Down The Rabbit Hole

We’re going to the Los Angeles County Fair today, and in anticipation, last night I was browsing their website and discovered that there is a vendor there that will be selling fried s’mores.  Yum.  So I go to tell my husband.

Me:  Dude.  They’re going to be selling FRIED S’MORES at the fair tomorrow.

Him:  Eh.  I’m looking forward to the fresh stuff.

Me:  What fresh stuff?

Him:  You know, like all the farmers in the area bring their fresh good stuff to the fair.

Me:  *blink*

Me:  Have you ever BEEN to the fair?

Him:  No.

Me:  Well, obviously.

This summer we’ve created a little ritual for ourselves in the evening.  When Hawk gets home from work, we pour a cocktail and go sit on our front porch.  We watch cars pass by, we watch people walking their dogs.  We have neighbors with three little kids who play soccer in the street, so we help Áine cheer them on.  It’s a lovely way to unwind, talking about our day, spending time together as a family before Áine goes to bed.  She can be cranky all afternoon, but when Papa gets home and we have our family time on the porch, she’s happy as can be.

My hair has never really been one of my best features.  It’s pretty thin, it has never held a curl well, always just kind of laid there, limp and boring. I’ve never really been able to do anything with it, it’s either down or back in a ponytail.  It’s been the same length and the same color for years and years.  There was an ill-advised pixie cut back in my early twenties, but let us never speak of that again.

But when I was pregnant I grew a gorgeous head of hair – thick, shiny, luxurious.  I could go days without washing it and it just looked fabulous all the time.  Every day was a good hair day.

See?  Great hair.

Until…

Yeah, one of the (many) things “they” don’t tell you about what to expect after you give birth is that all that gorgeous, thick hair?  It falls out.  Like all at once, all of a sudden.  About four months after Áine was born, I started shedding like a balding dog.  After I shower, it comes out in clumps.  I’m cleaning my hairbrush every day.  It’s all over my pillow when I get up in the morning.  I’m constantly fishing hair out of Áine’s little fists (could be worse, I read online if you have a little boy to watch out that a loose strand doesn’t wrap around his little boy parts – owie) and feeling a tickle on my shoulder because a stray strand has fallen there.  I have enough extra hair to make a small furry animal.

It’s just one example of one of the (not so) joyous little surprises that you discover after giving birth that no one really bothers to talk about, and your doctor doesn’t really bother to give you an “oh hey, by the way, now that you’ve actually had the baby, here are some things to look out for…”.  None of those pregnancy books I read while I was expecting said anything about this.  A friend of mine who had her daughter a couple months before Áine was born was experiencing the same thing and had actually made an appointment to go see her doctor, because she was worried that something was wrong with her.  Luckily, I had just looked googled “postpartum hair loss” a day or two earlier so I could tell her not to worry about it (I thought about googling: “DEAR GOD I’M GOING BALD WHAT THE FUCK?!?” but managed to calm down a bit).  It’s totally normal after-birth hormonal bullshit and should stop in a couple months.  Hopefully I’ll still have some hair left when it’s over!  If not, I guess I’ll be investing in a number of lovely hats for fall.

As if I don’t have enough to do what with the child rearing and house maintaining and such, I went and bought a fish tank for Áine’s room a few months ago.  I had read that the sound of a bubbling fish tank could help soothe her and help her sleep, so I thought why not.  We started out with four minnows and a very handsome bright red betta, who we named Fishes 1-4 and Mr. Fish, respectively.  Thinking I was being a responsible fish mom, I cleaned their little tank every week.

The first fish tragedy occurred when one of the minnows committed fishy suicide while I was cleaning his tank.  Mid-clean, I looked into the bowl where I was keeping them in the meantime – one fish, two fish, three fish…WHERE THE FUCK IS FISH #4??  Well fish #4 was on the fucking floor.  He had jumped out of the bowl and plunged to his doom.  RIP Fish #4.

A week or so later, Mr. Fish started looking not so hot.  His color dulled and his fins started to look kind of shredded.  I kept an eye on him, kind of concerned, and then one day I looked in on him and he was covered head to tail in white fuzz.  ”Well that,” I told myself, “CAN’T be good”.

I poked around online and was bombarded with a dizzying amount of information on fish diseases.  I thought, screw this, and went back to the store where we bought him and asked what was up.  I told the guy how I’d been religiously cleaning the tank and he told me that was exactly the wrong thing to do.  Apparently when you’re first setting up a tank, you have to let it get good and dirty (to an acceptable degree) to let good bacteria build up that will process fishy waste.  If you clean the tank too often, you don’t let the bacteria build up and basically your fish are eaten alive by toxins that would normally have been digested by bacteria.  By the time I learned this, it was too late for Mr. Fish and he died a horrible HORRIBLE fishy death.

I was wracked with guilt.  I’m usually not one to feel too badly for fish, but he was my pet and by trying to do what I thought was the right thing, I caused him to die and die painfully.  I think Mr. Fish will haunt me the rest of my days.

But that didn’t stop me from going out and buying another fish.  This time I did it right and waited for a month – didn’t clean the tank (the three remaining minnows didn’t seem to mind) to make sure all the good bacteria were built up – and I bought a lovely fantail goldfish, named Fatty Bo-Batty:

I brought him home and put him in the little one and a half gallon tank with the three minnows and all seemed happy as can be.

Then I started poking around online to find information on caring for fantail goldfish and everywhere I read that at a minimum fantail goldfish need to be in a ten gallon tank in order to be healthy and happy.  Usually I would have been like, whatever, it’s a fucking fish.  But I was still suffering from Mr. Fish Guilt and was convinced that if I left Fatty in the little tank that he would be miserable.  So I went out and bought a goddamn ten gallon tank.  I put the minnows in it for three weeks to get it “ready” for Fatty while he stayed in the little tank by himself.

Today was the day and Fatty moved into his new home.  Áine and I also took a trip back to the fish store and bought him a little calico girlfriend (or maybe a boyfriend?  It’s hard to tell with fish).  Turns out Fatty is kind of a douchebag and has been relentlessly chasing his new buddy all over the tank.  I figure they’ll work it out.  Here’s a photo of Fatty in pursuit of Gato (named in honor of the cat that Pepe Le Peu was always chasing):

We also got a little freshwater eel (named Pinky) to hang out on the bottom.  He’s camera shy though, so no pics of him.

The overall moral to this story?  I am a sucker.  I guess it’s worth it though:

This past weekend we went to a carnival at our friends’ little boy’s school.  There were acrobats and other performers there, and this woman was doing tricks with some hula hoops.  I thought it was pretty neat.

Just a little reminder to keep some whimsy in your life!

Hawk and I got up early this morning so we could get to our polling place right at 7am when it opened.  In the 2004 general election, we waited in a five minute line.  This morning we waited 45 minutes.  A good mix of people (white, black, hispanic, young, old) and it was cool to see that several parents had brought their kids with them.  One guy brought his wiggly cocker spaniel, much to the delight of the two little girls in line in front of him.  One of them said to him “You’re so lucky to have a dog like that.”  So cute.

After we had been waiting about thirty minutes, a 50-ish looking guy came in, took a look at the line and exclaimed angrily “Oh my god, this is ridiculous!  I can’t believe this line!”  An older, sort of wobbly gentleman with a cane a couple people in front of him said, “I think it’s wonderful.  It shows how the American people are feeling, how important this is.”

When I cast my vote for Barack Obama and against Prop 8 this morning, it really felt good.  I felt like I had contributed to history and made what I truly feel are the right choices for the future -  not only for my country, but for my daughter as well.  I was glad she was there with me, even if she’s still in my belly and couldn’t see for herself all the people making their voices heard.

All is well here at the Corbell house.  Since I have been rather lax at the updates the past couple weeks, here are some highlights:

• Baby Corbell is awesome.  I have taken to calling him/her “Thumper” because the movements are no longer mere taps or flutters.  This kid is thumpin’ and bumpin’ and kicking my butt from the inside out.  We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.  I’ll post pictures.
• Made our first trip to Babies R Us this past weekend to buy a crib mattress.  While we were there we took our first look at car seats and strollers and my head exploded.
• Not sleeping well.  The hormones and back pain are the main reasons for my insomnia, but the future of our country being decided in eight short weeks has something to do with it as well.
• Totally obsessed with Election ‘08.  I vacillate wildly between totally confident and absolutely scared shitless.  The past two weeks have been much more on the “scared shitless” end of the spectrum.  I spend most of my day online reading political blogs and praying to the God I don’t believe in to please just make John McCain and Sarah Palin go away.
• On Friday we are taking our beloved cats Jethro and Millie to their new home.  I haven’t really written about this, mainly because I didn’t really want to talk about it much (made me too sad) but we came to the conclusion several months ago that Hawk’s allergies make it impossible for us to keep them any longer.  Luckily, our wonderful friends Tammy and Aaron are welcoming them into their home.  I am heartbroken to see them go, but this is the best possible outcome, since we know they will be so well loved and cared for, plus we can still visit them and Tammy will give me updates all the time.

Today is my birthday!  I am officially IN MY THIRTIES.  30 is just 30, but 31 is IN MY THIRTIES.  Oh well.  Bring it on.

About two months ago I found my first grey hair.  I showed it off to my husband, told my parents and my friends – “I like it!  It’s so cute, I think it makes me look distinguished!”

I found grey hair #2 yesterday.

It’s not cute anymore.

It’s an epidemic, people.