Milking it

Did anyone else watch “Desperate Housewives,” last night? The show is a complete soap festival, and I love every minute of it.
One of my favorite story lines from last night was the woman who was breastfeeding her five year old son. She spouted all kinds of arguments in favor of this decision, it’s good nutrition, women in third world countries nurse their children until they are six years old, she wanted the child to make the decision.
But when it came right down to it, she had a hidden agenda. As long as the child was nursing she was expending extra calories on milk production and didn’t have to hit the gym.
Ah, if only it had worked that way for me. I gained a minimum amount of weight when I was pregnant. I only gained 11 pounds with A, and 10 of it was during the last week when I was retaining water because of my toxemia.
But after giving birth I sat around stuffing my face with both hands and rested on the excuse. “I’m breastfeeding.”
My sister taught me this little trick. See, if you are breastfeeding you can get out of all kinds of chores.
“Honey, can you just start dinner, A’s hungry and I need to nurse him.”
“O, I’d love to help with the school program, but A’s nursing and he won’t take a bottle, so I can’t really leave him with a babysitter.”
“Teaching in Primary? It sounds like a great job, but you know I’m still nursing …..”
You will notice in my sister's reply to my reply to my blog yesterday that she’s onto me milking the dentist visit for extra naps.
“You know the dentist said I should take it easy for a day or two …”
I was raised by the champion long suffering heavy sigh, queen of emotional blackmail. But DH mother was no slouch in that department, either.
So milking it around him usually results in a stalemate.
My boss, however, apparently was raised by an emotionally generous woman. He volunteered to let me “take it easy” this week.
This should make me happy. Instead I’m wondering “is he trying to let me down easy.”
“Is he happy I’m not working this week?”
“Will I have a job when I get back?”
Hummmm, maybe my boss is better than he appears. Maybe he’s milking it, too.

POD ~ I woke up to snow again Sunday morning. It was beautiful, so I was out with my camera at 7:30 a.m. shooting the trees. It was gone by this afternoon, but weather reports tell us there is another storm on the way. On Saturday I had the children out climbing around on rocks by the lake, by 10 that evening snow was falling. Enough of the lamb and the lion weather already, let's bring on some April.