Thing to Do No. 3: Take Bad Photos

I have a digital camera. I have no idea how to use it. I got it perhaps 3 years ago, and just a couple of months ago, I learned how to get pictures off of it and onto my computer. My friend Katie gave me a good tip and told me to try to avoid using the flash at all costs. I now know how to turn the flash off, and I’m pleased with the results. Imagine how bad they would be otherwise.

This is Molly, out of work Poodle to the Stars. Like me, she needs a haircut and her brows and nails done. She’s probably mad that I took her picture looking like she does.



Bad hair notwithstanding, Molly must wonder why her life suddenly sucks. Just last week, she was coming to work with me, taking short walks at 11am and 3pm, and enjoying the outdoors in the evenings. Now, while we are generally occupying separate sofas, we are serving a communal sentence.

Interestingly, or perhaps not, Molly refuses to go outside right now. I’ve tried to let her out at least three times today, but she refuses to cross the threshold onto the back deck. In my head, I’m thinking she doesn’t want to leave me in case something happens. In her head, she is probably worried that if she goes out, I’ll do something interesting without her.

Sorry Sweetheart.

Thing to Do No. 2: Plot Hospital Insubordination

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t care for the standard issue hospital gowns. I’m not wearing this. I may be an arrogant ass, but I’m not wearing that for any period of time. My husband will be there for godssakes. It’s bad enough that I currently need my nails, brows, and roots done, but I’m not spending hours of labor in the medical equivalent of a gunny sack. I’ve seen some of those labor videos, and those women look atrocious.

(Those of you out there reading along and chuckling to yourselves thinking, “That’s what SHE thinks; just wait and see.” Keep your comments to yourself; I’m very grouchy.)

The Colonel has proffered his own labor outfit suggestion, and I have responded that it will be fine if he doesn’t mind our daughter growing up without a father. He thinks it would be “funny” for me to wear eyeblack and a UGA football jersey.

I found something on the internet called a “labor skirt.” It is supposedly designed to avoid the hospital gown while accommodating any necessary medical equipment from admission to delivery, including c-section. I imagine you have to just throw it away when it’s all said and done, but it’s a nice alternative to the gown.

Thing to Do No. 1: Send Demanding Emails

With nothing more than a lap tray, laptop, and wireless connection, I can irritate, agitate, annoy, and berate everyone I know via email, this blog, and facebook. I am fashioning my email missives after Miranda Priestly as played by Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” one of the few book-to-movie interpretations where I felt the movie was infinitely better than the book. The book, to me, was very unfair to working, career women. I was more than a little put out when the main character and her temporary, one-year job were blamed for her drunk girlfriend’s car accident. “If only she had been there for her friend, maybe the friend wouldn’t have had eleven tequila shots and then decided to drive around in the middle of the night.” Give me a break.

Back to Miranda Priestly … My favorite thing about her in the book and movie is the utter vagueness of her demands. I see a lot of myself in her demands for instant comprehension, compliance, and gratification. Here are some excerpts of emails I’ve sent of this morning and over the past few days. I should be ashamed.


“Remember that piece of paper I gave you last week? Please scan and email that to me.”


“His name might be Chad Somethingorother. Send it to him.”


“Please do with this whatever I told you to do with the last thing like this.”


“Remind me what I said about that old file from two years ago.”


“What is the status on all that stuff I asked about before?”

How I Got Here in the First Place

Welcome to yet another partially written, ill-conceived weblog by Holly. This will be blog number three that I’ve started and will likely entertain for a few days or weeks before abandoning it like a pair of overly trendy, impulsively bought shoes. Unlike my prior blogging efforts, however, this one is intended to be temporary, and perhaps that will be the key to its staying power. It’s temporary because I envision it ending with the arrival of Baby W, due in nine weeks but expected at any time between now and then.

Who is Baby W? And how did we get here? To refresh my old readers’ memories and bring anyone new up to speed, the Holly saga began online several years ago with Mean Reds, an internet distraction chronicling my life during study for the bar exam and first year of law practice. The Colonel is the same man of several different roles, beginning with boyfriend and progressing to fiancé and husband and now playing the unenviable role of handservant. Our first child, begotten out of wedlock, is our standard poodle, Molly Golightly, Poodle to the Stars.

Blogging effort number two was a food and restaurant critique blog called the Marietta Slammer. I abandoned it in small part because my father suggested it sounded overly critical and incredibly spoiled and in larger part because Marietta is Restaurant Siberia where all the food is bad and you can only hate so much.

A little background:
When two people are married and they love each other very much and take a nap together, sometimes they make a baby. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

The Colonel and I began our journey into parenthood approximately seven months ago, and in that time, I’ve had a very contented and uneventful pregnancy. We’re having a little girl, whose name is not to be disclosed prior to delivery, Colonel’s orders. Our happy little gestation period was interrupted last Monday when I started experiencing very frequent contractions. I had been having practice contractions (called Braxton-Hicks) since about week 20, but they were highly irregular and infrequent. Given the sudden onset of these contractions, my doctor’s office saw me on Tuesday and sent me over to the hospital to see if I liked the standard issue hospital gown. I didn’t.

While trying out the gown (ample in the front, open in the back), the triage nurse had me sit on the fetal monitor for approximately four hours. She and the midwife on call confirmed with some surprise that I was indeed having contractions every couple of minutes. The results from a fetal fibronectin test reassured them I would not likely go into labor for at least two weeks, so I was given a bag of IV fluid and a terbutaline shot to stop the contractions.

The contractions resumed on Wednesday, and at my followup appointment on Thursday, another midwife from my doctor’s office made it quite clear that I could either rest at home or spend the rest of my term at the hospital. While we were all hoping serious rest would quell the contractions, I had to start taking as-needed doses of terbutaline (prescription crack as far as I can tell) after having at least 8 contractions in ten minutes in the wee hours of Friday morning.


Now I am doped up, drinking lots of water, and lying horizontally for the foreseeable future. My dear sweet husband is waiting on me hand and foot, and he doesn’t even know yet that I’m going to ask him to clean my bathroom today. The grandparents-in-waiting are taking turns preparing meals and calling worriedly, and I am amusing myself, and hopefully some of you, with these postings, a 101 (or so) Things To Do on Your Back … Except That.

Enjoy.