There it is. I am going bald. My hair is falling out faster than I can grow it back in. Every time I wash my hair my fingers become entwined in about fifty fallen strands. By the time I am done showering my hands look like someone’s old hairbrush, covered in ratty, matted fur. You know how most people have to grab the nasty wad of hairs out of the drain every week or so? I can prevent my shower from draining in just one day. Seriously, I am losing that much hair. I can actually see my hairline receding.

This isn’t the first time I have gone through this. This sudden loss of hair is actually a byproduct of pregnancy. May I reiterate once again how much I loathe being pregnant? I get every weird side effect; no part of my body is spared. The scientific way to describe this is that during pregnancy the hormones created send a message to the hair follicles to not release the hairs that ought to be let go. These hairs are all accumulated until about four months after giving birth, at which point, the hormones even themselves out and the hairs begin a mass exodus from my head. It’s not pretty. There’s hair everywhere.

After I had Jonas I developed literal bald spots. They were small, but they were there. I have the photos to prove it, and no, I will not be sharing them. This time around I was taking the optimistic approach to things, hoping that just maybe, since I was having a girl, things would be different. I don’t know why I thought this. Every other aspect of my pregnancy had been the same, (except for the fact that I was carrying Maggie so high there were days that I thought they would have to pull her out of my throat) so why should this be any different?

Now, if you are a guy and you are balding, that’s just kind of a part of life. Lots of guys do this. It’s not so weird. But when you are a woman? A vain woman? Yeah, not good for the post pregnancy morale. First no abs, now no hair. But a much larger, mushier tush and thighs. Not a very good advertisement for having a baby. I have gone forth and multiplied, spread my seed as it were, to sustain life on our puny little planet, and this is the thanks I get? Chubby and balding? It’s just not right.

The really funny part is that this really isn’t the worst of it. The worst part will happen in about four months when all the little hairs grow back. At that point I will have three inch long spikes of baby hairs poking out all over my head, but predominately at my hairline. This means that every time I wear my hair up (which is frequent because I am too lazy to fix it most days) I could poke someone’s eye out. To paint a simple picture, replace my head with Sputnik. “Spherical, but quite pointy in parts.”

Last time I hit that point I slathered on gobs of every wax, pomade, gel, mousse, and hair spray known to man and tried unsuccessfully to mold the little feelers back into place. The flagella refused to be reigned in. After about two months of looking ridiculous, my new hair was about four inches long and still defiantly refusing to bend to the will of gravity. I finally broke down and chopped it all off. I liked it for about three days.

At that point the novelty wore off, and I realized that it was appallingly high maintenance. I spent the next year trying to grow it back out so it didn’t drive me crazy. I am not a short hair person. I know that now.

I am considering taking a punk approach this time and coaxing all of my hair into large spikes. I could even dye the spikes different colors just for kicks. I will, of course, maintain my usual boring, suburban housewife garb. I am sure I will be quite the sight. So next time you are strolling along in the mall and your friend exclaims, “Look at that woman in the stylish twin set and khakis with the two foot purple spikes growing out of her scalp!” That’ll be me.

I decided to think 100 more things. This actually took a lot longer than the first 100 did. You can see the first 100 at the link under my profile photo.

101. If I could, I would never wear the same pair of socks twice. I love the feeling of new socks!
102. I make really good chili.
103. I hate fake watermelon flavor.
104. I hate Jolly Ranchers.
105. I can swaddle a baby in my arms, standing up, without putting the baby or the blanket down.
106. I get migraines.
107. I have panic attacks occasionally.
108. I love old musicals.
109. And Katherine Hepburn movies!
110. I am allergic to cockroaches. (Really truly, I just got tested!)
111. Kiwi too.
112. I have read the Reader's Digest since I was 8 years old.
113. My parents used to ground me from reading when I was a kid because it was the worst punishment they could throw at me.
114. I won the Fargo Public Library's Children's Reading Contest 2 years in a row (3rd and 4th grade). One summer I read 413 books. They discontinued the contest after that year because some other parents thought I lied. I didn't.
115. I enjoy singing at funerals.
116. I have greenish brown eyes. They are just like my Gramma's.
117. My children's middle names are after realtives: Jonas Jeffery for my Father in Law and Margaret Donna for my Gramma.
118. I'm really not sure if I'm finished having kids.
119. I don't like Mangos.
120. I love fresh pineapple.
121. I have never been dumped.
122. But I have had a broken heart.
123. I like my in-laws.
124. I find ovetures irritating. Get on with the show already!
125. It bugs me when people use plural pronouns in association with singular subjects. And people do this a lot. Just stop. OK?
126. It doesn't bug me at all when people end a sentace with "with." As in, do you want to come with? It's not bad grammer- it's a North Dakota Colliquillism. There is a difference :-)
127. I love parmesan cheese!
128. I used to be a Pampered Chef consultant. I did it to get all of the goodies- once I got them all, I quit. Now I do a show once a year to keep up with the new toys.
128.5. I went into preterm labor twice, both times were on the same day that I had a Pampered Chef show planned for myself.
128.8. I'm not suspicious, but if I ever have another baby I won't have a single Pampered Chef show while I'm pregnant, unless it is time to give birth.
129. Noisy neighbors drive me crazy.
129.5 We have good neighbors now, but we have had several really weird, rude, pot smoking wackos before. I called the cops on every one of them and even got one evicted. It's not that I'm mean; they truly were dangerous people, always drunk or high or having boyfriends come over and smash up the place (and the girl). I could do at least five posts just on some of these weird neighbors.
130. I like to eat eggs.
131. I tend to walk around stores grabbing what I want, then thinking better of it and putting items back.
132. I would like a dog someday. But not right now.
133. I tend to switch numbers around without knowing it. That caused major problems in algebra.
134. I flunked algebra twice with effort in high school.
135. I took almost all AP and honors classes in high school, except for the math. My teachers couldn't figure me out.
136. I passed stats in college.
137. I can conduct music.
138. I don't like shopping for clothes for myself.
139. But I love shopping for Chris and the kids.
140. I can crochet a chain. That's it.
141. I can knee board.
142. My favorite childhood place is Twin Lakes, MN.
143. I consider a book good when it makes me want to write.
144. I've shoveled snow off of my roof before.
145. I know what 70 degrees below zero feels like.
146. I don't like to have a television on unless I am watching it.
147. My favorite radio program is the Minnesota Public Radio morning show. It has the best mix of eclectic music and starts every day off with the poem of the day at 6 am read by Garrison Keeler. Since I live in California, I really, really miss it!
148. I don't deal well with gore or violence. I upsets me.
149. I once did a cannonball off of the high dive. It was an extremely painful lapse in judgement.
150. I used to be on a swim team. I discovered I like to swim, but I hate to compete.
151. I really hate to be forced to be perky and upbeat.
152. I'm not a super encouraging person. I say what I mean. If I have complimented you- I meant it.
153. People who are always uber encouraging kind of sicken me.
154. I used to really enjoy writing poetry. I won first and third prize in a contest once.
155. I rarely say I'm sorry. I think saying I'm sorry is lip service.
156. I want to hear you say, "I was wrong."
157. I know how to use a semi colon; that makes me special.
158. I type strangely and my E finger hits before my H finger so I tend to type the word "the" teh.
159. However, my spacebar figer hits before my E finger so I do things lik ethis.
160. I always type would like woudl and in my head I pronnouce it like Wu-del like rhyming with Hodel from Fiddler on the Roof.
161. I have to proofread everything.
162. When I was five I wanted to be a palentologist.
163. When I was seven I wanted to be a country western singer.
164. I love pistachios.
165. I have driven a combine.
166. I legally changed my last name when I was eighteen.
167. People tend to either really like me or hate me.
168. I tend to have only one or two pairs of shoes and wear them til death do us part.
169. I prefer clogs over all other shoes.
170. I really hate wearing sneakers.
171. I don't like didactic country music. Give me the old cheatin' songs anyday.
172. The clicky noise that some turn signals make drives me crazy. Our car does this and I have informed Chris that I don't care what our next car is, as long as it doesn't make that clicking noise.
173. I like camping, but I haven't gone camping since my honeymoon.
174. I use hot rollers in my hair when I fix it.
175. I often fantasize about having my own commune where everyone I like can come and live so I can see all of my loved ones whenever I want.
176. I met my husband walking down the street at campus.
177. His family had us married before we had even started dating.
178. I like to shower and get myself fully dressed and ready for the day before doing anything else in the morning.
179. I don't like wearing shirts that are baggy. A regular t-shirt ( the non fitted variety) drives me crazy. I feel like a slob.
180. I hate rejection. I submitted some stuff to Creating Keepsakes recently and the calls went out, and no call. Rejection sucks.
181. I would love to be on another scrapbooking design team.
182. I prefer pampers diapers.
183. I like geraniums because they are very hard to kill and bloom a lot.
184. My favorite Bath and Body Works scent is Cherry Blossom.
185. I am a perfectionist. If I can't do something perfectly, I usually won't even try.
186. Upon becoming a mother, my attention span and memory were reduced to the size of fleas.
187. I am extra senstive to noise. My level of stress will rise with the volume. Some days it is too much to have the tv and the dishwasher on at the same time.
188. I smake the best gingersnaps ever. Once you have my gingersnaps, no other gingersnap will do. I'm not kidding- you'll never be satisfied again.
189. I have a Berta Hummel figurine that looks just like Jonas did when he was one. We are going to get one for Maggie when she is one, as well.
190. I love food with lots of flavor.
191. I think that The Emperor's New Groove is the funniest Disney movie ever and it is a total shame that it bombed at the theaters.
192. I craved powdered laundry detergent when I was pregnant with both kids.
193. I discovered that eating a spoonful or two of baking soda quelled the craving.
194. I tried the detergent to see if I could just gross myself out so I would stop craving it, but it didn't work. I liked it.
195. I love the words idiosyncratic and multiplicative. I don’t get to use them very often, but I love how they roll off of the tongue.
196. The first book I ever cried at was Where the Red Fern Grows. I cried for three chapters straight.
197. I feel my best when I have had 9 hours of sleep.
198. Almost any time I go anywhere I have a layover in the Denver airport.
199. I have only one niece. I was a mother before I was an aunt.
100. I don't enjoy window shopping. If I'm shopping, I want to get something. I do my window shopping online.

Lovely grapefruit lunch
spherically splendid, so pink;
ferociously squirts.

Here are lines from a few movies I enjoy. . .do you know which movies they are from? Leave your answers in the comment section! I'll put the answers up by Wednesday :-)

1. "Not much meat on her but what's there is cherce."
2. "Cheese me no likey!"
3. "Have fun stormin' the castle!"
4. "You broke the ship, you broke the bloody ship!"
5. "Great Scott!"
6. "Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put on this earth to rise above"
7. "You normally don't see that kind of behavior in a household appliance."
8. "Head! Paper! Now! Move that melon of yours and get the paper if you can! Haulin' that gargantuan cranium about! I'm not kidding, that boy's head's like Sputnik! Spherical, but quick pointy in parts. Well, that was off sides, wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight on his *huge* pillow! "
9. "If you gotta live hand to mouth, you'd better be ambidextrous"
10. "Round up the usual suspects."

Some of them are classic, some are contemporary. . .it's a pretty big mix- can anyone get them all?

Last night I was checking out a Thomas the Tank Engine website that I plan to order Jonas’ birthday present from. Jonas is very enthusiastic about these toy trains. He frequently (like every hour of the day) asks me to go to Barnes and Noble so he can play with the huge train set they have there. He also likes to look at the toy trains online. Whenever he wants to see them he tugs on my arms and asks, “Choo-Choo? Choo -Choo? Choo-choo choo choo choo chooooooooo,” until I either take him to the store or look them up online, or go crazy from the incessant choo-chooing.

Jonas has started adding new phrases to his small vocabulary, much to our amusement. As I was looking at the little engines online Jonas saw a set he liked and out of no where exclaimed,
“I WANT IT!”

Both Chris and I were like, “whoa, where did that come from?” He has said the word want before, but never very clearly. So we had some fun with it. We made a little wishlist at the site I was shopping at and put everything Jonas really wanted on the list ( umm, yeah, he won't be getting everything on the list because my birthday budget simply isn't that extravagant). I would have thought that being two, he would have said he wanted everything, but he is actually a very discerning train connoisseur. Not all toy trains are created equal, apparently.


I guess these three are really awesome,


but this last one, well that set just stinks, according to Jonas.

This new vocabulary was all well and good until we went to Target an hour later. I think Jonas wants the whole store delivered to our house. He yelled I want it at almost everything he saw. He has been on a no treats ban for almost a month because I was hoping he would learn to deal with the fact that he doesn’t get a treat every time we go somewhere. I can’t afford it and he doesn’t need it. He has gotten better about dealing with me saying no, so that is good. He actually did pretty well when I made him put back 98% of what he was grabbing, especially for a kid who had skipped his nap. At the checkout he hopped out of the cart and grabbed all of the hotwheels cars off of the impulse buy rack by the checkout counter and started putting them on the counter. He didn’t see me put them all back, but I think he did wonder where they were when we got home.

Babies have such tiny nails!

I've been reading a lot about the new Pope lately, and while I really don't care one whit or another, it strikes me as odd that people are offended by the fact that he plans no sweeping change to the current views on issues such as abortion, birth control, homosexuality, women priests, etc.

I'm not Catholic, but as far as I can see, when you ascribe to a set of religious beliefs that you consider to be God's Word, or God's Holy Law, why would you expect it to change? Christianity is based on the premise that God is infalliable. His word does not change and is never wrong and if it were so, He would cease to be God. In Catholiscim, the Pope speaks for God. So, with liberal Catholics calling for change, one would have to surmise that, in their hearts, God has ceased to be God. They have become Master of their own lives, instead of submitting to God's will. They just feel insecure about moving on from it, and hope to have the Papacy say that what they are doing is ok, so they can do what they want in good conscience and still be aligned with the Catholic church.

Now, I really don't care what the Catholic church says or does, or what your opinion is on the hot topics, and if it is morally or ethically wrong or right. I know the hot topics are pretty hot and spark a lot of controversy. I just think that if you are going to be Catholic, then be Catholic. Live your religion. If you don't agree with several things that your religion feels strongly about, find a new faith. The point of religion isn't to have it bend to your will; it is about bending to the will of a supreme being.

I also don't understand how you can be a liberal or conservative proponent of any faith. I haven't seen many religions that say, "well, you could do this and be more righteous, but you don't have to so, you know, whatever you want to do, that's just fine." You either are or you aren't. You live it, or you don't. Perfection isn't neccesary, but all of your effort is.

I have the utmost respect for any individual who truly lives their religion, regardless of their faith. Being wishy washy never benefitted anyone. Decide who you are and be it. If you are Catholic, then I would assume that would include living by the Catholic church's official stance on things. I know some Christians feel that what they have currently is the best they have found so far, even if they don't 100% believe everything that faith teaches. If that is the case, call yourself the broader definition. Be simply Christian, or if you really don't know, call yourself agnostic, and admit that you don't know. There is no shame in that.