Dear Whole Foods,

Don't get me wrong. In theory, I applaud your decision to eliminate plastic shopping bags in all your stores. I'm something of an eco-freak myself, and I think we can all agree that plastic bags are evil and polluting and make us slaves to the oil companies and kill animals etc. I like bringing my own shopping bag and I do appreciate the $0.15 discount you give me when I use it.

But. Your plastic bags were the best. I loved them, I really did. They were roomy and hefty (I almost said "big and thick," but this is not that kind of blog, you perverts. Okay, I guess it kind of is) and didn't need to be doubled up. They made the best garbage can and diaper pail liners--they never tore, never leaked, kept in the poop smells better than any other bag. Now we have to use those cheap flimsy bags from the grocery store down the street.

And what am I supposed to do with all of these paper bags? Because sometimes, I just don't have my own shopping bag with me, and I have to use your paper bags (doubled up, annoyingly). And my kid is only 14.5 months old, so she doesn't have any textbooks to cover, and the cat only needs one bag to play with, and there are only so many presents you can wrap in brown paper bags before you become that girl, and you don't want me to be that girl, do you, Whole Foods?

And here's the big thing: I live in the big city. I don't own a car. I walk and take the subway everywhere. I walk from my office to your store, and then from your store to the subway, and then a five-minute walk from the subway to my apartment. And you know, a lot of times it's raining, or snowing, when I'm walking home. And I am just waiting for the terrible day when one of your stupid brown paper bags gets soaking wet and falls apart and spills my groceries all over the sidewalk while I'm walking home in the rain. Uphill. With wet shoes. And my canvas shopping bag is soaked through and my box of stupid yuppie organic "O" cereal gets all wet. And it will be all your fault, Whole Foods.

I will probably continue to spend my entire paycheck at your store, because I'm a lame eco-yuppie like that. But I will hold this plastic bag thing against you. I just thought you should know.

Love,
electriclady

What was that about the terrible twos coming early?

A phone conversation, today, approx. 4 p.m.:

Husband: Yeah, she just dumped everything out of your T-shirt drawer.

Me: Well, make her put it all back.

Husband: Hey [Bat Girl], put the shirts back in the drawer.

Bat Girl (in the background): No!

*****

Kitchen chez electricfamily, approx. 6:30 p.m.:

Me (to BG, fussing in her high chair): Hang on a sec, I'm just making you a little guacamole.

Bat Girl: [ultrasonic, ear-piercing shriek]

Me: I think my eardrum just ruptured.

Blah blah blah

Last year, when Bat Girl was still in the "aa...goo?" phase of verbalization, a friend with older kids told me that watching your child learn to talk is one of the coolest experiences there is. And she's right.

I'm fascinated by how Bat Girl picks up words. Sometimes she just starts saying words out of the blue--if you hear "No" often enough, I suppose it's not hard to just bust it out one day, as she did Easter weekend. (Except she pronounces it "noo," which is hilarious.) Other times you can watch her working on it. A few days ago, she pointed to the flowers on the lampshade in her room, and I IDed them as "flower" to her. Every night since, she points at the flowers and says, "Fow!" I say "Right, flower!" and she repeats back carefully, "Fo-wa!"

Most of her vocabulary is unintelligible to anyone but us ("chuc!"=truck; "tsai!"=outside="Hold me up to the window so I can look at the chucs, lady!"). Because of the random nature of our reading material and toys and our city life, she has what is probably a somewhat unusual vocabulary for a toddler. She says "shark" and "penguin" but not "cow" or "pig," "truck" and "BIG car!" but not "apple" or, frankly, "Mama." (She says mamamama but doesn't consistently say "Mama" the way she she says "Da-ee!", dammit.)

She listens carefully, so I've had to cut down on my swearing--a month or two ago I dropped something and said "Shit!" and she promptly parroted back, "Shit!" Or I'll say something like, "Are you going to sleep better tonight?" and she'll say back, "Niiight?" in the exact singsong ickle-bickle tone I used.

The other fun thing is, of course, teaching her stupid baby tricks. Like how, if you sing the Blue's Clues mail song to her, she'll chime in at the end, "Maaiiiii!" complete with jazz hands. My husband especially enjoys teaching her things in secret and then busting them out to surprise me. A week ago we were all hanging out in bed and he said, "Hey [Bat Girl,] KARATE!" and she immediately responded, "CHOP!" complete with chopping hand motion. I nearly peed my pants laughing.

The downside is that despite her extensive vocabulary, she is still 14 months old, and still has trouble communicating the most basic of things. Or rather, I understand perfectly that when she reaches up for my glasses, sitting on the bathroom counter, and lets out a wordless whine, she would like to grab and mangle them. But no dice, kid. And I understand that when she stands outside the gate shutting her out of the kitchen and lets out a series of high-pitched, supersonic shrieks, she means something along the lines of, "Stop messing around with breakfast and come pay attention to ME! And/or let me in there so I can snack on cat food!" And I foresee many more toddler meltdowns along the lines of what we've been experiencing lately, where she'll demand her "CUP!" and then when you give her said cup, she screams and turns her head as if offered a poisoned chalice. And then plunges into despair when you take the cup away, sobbing "cuuuup...." Yeah, I'm guessing we'll hit the terrible twos early, here.

*****

I keep meaning to post a monthly update on Bat Girl but I can't seem to get it together--I still have thirteen and fourteen months sitting in my draft box--so this will have to do for now...

Why am I awake right now?

I have a job interview tomorrow. I don't particularly want this job. I like my current job. But despite our fat tax refund, we could really use some more money. So I'm going into this job interview, and if they ask for my salary requirements, I'm going to ask for nearly 40% more than what I'm making now. Because really, why the hell not?

The problem is that about a year and a half ago, our computer died and I lost the only digital version of my resume, and I never got around to making a new one. I still have hard copies of the old one, so it wasn't too hard recreating it, but I had never updated it to include my current job. So I'm sitting here at 10:30 pm trying to remember what the eff it is I do all day long.

Woohoo!

Just got a call from our accountant--we are getting a HUGE refund this year. As in, approaching five figures huge. Whee!

Unfortunately, we can't run out and blow it all on DVF dresses (me) and vintage Transformers (husband) and foie gras (oohhhh), as over the past year, between the hospital bills and the organic formula and the partially unpaid maternity leave and the going from two incomes to one and the price of EVERYTHING going up and the total lack of budgeting skillz up in our house--and, clearly, the massively excessive tax withholding from my paycheck--we have been running a major budget deficit each month. So most of that fat gubmint check will go to replenishing our savings, and then maybe we will buy a sexy new vacuum cleaner. And pay the accountant.

But it's nice to know that having a kid does have SOME financial perks. Now excuse me, I have to go change my withholding.

(God, being a grownup makes you so fucking boring. Accountants! Withholding! This is what passes for fun around here!)

Blogger makes me tired

But despite my total lack of html skillz I managed to update my sidebar, cleaning up my links and figuring out how to get my bloglines feeds listed. Check it out! Who else should I be reading to help me waste time at work? I had trouble sorting some blogs into infertile vs. non-infertile but really it was too much of an existential quandary on 5 hours sleep and fuck it, it's not like anyone's going to go looking and then complaining about it, right? (although, if you feel your blog has been mischaracterized, let me know!)

Also, I have been planning to go through and label all my posts and then do a sort-by-label thingy on the sidebar, but there doesn't seem to be any quick way to do that--I either have to manually code each label's link or I have to switch to Blogger's paint-by-numbers "Layout" mode, which I think will break all the html fussing I've already done. Bleah. Any ideas? (Besides "Shell out for Typepad, you cheap Luddite.")

Housekeeping posts are so riveting!