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Archives from 2002-2006

We got home on Saturday after a freakish drive through every type of weather imaginable barring a rain of toads and today is my first full day back on my own doing the stay-home-mom-gig and oh my lord I am feeling nearly flattened by tedium. Either I am just out of my routine or I have seen the light in terms of raising kids via the village method or the baby is now in a constantly-needing-entertainment-and-intervention stage (naps? Oh, you mean those 4-minute things that happen before the binky slips out of his mouth or the planet’s alignment changes or a molecule of oxygen taps him on the nose and he wakes up shouting?) or some poisonous combination of all of those things but damn, I have never seen a clock crawl so slowly, and I am counting all those Saturday school detentions I got as a kid which were so mind-numbingly dreary I once tattooed my own hand with a needle and a bottle of India ink just to pass the time.

(Not a good idea, by the way. Also: laser tattoo removal? Surprisingly painful.)

I am scheduled to go back to work on May 5 and I’m swinging wildly between heady anticipation (being around adults! Working on projects that don’t involve removing poop from someone’s testicles! Having a reason to get dressed before 5 PM!) and a lurking dread. I know it will be hard to leave Dylan in someone else’s care, and I know it will be hard to deal with feeling guilty about it — and I also know I will feel bad when I don’t feel guilty about it because aaaaahh shouldn’t I be feeling guilty about it? (Parenthood! It’s like cramming your brain into a smoothie machine! And then dumping the contents into the garbage!)

I know without a doubt I am a better, happier parent for working outside the home — just my own personal situation, one size doesn’t fit all, we are all unique snowflakes, etc etc — but goddamn, it’s still a compromise. I know it will seem crazy to hand my baby over to someone else when the time comes, and yet I also know how much more engaged I will be for having done so. I know how it will hurt to drive away with an empty carseat (carseats!), and I also know how positive daycare has been for Riley overall.

Well, I don’t think there’s any easy way to return from maternity leave, is there? Or, if there is, tell me the secret. I’ve got two weeks to prepare.

Can I just say how much I’ve been enjoying your movie star crushes? And with every comment I think, oh yeah, HIM TOO. How could I have forgotten Viggo as Aragorn, my god, or Orlando as Legolas? Mmmm, Man-Elfwich. Also, the bathtub scene in Out of Sight with George Clooney, Clive Owen in every-damn-thing, the FOX in Robin Hood (yes, yes, YES!).

I LOVE that one of you listed Philip Seymour Hoffman, by the way.

Let me cycle back to the tines-up/tines-down issue. I hear you saying that tines-up maximizes your chances of getting everything as clean as possible, but what about the hand-stabbing? Am I just clumsy, or what? Because I have had to wear a Band-aid two nights in a ROW as a result of being skewered by a upward-facing steak knife.

Also, unrelated to anything but because I’m halfway watching American Idol right now and Mariah Carey is warbling away: I have been compared to Mariah Carey more than once with regards to facial features. I don’t know how to say it without being kind of a dick but Mariah Carey? Not a pretty woman, in my opinion. Guess who else someone compared me to recently? Chloë Sevigny. Hmmmmmmm.

So my boy Dylan has grown right before my eyes since we’ve been here in Coos Bay. All of a sudden he can’t be crammed into his tiny newborn outfits, his size 1 Swaddlers are too tight, and he’s noticeably more aware and, I don’t know, sentient. He makes all these hilarious sounds: AWOO, AGOO, AWWW. He demands entertainment in the form of looming human faces or dangling toys and if left to his own devices he voices a loud complaint. I love the new, more interactive update (Baby V. 2.1.4!) but hoo boy, things are actually getting a bit harder, too, because he can’t be . . . um, stuffed in a corner and ignored anymore. Which is to say, OH SAY IT WITH ME: nobody puts Baby in a corner.

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