan, and I'm feeling better already!

So much so that I might even kick back with a celebratory ice cream sundae tonight after the kidz are in bed.

Everybody's Got a Voracious Ticker

In the car on our way home from school this afternoon, the V-meister put in a song request:

"Mama, I want to hear the one about the starving love. The song about the starving love."

I wracked my brain for starving love songs, but not a one came to mind.

"Mama! The one about the love that's so hungry! That one, I want to hear."

"Ohhhhhhh . . . heh, heh, heh, you mean "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen?

"That's what I said."

Then I spent the next ten minutes trying to explain the difference between radio and CDs to the little V-meister, who could not grasp the concept that there was no Starving Love to be heard on our car stereo at the moment she required it, and therefore continued to demand that the Starving Love song be played until the very moment we pulled into our driveway.

(I have no idea where she even heard that song, because I never listen to no sappy 80s stations.)

But, speaking of starving love and hungry hearts, check out this picture of the V-meister and my friend's son, V-boy, taken at the mall the other day just moments after he enlisted her to help him find a nice blue shirt just like his dad's, but smaller:


"Do you want to try Gap Kids?"