Fighting the Frump: Coffee Shop Edition

Today, I get to go out and have coffee with a friend, sans children. After working crazy hours to get a project done last week, Carl's been able to be home all this week, so when my friend sent me a note on FB and said, hey, want to get together on Thursday, and oh, should we go out or stay in, I said GO OUT.

And then I immediately started thinking about what to wear.

Any winter outfit for me automatically starts with my boots, and I can't find any pictures that show them. I have two pair of tall boots, one black (that are awesome), and one brown (that are not quite awesome, but still pretty terrific. When I want to look good, and more important, feel like I look good, I wear the boots.

So if I'm going to wear boots, I am going to wear skinny jeans, so I can pull the boots over them and show them off better. And if I'm going to wear skinny jeans, I better wear something on top that comes down to or past my hips. Because hips, I haz them, and while they were very useful when it came time to give birth, they don't always look the loveliest in skinny jeans.

Which leads me to ...

The long open cardigan. My new BFF, next to my boots.

photo courtesy of banana republic

I have two LOCs, one in white and one in purple. I want one in black or grey, one in brown, and one in either red or yellow or orange - something bright and unexpected that I could wear with my neutral-colored t-shirts and not blend into the background (something I do all too well on my own, without my clothes helping).

I love that I can throw these on over any ordinary outfit and - voila! warmth and style. Or I can wear them with a dressy outfit to add a touch of flair. My mom's a big fan of boyfriend cardigans (and she looks good in them), but I like the flowiness of the LOC.

They are multi-seasonal, too - wear them over long sleeves, and they are great in fall and winter, over short sleeves and they are perfect for spring or even cool summer days.

In short, they are awesome.

So, the coffee shop outfit today? Brown boots, skinny jeans, teal shirt, white LOC, and my own weird eclectic mix of jewelry - brown tigers eye earrings my sister made, gold dove necklace I've had since I was about twelve, the ubiquitous copper cuff, and copper twisted bangle that I made back when my sister was first starting out in the silversmithing (and other metals) business and I thought it might be fun to try my hand at a piece of jewelry, too. The soldering job is terrible, but it's still a fun statement item.

Oh, and I even straightened my hair. It looks nice, but it's tickling my neck more than ever and reminding me rather urgently that I am far overdue for having it all chopped off.

photo courtesy of my husband. I was supposed to be smiling - not sure why it looks more like a sneer.

What's your go-to item(s) in your wardrobe that help you make any outfit a good one?

A run of luck

This has just been an exhausting week. It seems like every water-bearing appliance in my house is conspiring against me; the condo board raised their monthly fee by $50; Lulu had a cold, which she kindly passed to me. And then my managers at work asked me today, very nicely, if I would consider working my full 20 hours next week to make deadline, despite the fact that I haven't taken one lick of PTO all year and was really looking forward to it, despite the fact that from Tuesday through Saturday, I am going to be visiting family 200 miles away from my computer.

This afternoon, I pattered around the house in desultory kind of way, folding random sweaters and seeking pairs for tiny, solitary baby socks, blinking past the aura of an impending migraine. Feeling sorry for myself. Allowing a few tears to squeeze past my eyelids and drop down onto my shirtfront.

And then I found it, at the back of a desk drawer: a Christmas present from last year that I had forgotten about, a voucher from J.D. to a local spa. I had planned to use it for some pre-baby beautifying, but then I was put on bed rest and then Lulu was born, and then in the hassle of NICU and swaddlers and leaking boobs, I forgot.

I turned it over in my hands, which were suddenly shaking with hope. Please don't be expired. Please don't be expired.

It hadn't expired. I picked up the phone then and there and called to book myself a massage, a facial, a haircut and manicure. We have a lot of packing to do, a long car ride ahead of us next week, all the tantrums and nursing strikes that go along with being in a strange place, far away from home ahead of us yet...but the week after next, I have some SERIOUS pampering to look forward to.

And there was suddenly a spring in my step that hadn't been there before.

Then my mother called. J.D. and I are driving down in a few days, but she can't wait to see Lu, and wants to drive up this weekend. If I have anything to do this weekend, she'll be willing to watch the baby and give me a few hours for myself.

Suddenly, I see a way out from underneath my mounting workload. Feeling greedy, I asked my mom if she'd be willing to babysit tomorrow night so that I can go to see J.D.'s band play a show downtown.

"Are you serious?" she said. "I'd love to."

The migraine began to lift.

And now I'm cuddled up on the couch with a steaming bowl of pho to help my stuffy nose, and some illegal episodes of Downton Abbey sent to me by a friend queued up on the TiVo.

There's a saying in these here parts: if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.

There's a saying rattling around in my head after my run of luck: if you don't like your mood, wait half a day.


Because everything just might turn out all right.

But I Get Up Again

I love this series of photos. Not just because it shows my daughter loving something I also love (I dreamed of going to the Olympics for figure skating when I was a girl, but alas - I had no talent and no money) (ok, to be just, I am a decent ice dancer, but I didn't discover that until I was sixteen, too old to try to pursue it seriously), and doing it better than I could dream, but because it shows her persistence. Fall down, try to get up, stagger, keep trying, and then - Up on her feet and ready to go again!

She is determined, my Joy. She doesn't quit. Sometimes, like when she is doing something she oughtn't, this frustrates me, but most of the time, I am thankful for it. I am too prone to give up on things after a while - I get bored, or discouraged (usually discouraged) at lack of progress, or I look around at other people and see how much better they are doing at something, so why should I even try?

Not Joy. She keeps her eyes on the goal, and sticks with it.

And she looks stinkin' cute while doing so.

(Note for anyone concerned - when Joy starts taking skating lessons, i.e. skating on the ice without me or her aunt close nearby to keep an eye on her, she will wear a helmet. Her brains are too precious to me to risk! For right now, though, it's still safe. Especially since the very first thing I taught her after she learned how to move forward on the ice was how to fall safely. So please don't send CPS after me.)

Little Wonders: New Skates

First time on ice skates.

Two and a half years old.

Took to the ice like a natural.
Love it.

Snow day

When it comes to snow, J.D. and I are just big kids. We work from home--and still, we pray for snow days. Snow means Christmas, our birthdays, warm stews bubbling away on the stovetop, sledding, cookies, hot chocolate, and that holy, quiet hush that comes over the world and reminds you what it must have been like in ancient times.

Last winter, we didn't get much snow, but what little snow we got, I missed because of bed rest. The night Lulu was born last March, it snowed, and when we woke up the next morning, there was a dusting on the grass that made my heart glad.

But I missed real snow--a good, thick, soft blanket of it. So when I heard we might get an early storm this weekend, I was beside myself. At noon it started to come down, thickly. But it didn't stick. It didn't cover the grass.

And I was disappointed.

J.D. said, "Let's go find some snow." And so we bundled Lu up in her bear suit and drove west out 66, away from DC, through Fairfax and Loudon and Fauquier counties, toward the mountains.

And we found our snow.






It was everything we wanted it to be. The clean smell in the air, the white blanket covering, the quiet hush.

Now we're back home, waiting for cookies to come out of the oven.



And it's still coming down.

Little wonder: Baby's first library books

Lulu and I visit the library every week for story hour. We love flipping through the stacks of childrens' books while we're there, and today we decided to take some of our (read: my) favorites home to stay with us for a while. It was a sacrosanct moment for me, book lover I am. One day I won't remember what time Lu was born or what she got for her first Christmas, but I know I'll always remember her first library books. Blueberries for Sal, because blueberries are the favorite food right now. The Big Snow, in honor of the flurries we'll have here in D.C. tonight. And Eloise because she just rules.

Tonight we'll snuggle up and read each one of them.

Both sides now

I've always been the kind of person who functions best when there is some kind of reward at the end of things to spur me on. Throughout my adult life, I've always tried hard to find little ways to reward myself for doing things that needed to be done. I went to work today; ergo, I totally deserve this $89 pair of shoes!

Yesterday I cleaned my entire house, did three loads of laundry, pureed, steamed, and froze a huge batch of dollar-apiece locally grown organic carrots, stripped and washed and dried and stuffed cloth diapers, fed the baby carefully mashed worth-their-weight-in-gold farmer's market blueberries, cleaned blueberries off baby and floor, wrote six thank-you notes, did the grocery shop, and edited a 15-page article on glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite.

"Good job, self," I thought, tuckered out at the end of the day. "You have accomplished a lot in a little amount of time. I am so proud of you. As a special treat to honor all you've done, I will carve out a half-hour this evening so that you can PLUCK YOUR EYEBROWS."

Motherhood brings with it all sorts of adjusted expectations. This is one of them. There's less time, less opportunity to treat myself. But it's important to try to fit these things in. And so I look forward to Tuesday because it's the day the Savage Love podcast comes out, and I allow myself an hour in the middle of the day to clean the kitchen and listen to other people talk about their sex lives in amusing detail. Every Friday night, the call goes up around the house: We're changing the sheets! It's New Sheet Day! The promise of slipping into bed between those fresh, smooth sheets is almost too much excitement to bear. A Starbucks latte, once a many-times-a-day, taken-for-granted necessity, becomes a special, once-a-week treat, a genuine outing, a reason for putting on makeup, blowdrying my hair.

Trip to H&M = all expenses paid weekend in Paris

I think my pre-baby self would have thought this was a sad way to live. Post-baby me feels sorry for her. There's so much she didn't see, so many tiny joys she missed.

I know one day the harried baby stage will end and I'll have more time for myself.

I hope I remember to be grateful for it.

Perfect

Over the weekend, Louise posted about the times when you should put the camera down, sit back and just enjoy. But at other times, it is important to pick the camera up, and snap away.

~

I have the reputation for being a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to photography. "No, no," the instructor of my Tuesday night Intro to Photography class is prone to saying. "It's really good, especially for a beginner." I hear it a lot, in all walks of my life: "You need to cut yourself slack." But I hardly ever do, especially when it comes to photography. One unfortunate shadow, the blur of an eyelid, a chopped-off hand? Delete, delete, delete.

So how is it, then, that some of the pictures I love best are some of the most imperfect?

This is our first photo with Lulu. There wasn't time to take a proper one before she was whisked down to the NICU. So we posed--my parents, my mother-in-law, my husband and me--with a cell phone photo of Lu that J.D. snapped as the nurses were wheeling her away.


It wasn't the kind of newborn photo I'd hoped to get, the kind you see over at Kelle Hampton's blog, of a soft-lighted mother and baby looking joyfully at each other in their first wondrous moments together. But still: I love it.

~

This is our first family photo, just the three of us. Taken in the NICU the next morning, the first time we were able to hold our girl. A kind nurse asked, "Would you like a family picture?" and we said, "Guh," which in stunned new-parent speak can mean "No problem" or "Is it serious?" or "We are over the moon with happiness." In this case, it meant yes, thank you. She translated, and whipped out a non-digital, 35-mm point and shoot. She printed out our picture on a printer in the corner of the nurses's station, handed to us as we left, the ink still wet, along with a lot of pamphlets on PPD and proper handwashing procedures.


The pixels are as big and square as my hand. You can't actually see the features on Lulu's face very well. There's just a baby-head-shaped red splotch that denotes her presence. But still: I love it.

~

We meant to take a picture to replace that one shortly after Lulu came home. We figured out the tripod and the self-timer on the camera. But lugging all of this stuff out, setting it up, finding a time when all of us had hair brushed and matching clothes on and no drool or pee or vomit on any part of our person was a little hard. I know that family pictures are important, and sometimes difficult, to get. So whenever I see a family with a new baby all out together, I will go right up to them and ask them, "Do you want me to take a picture of you all together?" I will pose them, snap a few shots, get their email addresses and send them copies.

But somehow, I couldn't get it together to do this for myself.

Until this weekend. We were at a pumpkin patch with friends, we were walking to the car, we passed a platform of pumpkins and I said, "Stop!" I moved things around, adjusted the exposure, handed the SLR to my friend who has never SLR-ed before. She waited for us to get in position and snapped the shot.

When I got home and opened the file in Photoshop, I saw that for all my careful adjustment, it was kind of a funky picture. The spot I'd picked was backlit by the setting sun; I had to play around a lot with levels and fill light so that we didn't look like zombies. The sky is weirdly exposed in a nuclear-fallout kind of way, and I have a strange Joan-of-Arc thing going on with my hair. It's not a perfect picture by any means.



But it is still perfect because it's us, all of us, together. And so I love it.

Autumn Leaves

On Friday, we drove through the Adirondacks on our way to visit my folks for the weekend. It was glorious, especially in the southern part where everything was either at or just barely past peak. I wanted to stop EVERYWHERE to take pictures.

But we waited until we got to Lake Placid (which is one of my favorite places in the whole world and almost as much of a home to me as where I grew up, because of all the time I spent there in my college years, working almost every single weekend of the fall and winter at various sporting events) and could get some lunch as well as pictures.

Except then my camera quit working on me. And it was raining, so I couldn't take the time to mess with it without it and us getting soaked. So we grabbed lunch and drove the rest of the way up to my parents'. No pictures at all.

(We fixed the camera once we got up here, by the way. The lens had some dust in it.)

I was a little disappointed at first, but then I got thinking about the nature of beauty. Isn't, maybe, half of what makes some things beautiful, their transient nature? If the trees were always this dizzying array of golden, orange, and red, would we notice them as much, or would we take them for granted after a while?

Maybe, by not being able to capture the whiteness of a mountain cascade spreading like a veil across the dark rocks, the reflection of red and yellow in a lake at the bottom of a mountain, the colors spreading across the horizon as far as the eye could see, maybe by only having to fix them in my memory instead of relying on the camera to record them for me ...

Maybe I appreciated them more.

And maybe, if I think of these days with small children as beautiful in their passing, if I look at potty training, and self-control teaching, and mealtime struggles, and never ever getting enough sleep, as memories getting locked away in my heart instead of tasks sucking up my life ...

Maybe I'll appreciate them more, too.

Not to say I won't still get frustrated and tired and occasionally longing for the days when they are older. But if I think of these days as fleeting as the autumn leaves, it might make it easier for me to delight in them.

Mommy meangirl

I have to preface the entry by saying that I live in the snootiest county in the snootiest area probably in the world. There's this messageboard, for moms in my metro area? And it is filled with some of the meanest parents I have ever had the misfortune to run across online. People who won't hesitate to tell you that they think you are a bad parent, that you are fat and poor, that your kids are ugly. There are SO many mean moms on there. But luckily I have never encountered any of them in real life. All of the moms I have met in real life, at parks and library story hours, have been nothing but totally awesome and nice.

Until today. Today I am pretty sure I was mommy meangirled.

It happened like this: Lulu and I got up early. It was raining, so our usual jaunt to the park was out. So we decided to go to a playgroup meetup at a local community center. We've been a few times before, she loves it, I have a great time talking to nice people. Today I sat down in my usual spot, started chatting to the other parents. There was a dad to the left of me, a mom to the right with her twins. We listened to stories, we sang songs. Then we put the babies on the floor and let them loose on a bunch of small plush balls.

Just about this time, a new mom walks over, plops herself down with her kid, and confiscates the balls nearer to us. She turns to the mom with twins. "Would you like to play?" The mom with twins says yes, and so the new mom rolls a ball to her. Then she leans ALL THE HELL WAY over me and says to the dad, "Would you like to play with us?" The dad says yes. She says nothing to me. She rolls the ball over my legs to the dad. Lulu is sitting there clapping her hands, watching. The mom collects the balls, rolls them out again. But not to us.

WTF, right? I just kind of sat there, waiting for her to ask us if we would like to play, too, but she didn't. Soon it became apparent that she didn't plan to, and I really didn't know how to respond. I suppose I could have asked, "Hey, can we join in?" but neither of the other parents had had to ask, and something in me balked at having to be all, please, sir, I want some more to this woman who had so obviously snubbed us. Across the room were some moms I knew, nice moms, moms who had always included us in previous playgroup activities, and I wanted so badly to get up and walk away from the mean mom but my foot had fallen asleep, which prevented a quick getaway.

So I just sat there, feeling like a fool. Thinking of other times in my life I had felt this way. In sixth grade, when I learned everybody in the class except for me and a few others had been invited to Allison Dupre's birthday at a really cool waterpark near the beach. I had always been really cool to Allison, practicing spelling with her in the carpool line before a big test, lending her Sweet Valley books. We were in Scouts together. She had come to my birthday. When I confronted her, crying, asking her why I wasn't invited, she said, "I just didn't feel like inviting you, Cathy."

While I waited for the feeling to come back in my foot, I went over a mental checklist, trying to work out if there was anything about the way I looked, right then, that would make it appropriate--even wise--to exclude me from the playtime fun. I was wearing jeans and a black tee, ballet flats, an anthropologie sweater. My hair was brushed. My teeth were brushed. While I was not wearing makeup, I had at least showered and put on earrings. They were $4 earrings from Forever 21, covered in tacky rhinestones, but I did not think that qualified me as crazy woman from whom you must protect your children. Maybe she didn't like the cut of my jib? Maybe she thought the others would be more complacent minions?

And the worst part was, this woman's kid? Was older than Lulu, about a year old. And could tell that Lulu wanted to play. So every time she got the ball, she rolled it to my daughter. And then the mean mom would reach over, take it back, and roll it to one of her BALL PLAY APPROVED friends. It made me sad, to see her kid so open, so inclusive, because I know when that baby grows up, she is going to be a meangirl just like her mother. Because you learn what you see, right?

The hour came to a close, the other parents got up and drifted away, and finally, the mean mom turned to me and tried to make small talk since she had nobody else to talk to. I guess I was better than nobody at all. I usually try to cut people some slack in situations like this, but today I wasn't in the mood. I just kept thinking of how my kid's eyes followed the ball she (or I?) obviously wasn't good enough to play with. And plus she was being so suddenly nice and it freaked me out. The feeling had come back to my foot so I stood up and collected our things. The mean mom said, "Are you going to come back next week?" And I said, "Maybe."

Here is what I would have liked to say, though.

"Listen, lady, probably not--unless you're not here. Because seriously, you have just made me feel about three inches tall and I don't like the fact that you found it so easy to be rude and excluding to a little baby. Maybe you don't like my diaper bag or some shit, but that's no excuse for excluding my kid. She doesn't realize now but one day she will and she'll be hurt, and I actually think people who can be hurtful in this way are psychopaths that are a worse of a threat to society than someone like Dexter, who dismembers and kills people on the reg. You've now thrown me into a quiet panic about how I will handle this mean girl shit in my daughter's preteen years, how I will make her feel better when girls like your own kid are mean to her because they can be, since I don't seem to be doing such a good job with it myself right now. Nothing would make me happier than if you relocated to Timbuktu. I wish you hemorrhoids. Good day."

I got home and dug through the toy box and found a few balls of our own. I spent a little while rolling them to Lu, praising her when she bopped them back in my direction, talking about how good it felt to share when I rolled them back. I might not be able to protect my daughter from all the meangirls in the world, but I swear by the three faces of Jove, she will never be one herself. Not while I have breath in my body.

Nostalgia

We took advantage of the gorgeous weather last weekend to visit one of our favorite state parks and did a bit of exploring/rambling/hiking/picnicking.

When we moved from our previous house to this one a few months ago, I kept waiting for my moment of nostalgia, the welling up of all the good memories we'd had in that place, momentarily overshadowing all the very very bad things that caused us to move in the first place.

It never came.

I had it here, at the park, though.

Carl's been doing phone interviews for a new job, new city, new state (more about that if it comes through - I'm not terribly superstitious, but I still don't like talking about things when they are nebulous possibilities instead of "Hey! We're moving in two weeks!"), which means that we are looking very seriously at everything we do here being the "last time."

The last time for apple picking at our favorite orchard. The last time seeing the gloriousness of an Upstate NY autumn. The last time visiting each of our favorite parks. Our last time at this park, this park we visited when Gracie was a week old and we had to get out of the house, the park that gave my children a place to run and play when we didn't have a yard, the park where we were able to look from the mountaintop and see the beauty of this strange new city when it was all new to us.

And then I had that nostalgic twinge. I forced myself to walk slowly, to breathe deeply, to soak in the moment instead of regretting how quickly it would pass. And as the littles ran and tumbled and laughed and played, as Carl chased them all over in crazy circles, I smiled and let the memories sink down into my heart.

We may never visit this park again, but we will always have each other, and new memories will build on top of the old ones.

No Good Very Bad Day

We had a great holiday weekend. Like, birthday party, going to a play, cheering daddy in his first race, barbecuing with friends, drive in the country great. We really did. I have pictures to prove it.

We played with friends...

We enjoyed the beautiful fall weather...

We drove through a spicy apple orchard with the windows down...

And paid an impromptu visit to the Great Pumpkin.

It was so wonderful; it was the kind of weekend that reminds you why you do the during-the-week stuff, to pay for tickets and presents and beer and celebratory banners and all those things. This weekend had, in the words of the old Mickey D's jingle, food, folks, and fun. It was the kind of weekend that restoreth the soul.

~

Then yesterday happened.

I woke up to a grey-faced J.D. standing over me. "I think I have food poisoning." And I was all YEAH NO SHIT. There was literally not one shred of color in his face. He betook himself to the couch. I folded laundry and cleaned up the stuff that had piled up during the weekend (one of the only downsides to having a lot of fun days all in a row) and dealt with a blowout diaper courtesy of Lulu Belle, champion pooper. Some of it had gotten on her white onesie, so I plopped it in the sink with a scoop of Oxyclean, turned the hot water on, and then the doorbell rang and I went and signed for the package and then Lu was crying and I had to pick her up...

...and then about 15 minutes later, I heard the cat meowing from the middle of a spreading puddle of water on the bathroom floor.

O HAI PILE OF CLEAN, JUST-FOLDED TOWELS. BACK TO THE LAUNDRY WITH YOU.

We have a beautiful sink in our bathroom that is shaped like a very shallow fluted bowl. When purchasing it, I thought about how clean and elegant and architectural it would look. I did not consider how, if (when) it ever overflowed, water would sloosh over the rim and behind the vanity.

Which meant disconnecting pipes

To move the vanity and mop up the water behind it

Since I didn't caulk the area behind the sink when J.D. and I laid our new bathroom floor, and was worried about water getting underneath the linoleum and bubbling up

Which apparently seems to have happened anyway.

I'd just put the towels BACK in the laundry when Lulu started howling with hunger. She was being kind of fussy and tetchy about breastfeeding, so I pumped enough for a bottle and then passed it over to J.D. He fed her for a while, her eyes closed, blessedly...

And then she started to shake. Her upper body, but mostly just her head. It bobbed back and forth in a weird way for about five or six or maybe even as long as seven seconds. J.D. threw the bottle aside and started tapping her face, and it seemed to take a long time for her to open her eyes, and for a moment I thought she wouldn't, but then she did. And J.D. and I looked at each other and he said, "Did she just have a SEIZURE?"

I had been grasping for, but not reaching that word, and as soon as he said it, I snapped into emergency mode, which does not involve calling 911 or assessing for damage, but ripping the baby out of his arms, going to huddle up in a corner of the couch, and covering both of our heads with an afghan. From under the afghan, I debated with J.D. whether we should drive to the emergency room or call an ambulance or do nothing.

We settled for the middle ground. We called the pediatrician. She wanted us to bring the baby in right away.

So J.D. took my precious child to the doctor's, and instead of working I curled into a fetal position on the couch and chewed my nails and then got up and rummaged around in my desk drawer in case there was a cigarette forgotten in there, which is another thing I always do in emergencies. I kept checking the time on the phone like why are they gone so long, what is happening? Why isn't my husband calling me? And then after a million years, J.D. came home with Lulu cooing in her carseat and he had stopped by the store, so obviously she wasn't dying or anything. But I was still all MAH BABY WHAT DID THE DOCTOR SAY? And J.D. was like, "Oh, you know, she said it happens."

Wait, what?

"She said their neurological systems are still developing and kind of glitchy and sometimes they just weird out for a second."

And...is it going to happen again?

"Maybe. But it's not a big deal. Hey, I got cookie dough at the store."

So. Babies can just have seizure-y type things for no reason at all? And that's normal? I really feel like this could have been covered in one of the FIVE HUNDRED baby books I read before Lulu was born. There were dozens of pages on what kind of crib mattress to pick, what kind of rattles are most entertaining for each developmental stage, but nothing about weird shaking episodes caused by neurological system glitches. Not ONE WORD.

It kind of seems like the thing you would want to mention.

And it really makes me wonder what other critically important and scary things I don't know about babies. What else did the books leave out? Does their skin turn different colors? Do they occasionally shoot laser beams from their fingertips?

Lulu finished her bottle from earlier and went happily to sleep but of course I was afraid to leave her in case the shaking thing happened again. By the time I realized it wouldn't, it was late. And so I ended up starting my workday at 11:46 PM. And of COURSE the cat had barfed on the floor of the office, in retaliation for me marooning him in the bathroom hours earlier.

So I went and ate some cookie dough. THE END.

Scatterbrained

When it comes to being organized at home, I am all over it, having lived in tiny spaces my entire adult life. But when I leave the house, my organizational skills disappear, and I often find that I've forgotten my keys or wallet. So I end up having to pay for my latte with change grubbed from the cupholders in my car, or cajoling librarians to let me check out books with an expired college ID I found buried in the glove compartment.

The same goes for my phone. I have some kind of mental block against taking my phone with me when I go out. I think something in me balks at the idea of being SO ALWAYS accessible to people. Sometimes I just want to be left alone, disconnected. And so most of the time, this tactic works, but then there are the other times when I need to call someone when I'm out, and so have to embark on a great search for the world's last payphone, or else be that weird person who accosts strangers and asks if she can borrow theirs. My phone has one of the best coverage plans in the world; I use it pretty exclusively for reading the internet in bed before getting up in the mornings or as a sleek and expensive paperweight.

But when I had a baby, I told myself all of this would change. I would finally conquer my scatterbrainedness, get my shit together, and be responsible because my baby needed me and it was my job to provide for her. I gathered up all my cards and IDs from jacket pockets and put them in their own special slots in my wallet. I found my phone charger, and put it by my bed and now I make myself find my phone and plug it in, no matter how late it is, before going to sleep at night. I made a handy reference list of all the things I would need to take with me when leaving the house with my infant, to be prepared for any poopy, snotty, spituppy eventuality and stuck it by the door.

And still, sometimes, I forget important things. As I found out when I was out this morning, and confronted with Lulu's poopy diaper.

Here is what I had in my diaper bag:

• One cloth diaper and what looked like an insert, but is actually a burp cloth
  
• Changing pad
  
• Library books
• Empty (and smelly) container of breastmilk
• Gripe water
  
• US$1
  
• Earrings and necklace
• Two lipglosses
• Extra onesie
• Extra pants (too small)
• Hat shaped like pumpkin. This may seem very apropos for the season, but has actually been in the diaper bag since we bought it two months ago.
  

That assemblage of stuff reminds me of the random junk that a bunch of castaways might gather together to try to survive until rescue. "Jack, we can totally raise baby Aaron to adulthood with this, right? We don't need important things like bottles or socks or OMG WIPES, do we?"

Another way of looking at it is that I am training my daughter to be the female MacGuyver.

FWIW, I used the burp cloth as a diaper insert, and subbed paper towels for wipes. Horrible blowout in car on way home. Of course.

Going out with a baby is hard. Staying close to home is much easier.

FYI: Your parents are cool(ish)

Because I am a loving parent (and also probably extremely overprotective), I haven't really had many nights out since Lulu was born. I live in fear of wearing out the few babysitters that are willing to watch our child for us. And I think I have PTSD from being separated from my baby for the first days, and weeks, of her life. So J.D. and I are the annoying people who take our kid everywhere with us, and haven't really had a proper date night since Lulu was born. We even took her with us to our anniversary dinner back in May.

But when J.D. told me that X, my favorite band of all time, was playing in Maryland on Monday night, and that there were tickets left, and that it might be fun to go, I carefully weighed the pros and cons of leaving my baby called my MIL and asked if we could dump Lulu's ass with her for the evening. How could I not take this opportunity? I listened to Wild Gift pretty exclusively from about 2003-2006; it was the only CD in my car for a while. I think at one point, it got stuck in my CD player, and that was fine by me, since it saved me the hassle of having to find it in the detritus on the passenger-side seat. Plus, everybody in the band is in their 60s. Who knows how many shows they have left?

So Monday night, we went. I put on real clothes (as opposed to yoga pants). I did (run a brush through) my hair. I put on MAKEUP (lipgloss counts), and EARRINGS and even perfume! We left the baby and a heap of her stuff with my in-laws. And J.D. and I drove to Annapolis, and we heard X play.

And! We talked about so many things on the ride there! Things that were not child-related. We talked about politics and home values and music and gossiped about people we know and it was SO QUIET. And yes, there were a few times when I looked back and saw the empty carseat and freaked out for half a second, thinking we had left the baby in the parking lot or on the roof of the car or something, but I soon calmed myself because THERE WAS NO CRYING and it was just so peaceful I couldn't help but relax.

This show was the strangest punk show that I have ever been to. Instead of being crammed in a basement or a sweaty room in a bar, we were seated at a table surrounded by a bunch of other tables in a pretty upscale restaurant. A waiter came by to take our drink orders and left carrying a tray of empty martini glasses. There was a list of specialty beers and available tapa-type appetizers and a bunch of people in business casual work clothes and I was the youngest person there by about 15 years, which is what happens when you like bands that rose to popularity before you born. We watched a documentary and then the band played through their most famous album, and then they played for another 45 minutes or so. Altogether, we were there for about two hours, and in those two hours, I listened and sang and talked and drank (iced tea) and generally had an AWESOME time.

A picture of the band, and also the pole that blocked half of my view of the stage. But it was a very upscale pole.

I had so much fun. I had forgotten what it was like to be able to give my whole attention to something without wiping up drool with one hand and calculating how long before I needed to breastfeed again in the back of my mind. Between sets, I went outside and bummed a smoke off of a young crust-punk and got into a very heated discussion with him about the definition of anarchy (lack of state, not lack of laws) and why Haiti is so f-ed up (corrupt government and deforestation). I quoted Thomas Jefferson and brought up the whole lawyer thing to make a point. And then I realized that zipper on my $14 Forever 21 jeans had been down the whole time and that I was possibly not as cool as I thought.

I slunk back into the venue and drank more iced tea and listened to Exene wail and watched Billy Zoom play the guitar, cool as a cucumber, and was happy when the band played my favorite one of their songs.

After the show, J.D. and I sat in a deserted park in the center of town and talked for a while. And then he stood up, and said we should probably get back. My first thought was, why? And then I remembered: the baby. For a minute, I felt like a bad mom, because I kind of...forgot. I had a picture of Lulu in my head, her blue eyes welling, missing me...when I'd been chugging iced tea and singing at the top of my lungs. How could I have wanted to be away from her? What if she needed me?

But then I got over it, and decided that going out and enjoying myself was the best thing I could have done for my child. Lulu, if you are reading this thirteen years from now, do not take this the wrong way, but right now, being your parent, while fun and often funny, is not always very intellectually stimulating. And you, like all babies, can be rather selfish in that I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ARE IN THE BATH, MAMA, I NEED TO EAT NOW. Tonight I got to recharge my batteries, and remind myself of who I am outside of you, and I can't share all the things I love about the world with you if I do not experience them and thus cannot recall exactly what they are.

Plus, if I had not gone away from you, I wouldn't have gotten to come back and experience tons of delicious baby smiles when you saw me again. That was pretty great.


Other things I learned tonight: pregnancy has robbed me of my iced tea tolerance, which was once pretty impressive. I think I spent about 30% of my night out going back and forth from my table to the bathroom. Luckily, it, too, was far more upscale than the bathrooms I am used to at these events. There was no drug use going on in there (that I could see). And no hanky-panky between people reeking of B.O. And there was one of those hand dryers that's so strong it moves the skin on your hands all around. FANCY!