And it was terrible – we’re talking tiny open sores on her little booty. Ouchie!!!

I called the nurse at our pediatrician’s office, and she said it sounded like a yeast rash, and to go get some Lotrimin.
I didn’t know this, but Lotrimin is for jock itch. Poor little bebe is already getting embarrassing sports injuries.

A few days of Lotrimin didn’t help, so I decided to try the cloth diaper route. A few times hearing your sweet infant cry in pain because of an ow-ie booty will make you decide you’ll do anything to help her.

Two days and about $100 later, I became the proud owner of about 1 day’s supplies of cloth diapers. That crap’s expensive! (ha. no pun intended.)

Roughly 1 day's cloth dipe supplies

We’re using them pretty much only during the day, and not when we know we’ll be gone for a long time.
(Who am I kidding, I never leave for a long time. I’m too pooped!).

(ha again. pun intended.)

The rash wasn’t getting better, so we ended up seeing her doctor, who upon seeing her little tuchas confirmed the diagnosis.
And I quote “Ooooh! Ouchie ouchie ouchie!!”

Upon his recomendations, I’m now giving her twice/thrice (ha! Thrice!) daily baking soda sitz baths, plus using the cloth diaper “systems”, plus Lotrimin, plus 1/4″ of Vaseline at every diaper change. It’s quite a load of work.
Plus – while holding her during her very fussy “mommy my booty hurts” times, she peed on me as if there were no diaper even on her. I guess not only does everything need to be centered on her bottom just right, but she has to be at the correct angle when peeing or it can all just fall out the side. Hence my (not-my-own) pee covered pants.

Yesterday she seemed to really be hurting, so after a sitz bath, we put down a giant puppy pad and just let her be free and naked.

Naked baby!

We’d do that more often, but she pretty much constantly is leaking something, so it’s not practical with beige carpet.

Happy to report that today her Ouchie was slightly smaller. Progress.

Baby got back

Kate for the Win!

So now I get to officially research and explore social media and web stuff in general as PART of my job, not just as an ancilary “hobby” that I’m trying to prove worthwhile.

I’ve often found myself trying to locate tangible evidence that Social Media is a must for any business, but stats are hard to come by. How do you measure something so nebulous as “Brand Engagement” when you’re not Nike or McDonalds? No Budget = No Tangible Evidence your company is benefitting.

It’s totally a “gut-check” when it comes to “is this working or not?”

So with that in mind – here’s at least one article I’ve found that includes examples. Hallelujah!

Check It:
<a href=”http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/why-you-have-to-engage-in-social-media-even-if-you-dont-want.html

So let’s pretend for a minute that we had a tad bit more say in our lives, and that the things that are fun actually pay the bills too. Like – A friend said if she could get paid to, she’d shop for a living. I think she might mean that she’d shop for herself, but I do believe you can be paid to shop. You just can’t keep any of it.

Really, you can find a job doing just about anything you love to do for fun. The problem is that you probably can’t pay the bills on that sort of thing. At least I can’t – I’d like to sleep in and eat desserts and drink wine and wear fabulous clothes and get my hair and nails ‘did’ and be generally fabulous. But since I’m not a celebrity, it’s fairly unlikely that will be my job any time soon, and I don’t see my husband offering to sponsor that “job” for me. (I know, he’s totally selfish!)

I actually really like my job as an Associate Brand Manager. I work with smart, cool people, in a beautiful building in a business I actually believe in. But if I didn’t have to get paid or have health insurance because it was all irrelevant, there’s lots of fun things I could think of.

1. Watch a certain ex-supermodel’s talk show and love to hate how she makes EVERYTHING about ‘her’. (“Oh, you’re blind? That’s so saaaad. You know when I found out I had to wear glasses in second grade for reading I was soo bummed and I just don’t think I ever really got over that tragedy and now people can tell I’m a much stronger person for it, so I’m really proud I survived that hardship…”)

2. Puppy snuggler

3. Cookie Dough taster

4. Professional Massage-y (as in – it’s my job to get a massage)

5. People watcher

6. Critic. (Just in general. I already do this, so I know I’m a natural)

7. Happy-Dance demonstrator

So let me know – what would YOU do if money wasn’t an issue?

So the newest “trend” right now is to be a “recessionista”.

It’s debatable who originally coined the phrase, but whether you like it or not, it’s pretty true.  McDonalds and WalMart stock is up, and it’s not because they’re doing something exciting and new.  Truth is, people are still going to go out to eat and buy stuff, they’re just trying to do it a little more frugally.

So if you used to eat at Morton’s, maybe now you eat at Outback Steak House.  (Although Outback is still a tad pricey, if you ask me, but I wasn’t eating at Morton’s in the first place…).    If you used to eat at Friday’s, maybe now it’s McDonalds (Dollar menu – Hollah!).

Or maybe you, like so many people, are “nesting”.    You know, sticking close to home, breaking out the pots and pans you got for your wedding but haven’t actually cooked with yet.

So working at Pampered Chef has allowed me some certain exposure to some pretty great stuff that’s great for “chef-ing” at home.  Let me tell you three beautiful words… Deep Covered Baker.

I wouldn’t write about it if it weren’t true.  I just got one and the first thing I made in it is BBQ pork ribs IN THE MICROWAVE in about 1/2 an hour.  They were AMAZING.

So if you get a chance, consider picking one up – I’m not sure how the kitchen magicians made this thing so amazing, but they did.  It’s about $69 or so, unless you have a Pampered Chef show, then you can get it much cheaper (that’s what I did).
In case you’re wondering – here’s the whole recipe, I winged it based on some stuff I learned at work.

Take some pork ribs.  Cut off the silver skin (if you don’t know what that is, look up this video on how to use a boning knife. They show you how

Rub in some seasoning. Maybe some BBQ seasoning, maybe some salt and pepper. I used Jamaican Jerk seasoning because that’s what I had in my cabinet.

Cut the ribs apart from each other (don’t bother trying to take them off the bone).

Pile them in the Deep Covered Baker, put the lid on, stick them in the microwave for about 30 minutes.   Take them out and slather on some BBQ sauce.  If  you bought a big rack of ribs and you want to be really sure they’re done, stick them in for another 10 minutes or so.

Delish!

So here’s the conundrum.

You have a job, but with your job comes stress.

Research shows working out is a great stress reliever.

So you think – Hey! I’m stressed! I will work out.

Then you try to work out, but find you don’t have time.

Which stresses you out.

A selection of Haiku’s for your Wednesday pleasure

Working is stressful

Schedule stress relief for health

One more appointment

Going to the gym

Self-righteous calorie burn

Smug sweaty girl leaves

Diets do not work

Big calorie deficits

Equal angry girl

I have a hobby

It takes my money and time

Husband can’t complain

Baked Chicken for one

Husband eats boxed dinner

Wife cleans dish alone

Fluffy snuggle head

Puppy warms entire home

Barky dancy boy

Hug me.

Blogging is not a hobby.

Neither is reading, if you ask my husband.

He’s decided that I need a hobby of my own, and a “hobby” means something scheduled.  There is no “pick up and go” with a hobby, oh no. It must be planned in advance and on a calendar.  And according to him, I need to get planning.

To be fair, he only has my best interests at heart.  He’s knee deep in training for his bout at the Maccabi games in July, and he wants to make sure I’m not lonely while he’s training twice a day. 

I bristled when he ganged up on me with a friend to suggest I needed to get a hobby now, while the getting’ was good.  Because after we have babies, it will be harder to have my own time to do things for fun on a regular basis.  They said I should go to the local college and find a class in which I’m interested.

Well I tried that, and I didn’t find a class I’m excited about.  Something about “adult education” seemed sort of lonely to me. I’m not judging, just projecting.

So I looked elsewhere, and guess what I found?

Flirtease.

It’s more expensive than the local college, but a heck of a lot more fun than painting by numbers, too.  And hey, my husband can’t complain I’m not learning anything useful.

 Sign me up!

You know, it’s where you tell yourself something over and over to hopefully make yourself believe it.  It’s one of those self-fulfilling prophecies that only really works if you already believe it really works.

So lately I’m listening to a positive affirmation CD.  I pretty much only listen to a few sections, because even though I believe it does a tiny bit of good – even I can’t stomach a full hour of it on my evening commute.

The section I listen to most consistently involves work.

Specifically, it involves being positive about things so that they can thrive. The theory being that a “plant can grow in well nourished soil, but does not grow so well in dry, barren soil”.  In other words – think happy thoughts and more happy things will happen.

You know, the Power of Attraction and all that.

My favorite thing they tell you to do is to “bless everything in your office with love. Bless the chairs, bless the plants, bless the staircase…”     right. You get the point.  Cheesy? Of course.  But can it hurt?  Not as long as nobody else hears you saying it loud.

In the case of people that love their job but want more money (who’s with me?) this is especially important. You must “bless your income so it can grow”.

Absolutely.  This seems like a very reasonable task, and I’m happy to do it.

Let the records show that  I bless the HECK out of my salary.  I WORSHIP my income.  I think my paycheck is the best thing that has ever happened to anyone, ever.  (bless bless bless, grow grow grow…)

If blessing my desk and cubicle walls will help (and they say it will)- I’m blessing those too.

Feel free to shoot me some blessings of your own, if you wish.  Just like you can usually find a Starbucks where Panera Bread hangs out, I have to think Karma probably hangs out with Affirmational thinking. 

You like good Karma, don’t you?

Oh sure, I’ve gone clubbing in the past – and for a few years I could drink myself to the point that I believed I was a good dancer.  But that was a time way back when I was in my early 20′s and club beats warranted a certain kind of flailing and spinning that could be passed off as “sexy” – or at least “interesting”.  Not that I was, just that I thought I was.

In fact, here’s a direct quote from my friend:

… You start out kind of mellow but the intensity slowly increases until you hit that “dancing peak” which I can only describe as some kind of rhythmicly synchronized grand mal contortion”

Anyway, times have changed, and I don’t go out much anymore.  And my dancing has largely been reduced to various iterations of my “happy dance” (it involves doing ridiculous flailing and spinning.  This time I know I look ridiculous.  That’s part of the fun).

My friend decided we should go dancing downtown Chicago for her birthday.  A terrific idea!  Except she hadn’t seen my dancing handiwork.

And when I heard that it was a ”no jeans allowed” club, well, that just made my situation worse.  The last time I wore non-jeans was when I was doing the “sexy” flail and spin.  Those non-jeans are also known as bar-pants or party-pants - typically black, stretchy pants that looked a lot better on my 21-year-old butt than they do on my now 30-year-old-butt.

I do love me some mojitos.

So we went to the club and let me tell you, that place is awesome for ego-boosts. Never in my life have I actually had a line of guys waiting to ask me to dance.  But there they were. 

As luck (or mercy) would have it, the first guy to ask me to dance was actually a latin dance instructor (could he see that clearly that I was going to need assistance?)…

This is one of our gals, demonstrating how we danced with all the fun guys

From there on out my friends and I had full dance cards and by the end of the night, our feet blistered, swollen and stomped on, we were happy and exhausted. 

In the end, I even a little bit believed what many accented men told me that night … “you a good dancer!”)

Kasia is the belle of the ball!