First baby purchase

Sorry to bore you with all-things-baby, but I've got to highlight these moments in our lives so that we don't forget! This weekend J and I went to BuyBuyBaby to buy ourselves a stroller for Peanut. No jogging prams (hello? do I look like I jog?) or bugaboo designer strollers, just something simple and small that would be easy to manage in claustrophobic Trader Joe's aisles and to fold up fast for airplane rides.

After five minutes it was clear which one I'd fallen in love with: the Graco FastAction Fold Travel Stroller. J was on the fence about it for a few minutes, since he thought the bigger strollers had more to offer, but I LOATHE big strollers. All that bulky plastic seems so unnecessary. So we brought the thing home and I took pictures (naturally) while J put it together. It was surreal watching him click the wheels on and inspect the infant seat; I don't know whether it's the hormones or what but I almost cried from all the sentimentality. He's going to be such a great father.

What I'm looking forward to this month

1.) Mad Men finally returns


Um, has this show been off the air long enough for you all yet? Personally I've been dying -- the past 525 days of it being off air has resulted in me rewatching old episodes multiple times, along with Matt Weiner commentary, to sate my MM fix. I'm very curious to see where Season 5 will go...will Don and Megan actually marry? Will the season fast forward and start a year or two into their marriage? How will Pete be as a real father? Will Betty and Henry finally get a divorce, and if so, will she continue to try and get back into Don's good graces? Will Greg die in Vietnam and leave Joan free to carry on her dalliances with Roger? Would she even want to with Jane still in the picture and a baby on the way? Will Sally blossom into the flower child we all know she's going to be?

So many questions, so little answers in AMC's many teaser trailers. At least the premiere will be a two-hour event. March 25th: You can't come soon enough.

2.) Neiman Marcus opensNot like I'm in that echelon of people that can casually shop at Neiman's like it ain't no thang (yet), but Neiman's is opening in my town and I can't wait. Construction on the building wrapped up a while ago and it looks all retro and lovely as usual, with avocado-green glass panels and the store's classic signature logo pinned nice and high on the side. The day it opens, Neiman's is holding a VIP gala indoors with live music, champagne, decadent foods and other fun things that wealthy people commonly partake in. Unfortch tickets to this gala cost somewhere around $250 per person, and well, with remodeling underway and a baby in our future, $500 on a black-tie night in a high-end department store doesn't seem to be in the cards for J and I. Luckily Neiman's understand this and is hosting a big outdoor party the next evening with live music for the commoners.

3.) We find out what Peanut is!


March 27th is the big day for the gender ultrasound. Boy? Girl? At this point I don't really care. Prior to getting pregnant all I wanted was a little girl to dress up and take shopping with me and teach how to be a lady. Now that I'm with bébé, though, my desire to only have a girl has dissipated. I can still dress a little boy up very cutely (I'm thinking Janie and Jack preppy here) and have just as much fun with it. Plus it's not like this is going to be our one and only kid. Other babies will be in our future, so we'll have many opportunities to roll those dice.

The most unproductive Sunday ever (relatively speaking)

So normally J and I don't make solid plans for our weekend afternoons, choosing instead to reserve planning for Friday and Saturday nights, which usually consist of either dining out or attending dinner parties (clearly, this is an indicator that I hate cooking). Those couples that plan all those fun Saturday and Sunday afternoon activities like mini bike trips or drives out to the nearest beach or fascinating hikes in any of the Bay Area's many locales? Yeah, so not us. Not because we don't want to do these things, but because neither of us is proactive enough to actually plan anything. (Ugh, so lazy, I swear in my other life I was a cat.) Once in a while we'll go on a picnic with my Totally-Amazing-Decked-Out-Picnic-Basket-complete-with-wine-glasses-and-gingham-handled-flatware, but more often than not our weekend days are unscripted. Shopping the clearance racks at Burberry in SF? Might as well look on a whim. A croissant and cappuccino at La Boulange? Why not. A stop at Trader Joe's is usually in order, and who knows, things can always get a little crazy if we find ourselves wandering the paint section at Home Depot.

Normally this method of madness bodes well for us, but it also leaves room to improvise, which can be detrimental if either one of us is undergoing a current obsession. Such was the case this past Sunday.

I have become OBSESSED with the Game of Thrones book series. As in I've got my face in one of the books almost every waking second, sometimes even in the car, and if I'm not reading them, then I'm thinking or talking about them constantly. I begged J to start reading the first book, just so we could discuss, and right when he started it, he too became obsessed. So in spite of our best intentions (he had reams of legal work to do and it would have been nice for him to finish installing our tile backsplash in the kitchen), here's how our past Sunday rolled out:

• J wakes up before me, reaches for Games of Thrones, reads until I wake up.
• I wake up.
• We talk in bed for an hour or so.
• We move to the couch and continue reading, he on book one, me on book two (A Clash of Kings). Hours go by. We periodically graze on restaurant leftovers for sustenance.
• I decide it's more comfortable to read in bed, so I convince J to continue reading in bed with me. Another three hours go by.
• J claims he can't lie down any longer, so he moves back out to the living room couch with book. I follow him.
• Evening: I finish book two as J nears the end of book one. We head to Target since I obviously need to buy book three so I can continue reading that night. After purchasing book three and two blue raspberry Slurpees, we return home and continue reading, he on book two and me on book three. End scene.

The next morning I realized our Sunday was a bit ridiculous. We have SO much to finish around the house before the baby's born, but instead we succumbed to levels of college behavior that left us nothing to show for ourselves at the end of the day. Obvi this can't happen once Peanut is born, but I've got to admit, I felt a little guilty indulging in my obsession to such a degree. Do my depths of laziness know no bounds? Or do we need to get these kind of days in before they become a thing of the past?

Nursery room themes

So I know Peanut's big day is still far off (170 days to be exact), but today I woke up with this hankering to start picking out a nursery theme. Maybe my "nesting" instinct is finally kicking in on the cusp of my 17th week!

As far as nurseries go, I don't want to spend exorbitant amounts of money on everything from the crib to the changing table to all the little room embellishments that make nurseries so cute....buuuut I also don't want to chintz out. It is Peanut, after all. So maybe I'll do a blend of different price points and try to make some things myself, like curtains (if I'm feeling extra ambitious and have the time). All I know is there's really no reason to go all out and spend $500+ dollars on the Cadillac of cribs, people. Most baby's are too un-evolved yet to even appreciate the fact that its crib is made out of exotic imported mahogany.

Currently our "nursery" is the bedroom across the hall from our master. We painted it a Tuscan yellow when we first moved in thinking it was going to be a guest bedroom, then we conceived much faster than we thought we would, and now I'm toying with the idea of changing the wall color. I've still got lots of time, but I have some nursery theme ideas in mind:

1.) Peter Rabbit

In my salad days (read: single digits) I was ob-sessed with the Peter Rabbit books. They were and still are so classic, and I dig that the series and characters are pretty gender neutral, so they'd work for whatever Peanut happens to be. I found some adorable Peter Rabbit nursery ideas I could borrow from online:

Pictures from Design Dazzle

Okay, I never thought I'd be a fan of the striped wall look but I LOVE this!! The periwinkle/cream combo is so cute, and the little chandelier accents the theme and decor perfectly. J says painting "straight" stripes that don't bleed into one another is actually a lot harder than it seems and that he doesn't know if he'll have the time to do it since he's still remodeling the kitchen at the moment when he's not at work, but perhaps we could do just one accent wall striped?

And then there's Pottery Barn's take on Peter Rabbit:


I always love a good topiary or two.

2.) Vintage Alice in Wonderland

I feel like this concept would only work if it's a girl. I'd want to go with the traditional drawings from the original text and somehow incorporate those in framed decor and bedding (although in the latter I'd have no idea how -- I haven't exactly seen old-school Alice illustrations in fabric as of late). Anyway, it could be an idea...


I would definitely say that both these Alice in Wonderland nursery examples (above) are way too ambitious for me. I don't have the time or interest to go that far out on a limb (hello? there are actual toy geese flying over that crib!!) but I could borrow certain elements from both.

So far, that's all I have. I was also thinking maybe a vintage Winnie the Pooh theme (though I do like Peter Rabbit better), and maybe a Parisian theme, though that would probably be better suited for a girl unless I've got a little Brad Goreski in the making. ;)

Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas on how to do this myself? I'm such a newbie at all of this that I feel a little lost.

The first flutter

It happened last night -- I finally felt Peanut inside me!! There was no kick or sharp movement or anything (I still don't have a bump), but I felt a strange fluttering in my stomach, like no other feeling I've ever felt before. It felt like something inside of me was giving me butterfly kisses with a dozen little eyelashes. I couldn't help but smile.

The almost-ruined Valentine's Day

Last week J took me out to dinner for Valentine's Day at a nice restaurant here that I'd been wanting to try in forever and a day (actually just since we moved here a couple years ago), but the stars never quite aligned with planning a lunch or dinner there. Until Valentine's Day 2012 came along. Then it was like bashert.

With J being all busy at work, I made reservations over a month in advance just to be sure we got a table since the place is popular and small and award-winning in the Bay Area, which doesn't bode well for holidays. And when we got there that night, everything was perfect -- the ivy-covered brick outside, the smell of wine and hearty Italian dishes wafting into the lobby, every woman in the place wearing some form of red. Then we got seated and that's when things starting going downhill, thanks to our server, Rick.

After looking over the extensive beverage menu (which consisted 100% of wine), I quietly decided I would just have water unless Rick recommended some "preggatini" that bartenders can usually whip up at comparable restaurants.

"I'll have a glass of the Pinot Noir," J ordered across from me.

"Shall I make that two?" Rick asked, motioning to me.

I smiled and said that I wished, but I was pregnant and couldn't drink alcohol. Instead of recommending something else (um, even club soda would work for me, honey) he curtly grabbed the drink menu from J's hand and said, "Well, you can just smell his then" and walked away. Strike one.

A little later we were ready to order, and Rick stood dutifully near us with a pen and pad of paper in hand. But as J was in the middle of our order, a customer at a nearby table stood up and made his way over to our server, tapping him on the shoulder and complaining about not being brought something they had ordered. Instead of quickly apologizing to us that he needed to deal with this other customer, Rick turns around as J is still ordering, talks to the customer, then strides away without letting us know...well, anything. J's voice trails off and he gives me a look like you've got to be kidding me.

"Well that was rude," I said. "Maybe he'll apologize when he comes back."

But no, he never did apologize. Rick drops off whatever it was he'd forgotten at the nearby table and ambles back over to our table, standing silently near J with his pen poised over his pad. No explanation or anything.

Now I don't want to sound snotty or entitled or that I expect to have my butt kissed whenever I spend exorbitant amounts of money on food or clothing, but in my book this kind of customer service is completely inappropriate in this caliber of an establishment.

The next day I talked to some friends about it and wasn't planning on doing anything until a couple of them suggested I leave a bad Yelp review or call the restaurant. Personally I don't do Yelp reviews (especially since most of them around here are written by pretentious San Francisco hipsters decrying any business as lame or unworthy if it falls outside of city lines), and I've never been one to call a place and complain about service. It just seems like such a first world problem to me, and I'd rather vote with my wallet and take my business elsewhere. But in this case my friend had a point, so I called and left a message with the owner.

Two days went by and nothing. I'd almost forgotten about it until I got a call from a strange number, picked up and it was him. Without going into all the specifics, after my conversation with the owner, I was very very glad I'd picked up the phone and made that call. I detailed exactly what happened that evening and he apologized and said that if it was any consolation, Rick had been getting similar complaints lately from other patrons, including a food critic at a major publication, so I wasn't the only one. Then he asked if he could make it up to me by offering us a dinner on the house next time we came in. How could I turn down $200? Of course I said sure all casually, though internally I was freaking out like "whaaat? this is not what I expected. Score!"

So was I glad I called? Of course. Will I make it a habit? Probably not, I still feel like people who call to complain about everything little thing are annoying with their false senses of entitlement, but under special circumstances that I feel cross a line, I will definitely pick up a phone.

Please stop saying "labia"

Last month I had my first "official" doctor's visit for Peanut. This visit also happened to coincide with the first time I've ever met my doctor. Usually I meet with her head assistant for my annual check-ups, as the doctor is obvi too busy to perform routine pelvic exams.

I invited J to come along to this first visit so that we could both meet the woman who was going to be delivering our baby and to get a feel for whether we felt comfortable with her. When she walked in to our room, I grew a little worried. Not because I got a bad vibe from her or that she was unprofessional or that I felt slightly embarrassed sitting on a table in a partially open Pepto Bismol pink hospital gown. No, it was just that she seemed so...old. Like on-the-cusp-of-retirement old. Which is fine, I mean the woman went to Yale and has delivered 6,000 babies during her career, so she knows what she's doing. But when she hobbled around looking for a wastebasket for her tissue and almost tripped over her little wheeled doctor's chair, or when she had five minutes worth of awkward problems with my speculum (don't worry, I won't go into all the gory details), I wondered if maybe her place in the world in 2012 wasn't sitting in this office prodding me with a speculum, but instead poolside in some Palm Springs resort waiting for her tee time.

The worst part (or the most humorous part, if you're sick and twisted like me), is that she had no warmth or empathy about her. In fact, I don't know if she was even capable of smiling. She very much reminded me of one of those cold, technical German doctors from a black-and-white film. Because of this, from here on out she shall be known as Fraulein Margaret. She'd clearly been through the whole having-a-baby drill a billion times, was good at it, and purely cared about the medical aspect of the whole procedure. Her inspecting my nether-regions was like a mechanic examining an old Volkswagen engine. Been there, done that.

So the last half of my appointment was getting my first ultrasound. For that Fraulein Margaret asked J to stand over by my right shoulder as she took a front-seat to my hoo-hoo and used her probe to get a good look at Peanut. But no, she didn't just do that quietly. She had to announce every. single. thing. she was doing down there.

"I'm examining your labia right now," she declared.

I don't know what it is, but just the word "labia" makes me laugh hysterically. It's such an ugly little word for a weird part of the human body. And if you think about it, the term rarely ever gets used in passing, making it even funnier when it is said aloud.

I tried not to look at J since I knew we'd both burst out laughing if we locked eyes after her little announcement. Out of my periphery, I saw him standing near my shoulder, his hands in his suit pant pockets, looking away at the ceiling as though there was something phenomenally interesting up near the fluorescent lighting. Meanwhile, the silence in the room was deafening. But then, it happened again....

"I am still working around your labia," she said.

This time I couldn't handle it. I tried scrunching my mouth closed like an angry muppet, successfully muting any giggle trying to escape, but then I made the mistake of looking up and locking eyes with J. The look on his face was priceless, one of helpless amusement desperately hidden under a semi-straight face. I tried, I really did, to not laugh, because really, we're almost 30 years old and it's SO immature to laugh at a stupid little clinical term like labia, but I couldn't help myself. I ended up trying to muffle my laugh, which came out sounding like a giant repressed sneeze cutting the silence in the room. Luckily. Fraulein Margaret, seated on her wheely chair below my line of vision, didn't seem to notice the sound or that at this point J was basically almost entirely turned around with his back to her, hands still in pockets. She just kept on keeping on, examining my Volkswagen engine.

The rest of the exam went splendidly, and we got to see Peanut for the very first time on the ultrasound monitor. His/her little heart was beating like a tiny hummingbird's, and we could just barely make out where his/her little face was starting to form. I admit, I did get teary-eyed when I saw it on the screen because all of a sudden, it was a reality that I was pregnant. I'm not currently showing at all, so sometimes it's hard to imagine that there's something growing inside of me and that my life is going to change from here on out. But that day the blurred image on that medical screen was all the proof we needed that we were actually going to be parents. It was one of the best reality checks of my life.

Hello again

Confession: After months (well, years) of being gone from Brunette on a Budget, I've decided that this site is exactly where I belong in my off-time. Now that I'm finished with The Worst Job in the World (officially quit February 2011), I dabbled off and on in my other anonymous blog and it never felt quite right. Partially because I've never liked doing anything anonymously, especially writing. Why should I feel bad about telling it like it is? Why do I need to hide how I really feel? I don't, and it's only taken me about 16 months to figure that out. I'm sorry, sometimes certain people or certain situations just suck. That's reality, no matter how much it hurts to read. Now I'm back, to the inevitable chagrin of some and the (hopefully) happiness of others (hey, if you don't like reading here, you're more than welcome to move on).

SO, with out of the way, the last year or so of my life has been packed with changes. Like the kind of drama in Jennifer Aniston movies where years of changes have been condensed nicely down into two-hour bits. For starters:

We bought a house!:

The house around Christmastime (still hadn't unpacked yet).

The house was a steal, mostly because it needed major remodeling to be "cute," but we spent all November remodeling. And by remodeling, I don't just mean throwing up a coat of paint on the walls, though we did that as well. I'm talking on-our-hands-and-knees-scraping-old-tile-adhesive-off-the-concrete-bathroom-floor-for-six-hours (okay, that was more J than me), ripping out all the older Pergo flooring throughout the house, laying down new, dark hardwood flooring, completely gutting the bathroom and rebuilding the shower, painting the dirty fireplace white, etc. etc. After our remodel, we refinanced the place and it appraised for $50,000 more than we paid for it. Apparently, all that work in November paid off. Now our mortgage on our 3-bedroom home is much less than rent on a 1-bedroom apartment. J calls it one of the best investments of our lives so far; I have to agree.

Now that most of the interior remodeling is done, we're going to start fixing up the outside when it gets warmer. On the docket: Painting the house dark gray with white trim and a dark red front door, and landscaping everything.

We got a second car!:


A few days ago we picked up this beaut, since we really only have one reliable car between the two of us (J's been driving his old '67 Volvo to work, and it hasn't been too happy about that.) Now we both have reliable cars. Movin' on up.

We adopted a new dog!:


This is Gidget, a six-year-old Chihuahua we found at the pound. She's a quiet, shy little four-pound thing that barely ever makes a sound. Since it seems she's cold all the time, I had to buy her this bathrobe to pad around the house in.

Last but not least: We're having a baby!


World: say hello to Peanut (above). We don't know Peanut's sex yet, but I think we find out in March and we're both very, very excited. Well, I'm sure Peanut is excited about this revelation as well, whenever it happens. I still can't believe I'm going to be a mother (Jesus Christ, just the word makes me feel old), but I'm looking forward to the whole thing as I'm sure it will provide reams of good blog fodder, starting with the odd encounter I had recently with my doctor. But that story's for another time.

Those are the big things in my life as of late. I'm sure there were many other things but probably not as important. Ah, it feels good to be back. :)

Adios, muchachos

Hello, goodbye.

The time has come to say goodbye to this blog.

Why? Frankly, I feel too many people read it. It's one thing having strangers around the world reading up on my weekly exploits, but it's another having casual acquaintances check out what I've been up to or read what I think about J, our marriage, my career, or other facets of my life. I never thought I'd be saying this but I don't want the details of my life to be so public. At least not to people I kind of know.

I want to be more honest about my thoughts; I want to be more raw about my life. And so I've decided to abandon ship here on Brunette on a Budget and start over again, completely anonymous on a new blog. I get that if I want to be private about my feelings I should probably just buy a moleskin and call it a day, but ever since I've started blogging I've fallen in love with it. I get a thrill each time I hit "publish" and don't want to give that up. Instead, I'm willing to give up my online identity. On my new blog there will be no name, no picture, no location, and I'm beyond thrilled to have a fresh, anonymous start. (Is this an iota of the way Madonna feels each time she reinvents herself? Because the feeling is so liberating.)

I will miss it here, though, and I'll miss you, dear reader-friends. It's been an amazing 2+ years and leaving now feels like the end of an era. When I started this blog in May of 2008, J and I were just settling into life in DC and this was meant to be a creative outlet outside of work on those long nights when J studied in the law library and Lola and I sat home watching Grey's Anatomy. My initial focus on this site was personal finance (hence the name) and I blogged about financial matters for months until my writing morphed into more personal narrative as I figured out my life and where I was going. That led to the infamous I did it. I quit my job post, which kicked off my journey into fiction writing and now, a year and a half later, my entry back into the workforce. P.S. If you're wondering, I do still write but wish, like before, that I could commit all of my time to it (she said, longingly).

Now I feel there are too many eyes on this blog and I can't say everything I want to say, and so I'm peacing out. I have one book review that I promised to write in October, but after I post it on Oct. 18th, this blog will officially become stagnant. Over on my new blog I'll continue to write about J, The Nana and the rest of my cast of characters; I'll continue to make like Rita Hayworth and Put the Blame on Mame; I'll continue to update about my book progress (J's currently editing manuscript #1 with me); and I'll update about writing my third novel in November for NaNoWriMo (my outline is already coming together -- I can't wait!!). Best of all, I'll continue to blog about my life, but this time more boldly. More honestly.

I'm almost finished setting up my other website, so if you want to follow me into anonymity email me at brunetteonabudget@gmail.com and I'll let you know once it's up and running (include your blog link if I don't know you.) If not you can always still find me on Twitter.

Hopefully we'll meet each other all again on our long journey to the middle -- till then, ciao ciao!

A night with Lady Gaga at the Monster Ball

In terms of concerts, the Monster Ball tour I went to last month was definitely in the Top 5 Best Concerts of my life (dare I say she beat out David Bowie when I saw him at the Shrine in LA?)

I got decked out in tranny heels and red lipstick; my bff donned a black and white Rhythm Nation ensemble (complete with fingerless-leather glove), and we had fun people-watching in the lobby before the show started:

This Gaga lookalike (above) only wore these sequin disco boots, booty shorts and hat. The rest of her body was covered with rhinestones.

More little monsters (above).

When all 20,000 of us were packed into the pavilion and the lights dimmed, the crowd erupted into screams and cries, waiting for Gaga to emerge. But first, for the intro, a giant projected video played on a 30-foot white sheet hung above us, hiding the stage behind it:



It was ah-mazing. The visuals mixed with her looped voice saying "I'm a free bitch" over a remix of CeCe Peniston's "Finally" made for the perfect concert intro (and ringtone, if I could just find this version online). The rest of the show -- which was more a "pop-electro opera" -- was spectacular:

Holding her Disco Stick...get it?

One of my favorite parts of the show (above and below) was when she sat down and sang Speechless -- just her and her piano. As she sang the ballad the piano went up in flames.

I mean, who plays a guitar with the stiletto heel of her patent leather boot? Gaga, that's who. Loved!

Singing "So Happy I Could Die" in a moving headpiece (above, below).

What I loved most about Gaga live was that unlike any other act I've seen (and I've been to many concerts), Gaga actually succeeded in creating a connection with her audience. Between each song she'd pause to speak with us as though she and the 20,000 people facing her that night were having an intimate chat over coffee (one-way, of course). I have no idea if she actually does care for her "Little Monsters" as much as she lets on, but the point is she made us believe she cares about us. She made us believe that she wouldn't be where she is without us, her fans, her little monsters. Many stars have spun the "Thank you to my fans" spiel, but none pull it off like Lady Gaga -- her love for her fans seems genuine, and this makes us love her more.

At the concert I also loved how empowering she was to the crowd. At one point between songs, she said (verbatim):

"I've got to know so many of you and you've made me so brave. I wasn't brave before but I'm brave now because of you. So now I'm gonna be brave for you. Tonight I want you to free yourself. I want you to let go of all your insecurities. I want you to reject anyone that's made you feel like you didn't belong or you didn't fit in or told you 'No, you can't do it' or you're not good enough or thin enough or you don't have enough money or you're not pretty enough or you can't sing well enough or dance well enough or play well enough -- you remember that you're a superstar and you were BORN THAT WAY."

"Tonight will be your liberation. YOUR LIBERACION!!" (with a snarl).

That was, without a doubt, my favorite part of the whole night. I knew, right then, that I was a diehard fan.