Garage Sales

My husband and I recently had a baby girl, and let me say, clothing these little monkeys is a ridiculous venture. You pay $10 for what can’t be more than a yard of fabric which they will outgrow in a month or so anyway. Honestly, though, a month is about the longest these clothes would make it because the instant you put a clean outfit on your child, he/she will vomit/poop/pee on it. You can tell a baby's age by how much stuff their parents will allow to be on their clothes before changing them. Generally it goes from a small amount of spit up to a onsie so crusty it maintains the babies shape after you take it off.
So the best solution I have found to the huge cash sink that is infant clothing is attending garage sales. In the interest of public service and contributing to the blog, I want to share the many awesome things I have learned about garage sales.

1. The best prices can be found in lower middle class and upper class neighborhoods. Lower middle class members realize the value of dollar, and let's be honest, they probably bought the clothes at a garage sale too. The upper middle class was probably going to throw the stuff out anyway, so why charge more than a dollar for anything? The middle middle class is under the delusion that because they value their stuff, so do other people. But truthfully, no one cares that your little girl ate her first carrots in that chair, I am still not going to pay $50 for it.

2. Bring quarters. There will be adorable little children at most garage sales selling lemonade. And you may not care about supporting their first venture into a capitalist society, or hell, lemonade may give you a severe case of GERD, but I promise you, a cute little girl in pigtails + minute maid = you giving up those quarters.

3. Sometimes Googlemaps likes to mess with you. Bring a backup map just in case someone out there in internet land thought it would be funny to send you into the shady east side of Toledo near dusk.

4. Estate sales sound like the weirdest thing on earth, but actually it is an opportunity to spy on people in their (once) natural habitat. The only other way you will get to know people this well is by risking a breaking and entering charge.

--By Sarah, who is contemplating not letting her daughter watch Disney movies.

The Most Romantic Day of My Life

I have to say one of my biggest regrets in life is how my husband proposed to me. Or rather, how I proposed to my husband.

All of it is a bit hazy, because at the time Adam was working for Anheuser Busch and through some miracle his free beer card had stayed active for the six months between his two internships leaving our dining room literally wallpapered with cases of beer. So I was enjoying one of America’s finest domestic beers and surfing the internet, looking for something to waste my waitressing money on. Somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to look at wedding dresses, but I wasn’t engaged to Adam yet and we all know looking at wedding dresses before you have any prospects is a little crazy. Or at least it’s crazy if the person you may have a prospect with is in the room. So rather than saying “Screw society, if I want to look at pretty white dresses, it’s my god damn right as an American with a fast internet connection,” I decided it was time to get engaged.

“So Adam,” I slurred, “we are gonna get married, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So we are engaged?”

“Well…”

“Can I call my mom?!?”

“No!”

“But we are gonna get married right? So we are engaged. I want to call my mom.”

“Don’t call your mom.”

“Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaase can I call my mom? I want to call her!!!”

I imagine by this point my voice had gotten very loud and shrill. Anyone who has had the unfortunate task of sitting next to me in group discussions knows that when I get excited about something I lose all control of the volume of my voice. So by now, I must have been yelling about calling my mother to tell her we were engaged. And as with anything I really want, Adam caved.

“Fine, call your mom!”

And that is how I became engaged. Later on after we were married, Adam told me he had wanted to ask my dad’s permission for my hand and had begun planning exactly how he was going to propose and all this other romantic stuff. Instead I am left with a cautionary tale about the dangers of beer, internet shopping, and long term relationships.

--By Sarah, who thinks awesome, creative engagement stories are way overrated, right?

Ah yes, I am an ass

So I guess Mariam and Farrah stepping down from the blog means its time for other people to step up (I looking at you Abby). Luckily for the blog world, I embarrass myself in front of large groups of people on a very regular basis. Unluckily, I am a terrible writer and storyteller, so bear with me.

For some time now, my husband Adam and I have been talking about having a baby, weighing the financial burden (that’s right, babies are burdens, anyone who disagrees should watch the show Jon and Kate Plus 8) and the actual logistics of having something you can’t leave in a cage when you want to leave the house. Finally, we decided now would be a good time to try: Adam is making enough money and I am able to delay the horrors of the third year of medical school for a year while I participate in a pathology fellowship. I decided that if I became pregnant, I wouldn’t tell anyone other than Adam for the first trimester since the risk of miscarriage is very high. I did however decide to share with my friends that I was trying to have a baby, mostly because if I tried to keep it secret my head would explode. However I tried not to tell too many people, as I am pretty sure most people really don’t care about my reproductive status. And yet, somehow, at a school function I managed to tell 20 strangers (and Sapna) that I might be pregnant.

I signed up to be a peer mentor group facilitator at school and had to attend an orientation dinner where, in the grand tradition of leadership training, we played an icebreaker game. I had been popping in and out of the dinner all night because my lunch and I were not agreeing with each other about my having left home so when I walked back into the dinner for the third time everyone had formed into groups. I hastily returned to my seat and joined whatever group was located there. Upon sitting down, I was handed an index card and told to write something unique about myself, but to not put my name on the card. I figured at this point we would turn the cards in and they would be read aloud amazing everyone that someone so unique was in the crowd. So I turned to Liberty who was sitting next to me and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote that I might be pregnant? I mean, how ridiculous would that be?” She uncomfortably agreed it would be pretty funny (I should have taken the hint).

This is where the night took a turn for me. The rest of the game was then explained: we were to pass in our cards and they would be redistributed to be read aloud. Then the reader would guess who had written the card, and afterwards the person who actually did write the card would identify themselves as the writer. At this point my stomach dropped and I turned to Liberty in a panic, “Oh my god, what should I do!? I don’t want all these people knowing I might be pregnant!” Liberty shrugged sympathetically but as they already had passed the cards back out, there was really nothing I could do.

So my card was read around and every looked around in befuddlement. I could see in their expression they were thinking who would share pregnancy news at a peer mentor facilitator group meeting? I debated just staying silent and not admitting to my possible oven bun. Luckily I didn’t have to decide because Simas, the current pathology fellow whom I had informed a month earlier my husband and I were trying to have a baby so I could get an idea of my schedule for next year, was in our group. Immediately after my card was read he turned and pointed right at me. I turned red and tried to explain I had no idea that we would be reading the cards aloud or I would have said something like banal like “I have three dogs!” Instead I spent the rest of the dinner flushed with the realization that by tomorrow everyone in the school would have heard the story about this weird girl telling everyone she might be pregnant during an icebreaker at a school dinner! I guess one good thing will come out of this embarrassing experience. If later the hormone surges of pregnancy make me bite someone’s head off (I am looking at you Simas), they will have received advanced warning that I am both unhinged and possibly pregnant.

Ok, so I know I have more ridiculous stories like this (hopefully they aren’t so long). So if you enjoyed this one, and can remember me telling you any embarrassing story about myself let me know and I will write it up. If you didn’t enjoy it, you should probably be studying for boards anyways.

--By Sarah, who wishes her hair was as big as all the secrets she was filled with

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So I realized something truly awful today. Aimlessly trolling around the internet is not that fun if you don't have any studying that you are supposed to be doing. I have no idea what I'm gonna do for the rest of the summer.

FARRAH AND SARAH’S GUIDE TO “McGiver”-ing Rx

Do you have conjunctivitis? No time to go to the doctor? You have three options:

1) Find some antibiotics. Crush them up. Pour them into visine. Shake it up! Drop into eyes.

2) Don’t have any antibiotics? Find some Neosporin. Squeeze into Visine. Mix into a slurry! Smear over eye.

3) No Neosporin? Let a dog lick your eyes because their saliva has anti-biotics. Make sure the dog wasn’t just licking his own ass – that would be bad medicine.