New Year New Me: Pony Progress

Today I thought I’d mix up my morning “internesting” ritual (coffee and computer time, usually comfortably nested on the couch); I brought my laptop and my coffee into the horse pen. It's one of my New Year's Resolutions: spending more time hanging out with the horsies to work on gentling them. 

Progress up to this point, I'm sorry to say, is minimal. Our winter thus far has been virtually nonexistent, but their pen has lots of shade and what little snow we've gotten takes a long time to leave, resulting in a muddy, icy, frozen poo wonderland. This environment is, shockingly, not that enticing to spend time in. 


Currently it's about 35 degrees out, and cloudy, but my travel mug “bubba”--that’s the brand name, not a weird nickname for a cup--is excellent at keeping my coffee hot. My fingers, however, are chilly as I type, and my computer won’t connect the the wifi from the house. Dangit. I need some kind of slender-fingered gloves that would still allow typing, however, a) the house is far, and b) I don’t think I have any.

The horses are staring me down so hard. I put grain buckets at my feet so they HAVE to be my friends. (LOVE ME!) Petunia promptly cleaned out the one farther away from me, but both she and Lady Mike refuse to eat from the closer one. Maybe the computer is scary. Or the typing. God, horses are jumpy. The other day I brought out my actual clicky-shutter camera out to take photos of them and it was ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

Of course these ladies are particularly sensitive as they are Actual. Wild. Mustangs. that I got way ahead of myself in taking on, having no experience horse training and all, and now I’m super impatient and why won’t they let me pet them for the love of God let me pet you I promise you’ll like it! I tell them all the time how much they’ll like it. Why don’t they believe me?

[Aside: we aren’t completely stupid and/or inept, F.Y.I. While we (*I*) were very impulsive in rescuing the ladies, Dooley does have a horsey background—rodeo, riding, starting colts, etc.—and I am learning all I can about natural horsemanship from other mustang trainers. Don’t fret. Also, I've been told it can take over a year to get "untouched" mustangs touchable. 😒 We're around 5 months.]

Bruce the dog is eating horse poop again. Dogs are so gross. Whenever I’m scooping manure, I sing songs to the horses about capturing rogue poop nuggets and such; one day I had a song about Bruce the shit-eating mutt. I think it was to the tune of a Christmas song, but I can’t quite remember. It was so catchy. 

Speaking of shit-eating...thank you, faketrumptweet.com

[Unrelated: the other day I realized Trumpspeak is eerily similar to a Dr. Suess book, but much less clever. If only this speech generator could rhyme.]

https://trump-speech-generator.herokuapp.com/

My computer finally found the internet! And ponies be creepin’. Lady Mike is 100% Professor Petunia’s shadow—always by her side, always behind her. She will be bummed out when we put up panels to split the pen. SUCH GOOD, BRAVE GIRLS are now eating the near grain. But I stupidly itched my nose and Lady Mike spooked. So Fat Petunia got most of it.

I don’t think Fat Petunia is pregnant after all. She’s just a Lil’ Roundy (her rapper name). Or was wormy when she got here and just looked pregnant. While I am disappointed, it’s probably for the best since we still can’t handle her. SO instead of a baby horse, I’m pulling for a miniature mule, courtesy of my sister-in-law in Georgia. They just have to plop her in the back of their Cadillac SUV and drive her to Colorado. (After I get my husband to consent. But he vetoed getting another cat so…mini mule it is!) Maybe “Dandelion”, aka “Dandy”, will help convince the mustangs to love us.

~

I am inside now. My fingers are still a little numb but now I’m using a ceramic mug and a coffee warmer and it’s the best thing in the world to hold a hot mug in your cold hands. I want to become one with this warm mug.

So. My resolution to spend more time working with the ladies is part of a bigger resolution to better manage my time. Since I quit working, my days get away from me and I am sucked into a vortex of lack: lack of motivation, lack of productivity, and lack of energy. So I've resolved to spend a certain amount of time every day on the following (in no particular order): 1. Horses, 2. Fitness, 3. Art, 4. House. Since my NYNM didn't really start until the kids finally went back to school this week, I'm still slacking in the art and fitness categories. In my defense on the latter, I am still recovering from a killer workout class my friend dragged me to on Friday.  

When I was a hardcore badass with diet and exercise three years ago (how has it been that long?!), I lost all the weight I’d gained with the surrogacy and then some, but once we moved from the prairie to the city and I started slacking it all came back…and then some. I have 30 pounds to lose and am dreading getting back to the diet and exercise routine, but NEW YEAR NEW ME, right? At least scooping manure and hiking to and from the bus stop is a bit of exercise; now if only I could quit the beer and cookies. 

I got a knockoff Fitbit for Christmas, which is fun. I got over 11k steps yesterday, mostly doing chores and wrestling the Christmas tree into submission. When I hit 10k steps my little fitness watch started buzzing up a frenzy and flashing a little trophy. WINNER! (That’s the spike on Tuesday on the far right.) Today I went on a short walk after taking the kids to the bus stop and then cleaned the horse pen and already have 4,605 at 10am. WUTTUP.

My favorite part is the line graph on the days after Christmas, although it was by far my least favorite in real life. So Christmas was Monday, hence the no steps. The day after it, the looming cold finally hit me, and I sat around most of the day blowing my relentlessly productive nose (3,206 steps—surprisingly more than I’d expect for such a lazy sick day). That night, howeverrrrr, I got hit with the *stomach flu*, and spent the ENTIRE next day in bed. Literally. The 831 steps are apparently what it takes to get up and go to the bathroom and get water a few times.

Anyway, it’s kind of neat to track. Looking forward to wearing it on some hikes. 

It also has a *sedentary alert*, which, coincidentally, is going off right now, reminding me that I've been sitting too long and need to get my too-big-for-my-old-pants butt up and moving. 

Until next time (when I hope to have actual pony--and self--progress to report). 

F is for Fitness: My 5-Year-Old Trainer

I’m struggling along with a workout video when my nearly 5-year-old boy enters the room. He stands there and watches me quietly for a few seconds before offering an oh-so-helpful observation:

“She’s in better shape than you.” 

“Thanks.” I say flatly. No freaking DUH, I think to myself. Thanks a lot.

“But if you keep working out, you’ll be better than her.” He smiles brightly. I feel like I’ve received a politely patronizing pat on the head.

Such a sweet and innocent remark. So naïvely optimistic…and so spot-on. Well, I’ll never be as fit as the gurus on the DVD with their steely abs and buns, but I was impressed by his grasp of persistence and hard work.

If only I felt so confident and positive. Hard work and persistence in exercise SUCKS. Hard work and persistence in dieting sucks even more. But it’s been two months since my surrogate pregnancy was over, and I have some serious body baggage to lose. I still can’t fit in my pants. Or any of my clothes for that matter. (Except yoga pants. Love them. Can I just live in them? I don’t think I’d pass for a fitness freak if I wore them in public though—all stretched out from sleeping in them and covered in dog hair.) I thought the weight would fall off after having the baby like it did with my other two pregnancies, but that was dumb. 

Those pregnancies didn’t involve two rounds of fat-inducing hormones. Those pregnancies were each followed by six months of nursing, which, incidentally can burn like 500 calories a day. I was working full-time through my pregnancies too, which kept me more active. Sooooo…this time I started at a much higher weight, and somehow felt more deserving of relaxation and indulgence, so I stuffed my face with all the things. All the carb-erific, sugary, fat things. 

I pumped breast milk for a few weeks after delivery but then I got mastitis and had to take antibiotics, which totally depleted my supply and took me promptly out of the dairy business. And let me tell you, mastitis is a bitch. Ow ow ow. I guess those dehumanizing machines aren’t quite as effective as babies when it comes to *product extraction* without getting clogged ducts. While I had planned on doing it longer, I am overall relieved to be done because it’s really time-consuming to go bovine every three hours, night and day. Disappointed about the deflation though…sure was nice to be more buxom than normal to balance out my more-generous-than-usual behind. (It’s nice to have big boobs when you’ve also developed a fat ass--for proportion’s sake. It's just wrong being flat-chested and overweight.)

So I need to shrink the rest of me back down too. I got a set of workout DVDs on Groupon that’s just 20 minutes a day, three times a week, and promises results in thirty days (The Firm Express: Thin in Thirty). Sounds easy peasy (never mind too good to be true), but when you’ve done zero actual exercise in a year and your muscles have atrophied and you just had baby #3 and your whole body is fluffy sludge it’s really f-ing hard. Couple that with being the most uncoordinated human alive and fun times will be had by all. 

Not to mention the hard lesson I’ve learned in calories. I had no idea how many calories were in things!!! Things that I thought were healthy, even. I obsessively entered everything I ate in the myfitnesspal app on my phone and it was horrifying. Especially if I tried to stay within the caloric limit suggested by the app. Counting calories, much like mastitis, is a bitch. I’m not a fan. Although I will say the app is pretty cool, with its nutrition totals and bar code scanning feature and all. 

Even my darling husband was using the app on his phone, having conveniently gone on a health kick of his own due to a slightly high blood pressure reading. He’s really been the driving force behind my healthy eating; watching him cram his lunchbox/cooler full of salad and fruit makes me reconsider that cookie binge. Then he randomly goes jogging and wants to join the gym and I’m like, who are you? And of-freaking-course he drops ten pounds the first week. While I'm super proud of his drive and progress, I'm also a tad resentful cuz...NO FAIR. In any case, it's nice to have someone to help keep me motivated. To his credit it’s just through his actions, not his words. (That's eggshell business there—husbands telling their wives to diet and exercise. Tread lightly. Or not at all.)

Meanwhile I’m flailing along with my exercise movies as my helpful little boy sympathetically asks if they're going too fast for me. Is it that obvious? The cost of having a shorter workout, in these videos anyway, is that she doesn’t explain any of the moves before she does them. It’s like a mean joke when she says “now that you have that”, and then keeps elaborating on the moves and making them faster, and I’m still falling over trying to figure out the first part. Is it possible that my swearing under my breath at the workout chick isn’t as under-my-breath as I think? I develop a personal loathing of these ladies—not just because of their trim bodies and their nice muscles, but because of their smug encouraging words which are clearly meant to taunt and belittle the fatties laboring after them, gasping for air and dripping sweat off their flushed red faces with ungainly stumbling hops as their judgmental children look on. Or is that just me? 

Even the dog seems to raise a critical eyebrow my way. Or maybe it’s just concerned sympathy. But the cat…well we all know that cats are jerks, blinking slowly and turning away in disgust. My husband is explicitly forbidden to watch. And then there’s my sweet kids and their blunt honesty. When I finally make it through the longest twenty minutes of my life, my little guy is there with an enthusiastic “Good job Mama!” Best personal trainer ever.

I’ll keep you updated on any results I see this month. I’ll just be thrilled to be able to wear my clothes again. It might also be nice not to be excruciatingly sore and weak after a bitty twenty minute workout.

How Does the Baby Get Out?

I’m into the final weeks of my surrogate pregnancy. Like I can actually count the days down to the induction. The magic number is seventeen. 17 days! Sometimes I think it will happen sooner anyway, since both my kids were at least a week early, but as long as this baby waits at least 9 more days until her mom is in the same state as we are, I’m good to go. We’ve scheduled an induction not just for planning purposes, but for the IP’s peace of mind (they’ve had late term problems with previous pregnancies). 

So I am getting really excited. I obviously can’t claim the standard reason for being excited at the end of a pregnancy (the baby herself), but I have several other reasons:

1.      I want to not be huge so I can fit in my clothes again. I only have one pair of pants that fit comfortably. They are soft stretchy maternity jeans, which is all great, but they’re also skinny jeans, which is not so great when you are short-legged and top heavy. If my legs were slightly longer and/or more slender I might say I resemble some sort of adorable lollypop, but since they’re nice and stocky I might say I just look like...a dumbass. My darling husband might whole-heartedly agree. I imagine wide-eyed vigorous nodding. He hates those pants. With fire. 

2.      I want to not weigh 1,956 pounds so my feet quit hurting when I stand up for more than 0.78 seconds. I also would hope that they return to their normal size (still excessively wide but perhaps not so swollen). 

3.      I want to get into a hardcore diet and exercise routine and get back to my pre-pre-pregnancy weight. SIKE. (Or is it PSYCHE?) Well, yeah, I DO want to get back to my pre-pre-pregnancy weight, but I totally do NOT want to do the hardcore diet and exercise routine. UUUUGGGGHHH. I’m actually really dreading it, but it needs to happen. I’ve gained way more weight with this pregnancy than I did with my two, plus I started at a much higher weight than the other times. I’d like to blame the two cycles of IVF meds (which DO cause weight gain), but the inactivity of my first year staying home full-time is also to blame. Waitressing and childcare kept me moving more than I realized. HowEVER, I must admit, my extreme laziness and gluttony are the real culprit(s). I have milked the pregnancy excuse to the max. Oh, the baby wants another piece of pie. Oh, I’m supposed to take it easy. Heh. Whatever, Fatty. So I have a few weeks left to eat AALLLLLL the fudge, cinnamon rolls, ice cream, chocolate, cookies, cupcakes, etc., etc. currently in my house and then people had better quit giving it to me. (I suppose I’ll have to refrain from buying and baking stuff too.) 

4.      I want to drink beer. Prost Dunkelweizen, to be specific. And ginger beer. And strong coffee. Plus marijuana will be legal in Colorado tomorrow, so there’s that. Kidding not kidding. 

5.      I want to not be so lethargic and irritable. No doubt my sweet kiddos and hub are even more excited for that. I feel like I’m always so tired and cranky that I’m no fun to be around for anyone, and I’m such a massive lump that it’s hard to get up and play with the chilluns. There are other relationship areas affected by the physical and emotional aspects of pregnancy that I am eager to work on too.

6.      I want to pee less often. 

7.      I want to eat sushi and deli meat and all the other no-nos. 

8.   I want to be rid of excess indigestion and gas and that weird pressure that rises up at the base of your throat like you need to throw up or burp but you can’t. What is that? Heartburn?

9.   I want to laser the hell out of these heinous purple veins on my right leg. Yeah insurance covers that! Woot woot!

10.  I want to get a tattoo. I'm not sure what but I want one.

11.  I want to sleep on my stomach. Even if it's bad for my neck to twist around like that.

12.  Finally, and most importantly, I want to see the parents with their new baby. I don’t know just what this experience will look like, but I’m excited about it. Truly.

One common question people ask—after the standard “how are you feeling” physically—is the “how are you feeling” emotionally. I don’t have a very good answer though. Honestly there’s not an extreme depth of emotion at this point. It’s been a very long process (I started looking into it when my daughter was just a few months old, and she’s three now), so I’ve had plenty of time to get used to the whole thing, plenty of time to research and read other peoples’ stories. It all just seems very…normal, for lack of a better word. While I do recognize that there is something profound about carrying someone else’s baby for them, it generally feels no more profound than babysitting. Surely when it all goes down in the hospital I’ll have more to say on the matter, but it really is pretty simple to me. No complex tangle of emotion, even with the idea of actually giving the baby to them. It’s theirs anyway. It always has been theirs. 

I won’t deny the possibility that I might get a little case of baby fever, and there will be no stopping the wave of hormones that will inevitably wash over me, but all I need to do is read the list above to remind myself what’s so nice about not being pregnant (even though I have easy peasy pregnancies). I could also recall any number of super stressful days at home with my two wonderful monsters and imagine how it would be even more stressful with the addition of a third, OR contemplate the fact that in two short years they’ll both be in school full-time (*gasp*bite knuckles*SOB*) so I might be able to have a life again and WHY would I start over with another one?

So in the meantime I’m enjoying the alien antics of this baby girl rolling and kicking my belly in the freakiest of ways, waddling to the bathroom every ten minutes, and kegel-ing nervously when she pushes down in such a way that I think she’s trying to escape. Not yet, you. 

Dirt and Tuesday are only mildly amused by the strange pulsation in my gut, and seem completely at ease with the idea that this baby is not ours. They know her name and her parents’ names, and ask why the baby kicks them when they squish her, but are uninterested otherwise. I just reeeeaaalllly want to avoid giving them an in-depth answer about how the baby gets out. “The doctor gets her out” is the accepted response at present, but I fear that my little incessant questioners will soon interrogate further. While I’m all for discussing natural things in an up front and honest manner, that is one thing I don’t want to burden their curious brains with right now. 

Although sometimes (rarely, but occasionally) they readily accept the most basic answers without any additional questions, like the time Tuesday asked why grownup ladies have hair on their hoohoos. All I said was that she’d have it too someday, and she happily dropped the subject and left. The idea of a thong seemed much more disconcerting to her though: 

“Why are you not wearing undies?”

Me, flashing front hip area: “I am wearing undies. See?” 

Tuesday, looking worried: “Why are you not wearing undies…in the back?”

If pantylines and wedgies are such troubling issues to discuss with a three-year-old, I am quite skeerd to describe the logistics of childbirth.