Brain Farts

The urban dictionary defines brain farts as,

A massive, horrible release of stupid that is often offensive to the senses and may create a social faux pa in some settings. Brainfarts often result in an intense feeling of embarrassment and shame compounded by an inability to explain what the hell just happened.

and also,

A gap, interruption, or uncontrolled shift in a chain of thought resulting in a lull, pause, and/or blank stare during oral communication and sometimes involving the loss of short term memory.

My brain has been farting a lot since conception. This is one more thing they don't tell you (and I am telling you friends that are considering getting knocked up) : when you get pregnant you check out from common sense world, or any train of rational thinking and normal body balance and start releasing a lot of stupid.

You bump into furniture and sometimes mumble sentences that make no sense, but it's all good because you will forget all about it in a second, anyway, since your short term memory is worth crap.

You will find yourself doing some of the following:

- Looking for your cell phone all over the house, and getting really worked up about it while opening every drawer and every purse until you hear your friend on the other side of the line, "Aren't you USING your cell phone right now?" and you will have to say, embarrassed, realizing suddenly that the phone has been with you all along, "I found it!"

- Trying to turn off the TV and saying, "Damn you piece of shit, just turn off!!" and realizing your car is honking because you have been pressing the panic button of your car key thinking it was the remote control of the TV (because they look so much alike, right?).

- Finding the actual remote control of the TV in the refrigerator.

- Sucking your belly in for another person to pass because you are taking the whole aisle space of a grocery store and realizing that it doesn't go in.

- Looking at your reflection in the mirror and realizing that your hair brush is half way through it from a few hours ago when you were brushing your hair and got distracted with something.

- Parking in front of Starbucks when you are supposed to be at a client's house at the other side of town and only then realizing you don't even want coffee and have no idea how you ended up there.

- Throwing the cheese sauce from packaged macaroni and cheese in the trash and the paper in the pan.

- Forgetting what this blog was about and have to read it again.

Nursery (phase 2) - I can't help myself

I have become a crackle whore (notice I said crackle, not crack). This is so much fun to do, especially when your job is to point your finger at what needs to be done and have your husband do everything.

First, here is a picture of the dresser. It finally made it's way upstairs, carried by mom and husband.

Secondly, here is all the snoopy "gear" for the bedding and curtains. We are still waiting on more snoopy things. This baby is going to dream of snoopy.

I have bought some snoopy appliques (wall decals) that husband was not too thrilled to have it glued on his brand-spanking-new painted wall. I decided that instead I would buy cheap picture frames at Michael's and glue the appliques on them.

Since the frames didn't come with a background for the appliques, I bought a hard paper with the same color as the walls of the nursery (special for frames - you can find them at Michael's, by the frame section) and had husband slave on cutting the matching squares.

I plan on hanging those snoopy pictures on top of the dresser.

Another thing I bought at Michael's was Matthew's name's letters. I plan on hanging them (I mean, have husband hang them) over the baby's crib.

And here is where the crackle whore comes in.

Here is a piece of the snoopy curtain's colors (which is the same as the bedding) that I decided to play with. I thought, "hey, this room needs some of this ugly green").

I went to Home Depot, bought some Asparagus-named color and decided that the frames and some of the letters would be crackled with that tone.

I started the crackle process the same way as we did with the dresser, minus the primer. We painted the frames and letters with the base color that matches the walls of the nursery.

We waited for them to dry and applied the crackle glue.

By the time I applied the first coat of paint with a brush, it turned out HORRID and it didn't crackle at all!

I looked outside and realized that (DUH!) it was raining and cold, and those factors affect how the crackles do their thing.

Wonderful husband had to sand all the letters that, by the way, got stuck to newspapers (after all, crackle glue is glue!)

I started with the base color all over again.

By the time we applied the blue color, we found out that the crackle was no longer sticky, so the blue didn't crackle as much. We used a blow dryer to heat and dry up the crackle. The blow dryer worked like magic! Everywhere the blow dryer passed, it crackled immediately. Very neat and kinda spooky (and perfect for rainy days).

We used a roller this time and it looks a lot better. Note to self: brushes are not your friend when weathered crackling.

Here is how the green ones turned out (click on the pictures to see them in a larger image).


It doesn't look like much now, but stay tuned to see how it all comes together!

I think I have a problem

Hi, my name is Mariana and I am a Facebook addict. It has been eighteen hours since my last post.

First, why did I even join it?

A marketing consultant said it would be good for business and I started with links and comments on health and fitness, but then someone would post something funny and I would have a slight panic attack, thinking, OMG, OMG, OMG, I have to comment and re-share!!!!

Slowly my main picture changed from a fitness related one, to a photoshoped version of myself (because that's what you are supposed to do with your main picture - you pick one of your prettiest and thinnest self and pretend you look like that all the time).

Then I started posting about the random things I thought and saw throughout the day because I had this delusion (which is one of the first signs of Facebook addiction) that anyone would give a rat's ass. The positive reinforcement came through with likes. The "like" button is an evil thing. It's an instantaneous self-esteem booster for those with lack of any life outside the internet. You may even catch yourself thinking, "I can't believe so-and-so didn't like my post!"

I hit my lowest point when I realized the cars behind me were honking because I had been checking Facebook while in a red light (that turned green). Facebook apps for phones are a product of the devil.

Why did I stay?

1) Because of Facebook I don't have to force myself to be social and write or call every single person that would like to know updates on my life and that live far away (which is pretty much everyone). I can just post one single thing, such as, "I threw up all morning and all night, oh, and all afternoon too," and everyone would be like, "Oh, wow, pregnancy sucks." End of conversation. Some may even like it (which will puzzle you into over thinking what that person meant by that).

2) Some friendships got a restart when they wouldn't otherwise. THAT is priceless.

3) Facebook news is a lot better than real news. Real news are depressing. Facebook news often lack any real life problems. Most people's lives on Facebook are peachy, happy, sunny and full of amazing vacations. Everyone seems tan and glamorous and everyone gets along with their in-laws and stepchildren. Life on Facebook is like a beer commercial.

How do you know if someone is going through something shitty? Usually they will disappear from Facebook for a while or maybe, like me, they are genuinely battling the addiction.

Why am I trying to quit?

Once I got pregnant I decided that half of my so-called friends had no business knowing about my pregnancy and my day-to-day life. Suddenly this was not about me anymore, but about this little person I am growing. I deleted about two hundred or so "friends."

By the way, statistically, no one has that many friends. Most people have a handful. It's true! I read it somewhere online and it must be true.

Also, I think no one has that many acquaintances either. I think once the Facebook friend's list goes over 150 people, you are starting to add the cousin of the friend that had a dog that bit your ex-girlfriend's cat, that for some reason you won't delete because it would hurt that person's feelings (and who cares?). Maybe that person also knows another person that could talk to this other person into giving you that job.

I get it. It's networking and networking works. But not when you are about to have a baby.

Once life becomes that personal, your personal life is really no one's business, but the people who really care about you.

Plus, some friends on Facebook think my life is peachy (my fault, really; I should take more pictures crying and in ugly locations as a background). All these friends want a piece of my life, either giving unwanted opinions or wanting to "visit the baby" while saying that they "miss me" which is usually followed by the question, "How far away are you from the beach and the wineries?"

So here I am, posting on this blog to divert myself from posting on Facebook.

I think I have a problem. I may need a sponsor.

Carbohydrates (and insulin and estrogen and progesterone and cortisol and serotonin)

Conversation over the phone with nurse from my doctor's office:

NURSE: I saw in our records that you called late last night with a blood pressure of 88 systolic and 49 diastolic. Did you go to the emergency room?

ME: No. I put some salt on my tongue and the blood pressure went back to normal. I figured I was having a hypoglycemic episode because I felt dizzy a few minutes after eating a few... hum... sweets...

NURSE: It could be hypoglycemia. Your body processes sugar differently when you are pregnant, do you know?

I know. When pregnant, the excess estrogen affects how fast and efficiently insulin is released and breaks down sugar, and also the body's retention of water. Insulin is the hormone responsible for taking sugar off the blood and carrying it into the cells. When there is not enough of it or the insulin is lazy (e.g. insulin resistance), the blood gets "sugary" and sugary blood will clog everything (hence why diabetes can be fatal and can cause blindness and loss of limbs) and when there is too much of it all at once, the body runs out of cells to feed and stores the excess as fat.

This discrepancy of the insulin's job during pregnancy causes some ladies to become diabetic, others to become hypoglycemic and for most of us to just become fat.

Since we are talking hormones, I'd like to mention that progesterone during pregnancy makes women loopy (as if I needed any more "loopiness"). To counterbalance this, the body releases an insurmountable quantity of cortisol; which usually is the stress hormone, but in this case it is the "alert hormone" to keep us ladies from running into walls.

Because there is this crazy amount of cortisol, serotonin, one of the sleep and mood hormones, has very little saying on anything, and this is one of the reasons why we get blue sometimes (and a tad moody) and can't sleep.

Once the baby arrives, estrogen and progesterone leave the body like they are busted from smoking crack, leaving cortisol and insulin like a couple of belligerent drunks in a party where poor serotonin has no chance of controlling. In non-scientific terms, this is called post-partum depression.

Anyway, back to my conversation with this nurse person, I want to impress her with my nerdy knowledge of hormones, so I ask, referring to her comment on carbohydrates being processed differently while pregnant:

ME: Is this why we gain so much weight so fast while pregnant?

NURSE: Hum. I think it has more to do with the fact that you are eating a few too many...hum... sweets?

ME: :o/

I'm too sexy for this blog

First I bloated into chipmunk cheeks within weeks of conception, and that's how I knew I were pregnant. Then my hair dried and I have been having a bad hair day for almost eight months now. Then zits popped up in places one should never have zits. Then every scar (including the ones from brand new zits) got darker, making me look like I had some foreign, nasty skin disease. Then there were episodes of uncontrollable flatulence and a series of peeing on pants when sneezing.

Now apparently I also have an onset of sleep apnea that is pregnancy related. Basically I snore with my mouth open (which already contains a mouth guard in it from teeth grinding that causes me to drool) and it only stops momentarily when I snort loudly trying to catch my breath.

I know this from husband, who wakes up annoyed in the middle of the night with all the ruckus I make and watches this troll looking person laying next to him, drooling while snoring.

I am starting to think that nature's way of making a woman extra-gross when expecting guarantees that no men in their right minds ever touches her and leaves the baby alone this way.

And, by the way, the whole "pregnancy glow" line is just a bunch of bs. That's what people come up with when there is nothing nice left to say about a pregnant woman's appearance.

For instance, when someone says, "You look great!"what they really mean is, "You are a tad less repulsive than other knocked up girls I have encountered."

Lost in translation

My mother thinks she speaks English and my husband thinks he speaks Portuguese, which makes communication in this here house very interesting. While one asks if the sky is blue, the other answers that the socks are in fact very yellow.

Also, neither one of them is aware that the other is speaking with me, so they are constantly talking on top of each other about topics that have no relation to one another.

I am sitting here on the couch between them. My mom is crocheting. My husband is watching football while studying something about war or killing people or something.

Me? I am trying to have a straight thought process while attempting to chat with other pregnant ladies online.

I can't, though, because this is what is going on every three seconds around me (switching back from Portuguese to English, sometimes overlapping one another),

"Tom Brady is awesome," "I want to go to Home Goods tomorrow," "That referee got punched on the face!," "You need new pajamas," "I hate studying this shit. This is so dry," "I'm hungry," "I'm hungry."

Hum. I guess I am hungry too. In both languages.

My scale can suck it

I have been so proud of myself for being one of those girls that don't gain much weight while pregnant and thought I had any control over it.

Apparently my doctor was right: weight gain during pregnancy has more to do with genetics (most women in my family didn't gain much weight while pregnant, but while going through everything else), and the weight gain can come out of nowhere.

I just put on an atrocious amount of pounds in a few days.

It doesn't show on my ass too much, so I guess that's a good thing.

Before getting pregnant I used to call these rapid weight gain episodes "the ghost baby," but now that I am knocked up, I will just blame it on the baby (not the brownie I made pretending it was a gift to husband for the Marine Corps birthday and veteran's day).

I'll just say it's all baby and my scale can suck it.

The mothership has landed

In the movies, the mothership usually lands when all hell has broken lose, or is about to. The mothership comes to solve all problems (rescuing E.T., save the world, etc) or to start them (eg.
"Independence Day").

Either way, when the mothership lands, everyone, everywhere, stops wherever they are and whatever they are doing, get out of their cars, hold on to their dogs, with their hairs flowing with the wind caused by mothership's arrival, afraid and astonished by its size and omnipotence.

The mothership has the power of making everyone feel so small, no matter how tall you have grown.

Where is the mothership now, with all her mighty force and influence?

She is cleaning my oven.

Let me tell you first why that is.

When I was twenty years old and landed myself in United States, I decided to drive from Miami to Maine, as a vacation escape to find out where in the world I wanted to end up (I still haven't completely figured that out).

I called my mother somewhere in Florida to let her know I was staying and that, no, I was not quitting school. I was just taking a break, a six-month break.

My mother, not so calmly said, "I will bring you back by the ear!" and I believed her. Every time solicitors rang my bell, somewhere in Virginia, I was sure it was my mom, and that she would grab my ear, throw me in a cab and put me back in a plane to Brazil.

She would yell on the phone that I could barely take a bus on my own. I would try and explain to her that this is why I needed to be gone. She would have none of it. Co-dependence, anyone?

When I told my parents, during dinner time, six months later, that I was accepted in an American college and was offered a scholarship, my dad was proud, my brother was quiet, and my mother cried.

Mothership is now asking if she can clean one of my windows because it has fingerprints on it.

Before my mother arrived I had cleaned the house spotless and cooked her favorite lasagna. I wanted to impress her, make her believe I have grown a little.

The mothership always knows better, though, and in her mind I am stuck at fifteen years old, when I didn't want to clean my room. For some reason she believes I am still that girl, seventeen-odd years later.

She also wants to go shopping for Brazilian food ingredients and thinks I don't eat well enough.

Mothership just passed by with a bunch of trash that she brought from upstairs. I have no idea where she got them.

In my early twenties, this used to drive me up the wall. I would get offended. I would battle my mother trying to prove to her my adulthood.

Mothership is now asking where my gardening tools are. She wants to tie the tomato plants properly to a stick and, by the way, she already made tomato sauce with the thirty or so tomatoes she collected this dawn.

Anyway, as I was saying, her behavior, always trying to teach me something, pretending I have not grown, taking over the house duties, used to hit a nerve.

I have accepted that this is my mother and for mothers, their children are always too young.

So when her plane landed I took a deep breath and told myself: she will clean your house, she will tell you the best way to do things, she will tell you that all the books about babies that you are reading are moot points, she will talk nonstop, she will take over and do things that needed to have been done a month ago, she will tell you you are cranky and messy, but she will also shower you with love and will do anything in her almighty power to see you happy.

Breath deeply, and let her clean, take her advice, nod when she tells you something she already told you for the millionth time, don't be a smart ass, let her cook rice and beans for twenty days in a row, even if you all end up farting up the beans for the same length of time.

Mothership just opened the oven and said to it, "You are so clean, oven!" and is now hunting for a broom to sweep the fall leaves on the sides of the house. I tell her not to fly away with it, with her witch powers. She says it is cheaper than American Airlines, and disappears in the garage.

After we spent the whole day buying an ungodly amount of baby clothes and baby things I never even heard of, my mother went on to tell me about how when she breastfed me, I would hold her breast with both little hands, and she showed me in the air how big the little hands were. I got teary-eyed, but looked away, because she is not supposed to know that.

My friend Jayme (hi, Jayme!) says you start to look at your mother in a whole different light when you are pregnant. You understand suddenly everything she went through for you and everything she still does, no matter how old you are.

My mother just said hello to a bird chirping outside my window, while passing by with a large broom in hand.

With that in mind, let me go grab another broom. I heard it's cheaper than American Airlines.

That slut

I have mentioned before (on the post "The Monster Upstairs") that being a stepmom is tough. Unless you have been in a stepparent's shoes, you have no business judging one. I have embraced that title, however, and have learned that it can mean many things, from ogre to saint.

I have realized today that I will also belong to another long line of negative archetypes at some point in my life: the mother-in-law.

Mother-in-laws are usually intrusive, feel entitled to give their opinion when not asked and seem to all have different ways to raise children and organize a house other than that of their daughter-in-laws.

As if a law of nature, mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws are supposed to march to a different drum.

In listening to numerous horror stories from some many different pregnant ladies, I tell my buttons I will never be that woman.

I will be a cool mother-in-law, or so I think.

My husband and some friends have recently asked me a series of questions and these are the cool and collected answers I came up for them, which should tell what kind of mother-in-law I will be.

My husband asks, "what if he picks some weird religion to follow?"
- As long as he has strong morals and values that are somewhat similar to the ten commandments I am OK with it.

My husband also asks, "what if he decides to join the military and is sent to war?"
- I have learned from watching my mom that the more she tries to stop or pushes my brother and I to or from doing something, the more inclined we are to do the opposite.

A strongly republican friend asked, "what if he turns out to be a democrat?"
- Read previous answer.

Other people ask, "what if he turns out gay?"
- Haven't you seen Modern Family? Nowadays any family dynamic goes; as long as he is happy (and uses a freakin' condom).

Finally, my husband asked, "what if he gets in a serious relationship with some girl when he is fifteen years old and wants you to meet her?"

Without missing a beat, I raise my voice, before thinking, "He is not bringing that slut over to my house!"