Purple Scare is one year old today. I'd drink to that but I'm still on antibiotics. Thank you, one and all, for visiting.

Warning: The following post may include Too Much Information.
I've been more than a little cranky of late, due to the recurrence of the "plugged duct" problem (again, the more you have to ask, the less you want to know; feel free to stop reading now). The problem is that it developed into something nastier and more painful.
If you've ever wondered what mastitis might feel like, read on.
Imagine, if you will, that you have a breast implant. It's about the size of a half a baseball, or half of a nice juicy navel orange.
But instead of being filled with silicone, cork, or juice, it's filled with finely broken glass.
Now imagine that it's leaking.
Now imagine that a very small person who can not be reasoned with is grabbing on to your nipple and twisting, grinding the aforementioned finely broken glass and sending fragments shooting into your lymph nodes.
So you see why I haven't been real chatty and perky lately. The good news is that antibiotics seem to be doing the trick. I'll check in with you again after the level of ibuprofen in my bloodstream returns to socially acceptable norms.

Road Trip Vignettes:
We were zooming along the Turnpike when I started to wrinkle my nose. Sniff, sniff. Cough. Sniff.
"Um, Honey, I think we might need to stop and change her..."
Sniff. Sniff! "No, Dear, that's just Newark."

New Cute Thing! New Cute Thing! Gigi has spent the past few days mastering the art of the 'raspberry', making sputtery noises for anyone who will listen. She has been on the receiving end of tummy raspberries from Daddy and me since day one. Well, today on the changing table, I handed her a new toy from Grammy to keep her busy. She brought her Lamaze inchworm up to her mouth, grinned, and went "phfbbbbt!" on its chin.
Lest we think this is just a fluke, she did repeat performances tonight, giving her bathtub ducky and froggie giggly raspberries. My girl is a genius. The fun is just beginning.

Purple Scare is on the road again. Literally. Oh yes, it's baby Gigi's first major Road Trip! We are in New England for Uncle Mikey's university graduation. A trip that would ordinarily take 10 hours in a shot was broken down into two days, and we still hit rush hour in two urban centers. Still, Gigi has been a pretty good sport, and has been charming her relatives and acquaintances from start to finish.

As a new mom, I don't have copious amounts of idle time. Often I barely have the time and energy to accomplish what I'd like to. So when I hear about people like Madeline Albright, who did a PhD in Russian while raising twins, I don't know whether to scream or applaud. Some days I barely get my laundry done or scoop the kitty litter, how am I supposed to accomplish modern earth-shattering wonders at a time like this? Heck, regular PS readers (if there are any!) know that I can go for days at a time without even posting.
So there is an almost Aristotelian harmony to this project, which would allow me to do my part for science and take advantage of the fact that I don't always check my e-mail regularly. Really this would be brilliant, except that my computer is running Windows &*(#$@! 98 and crashes as often as an automotive safety test dummy.

I don't know whether it has any connection to her new culinary adventures, but my little girl is learning to "raspberry." I've seen her practicing several times today, adding this to the repertoire of noises she makes when she's playing with her voice. She's also figured out, I think, that it cracks Mommy up when she makes her sputtering little "fpppbt" sounds.

Introduction to Solids is not a course in math or physics. It is all about the transition from an infant's liquid diet to a child's messy diet. "Gigi" is expanding her palate almost daily. She eats rice cereal or oatmeal mixed with Mommy Juice, as well as sweet potatoes, carrots, and bananas. She did not like peas, and let us know without ambiguity. It was not pretty (except in a Jackson Pollock kind of way, I suppose, if you're into that).
Today, we took her to a Salvadoran place and offered her plantains and yucca. Neither was to her liking, but she wasn't nearly as demonstrative about it. Well, at least we tried.
In other developments: still no teeth, still no actual crawling. She is working hard at both. Place your bets on which will be first, or on which food will be the next one she rejects.

New Cute Thing! New Cute Thing! Today, Gigi and I were rolling around on the living room floor being goofy. I rolled over, reached out and mooped her on the nose. She laughed, of course, with that adorable laugh. She rolled away and tried a little more scooting. Then she rolled back over towards me, reached out, and grabbed my nose. "Moop," I said. She laughed. My girl is a genius.

Curse you, Windows 98. My Mothers Day post is lost, the system crashed yet again, blah blah blah.
I have also had a recurrence of the engorgement/plugged duct problem. The more you have to ask, the less you want to know. The good news is that it's almost cleared up.
The Good News: Wee Gigi has had her six month well-baby visit, and while she's still wee, she's well. She's in the third percentile for weight, the fiftieth for length, and eighty-fifth for head circumference. So yay for the big brains on our little girl.
Yeah, third percentile for weight. The pediatrician says that anything between three and ninety-seven is considered okay, and since she's progressing along her curve there is no reason for concern. I still have philosophical issues with having a six-month old who doesn't outweigh my cat, but the cat just turned 12 and can't be expected to spend a lot of time on the treadmill.
And hey, at least someone in this house is healthily slim. Gigi's Daddy wants to spend more time on the treadmill, and I'm walking around carrying the A$$ That Ate Montana. I just keep telling myself that the reason she's in the 50th percentile for length is all that good calcium she's getting in her Mommy Juice...which Mommy seems to be getting mostly from Ben and Jerry's.

Baby Gigi's babbling is getting more expressive. She really likes to say "gee!" If I didn't know better, I'd think she knew her on-screen name. My mother, of course, believes that "gee!" is just working her way up to "Grandma!"

Grandma returns to her coast of habitual residence tomorrow. We hope to see her again in two months, when she heads this way again for her high school reunion. (Keep in mind that she hasn't been to *any* of her prior reunions, as far as I know. Now, of course, she has photos of adorable grandchildren to show off, so she has to go.)

Gigi will not be totally bereft of grandparental attention. She has her semimonthly lunch date with Grandpa next week, and the week after that we're heading to New England for Uncle Mikey's university graduation. Our girl is very lucky indeed.

I had a lovely thought the other day. I was asked about my plans for returning to work. I replied, "you know, the company seems to be getting along just fine without me." And it's true.

My dilemma is this: I've worked for the same employer for several years now, and I have a few years left before I'm completely vested (i.e., I qualify for full retirement benefits). It seems obvious that I should go back, put in the time, and get the pension. But this sabbatical has given me some much-needed perspective. I still want to work, to have a job, but I am less concerned with getting promoted and running the world than I was before. I don't want to be someone who works her butt off in order to have a nice home in a nice neighborhood and not have time to enjoy it.

But the business I'm in isn't something that neatly wraps up at 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Travelers aid is a 24-7 operation: people don't break their legs or lose their passports during normal business hours. Tourists get mugged late at night and need new travelers' checks and airline tickets the following morning. It can be demanding, messy work, and oh yeah, it occasionally means that my family and I pack up and move a few time zones and a continent away.

So is it worth sticking around for a pension, or do I start over someplace else that is less stressful? Or do I just give up the paychecks altogether and spend my days making raspberry sounds on my daughter's cute little tummy?

It is the cause, oh my soul, the cause. Forget all that 2004 nonsense, this is the vote that matters. You don't have to be married to a New Englander to appreciate the magnitude of this debate.

Yet another very good reason to blog anonymously or pseudonymically.

Again, I maintain my online persona not because I get a kick out of being coy, but because it reassures my family. I seriously doubt that I am at risk of my employer's discovery and wrath, but on the other hand, what are they gonna complain about? In the early days of PS, I did a certain amount of bitching about my job, but I would never be so stupid as to identify myself, my company or my co-workers by name. I work(ed) in the travel industry, and now I'm writing about adventures in suburbia. There's not a huge conflict of interest here.

Rall's theme is too creepy: getting hassled or canned for exercising your rights of free speech, free assembly and freedom of association outside the workplace? Where are these people, North Korea? Sheesh.

This week on Crap Science: Someone has to explain to me how they objectively quantified "ugly".

The ultrasound came out just fine. (Wow, there's something I haven't said in a while.) But seriously, everything is okay. So it's just one more day of antibiotics and we're back to business as usual.
We're starting Gigi on solid foods now, if you can call a thin porridge of mommy juice and rice cereal "solid". So far she's adapting quite well: she appears to be getting more into her mouth than on her face, and she thinks spoons are dandy little playthings. The adventure is just beginning.

Medical Updates: Gigi gets an ultrasound tomorrow, to ensure that there is no anatomical issue contributing to her urinary tract infection. She's on antibiotics for a few more days. Her daddy finished his antibiotics today, and we hope he won't need a refill. The cat is getting daily eyedrops for at least another week, after which she may or may not need to have something aspirated and drained.
As for me, I have one bottle of tonic water left and no limes. I'd better get a refill on those. Drinking straight gin would be just unseemly.

I'm doomed.

Okay, longtime PS readers know that I've said that before. But this time I mean it.

Gigi's starting to figure out that when she lies on her tummy and kicks her feet out, sometimes her feet get caught on the floor, and the kicking propels her forwardish.

She is still mastering the whole rollover process. If she really starts crawling this quickly, I'm toast. Does this mean I have to start vacuuming and stuff?