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Monday, September 22, 2003: Rainy Monday Afternoon
It's about 3:00 on a rainy Monday afternoon. Delphine is asleep in the big bed (there still is no little bed) and has been for ages, more than an hour. She didn't have a nap this morning, so she's making up for it now. I need to vacuum and practice, but both of those are noisy and I don't want to wake her up. I'm practicing for an "audition" for the choirmaster tonight. He wants to hear everyone individually so he can... I don't know, do his choirmaster thing. I'm going to do a movement from Hodie, and I want to go over it a few times before the audition. I don't think it will be as good as it could be -- I haven't prepared it as well as I prepared the pieces for the exam last January -- but it should be okay, as long as I warm up well. That's about all the excitement for today. I already walked up to Indigo and bought a daytimer, a one-week-per-page one. I've stopped using my pilot for a calendar because, well, the printer broke so I can't print out the calendar for the month, and because I'm not at a computer all the time, and it just doesn't seem to work as well as it used to. I'm back to old school paper. I'm still using the pilot for things like birthdays, and as an address book, and if we ever get a good setup with a PC and pilot cradle and the printer, I expect I'll go back to using it. For now I'm enjoying all the things I missed about paper, the feel of it, the different coloured inks, the freedom to scratch things off and write big or small, tiny or messy, not always in anaemic Graffiti.
In two weeks we're going to be in Saskatchewan. We're visiting my parents for a week, Blake and Delphine and I. It will be the first time they've seen Delphine, and I'm not sure what it will be like. I'm the last baby they've hung out with, so I've no idea what they're like with babies. I'm sure my Mum will be good with Delphine, she's good with children in general. And I expect my Dad will be appreciative but distant; he's not the dandling sort. I don't know how worried I should be about my mother being a busybody. On the phone she's pretty assertive about what she thinks I should be doing. She thinks I should have started Delphine on solids already, she thinks I should wean by six months, she thinks I should be using disposable diapers instead of cloth. If there are any clashes I think they'll be about feeding. But I hope she just keeps her advice to herself. She might do, anyway; sometimes she surprises me, especially when I'm expecting the worst. I am excited to see her now that she's recovered from both hip replacements. The last time I was home she had just had the first hip replaced, and she was still mostly bed-ridden. It sounds like she has much less pain now, and some more mobility. I will be like getting my old Mum back! I remember after she was diagnosed with diabetes and treated, that was like getting my old Mum back too, because she had been so unhappy and grumpy when it was undiagnosed. So we're renting a car (with a car seat) and driving to my parents' place from Saskatoon. I'm kind of looking forward to that; I don't like to drive in the city, but highway driving is fun, and it's nice to spend the time with Blake. I don't know how Delphine will be; hopefully she'll sleep. I'm nervous about travelling with Delphine in general; about lugging her through the airport (I think we'll take the BabyTrekker), about the plane ride, about driving long distances. I'm worried about where she'll sleep at my parents' place; the bed there is too soft for her to sleep with us safely. A friend of my mother's said she might be able to get a playpen; that would be good, if it's clean and in good condition. If. I read somewhere that babies are more likely to die of SIDS when travelling because people kludge together inappropriate sleeping arrangements for them. I'm terrified of SIDS. I should write about that in the baby journal. After we've successfully conquered travelling to Saskatchewan, in November we are going to New York for a week. The occasion is Sascha and Leontine's wedding; thank god for weddings or we'd never go anywhere. Anyone want to get married in Tuscany next year? We're staying in a hotel, so I'm less worried about sleep; either the bed will be firm enough for Delphine to share with us, or we'll be able to get a crib. I think the whole trip is going to be a blast. We have hardly anything planned, just the wedding and a dinner with a friend of Dorothy (no, really). We'll also see some Suspects, I hope, and spend some time with Jason and Lindsay. That's, like four things, isn't it? Well, we're there for seven nights, so that still counts as hardly anything. So we'll be free to just wander, and go to museums, and wander. Heavy on the wandering. Wandering is both frugal and healthy, both of which will be called for, between the hotel and the tasty wedding food.
I'm officially counting calories. I'm not on a diet, because I'm not aiming to lose a particular amount of weight, or even any weight at all (although I expect I will, and truly will be a little disappointed if I don't), and because I don't intend to ever stop counting calories, one way or another. I used FitDay to track my eating and found I was getting about 2700 calories a day on average. I then found out that the USDA says women my age should be getting 2000 calories a day. (I don't believe the Canadian government has commented on this.) Even allowing for 500 calories to be burned up by breastfeeding, I'm still 200 calories a day over. My metabolism is stable enough that that hasn't caused perceptible weight gain, but it seems like a bad habit. So my goal is to eat no more than 2400 calories a day, on average. As Delphine weans I'll cut that down until I'm eating 2000 a day. It's going to be hard. I'm doing pretty well with the 2400 calorie limit; that allows for normal food plus some kind of treat, be it a cookie or a little dessert or something. I can do it without too much difficulty, and usually have enough calories leftover for a chocolate milk before bed. It's going to be harder to do 2000 calories a day, but I hope I'll be able to adjust gradually. Yesterday I went to Starbucks and I was trying to decide whether I should have a vanilla Americano and a pumpkin scone, or a mocha Frappuccino. I decided on the Americano (pleasantly low-calorie, and yet still providing all the joy of ordering an unnecessarily complicated espresso-based beverage) and scone (seems like real food) rather than the Frappuccino (clearly a gratuitous treat). BWAAAAH! Wrong answer. After we had finished our drinks and were leaving the store, I asked one of the Starbucks folk for nutritional information on the scone. Five hundred calories! That's a fifth of what I get to eat all day. The Frappuccino was only 290 calories. So now I know what to choose next time. Egad.
So anyway, it's 4:00 and the baby is clearly narcoleptic. I'm going to post this now, quickly, before she wakes up. |