Social Cleaning

When J and I got married we were the only ones we knew in our circle of friends who were married. In fact, most of our friends didn't have long term relationships at all. And we spent a lot of time trying (largely unsuccessfully) to cultivate that holiest of grails. The couple friends.

It's a quirky bit of chemistry to find friends that the husband/boyfriend gets along with the other husband/boyfriend, and likewise for the ladies (I guess this is probably also true for same sex relationships) but also the four people enjoying everyone's company. Add in that my husband is the sort of person you really LOVE or just loathe and I am socially awkward and . . it has been a challenge.

We've tried though. Lord knows we try. We have one set that the girlfriend and I have literally not one thing in common and yet we soldier on, eight years into the relationship. It is just close enough. Even though after eight years I still don't know much about her and would never dream of going to movie or anything with her on my own. We can get through a night of cards and a few barbecues with each other.

Adding a baby into the mix makes this even harder because now it would be really great to have this other couple have kids and hey could one of them be a baby?

This is why, after MoMo was returned to us by the grandparents today, and after she went to bed we steam cleaned the fucking floors of this house. I am baking cookies. And making wings. And a variety of other things. Because one of J's friends and his wife are coming with their kids tomorrow and well. Maybe they are the ONES.

Normally J will claim I will just love whatever girlfriend/wife that he can dig up. Because all chicks enjoy each other. We just sit around and look at each other's vaginae and whooping it up. J has never been a thirteen year old girl, he thinks all women like each other.

I do like women though. It's just harder for me to find ones that I want to spend a lot of time with--female friendships are amazing but they require a lot of upkeep. You have to invest in female friends in a way that you don't with men. But this woman does sound nice and her youngest is about a year old--older than Mo but still a young baby. For this I will clean my house and try to not be a social moron. Try.

So wish me luck. I might be drinking all morning (while baking!) in preparation for trying to charm these people. All so J and I can have a couple to play poker with and eat cheesy appetizers with. I am a team player.

Five Blissful Weeks

There are things that I have been dreading, nay denying that they will ever happen despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. I go on and on pretending that everything will stay exactly as it is today and well that strategy has been working for me. Except for that messy bit about how shit but keeps happening anyway. That part is a kind of lame.

One of those things is crawling. OH YES MY BAYBEEE IS CRAWLING! Unacceptable is what that is. She just turned seven months old yesterday. IS SHE ALLOWED TO DO THIS? WHAT AUTHORITIES CAN I CALL?

Sorry for the shouty but this! Makes me shouty! And abuse punctuation! But my life is so very over. This house, while charming, is a total death-trap for a mobile but poor judgement showing thing. I means she already eats hairballs and keeps petting the cat (you know, the cat that wants to kill us all), I am pretty sure she will pull that damn bakers rack in the kitchen on top of herself any second now. It is fortunate that her crawling is more of a forward moving inch at this time but I am pretty sure she will be a pro in no time at all.

I had planned for her to be like me. I never crawled. True to lazy-ass form I held my arms up to be carried until one day I was like Fuck It and walked. Then learned to roller skate a week later. YES I WAS VERY LAZY.

But the damn kid has her own ideas and abilities and I vote hell no.

I was just thinking earlier this week about how much I was enjoying this stage. Where she can really play with toys and sit there on her own and man it is really handy for going to the bathroom. I mean, yes, she could roll but she really wasn't going to roll for distance. It was blissful really. I enjoyed that stage. All five weeks of it.

I Miss Him

I saw this old man eating his lunch today with shaky hands and I couldn't stop thinking about my grandpa. And though his hands would never shake while eating (because he is like the food equivalent to my best friend's grandfather who had Parkinson's disease and yet never spilled a drop of his martini) this old man just reminded me so much of him. The slightly stooped yet proud posture, the oddly formal clothing, the carefully combed hair. I just wanted to crawl in his lap and kiss the top of his head, breath that old man smell.



I had to remind myself that if I did that I would likely be arrested or . . .fondled. But it was touch and go there for a moment.



I miss my grandparents. Him more than her in a horrible way mainly because she really just likes to make us all feel horrible. Where he just enjoys us while he can. My grandmother is a wonderful woman and everything a grandma should be yet I am my grandpa's favorite. And every child should get to be some one's favorite. And he is the kindest, most gentle soul I have ever been lucky to meet.



The old man saw me watching him and asked me for directions to his bank. I walked him there, I didn't want him to get lost. I know that when I do that, when I care for some one else's grandpa, some one will take care of mine.

Maybe I Shouldn't Blog While On Cold Meds Either

I was sitting at lunch when this (I assume) homeless dude comes up and asks me for fifty cents for a McDonald's Hot Apple Pie. I immediately go for my purse because I do not wish to deny anyone their hot fast food pastries. In fact I gave him a dollar because man, you need two.

I cannot stop bitching about the trash can at work. I have a cold and according to the new eco-standards I should get up every time I use a tissue and walk to the trash can. This means I should work about fifteen minutes a day because I am not staying late because of a fucking trash can move. Instead I have a mountain of used tissues spreading germs forth into the workplace. We are saving the environment by infecting us all with the black plague and wiping out humanity! WINNER!

Not that there is anything delicious about a cold but I am quite enamored with the return of dangerous cold medications. During pregnancy they just toss you some vitamins and shake their heads at your selfishness if you so much as take a Tylenol but now I am allowed the entire aisle at Rite Aid. Sure I might die but the baybee will live so glug that Nyquil (except don't because I would totally sleep through her nightly howl for snacking). Still, it is a relief to be able to take something and not want to die. Of course trying to decide whether to stay home is now a calculus problem involving child care and is it more work to stay home and try to entertain the baby (or do I make my MIL come even though I am here and is it weird to displace them from their routine and GAH). Frankly it is a lot less stressful just to go to work and waste my time walking tissues to the trash can.

I Know, Technically I Do Not Have a Dick

Just so y'all know, not having a trash can is pissing me off even more in practice than it did in theory. It does not make me want to recycle. It makes me want to huck organic produce at some one.

I have a cold. The baby has a cold. We are snotty nosed messes. And I have to walk down the hall to throw out a damn tissue. Suck my dick recycling program!

Poor baby keeps waking up. J went and rocked her back to sleep. She is just a runny eyed snotface. Poor thing. Poor me because you know she will up ninety-eleven times tonight and I am already tired.

And I am still pissed about the trash can.

PKFA for Short

A really ridiculous thing happened at work today, one that I feel pretty comfortable talking about here because it really isn't about my office. It's about offices all around this country and all the stupid shit that happens in them that makes no sense at all.

They are taking away our trash cans.

I don't actually get this. Apparently this is to encourage recycling. And also exercise because you have to get up to throw things away? So when you have a cold that uses eighty-four thousand tissues a morning you can drag your ass to the trash center and burn 10,000 calories.

We have solved both global warming and the obesity epidemic.

I think this is why so much of the eco-movement just irritates the hell out of me. I do not mind doing small things that add up to big things. I don't even mind doing big things if they make sense. But I really mind that I am not allowed to have a goddamn trash can anymore to throw away my snotty tissues. And that I was barraged with emails after the announcement from people hitting reply to all friggin celebrating that we would all get exercise while we GO GREEN.

I love the sentiment of Go Green but I would like the phrase erased from the English language.

I suppose this all makes me a planet killing fat ass who doesn't want any exercise. I doubt that surprises anyone.

Do I Look Like Mike the Mover?

If you weren't following me on Twitter today, and you weren't since no one is, you missed that sometime around lunch a large box arrived in my office. It contained a chair.

This chair. In zebra print.

Which, oddly enough, I never ordered. It took some time for me to convince my officemates that I didn't order it, a vendor didn't send it to me (why would they do that), and NO J DIDN'T BUY ME A ZEBRA CHAIR.

It took me a really long time to track down who was supposed to get the chair (a woman from another part of the country, who's name in no way resembles mine and who I do not know) and convince the company that yes, it is a problem that I have this chair since I didn't pay for it and some one else did. Enough time that I am thinking I won't be doing business with Ballard Designs. Because bitches are crazy.

By the end of the day Zebra Chair was sort of a celebrity. People were coming to pose on it and remark on it's glamour. I think I will miss it when they send a man in brown shorts to come get it.

I am sure as hell not carrying it downstairs.

*COUGH*

In the past week or two the baby has taught herself this sort of fake cough--ahem HACK ahem--that she employs at every opportunity. Any time that things are not proceeding according to her little diabolical plan she gives a little Excuse me *HACK* and we are all supposed to fawn all over her. Except that it is the fakest cough sound ever, like she is a passive aggressive asshole trying to "politely" alert you to her presence. Usually girl dissolves into giggles shortly after--I mean she is six months old so her acting skills are keenly developed for her age but she is not Meryl Streep.

It's hysterical honestly. Except that when we are out and about and people are staring at us in horror because we are laughing at a choking baby.

So she will cough and then stop and check our faces for response. She will peak up over her lashes to see if we are watching. Laughter is the wrong response. Laughter will make her try again, like COUGH DID YOU HEAR ME? She will then howl a bit and be angry and well eventually will lose interest all OOOH SHINY. It's awesome and sad and we are so totally fucked when this kid is thirteen. That is a lot of time to perfect screwing with Mom and Dad. I am pretty sure she will get better at it.

*Side note, have totally signed up for Twitter. Have no followers. Please join up and I will follow you right back and we'll be BFF forever! Or something less stalkery!

Not At All

Yesterday was my thirtieth birthday. I spent it running DelSelva around the whole fucking earth trying to find him a Wii (VICTORIOUS I AM SHOPPING CHAMPION) and then we all went out to dinner at a dueling piano bar. I am glad that I secured the promise of DO NOT HUMILIATE ME before that dinner because those celebrating events got to do many classy things like grab their husbands' jock in front of a room full of people. Funny when other people do it maybe?

I am not sure exactly how I feel about thirty actually. I think it's an age that I remained convinced would only happen to other people and I would stay 29 for at least ten years. Not because thirty is old exactly, but because I am still young naturally. And I am still young. But I am old too. I am married, have a young daughter, work for The Man and pay an obscene amount of property taxes. I am not exactly partying heartily if you catch my drift.

I look at J and I think what the fuck because we were young once! We had flat(ter) stomachs and no grey hair (well I still do but . . .) and man we were adorable. Like little puppies. Now we are rumpled and tired and slightly more round. I guess it is still to accept that aging is universal and I cannot opt out. It is not at all like not buying an IPhone.

Woe and Despair

Most nights MoMo goes to bed easily. I take pride in this, not because I am doing something right, but in that I can usually spot it when things start to go very wrong. Because there is a brief window that she will go down easily and happily and if you miss it. Well hope you packed a bag with some ear plugs because it is going to a while.

Tonight we have an out of town guest and in between the long trafficky drive to get him, the excitement of lunging for pizza and her business in flirting with him well she crashed and she crashed hard. It doesn't help that she is working on yet another tooth and she got her six month shots yesterday. But she spiraled into an hour of screaming at me, a half of screaming at J and then reluctantly passing out while watching a Queen DVD with J.

I have to admit I worried that the newborn stage would be even more screamy than it has been and on nights like this I am so grateful that it hasn't been. Because I am weak and my nerves cannot take it. An hour of weeping, face melting wails of WOE AND DESPAIR and I need to recover from my vapors with ice cream and Olympic television. There are just moments when I want to reason with her, to just force that information in her brain--you are upset because you are tired so just go to fucking sleep kid.

I am sure our friend thinks I am a dream mother.

We Are Family

When we were still struggling with infertility I had a really difficult time articulating exactly why I wanted to have a baby. I have never craved babies the way that other women seemed to (though I cannot stop monching their cheeks now). What I wanted so badly, what cost us so much, was a family. I was lucky enough to grow up with a fantastic family and last week I got to just enjoy what I was looking for.

I know that my parents really enjoy my baby. I know that they truly love watching me mother my baby. And I love watching them with her. MoMo makes us a family in a way that we weren't before. I know that other people have great family relationships without children, and we did too, but for us this was what I wanted all that time.

We didn't really do anything so special. We lazed around, played with the baby, ate lots of chocolate chip cookies and bacon. We played cards and watched the non-stop coverage of the Brett Favre trade. I have been fortunate to have positive relationships with my parents as an adult (we all work at it but I think there is an element of luck too). They love my husband. We stayed up late and night and played cards (and yes, my mother drunkenly had issues removing her fleece jacket and flashed us all). We talked about babies and sports and what car we should buy this fall and everyone got some time to themselves and everyone cared for the baby and it was all so very healthy.

Everyone deserves that.

There is a lot about being a mother that has overwhelmed me. I tried to prepare for the big changes and I think I did as well as I could but . . .I just didn't know what it would be like for me. I am really struggling with balancing my life, figuring out how our marriage will work, getting used to the idea of even being some one's mother, struggling with my new body. It is a lot. I have never regretted having MoMo, though having a baby is so incredibly hard. But last week really embodied what I had been looking for.

And I felt so capable as a mother, I felt like a good wife, a valuable friend, a daughter my parents could be proud of. And I ate bacon! It was like the Thanksgiving dinner of vacations, short but satisfying and rich. Something to look forward to and to look back on with a sleepy and satisfied smile.

And did I mention the bacon?

Vacation

We are in the wilds of California this week. About fifteen miles from a forest fire with my parents in a "Presidential Suite." That phrase is very deceptive as it is really a laminate pine lined room with two attached bedrooms and a small bathroom. But still we are all napping a lot, playing with the baby and eating bacon at every meal.

Last night we stayed up playing cards with my parents. My mom slurped down the better part of a bottle of wine and well . . .she flashed us all. It wasn't intentional, she claims, and yet there it was. Or they were. She got stuck in her shirt? I was there and I still don't understand it.

I have done shit all week and thank god for that. I was so tired and dried and worn down deep in the bone. Believe it or not laying around and watching TV and walking around in the semi smokey river front is just what I needed.

Never under estimate the power of napping for a mom of an infant.