If there's one thing I have learned this week, it is this: being a full-time stay-at-home mom would mean the end of my savings account. For reals, people. Because when you run out of things to do, when you've played your sixteenth game of "I'm Coming To Getcha" and you've taken the dog for 35 walks and you've stuck the baby in her exersaucer so you could watch The Sarah Silverman Show and everything in your house is coated in such a thick layer of drool-slime that you slide off of everything that you touch, what else is there to do but shop?On Tuesday it rained, but I was three steps from the crazy so we went outside anyway. Shopping damage for the day was pretty benign, just some groceries and baby applesauce. And after making our purchases, we walked around the neighborhood park in the drizzle and touched trees. The baby kept extending her arms towards them, what was I supposed to do? You would think I was actually feeding bark to her, from the looks we got. She was WEARING A JACKET, park-patrol bitches, and I WASHED HER HANDS afterwards. Unless you've got some medical reason, all you anti-germ folks need to Dial It Down.Yesterday we went to Scary Baby Superstore for some more lightweight sleep sacks. Two men who clearly didn't know me or anything I stand for asked me for my opinion on whether or not the crib sheets they had selected (in Pink Shade A) matched the crib bumpers they picked out (in Pink Shade A.5). I pretended to be horrified by the color clash, then felt bad about it afterward. Then I bought two sleep sacks in the wrong size because I am no longer capable of paying attention while executing tasks, along with a rain jacket for the baby. Why does a baby need a rain jacket? I don't know. But now we have one.Today my mom comes to take care of the baby while I work all weekend to make up for the hours I missed this week. Can you all understand when I say that I loved every exhausting, infuriating, hilarious moment I spent with Cletus the Former Fetus these past seven days, but that I am so insanely happy to get back to the status quo? Seriously -- stay-at-home parents deserve some kind of governmental stipend or something, and subsidized health care, and a company car. I guarantee you that if more dudes started doing it, we'd get all that plus a big awards ceremony at the end of each calendar year.
Nothing much to report. This hot, sunny weather is global warming's gift to us all, and we repay her by renting "An Inconvenient Truth" from Blockbuster like the ungrateful little bitches we are. I for one am enjoying an extra burst of fresh air through the gaping hole in my kitchen ceiling, left by the maintenance guys who came by this morning to "repair" the leak-- except that after they had ripped the thing open they determined that it was Still Too Wet and that they would have to come back later in the week, when it will ostensibly be more dry, to install dry wall. So, you know, I live in a crack house.We also had no hot water from Saturday night through this afternoon. We had to kick it Little House style, heating water on the stove for the baby's bath and bottles. I am an unshowered dirty wretch. Which is not new, and between you and me, it's kind of nice to have an outside party to blame it on now.Day Four of my stay-at-home adventure finds me full of good cheer -- probably because it's really only Day Three. Yesterday the husband stayed home and we went to brunch, traveled to Scary Baby SuperStore to purchase a new stroller (one that is NOT a car-sized monstrosity like the one Consumer Reports physically forced us to buy upon Cletus' birth), and supped on butternut squash lasagna, which was full of the yum. The husband also watched the baby while I went to see a matinee of "Reign Over Me", which was awful to "Gah!!" proportions but I didn't care because I was at the movies with a giant Diet Coke in my hand.Today, when the baby wasn't in her crib refusing to nap the two of tootled all over town with the help of Cletus' new stroller, a small foldy-uppy number in an alarmingly bright shade of blue, which was chosen solely because they were out of red. We went through the park, into and out of the book store, back past the house, over to the hardware store for a new smoke detector, into the mom n' pop market for some frozen pizzas, across the street for an ice cream, and back home again. What a difference a post-colic baby and a lightweight stroller can make!Oh yeah, and we played with some toys:
I promise that this blog will not be All Baby All The Time forever; it's just kind of where I'm at these days. Unless you want to talk about that new show where Tori Spelling opens up a B&B because, come on, you know I tivoed it.
Daycare is closed for a week and a half, as our provider is vacationing in Mexico. This is what happens when you use home-based daycare. The person who watches your child dares to think she's allowed a life beyond the wonders of your child's diaper rash. So Cletus and I are kicking it on the homefront 1950s style.This job is way harder than the one I get paid to do. Also, it involves more regurgitated soy formula (but not MUCH more). Yesterday was Day One, and here's the problem I'm having: time management. Like, for instance, the mothers' group to which I belong had a get-together scheduled at the local library for 10:00 yesterday morning, and I wanted to go. But Cletus did not agree; Cletus resisted all of my fumbling efforts at initiating naptime by rolling around and smiling at me, as if to say "Oh mom. That's so cute." When she did finally settle down for some shut-eye, it was - you guessed it - 9:55 AM. After our belated naptime was over, I bundled the baby into the Bjorn, leashed the pug, and got myself all jazzed up about some neighborhood walking. Except that as soon as the baby was strapped in, with my jacket zipped halfway up around her for warmth, she suddenly felt overly burdened by the contents of her stomach and decided to release them all over her bondage. Not yet too phased, I used the bathroom mirror as a guide to help me sponge the both of us clean without unbundling, then got back to the business of proceeding toward the out-of-doors. Which involved stepping out my front door right smack into the thunderstorm I had somehow failed to notice until that exact wet moment.I realize that this sounds patently unremarkable to those of you who do this sort of thing every day. But dude: I cleaned up the spit-up, and then it was raining outside. Such a Herculean feat, getting through that front door, and all for naught. I went back inside and ate half a box of Girl Scout cookies.Today is Day Two, because although it is Saturday my husband is working and therefore it totally counts. So far we've enjoyed a few tasty bottles; did a bit of fussing; and played rounds of Kick The Legs, Mom Props Up The Baby And Pretends That She Knows How To Sit, Call And Response Squealing, Guess Whether That Noise Was A Fart Or A Poo, and Mom's Lap Is The Only Conceivable Place In This Apartment Where I Could Possibly Rest:
Tomorrow, we conquer third-wave feminist theory and the politics of lesbian separatism.
Someone straight up took a dump on my back steps. Then they picked up some of the poo and smeared it onto my basement door and across the sidewalk behind my house. Along with the poo, they left behind a poo-smeared t-shirt and an empty beer bottle. Happy Sunday.And since we're on the topic of poo, let's talk about The Gap. Specifically, about my trip to Gap Kids last week to buy some shoes and a hat for Cletus the Former Fetus. See, I'm a big loser and as such I have let the judgmental glares of ignorant strangers guilt me into outfitting a non-walker with footwear. I know; I'm embarrassed. But anyway, here we are. So last Tuesday, a day that was filled with freakish sunshine and 70 degree weather, I put Cletus in a matchy-matchy ensemble, strapped her into the stroller that doesn't quite fit her, and boldly took off down the street towards the Gap.Gap Kids was full of branded merchandise, hats and shirts and dresses with "GAP" stamped all over them like obnoxious tattoos. We looked around for awhile, Cletus drooled, I found some space-age silver slippers on a sale rack for $4.99. I took the shoes up to the counter to pay for them and Cletus chose that moment to start crying. Now this crying was just your run-of-the-mill fuss-making, nothing really -- not one one-hundredth of what this kid can do when she sets her mind to it. So I wasn't too concerned, just busied myself with digging through the diaper bag for the credit card I had hastily thrown inside just before leaving the house. Which apparently prompted the check-out clerk, a middle-aged woman with braids and Lisa-Rinna-lined lips, to lean down toward Cletus and unleash this steaming pile of bleh:"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sweetheart, what's wroooooooooong? Oh, I know what the matter is, honey. I knoooooow what the matter is. You just want someone to TALK to you! Your mommy's not TALKING to you enough, is she honey? Ohhhhhhhh, sweetheart. That's ok. If your mommy doesn't want to talk to you, I'LL talk to you."I kid you not. The woman actually leaned down and said this to my child. I was so taken aback, so incredulous that this was actually happening to me, that my parenting skills were being critiqued at the fucking Gap -- BY the fucking Gap, while I was signing the credit card receipt for the purchases I just made at the fucking Gap -- that I was rendered fully incapable of adequate retort. Of course, after I left the store? I was all about the retort. I had the retort coming out of my ears. I went home and ate a retort sandwich with a side of sass-back. I put Cletus down for a "nap" (15 minutes sleeping, 20+ minutes chewing on her own feet while fussing and babbling) and rattled off an email to the Gap's customer service center. I never heard back, but this week I think I'm starting my phone campaign of terror.Because seriously? Profoundly not ok. I'm pretty sure there had better be some kind of formalized training session for all employees of stores that serve children and their caregivers, entitled "How About Not Opening Judging Our Customers As If We Have Any Idea About Who They Are?" Mothers, especially new ones, have enough to worry about without low-rise-pants pushers trying to tell us how to raise the children we squeezed out of our hoo-has. If it had been Janeane Garofalo and Winona Ryder back in 1994, offering me unsolicited parenting advice and selling me denim while some Squeeze or Juliana Hatfield played in the background I might, MIGHT, have been less offended, but even then? I still might've placed a call to Gap Corporate. Now I'm all fired up again! Maybe I should take a tip from the gentle stranger who brightened my back steps last night? Smear some poo on the Gap?
Cletus the Former Fetus has her first real cold. She sneezed and snorfled her way through most of last week, then woke up Friday morning with a fever, stuck to her crib mattress with the powerful adhesive that was her own green snot. I took her to the doctor just to make sure it wasn't anything more than a virus. And by "took her to the doctor," of course, I mean: tried repeatedly to call the doctor but couldn't get through, as the doctor's office had their phones forwarded to their answering service for NINETY MINUTES after they were supposed to be open for the day, so I left message after message, and in the meantime I called Blue Cross Blue Shield to try and get switched to a new doctor, but they said I had to do that through my "medical group", so I called said medical group and they told me that there was only one possible pediatrics office that we could switch to at this time, and I said whatever, fine, give me their number, and they did, and so I called this new pediatrician's office, where I was promptly put on hold for thirty minutes just to speak with an operator, and so I finally just hung up and called our original doctor back and demanded that the answering service connect me with the office, which they finally did, and the office's one triage nurse got on the line and was all sweet as pie "how can i heeeeeelp you?" and I was all "by answering the damn phone when sick people call you" and she was all "so sorry, how about 3:00?" And then at 3:00 I waited an hour in the waiting room with a sticky crying baby and guess what? Cletus has a cold.We're getting new insurance next month and then we're flying the coop.On Saturday we took Mistress Green Snot to a party for the husband's lab, thus spreading the germs she already had and exposing her to new ones, cause that's just the kind of parents we are. The party was a 2-hour Lake Michigan cruise on one of those big cheesy boats, the ones with song-and-dance numbers and an Emcee in a rented tux. We ate a buffet lunch, which was this odd combo of, like, fried chicken, stir fry, some kind of stuffed fish, and lasagna. Has anyone else in the midwest noticed that all catered lunches here feature lasagna? What is that about? Who eats lasagna for lunch? Back in New England, you'd usually see sandwiches, wraps, maybe Thai food if your workplace was really ambitious. Here? Lasagna, every single time.Anyway, we ate lunch, and the "soloists" (as the Emcee referred to them) began their gentle performances while I was heaping my plate with iceberg lettuce up at the buffet. I don't remember what the first song was exactly, but I do remember that the rest of my family was still seated back at our table, and I also remember turning around to my husband's boss - a scientist of considerable esteem - and saying to her "I am SO bummed that I can't see my husband's face right now." And then I was filled with instant regret, like, what if his boss really loved cheesy soloists, and what if I totally offended her and would incur her wrath as a result? But she laughed, so all was well. And then? After the soloists? There was Pure Awesome delivered in the form of a medley featuring dancing, costumes, and two clearly gay men running around in motorcycle helmets while their corresponding ladies "vroom-vroom"d all over "Leader of the Pack."At one point during lunch there was one of those "But seriously, folks, try the fish" moments where the Emcee stood in the middle of the dance floor and started calling people out. As in: "Here with us on this fine Chicago afternoon we have the travelling show choir from Bumble Creek High School in Bumble Creek, Wisconsin! How are you folks enjoying the windy city?" And five tables full of high school students would stand up and wave their arms around and go "Wooooooo!" And then the Emcee would move on to somebody's birthday party or an older couple celebrating an anniversary with family. Eventually, he got around to "And I see here that we also have the, uh... [insert the name of the university where my husband works] with us today. Do we have the whole university on board?"Awkward titters and a few feeble mini-woos from our 4-odd tables of mixed-age somewhat socially-awkward scientist types and their families ensued. The Emcee waited for a minute, then was all "No, seriously, what do you guys do?" And we all looked at each other, like, how do we say this, and then I think somebody kind of half-shouted out "We're biologists!" or something like that, and then there was more silence. Finally the Emcee was like, "Ok, that's GREAT! Thanks for COMING!" and moved right the hell along, and let me tell you, from the perspective of someone who was in the group but not of the group: it was hilarious.Cletus did a pretty good job on the cruise -- she spent the first hour or so looking around while furiously chomping on whatever plastic toy I put in her mouth, then moved on to a period of crying I like to think was inspired by her inborn aversion to bad Stevie Wonder covers, then finally passed out in my arms from overstimulation. In other news, the child has finally started to swallow a few bites of solid food, after about a month of my fruitlessly spooning sweet potatoes into her mouth only to have her swirl them around into a yam/spit cocktail before tonguing the whole mess back out, resulting in the following hot mess:
I realize that every parent has this exact same photo of their child, but clearly? Mine's the cutest. Or at least the orangest.
Apparently if you blog about Oprah, people will leave comments. And somehow? That just makes me hate her more.It is really, really hard to find time to write on this thing. I don't know how all you prolific blogging mamas (and non-mamas too -- I promise I didn't leave you behind with my flat stomach and my sex drive) do it. It's all I can do to find the time to watch 3 hours of American Idol per week. That, my friends, is a commitment I will never break. (By the way, you know on this evening's episode, when Seacrest started going off about his big "announcement" and about "giving back" and whipped out the video footage of himself and Simon Cowell frolicking with poor children? And how he said that the American public was going to have the chance to call in and "make a difference"? Who else thought, for just a second, that they were going to flash a 1-866 number and ask us to vote for our favorite starving nation? ADMIT IT!! My husband was all "Don't vote for Africa! They aaaaalways win!" We eat puppies too; don't email me.)Today I cried at work, which is, like, my least favorite thing in the world to do. Crying at work is the worst. First there's the fact that work is not at all private, so unless you're some fancy-ass with your own office you have to find a way to secret yourself away to a restroom or dark corner where no one will see you get your baby on. Then, if you are a sobber and a gasper like me, you have to reign in the crying so that you do not become loud and alert the entire staff to yourself in the act of getting your baby on. And THEN you have to attempt to wash your face enough to hide the red-eye and pink cheeks, whisper some Stuart Smalley propaganda to your reflection, and try to slip back into the flow unnoticed.This morning I mentioned to a couple of colleagues that Cletus the Former Fetus sees a family doctor rather than a pediatrician, and that I'm wondering whether it might be a good idea to switch her to a caregiver who's more focused on babies and children. I'm dragging my feet about making this decision because our family doctor, while admittedly more laid-back about Cletus' care than I would prefer, practices out of an office that is located exactly one block from our house. ONE BLOCK. So whatever, I'm describing this quandry to my colleagues and I say something about our current doc being "just so convenient", and this one woman, a librarian with three grown children of her own, looks up from her work and practically shouts "Being a mother is not about what's CONVENIENT for YOU!!"I was all "ok, whoa, apply brakes, end advice-seeking, insert earbuds, zone out bitches", mumbled something incoherent and went back to staring at my computer screen. But I could feel the tears starting to come, and I blinked and blinked and squinted and tried to look like I was concentrating so very very hard on my email until finally I realized it was do or die and I purposefully rose from my chair and made like I was going for coffee. Except that I totally ducked into the bathroom and cried instead. I mean, what a jerky thing to say, right? I've been a mother for a whole five months, and I spend just about every minute thinking about what I'm doing for the baby and what I'm not doing for the baby and what I could be doing better for the baby and trying to figure out how to work and be married and have friends and take showers AND raise a child, and I dare to express a wish that this one stupid thing in my life might be kept relatively simple and convenient and suddenly: I totally suck. I was so caught off-guard and hurt and upset, even more upset at myself for being so upset to begin with, annoyed at how easily I could be affected by something so small. I sat in the bathroom and cried into some toilet paper for a minute, then said "fuck" a few times for good measure until I felt better. Then I went back to my desk and listened to the Talking Heads and Catie Curtis on my Ipod for the rest of the day, speaking to no one.I feel like I've got pregnancy hormones all over again.Also, one of my few good friends in Chicago is considering a possible move to Rochester. As you can imagine, this is an unacceptable state of affairs. Said friend reads this blog. Feel free to leave comments expounding on all the qualities that make Rochester a veritable hell on earth. I already told her "I hear there's famine in Rochester." She wasn't swayed. You guys go.
Have we talked about how much I can't stand Oprah? Don't take me off your blogroll; hear me out. The woman is OBSESSED with herself, and she's everywhere. Women flock to her like she's a prophet. Her damn seal of approval is mucking up the cover of all my paperback books. (What? So I like Joyce Carol Oates.) Her "favorite things" all cost a cool billion. She wore a red dress to her own black-and-white ball. And yes, I know, she opened that school for girls in South Africa, which is great and charitable and whatever, but then she had to go and blah all over the radio about how she had never given birth but that's ok because she now she feels like she birthed the female population of Johannesburg. And. AND!! It's not like James Frey beat up her grandmother or anything, you know?And then? Then she had to go and slobber all over The Secret. Are you a librarian who orders nonfiction materials? What a coincidence! So am I! You must understand my pain. Are you one of the 35 (not kidding) people currently on the wait list at my library for the one and only copy I ordered back months ago when I read a review and thought, "Hmm. A book that tells people they can get anything they want just by thinking about it? What the hell -- I'll buy one for the kooks."? You, my friends, you are the cause of my pain. You are the reason I have had to order 14 more copies of a book that allegedly proposes "not looking at fat people" as a weight loss strategy. You, and Oprah.Honestly, the world would be a much better place if women could just get over their Oprah worship and move on to more sophisticated pleasures. You know, like me with American Idol, and Top Model, and 5 tivo'd episodes of The View per week. It's got a lesbian co-host, people. That gives it street cred.And while we're ranting... do any other moms out there watch "Lost"? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? About the one-month-old baby who weighs 25 pounds even though it never eats (because there is no WAY that woman is breastfeeding with those perky little things), the same one-month-old who never fusses and somehow laughs and holds its head upright and sleeps peacefully through all major plot points? And who next week will probably be kicking a soccer ball around and speaking French or something? Meh.All of the DVDs I had on hold at work came in at once this week, and they make for the most depressing film festival of all time. I have already gotten through Jesus Camp and Half Nelson. This weekend I'm watching The Departed, Flags of Our Fathers, and United 93. Anyone want to come over for a par-tay?I just had way too much cheese and Diet Coke for dinner. And I'm out.
