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It’s 8-1 at the top of the 9th. Unless the Mets pull 8 runs out of their collective asses in the bottom of the 9th, we’re done with baseball for the season because the Phillies are up 6-1.

Oh well - there is plenty of bad TV to keep us busy for the rest of the month.

The HELL? I have the Mets game on but muted. I look up to see it’s already SEVEN to NOTHING in the FIRST INNING?

What the hell is going on? Apparently the Mets do not WANT to go to the playoffs. There is no other explanation. I am shocked and dismayed. This is just stupid, man.

I broke the cardinal rule of being a Former Teenage Girl - I re-read one of my journals. I’m really thinking about burning it now, but I don’t have anyplace to do that.

Really, not having a place to burn my journal is a good thing. I might want to read it again.

Or not.

I’m sure everyone’s journals are embarrassing, but mine gave me actual heartburn. They’re really, really, REALLY bad. I hope Freddie never gets hold of them.

I tried to resist. I did. But I’m transferring stuff from older boxes to newer boxes and, in my New and Improved Recovering Packrat state, I’m trying to weed out some of the junk that I have been dragging around for the past 15 years.

The physical junk is easy to get rid of. The mental junk may take longer.

And I’m sure re-reading my 1992 journals is not going to help. Is it too early to start drinking?

Jillian is notoriously suspicious of new foods. Ever since we took her off of breastmilk and put her on formula, she has been extremely wary of anything new. I don’t blame her - have you ever tasted baby formula?

Today I gave her a piece of chocolate-chip cookie. After sniffing it (I’m certain she thinks she’s a dog), she put it in her mouth and looked at me with the biggest grin ever, as if to say “Forget life and good looks! This? THIS is the best thing you have ever given me.”

I have no idea how I’m going to top this.

I’m pretty sure France is the place I need to be. I could give a shit about French fashion, and the language makes little sense to me (I prefer German - it makes you sound pissed off no matter what you’re saying), but the food, MY GOD, the FOOD!

I haven’t yet been to France, but oh boy.

It’s no secret that when I am stressed, I turn to food. My stress cravings tend to be all dairy, all the time, and today what I really really really really really really really REALLY want is some Brie. Oh, what a bonus, I HAVE SOME.

But what to do with it? I’ve never been a big fan of pairing it with fruit, and crackers seem a little low-rent for something so full of decadent fatty goodness. So I’m thinking bread. Specifically, croissants. But then again, a croissant might not be sturdy enough for what I have in mind. I could get a wee sourdough boule, hollow it out, slap the Brie in there and bake it, but sourdough? Really? Hmmm.

I will have to hit up the Whole Foods or the closest French bakery and see what my options are.

This winter will be lots of fun as I get used to my new kitchen. It’s a slightly different layout than my current kitchen, but it seems like it’s a little more user-friendly. Everything in my current kitchen is pretty spaced out - you have to take a few steps from the fridge to the stove and when things are exploding, that’s a few too many. Plus, the new kitchen has ALL NEW STUFF (thanks to the recent remodel), and that is just going to be excellent.

In my next life, I might be a chef. I certainly don’t have the drive or the stamina for restaurant cooking, but I do like to make messes in my own kitchen, try new things, and introduce people to foods they might not otherwise eat. Like my Famous Peanut Sauce.

I used to hate cooking. In fact, I would purposely burn things and choose really odd recipes just so Freddie would tell me that I didn’t have to cook anymore. But as I’ve gotten older (and become a chef-stalker of sorts), I’ve found that my penchant for experimentation can work well for me if I choose my experiments wisely.

So watch this space. I’ll talk more about food and less about things that irk me. I’ll talk about food that irks me! Like sauerkraut! That shit is disgusting!

We’re going to have an interesting winter.

A week from tomorrow, we are moving. It will be Freddie’s and my 8th move in ten years. I am sick of moving, and once we get installed in our new shiny house (with a YARD!!), we plan to stay for a good long time.

We’ve been in this house for just over three years now, which is the longest we have stayed at any one address since we’ve been together. We have a pizza place. A backup pizza place. We have a Chinese place. A backup Chinese place. A place that delivers sushi. One of my favorite Thai places. A backup Thai place. A sub place. An ice cream place. Walgreen’s and the post office within walking distance.

And now we’re moving. To a new house. In a new town. We’ll have to start all over!

The good news is that the town to which we’re moving has an excellent Italian heritage, so the pizza should be good. There are two Italian bakeries in town, which means cannoli for everyone! The new house is also pretty close to my OTHER favorite Thai place which has the added bonus of being right next to the bookstore! Too bad I have to drive around the World’s Most Dangerous Traffic “Circle” to get there.

The new town has an actual downtown! I don’t know how close we’ll be in terms of walking there, but the library is right the main street, and there are sidewalks between there and home, so we’ll see.

I think this move will be good for us. We’ll be downsizing a bit, but that can only be a good thing, since as we’ve packed up this house, I have realized how much utterly useless CRAP we have. Between garage sales, Freecycle, and donations, we are getting rid of a lot of it.

To make room for NEW useless crap!

…kidding.

Jillian is almost walking. She can take a few steps here and there, but she’s not walking as her primary mode of transportation just yet.

And as if we needed even further proof that she is my child, she has discovered speed before skill. That was a hallmark of my childhood - from walking to roller skating to riding a bike. I have the scars to prove it.

Jillian holds on to one of the footstools and launches herself at the sofa. I’m thankful that the sofa is soft and fluffy, or she’d look like she’d been in Fight Club. It’s when she turns around and goes the other way that I start to have the mini-strokes. The footstools have pointy edges that are ineffectually covered by canvas.

Jillian lets go of the sofa and takes two or three drunken steps toward the footstool. About halfway there, her top half gets ahead of her bottom half and she usually lands on her target face-first. This might be God’s way of keeping her from being too beautiful (I believe this is the reason why I am 32 years old and I still get zits), but I’m going to frustrate His will on this if I have to duct-tape her to the floor.

Okay, I just checked and we don’t have any duct tape.

For as verbal as she is, she doesn’t really say any actual words yet. She does say “Uh oh,” both before and after she throws things, and she’ll say “Dada” to Freddie, but I? I am “Elmo.” She can also say “Nana,” but I’m not 100% sure if she says it because it sounds cool or if she really knows who Nana is.

We’ll find out next week when Nana comes to visit! YAAAY!

We’re making progress in other realms, too. Her eating habits are improving, even if she’s still the Gagging Drama Queen when it comes to actual pieces of food. She is a pro at feeding herself with a spoon, which is an okay trade-off in my book. In fact, she gets extremely pissed off if I take the spoon away from her. Finger foods are still slow going, though. She’ll eat Cheerios, string cheese, graham crackers, and tiny, tiny peanut-butter sandwiches. She hates jelly, which is WRONG and if she didn’t look exactly like me I might request a DNA test. Jillian is drinking roughly three cows’ worth of milk, which has caused some interesting situations to develop.

For the last week or so, I would go get Jillian out of her crib and she would be very smelly. Not poop-smelly, but a sickly-sweet smelly. I couldn’t figure out what it was and it was really only her head that smelled.

Then, I went in to get her up from a nap and figured it out. She sleeps on her stomach, arms and legs splayed out in all directions, and like her Daddy, she drools something fierce. At first, I thought it was a diaper leak, but those Target diapers are totally amazing and anyone who buys Pampers is wasting their money, for sure. Besides, the big puddle was in the corner, and she’d have to do some crazy gymnastics to get her butt over there. So it’s a drool puddle.

Milky drool. Which makes her smell like a homeless geriatric. It was really gross. I tried changing her sheet, but that didn’t fix it, so I had to pull the sheet, mattress pad, and crib bumper off and wash them all.

[Side note - Elmo is on TV right now singing the ABC song and Jillian is clapping her hands like she’s in church. What is it about this fluorescent red rodent that kids love?]

So things are going quite well with this kid. Sometimes I worry, because - DUH. That’s what I do. But it appears as if I am growing a happy, healthy kid! She’s just a little bit nuts.

VH1 Classic still occasionally shows videos (kids, you’ll have to Google that to find out what a video is, now that they’re all endangered and stuff), so I’m watching it today since there aren’t any crappy movies to watch instead.

I have already cracked myself up laughing at a White Lion video, was horrified because I nearly mistook the beginning of Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky” video for a Night Ranger vid, and now I’m mourning the long, shaggy hair of one Michael Stipe from the “Pop Song 89″ video. Sigh.

I know. He’s gay. But the HAIR.

You know what? I think I’m going to turn the TV off. I usually do have it off during the day because Jillian is fascinated by it and gets really close up to it. I’m sure it’s burning her retinas and further damaging her chances of ever getting into Harvard (between that and all the head-first landings, she’ll be lucky if she can get into AKRON. My GOD).

The other night, Freddie and I were watching TV in bed and somehow the subject of body odor came up. He looked at me and said, “you never have B.O.”

I said, “Really? Even when I don’t shower for four days? Or when I only put deodorant on one armpit because I forget to do the other one?”

“Nope.”

We are moving in about 12 days.

We have way way way way too much crap.

I love Freecycle, which is assisting me in getting rid of said crap.

I am tired.

I always feel like I have nothing to wear, but I have A LOT of clothes. Most of them are pre-pregnancy clothes, and they do not fit me at present. They should, and will, but at present I am under a lot of stress and the primary way I deal with stress is by eating.

I’m not out of control or anything, but getting into my smaller-than-right-now clothing is still a few months off. I’m all right with that, because MY GOD, at least I finally recognize that the stress and the eating go hand-in-hand.

Or hand-in-mouth, as the case may be.

Fall is slowly approaching. While I do not welcome the shorter days, it means Sam Adams Oktoberfest beer is back, and that can only be a good thing. I cannot wait to get into my shiny shiny shiny new kitchen and cook.

Freddie took all of the art off the walls in the living room. Oddly, the room looks a lot smaller without it. I thought it would look bigger, now that there are huge, uninterrupted expanses of wall, but no. Hm.

We own three saxophones. When Jillian is big enough, we’ll be a trio.

I am hungry, but am reluctant to buy a whole bunch of food that I will have to deal with while trying to get things packed up. I did a merciless fridge-cleaning today - to the point where I even pulled out the shelves and stuff.

This is a hallmark of my PMS, which, coupled with yesterday’s all-day fast, is not making me be very pleasant today. The cleaning helps, though.

All in all, it looks like we’ll be out of this house in record time. Considering we’ll be paying the movers by the hour, this is a great, great thing. I’m looking forward to actually unpacking all the boxes. All of them. Even the ones that were packed in 1996 and haven’t been unpacked since.

Woo.