Most Awesomest Co-Ed Non Girly Baby Celebration EVER!

That is what Jeremy and I decided to call our “baby shower”. I am not a traditionalist. As a matter of fact, I will go left if right is what tradition is. I am always looking for new ways or different ideas to celebrate or do something out of the ordinary for something that “traditionally” is done another way.

Why would my baby shower be any different?

As I have mentioned time and time again, I am not a girly girl. I see a baby bottle filled with jelly beans or a sock filled with chocolates and I want to run the other way. It’s so cliché. Just thinking about me surrounded by women in a room discussing breast feeding or diaper disaster stories makes me cringe. Or listening to stories from the single girls about how their boyfriends don’t want to commit will probably illicit a response from me like “ Get pregnant” while I shove mac and cheese into my mouth. I just don’t do these types of things well.

To me, having a baby shower for just me is a selfish thing to do. Jeremy is one of my closest, bestest friends and to have him not included in festivities celebrating the impending birth of his daughter seems like an outlandish idea. I want him there, drinking a beer, opening presents, mingling with my family and friends (most of his are on the west coast), and have his friends on this side enjoying themselves as well. I want all my friends there, not just the girls, but all those awesome dudes I’ve spent hours partying with. I love my friends husbands and boyfriends. I want a celebration!

So I decided to enlist the help of my mom and sis (my friends are busy and I don’t want to burden them with planning my baby shower) and decided to mold the idea of this baby shower to them. At first, they were a little “huh?” when I said I didn’t want to do the wicker chair, wishing well, diaper cake, baby feet, baby girl banners, etc etc. But as I explained how I thought all those embellishments were tacky, cliché, and kinda weird for guys to be around, they started to understand.

So here are some of the decisions we have made:

Home VS Hall VS Restaurant – Unfortunately the baby is due to pop in late April so the shower has to be in March or early April. Not the most reliable weather in the world happens around then. So the option to have it at a home seemed a little unreasonable (I have a big family). Restaurant seemed like the next logical choice, but restricted us from having the kind of celebration I really wanted. The hall seemed like the better choice. So we rented a space where we can be free to be as loud as we wanted!

lunch VS dinner – I suggested finger foods (sandwiches, empanada’s, hors d’oeuvres) but my mother was a nay on that. We looked at caterers but couldn’t decide on any. My precious auntie Aya volunteered her cooking services and now what I thought would be a simple few eats has become a full menu! Rice, chicken, pernil, potato salad, etc etc. This is going to be a Puerto Rican feast! Hey, Jeremy and I are not complaining! WOO HOO!

Entertainment – my brother will be bringing his DJ equipment and we will be listening to some of our favorite tunes! I want songs 80’s, 90’s and today. 80’s for when Jeremy and I were born, 90’s because that’s when our personalities were ultimately formed, and today for when our daughter is born. Aww adorable. Plus I want to get down to some Biggie, Nas and Mary J. East Coast for life!

Games – I want active games. Not those word finding games or jelly beans in jars. Those are okay, but not really me. What I designed was a contest. 6 teams of 2 people (preferably couples) will vie for the first place prize. 2nd  and 3rd prize games available too. Games will include beer in a baby bottle chugging, timed rubber ducky bobbing, nipple toss, bottle bowling and maybe baby charades. I’m still formulated the whole thing. It’s going to be epic. We may also have a poker tournament going on for the gentleman that prefers to win a little money. That will happen based on if we have enough volunteers.

So that’s pretty much it so far. As I get the things together I will post how it is going along. April 1st is the day it all goes down. Everyone thinks its going to be when I announce the ultimate April Fools Joke: “HEY GUYS, GUESS WHAT, I’M NOT PREGNANT”

As awesome as that sounds, I assure you, I’m fully knocked up!

Self Centered

I had a dream the other night. The kind of dream where you lose yourself entirely and become completely enraptured and absorbed into the pseudo realm of your inner psychosis. In other words: I believed this shit to be real.

I went through the whole magic of labor and birth and had this beautiful baby girl. She was a cutie, with dark olive skin, green eyes and a creepy, intense stare (like her dad). The hospital said I was free to go home and I did. I was never so excited in my life. When I got home, I rushed to the mirror and looked at my body. I was a size 6 again. YES! I size down from before I had the baby. My breasts had retained their shape and I could walk around and breathe normally again, at the same time! I started to run around and I grabbed Charlie for a walk around the neighborhood, something I haven’t been able to do since before I got pregnant. He was so excited to see me like my old self again. Jeremy came home and I gave him a huge hug and told him to look at how great I looked. I was me again! No more acid reflux, cankles, swollen feet and hands, and I had energy! I felt like a million dollars. He was excited for me and we went for a run.

Jeremy’s first alarm out of his 85 that he sets went off. I awake and give an agitated grumble . He turns it off and flips over. I look down and my belly is still there. I get upset. I’m pregnant again. I still have 1 month and a half to go. I don’t want to do this anymore.

Then I realized the most messed up aspect of this whole scenario. After I had the baby, she was NO WHERE to be found in the dream. The one thing I was most excited about was not being pregnant anymore.

I recanted the dream to Jeremy and laughed at how ironic and ultimately disturbing how the one thing that I was most excited about was the fact that I was no longer pregnant.

“Isn’t that funny Jeremy? Just look at where my mind is, huh?”

I get creepy, intense upset stare. OOOPS!

Ok, so as horrible as it sounds that my subconscious is being a complete self centered dick, I understand exactly where its coming from. I am a very independent, fast paced, gotta’ move now and get it done kind of person and all this pregnancy has done was slow me down and make me rely on everyone else to give me a helping hand. It has completely denigrated me. An uninspired, low esteem Maraley is a very sad Maraley. So I can see why in my dream all I cared about was being me again. Having energy to do the things I loved to do. Looking the same way I did before. Before all the sudden surprises and change of my whole life.

Does it mean I unwelcome it? No, not at all. It just means that I don’t know for sure who or what I will be after I have my daughter. That is the ultimate fear. I’m sure once we meet all the apprehension will be put to aside  and I will be very comfortable with my new role as a mommy to my precious little girl. I always love a new challenge and as long as I don’t have something growing inside of me sapping away my energy, I’m sure I will accept this new stage of my life gracefully.

Hooray for self centered, mind opening revelations!

Oh and Jeremy is going to be a totally coo’ father. I just wanted to throw that in there and give his little ego a rub.

I got to admit its getting better. . .

Okay, that last entry wasn’t my best. It was dripping of cynicism and negativity. Well…if ya’ know me I guess that entry was just very much me. Just not as funny.

Today we started work on the baby room. Actually, my dad started work on the baby room. Jeremy, my mother and I just sorta’ went food shopping, Charlie shopping, and surfed the web. Now, I know how to work a paintbrush probably better than most people, but when it comes to my father, no one knows how to do it better than him. That’s his living, he likes to build and paint (Need work done: contact Santos Remodeling for all your house-y needs!).

Like a dufus I forgot to take pictures of the room BEFORE we started the paintjob. It was a dark, diarrhea/exorcist puke green. It wasn’t a bad green, that’s just the shade it was. Imagine if the girl in the exorcist had less bile in her puke to make it pea color and it was just a more concentrated green. Yeah, like that. It took my dad 2 or 3 coats of white paint based in a primer to cover it up before he could start the pretty light shade/hint of purple we chose. I’ll take pics of it tomorrow. It makes me happy and more into the fact that I’m having a little girl, a fact that makes me a bit weary.

Oh, my poor little girl. I worry so much. Not just for the fact that she doesn’t have an older brother to protect her, like I did. But for the fact that she has a mother like me. I’m the absolute worse girl ever. To me, everything girly is utterly boring. I hate weddings, could care less about nail polishes, I hate having hair let alone doing it, I die a little inside when I have to sit through romantic comedies. Everything that is geared toward women is something that I probably abhor. Except make up….and clothes. Love that.

I guess I’ll get more into that in another post. Right now I'm letting my mind spill out before I start having organized posts again. A week to ramble before I get right back into subjects and making sense. My Carrie Bradshaw like ranting posts (ps I  loved Sex and the City…I guess I have a little more estrogen than I thought).

Till then, Imma’ just let it out and get my mind clean of all the clutter and bullshit that is floating around. If you’ve been pregnant before, you can probably understand what I am talking about. Complete emotional crazy shit show that is happening in those brains!

*Yawn*

I don’t wanna’ complain. Honestly, I do not. But as I sit here with swollen feet, sausage fingers, ginormous boobs and farts from hell, I must say “How does one ever find the energy to do anything, let alone end up falling in love with the creature that has been causing this much discomfort and who in 13 years will start to hate your guts?”

I’m 7 1/2 months pregnant and finally started to slow down. Of course I still run after buses, chase around shoplifters, climb up ladders, scale the shelves in back stock, gyrate and do body roll dance moves at work, but I just do it a little more slowly.

When I get home I find myself so damn tired from running around all day that once I sit down, I pretty much stay down. This causes a problem. That problem being; I have to let housework slide. Etsy work, slide. preparing the house and my life for the baby slide. Taking care of Charlie slide. So when I finally do get a day off, I spend it running around trying to get errands, budgeting, shopping, prepping the baby shower (I have to have my say in it or else I will be stuck with this totally girly affair that I will be miserable at) and doing a bazillion other things to catch up with what I had left behind during the week.

I’m fucking tired…and the baby hasn’t even got here yet.

It’s my own fault. I want to do too many things because all my life I’ve done too many things at once. I’m fast paced and get bored if I don’t have things going on. I’m good at doing a lot of things at once. Just not right now, and its freaking frustrating.

Jeremy helps, but of course its under careful instruction. No, he isn’t mentally incapable of understanding how I like the toilet scrubbed, how to feed Charlie or how I like my budget balanced…he’s a man. I am a woman. I understand. I’m patient.

So right now, my life consists of lots of checklists in order for me to prioritize all the things I need to do. It’s a very long check list. *sigh*

I guess I should be chronicling these moments in my life. I have a daily diary that I really suck at writing in every day. Hmm, I should probably write in it after I write this entry. I need to get better at giving a shit about these kinds of things.

I will. I will also be funnier. Right now, my gas pain is giving me a headache and I just spent 1 hour crying about my dog having diarrhea. I’m exhausted.

 

Oh yeah, Whitney Houston died.

I lost myself in this blog and in life. I’ve been so polite and I held my tongue on so many subjects. I’ve decided, I’m just going to let who I am just fly on this blog and not care who I offend. I’m not offensive, I’ve just been trying to spare the sensitive. I’m just New Jersey is all.

I don’t know where that random thought came from, my thoughts are a bit all over the place. I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m not going to hold back on who I am anymore. I apologize if I seem abrasive from now on, but I feel I have that great talent to say what other people are thinking and feel no shame in voicing that opinion.

Getting to work!

Yep, today is the day I get back to work on the Etsy shop! I will be updating outfits on past items, getting together outfits for new items, working on my listings and updating them all. It’s going to be a busy day. Brenda and I (Brenda is my form) will be playing Barbie for a few hours and getting everything together. Feels good to get back into some sort of rhythm.

Before that, I have some cleaning to do still. We’ve made some pretty good headway here but there are a few more odds and ends that need to be placed.

Later tonight, I plan on making bulghur wheat with ground turkey for Mom Jeans and I. Over dinner we go over the painstaking laborious art of budgeting. Oh the joys of being responsible!

An Unexpected Surprise

I have been super crazy, ridiculously, extremely overwhelmed and busy these last few months. In early September Mom Jeans and I did an awesome flea market in Astoria. It was fun and it gave me the motivation I needed to get involved in other ones and make my way over to the ultimate Brooklyn Flea Market one day. I bought a dress form, we were ready to take pictures with it, I was designing thank you cards and business cards….but something was wrong with me. My usual high energy levels were low and my brain was sluggish. I couldn’t remember the simplest things and I was just so … blah.

Could it be….nah!

Life has a way of giving you beautiful and unexpected surprises :

My little girl! 18 weeks old!

So there you have it. Mom Jeans and I just couldn’t have an Etsy shop and multiple projects alone…we had to throw a baby in there. Things weren’t complicated enough for us, I guess.

I cannot wait to meet her and see her tiny toes and hands. Jeremy would say the same if the look of shock leaves his face anytime soon! He’s a worrier, I’m a planner. It actually makes us a good team.

So we’ve been super busy getting things together and he is about to move in and my energy has returned in this second trimester. Hopefully the shop will be up and running again later next week. Can’t wait to get our shit together!

Time to get back to work

I have been stressed, tired, and having migraines. It was an overall crappy July. I started feeling a bit off in the beginning of the month, so I pulled away from working on the blog and shop to concentrate just on my full time job, housework, and taking care of my dog. You know, take things easy *roll eyes*.

I did manage to get some work for the shop done. I made color dyed cut offs! It was surprisingly fun and extremely easy.

Here, I will show you how.

What you need:

• Procion dye mix of your choice
• Bag of Urea
• Bag of Soda Ash
• Water
• Clothes to dye

Step 1:

Get you dye tub ready. 5 gallon tub with cold water. fill with about 3 and a half or 4 gallons (remember displacement!!). You can use a larger tub, but remember if you use more water you will need more dye powder.

Step 2:

Completely soak the clothes separately, in a sink or tub, making sure they are fully saturated with water.

 

Step 3:

Make the dye bath! Add a cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of the dye of your choice, and 1/2 cup of Urea balls. Stir until well mixed. In a separate container of cold water, mix in 1/3 cup soda ash and mix until somewhat dissolved. Don’t  be shocked when the soda ash hardens, it will dissolve after a while.

 

Step 4:

Add the clothes. Leave enough room to stir (in a five gallon tub, two articles of clothing at a time). Stir consistently for 20 minutes.

Step 5:

When 20 minutes are up, add the soda ash bath slowly, while stirring. Keep clothes in dye bath for an additional 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

Step 6:

In a running bath, dump the dye out. Rinse the clothes until the water comes out clear…ish. It will take a few washes for the dye to stop running. Line dry.

 

a few tips:

• use gloves. I didn’t the first time I dyed some shorts fuchsia. It looked like I killed a Fraggle.
• If you are super neat with the stirring, go ahead and set it up like I have in the picture above (that was when I had the help of Mom Jeans to clean up spills, and he’s a lot more graceful than I am). But if you are a clumsy spaz like me, put the 5 gallon tub inside the bath tub so you can stir like a Tasmanian devil…and not suffer the consequences of getting your white grout tiled floors dyed pink and blue. Oops.
• The water will not run clean when you rinse the clothes after the dye bath…they just won’t. Go ahead try it. Think you are better than me and you are gonna' get that water to run clean. Frustrate yourself. The best you can do is get as best you can to run it a lil’ clean and then wash the items (either in the tub or in the washer) with detergent.
• don’t have the kitties around. I now have adorable little pink paw prints on the white sofa.
• Remember the dye will react to the original color. So if you are dyeing something that was originally red in a blue bath, the color will come out …Purple. Just like you learned in art class! That’s part of the fun of dyeing things, see what surprises come out that bath!
• An added plus is that you can mix dye powders to get different colors! But always keep in mind the original color of the garment being used.

Have fun mixing colors and dyeing away! Here are the final results of some items I dyed.

 

Original color: Yellow

 

Original Color: black

Original Color: light grey