now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

So, I had the ‘Woohoo! I’m 30! Please wrap a nap up in a big bow and give it to me as a present!’ entry all written in my mind. And then it was announced that my internet home away from home, 3WA, is closing, and all sensible well spoken thought fled my brain. I now find myself multitasking like I have never multitasked before, snarking like a fiend in chat, updating this journal to actually have a notify list (scroll down, really!), updating buddy lists and such, and finally tiptoeing onto IRC. For an early adopter, there are entire areas of netdom, like IRC, that I somehow flaked on 9 years ago and just never got into.

Things like this force one to pause and reflect. The transience of the electronic medium, the classical and modern definitions of friendship, just how much time one can devote to a screen, etc. We live in a society where there is still a stigma attached to ‘I met my SO on the ‘net’, and here in Happy Suburbialand, while every home has a computer, every parent is wary of the internet and its power. For me to say, in front of their children, that I met the KC crew via Hissyfit and 3WA, that I ran online games, or that I have never seen some of the people I call good friends is to undermine their parental authority by showing their kids that Reasonably Normal Not-Foaming-At-The-Mouth Unwashed Loser Psychos populate the net.

I have been gaming online since 1992, and been a part of countless games that have gone kerblooey. Even now, I find myself stumbling across people I’ve not talked to in 5, 6, 7 years, and after the initial catching up, we fall back into old patterns of banter and joking. These friendships are comfortable, like my favorite crewneck sweater. There is a frantic pace in chat right now, because none of us want to lose our ‘binky’, and we are swapping contact info like mad, lest we lose one another for 5,6, 7 years. I will have a foot-stomping tantrum should some of these folks drop out of my life. As regulars know, I am an only child. My friends are my family, as I do not have a passel of siblings and cousins to shoot the shit with and vent problems on. I am touched, more than my snarky vocabulary can express, by how friends- and I’m fucking well not going to distinguish between the people I’ve hugged in the flesh and the people I’ve talked to via a chat screen- have reached out to embrace the Lad and I as we try to raise a good kid. If any of my extendo 3WA clan drops out of my life, I am going to hunt them down, grow dreadlocks, put on platform shoes, and inflict Deep Hurting on everyone present.

Goddamn. Who will care for the cheese weasels now? Who?

In what will come as a shock to precisely none of my female readers, I have body issues. Yes, I, smart, well-educated, self confident career woman have been, over the past almost 30 years, assailed by the media and culture enough to question my value based on my waist measurement, and believe that I am not as attractive as I could be because I have womanly curves. This falls into the category of ‘things we quietly snit about with our friends’, because it’s a double mindfuck- there’s the mindfuck of ‘I am not worthy because I am not rail-thin, or even, hell, thin, or well, able to buy a shirt without thinking about Boobage Containment’, and then there’s the ‘goddamnit, I’m smart! I’m confident when it comes to handling multimillion dollar contracts/book negotiations/running an enterprise/dealing with venomous snakes, why am I fucked up about this!’ side of it, too, so there’s the stigma of ‘hi, I’m stupid enough to care about this’ until you sit around and gab and realize you’re ALL fucked up about it, and isn’t that sad and maddening and frustrating?

What’s also maddening and frustrating is my husband’s- nay, all my male friends’- inability to process this. I mean, I understand why they don’t get it. But they haven’t gotten it for 2, 5, 8 years. You’d think, by now, they’d be at the point of ‘My wife/girlfriend/close friend is seriously fucked up about how she thinks about her body, but isn’t ill because of it, and I just need to know this is a hot button for her and act accordingly.’ Nope. These men can hold PhD’s, negotiate huge deals, remember citations from papers published years ago, but this little sticking point? Meow meow meow meow. My husband marvels to me about how can a friend of ours not see how attractive she is, and be so down on herself, and I just boggle at him, plain and simple. Yo, shithead, you’re soaking in it. As he wonders and worries about her, he turns to me and says, with just the slightest note of pleading in his voice, “I mean, you don’t think that way about yourself.” He’s asking not for me but for him, for validation that he has treated me right and made me feel like the goddess he believes me to be, that if I am this down on myself it’s a failure on his part.

What brings this all about? I won a shopping party at Talbot’s for me and my friends- not a spree, but a discount, and damn did I need work appropriate clothes (like, for meetings and trips, not for working from home, Heh, for that I need bunny slippers)- so we did it last night. Before we went, I did a rampage through my closet trying on old clothes, including stuff I hadn’t been able to fit into in years. It was like seeing old friends, favorite shirts and skirts that as the pounds added on I couldn’t bear to part with. Now the shirts fit like a dream, some even loosely, and the skirts and pants- all but the smallest- fit as well. My wardobe suddenly expanded fivefold. I have a choice in shirts beyond the 4 pre-preg ‘fat’ shirts! I have long luscious summer skirts I needn’t fret neurotically about busting the side seams on! I was thrilled, I was deliriously happy. And you know what, I should be, this is a much healthier weight, and I know and am working on getting into better shape. Pretty much since the second after Sean was delivered, people have been marvelling over how good I look- how there’s no babyweight, how I look vibrant and healthy if a little tired, and dayum, maybe they’re right. And then I stopped and realized what got me here and what I’m so damn happy about.

For 6 weeks, I starved. For 6 weeks I could not eat food for the majority of the day, and when I could, it wasn’t a full meal. For 6 weeks I was losing so much weight, so fast, that my doctor put me on ‘full fats’- full fat yogurt, full fat cheese, full fat creamer in my coffee, ordered me to butter everything. For 20 weeks after that I was still losing weight and was threatened with a diet log to prove to them I was eating.

I starved to get here. I didn’t want to, but I did. And now I’m sitting here, horrified that I am happy, horrified that I feel accomplished, horrified that I’ve bought into the media this much. I had mass to spare- still do. I am ashamed to admit it, but I look at my son and think, you know, perhaps it’s a good thing you’re not a girl. Boys have body image issues too, but it’s so overwhelming with a girl, and I don’t have to worry about you being 6 and thinking you need to be on a diet, and there’s less chance you’ll be 11 and anorexic, or 30 and heartbreakingly down on yourself over the size of your ass, and maybe, just maybe I can raise you to understand what your father doesn’t.

So, in a little ha-ha, right after I snarked about having arrived, and not via a diarist nomination, this comes along. Okay, powers that be, gosh, I’ve never won the lottery, how about a solid unbroken 8 hours of sleep, and world peace? Seriously though, I’m flattered and honored, and in my shock of telling a few friends they have soundly berated me for once again falling into the trap of ‘me scientist, me not writer!’ Heh.

Not that a nom for a journal entry, lovely though that is, has prompted a major round of navel gazing all on its own, but it’s certainly contributed to it. Leaving Chicago caused a nice ‘who am I?’ personality crisis. Going consultant, and not based at a museum, caused a nice professional crisis. And then slather on top of it living in Kansas, being pregnant, being a mother, and you have a recipe for self-analysis disaster (or for rocking in the shower babbling incogently). I find myself bridling at the monkers people seem entirely too willing to put on me these days, and fighting to find ways to refute them. I am not ‘Sean’s Mom’. Sean does not- despite all evidence to the contrary in this journal- define every aspect of my life. I am not ‘A Stay at home mother’ and you can thence shuffle me off in your mind as a non-thinking entity consumed only by cooing at her baby and doing endless laundry and bottle washing cycles. Here, when people inquire what I do and how I can juggle having a baby, and I start to say ‘I work from home’, they say ‘ooooooh’ and automatically devalue what I do. I’ve taken to blathering at lightning speed, “I am a consultant to the themed entertainment industry and I telecommute” which usually confuses people here- where theming equals turning the grocery store into Oz for a sale (I mean as in Land of Oz, not Oz on HBO, though a violent max security prison featuring Chris Meloni as a theme for a meat sale is kinda amusing)- long enough that they then assume I Must Be Very Important And Do Meaningful Things, rather than Oh, Her Entire Value Is Defined By Her Child And Henceforth Political Parties Will Court her For Her Voting Bloc Power But Then Reneg on Every Promise, Rather Than Just Ignoring her Screechin Liberal Ass Like Before. Meantime, I had several people tell me within a 72 hour span of time that I ought to take some of my writing, combine it with additional writing, and shop it round as a book. Wench’s guide to pregnancy, childrearing, and snark, or something like that. That would be fun to explain to folks here. “In addition to telecommuting, I write maddening things about how I do not love every second of being a mother, enjoy drinking, had sex before marriage, and am a Jew. Please, hold throwing stones at me until the end.”

And just as much as I bridle over having labels assigned to me, I have a mad hate on for people ascribing things to my child. When the inlaws were here, my MIL insisted on speaking ‘for’ Sean, giving voice to emotions, motivations, thoughts… lady, he can’t focus more than 12 inches away, I assure you he’s not opining in his inside his head voice on how much he loves going for car rides. I doubt he knows the word ‘car’, he has yet to have the ‘water’ moment from The Miracle Worker. Also, he doesn’t know from bears yet, so your insistence on pointing out to me and beginning to buy up every teddy bear themed item under the sun because ‘he wuvs bwears’? Wrong. And furthermore, even if he WAS thinking that, he sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking it in a high lispy voice distressingly akin to how you voice Tumby, so please shut the fuck up and stop speaking for my child. Furthermore, I have a serious hatred of babygear which does the same- bibs with ‘I love grandma’ or rompers that say, ‘I love baby kisses!’. Those rompers? Invitation for strangers to manhandle my child. Back the fuck off. My child is a person, with personal space rights; just cause he’s a baby doesn’t mean you can demand kisses or hugs or whatnot.

Who am I? I am the cranky, slightly sleep deprived career woman/mother of a newborn who has just realized she’s in for a lifetime battle of creating a bubble in which her child is free to self-determine and perhaps someday tell his grandmother, “You know, I appreciate the gesture, but please stop sending me teddy bear stuff. I don’t like bears. How about a nice book instead, please?”

Our child has a name. No really, he’s has one since birth. And it’s all legal and stuff, we even have the official birth certificate to show it. Yet, there is much hoopla around names going on round here. There’s the serious side- his upcoming naming- and the not so serious side- our inability to be sweet loving parents and give him nicknames which will not require him to go into therapy someday.

We’re doing the Jewish naming ceremony, a homegrown one, the same day as the full on Catholic baptism. There’s a stinkin-ass kettle of fish, people. My mom, the Lad’s parents, Leather Pants Grrl, King of the Hill People, Matilda, Dog-Faced Boy, R and E all here for ReligionFest 2003. Notice the distinct skew away from family and towards friends. We’re breaking tradition here seriously, as baptisms are Big Things in the Lad’s family, and everyone is godparents to everyone else and takes this very seriously. Given who we’ve selected as godparents for the Snark, I fully expect him to receive the Jesus or Moses action figs from Archie McPhee as baptism presents. What to clothe the baby in for all of this has taken on epic proportions, as the lad’s family christening gown is in the hands of a relative Who Cannot Be Reasoned With, and so it is unavailable. the Ladmom, already wounded by this, has offered to buy us a christening outfit for the Snark, but the Lad and I are completely incapable of rationalizing letting her spend money on such a thing. For one, the baptismal font at the church we’re doing at is a funky modern fountain and the priest is a bit enthusiastic with the amount of water he slings around (Jesus? Why, you’re soaking in it!). For another, christening outfits are just ridiculous and ugly as shit. We tried looking for one this weekend, and the first option we saw prompted the Lad to declare entirely too loudly in Nordstrom’s, “I am not dressing my son up like the Sailboat Captain of Christ.” Option number 2 prompted him to add, “Or the fuckin Valet of the Son of God, either.”

But in a way, the baptism is easy. Show up, go through the ceremony, trala! The Naming, not so much. At least we picked a name fairly quickly, and the Catholics don’t require one till confirmation. But in the wonderful ceremony that R has written, we have to talk about his name and why. And while it’s straightforward to explain (we liked it. The middle name, after his grandfathers), it seems sort of half-assy, like there should be deep meaning or logic or reason behind it. That the name is not one the baby has earned or claimed as his own, it is not a name that looking at him, we thought ‘Sean’, we had it picked out already.

Unlike his nicknames, which he has earned. He has 3 that he has told us so far, whispered to us in night feedings, names that are right and proper and meet. My son is Snorty McPig. My son is My Little Frat Boy, capable of belching and drinking at the same time. My son is Doodlebug. Before you think that we have been kind and given him one normal nickname, wait for the whole thing. Doodlebug of the X-Men, little known Mutant, Capable of drawing complex fractal patterns in pee on the wall! He’ll urinate on the bad guys in dizzying designs, causing them to drop their weapons and pass out! Yeah, we’ve built up a whole mythos for him, including an Origin Event (the absorbent gel matrix in pampers? it’s a mutagen, clearly).

Boy is he going to need therapy.

I have a shameful, shocking confession to make. I, Chicagowench, mother of a child all who see declare to be the cutest, sweetest, mellowest baby; dweller of hardcore suburbia; driver of a freakin volvo sedan… I want sex. Badly. I am so goddamn hot and bothered it is difficult to concentrate on work for more than 10 seconds at a clip. In other words, I’ve turned into a teenage male, haha! No, kidding about that last part. The rest of it though, true.

It’s so unfair. For one, there’s the whole ‘no touchy touchy until the 6 week post-partum checkup’ thing with the doctor- and don’t think for a second I’m not really goddamn bitter about not being able to have mindblowing sex on my 30th birthday. And really, 6 weeks? People, I had a textbook, couldn’t ask for better delivery (the labor, another story entirely). Whyfor you just quote me 6 weeks? Is it so unusual for a woman to want to have sex again in under 4 years? But my doc was clearly serious about this, as she said this while fixing not me but the Lad with a steely gaze, as if once home, the black slacks and french blue shirt wearin me would transform into a browbeaten woman in a faded housecoat, bringin her wifebeater t wearin spouse a beer and he would demand we rut like pigs on the 3 dollar Walmart folding porch chairs right then and there.

For another, the cachongas and I, we have reached an uneasy truce, and I am loathe to do anything which would disrupt the negotiated peace. They have receeded back into normal sized territory, as opposed to county fair prize-winnin melon land, and I do nothing to make them think they need to crank out milk. This involves the world’s fastest showers, wearing a bra at all times, and the surreal challenge of having to rub allergy creme into them without making them think (because you know they’re sentient. Yes, sentient tokyo-crushin man-eatin itchy cachongas of doooom) there’s a baby nearby who needs to be fed nownownownow! Meanwhile, I’m sure this period of time will go down as one of the darkest in the lad’s life, not because of the interrupted sleep or the challenges of interpreting signs and signals from a puling infant, but because of the don’tevenTHINKoftouchingthem! during the H cup days. I wish they would go completely back to normal, however, as I am getting sick of sleeping in an underwire bra, not to mention tiptoeing around afraid of my own boobage. Of course, in unholy irony, I’m sure as soon as they DO return to normal, the hormones currently jacking my sex drive to levels unseen in the past 7 years will abate.

I am praying, praying I tell you that the kid continues to move onto something resembling a schedule as we get closer to the 6 week mark. Because my god, my head will explode if we cannot find time for gettin triple X groovy, to quote the delicate poetry of ‘Hot Action Cop’

My son has not heeded the siren song of the cluephone yet. His evolutionary hardwiring is too strong, yet it’s also dreadfully misguided. Despite having never consumed anything that doesn’t come out of a bottle, he continues to root, desperately, for the real live nipple instead of the silicone one.

Too bad he keeps doing it to my husband.

The Lad is severely disturbed by this. The other night he told me to stay in bed while he handled a late night feed, and I lay there, blissfully dozing, until a strangled, horrified cry blasting out of the baby monitor jolted me awake. I ran down the hall to find my husband tugging my son away from his chest- the lad’s robe had come open just enough, and the baby, in his ’snorty mcpig’ head shaking nipple seeking rooting behavior, had, well, seized upon my husband’s manly chest, and was doing his damnedest to get milk out of him. The snarklet’s pulled this trick a few more times since then, and it never fails to crack me up and squick the lad out.

It does, however, mean the phrase ‘man nips’ has become quite the focus of hilarity in our house.

My husband is obsessed with our son’s cock. No, really. First he was gravely concerned about the circumcision because it was performed on a Monday, and we all know Mondays suck ass. Since it was performed, it’s been a festival of him fretting over the healing process. If I had a buck for every time he asked, “Does this look okay to you?” I’d be buying myself a half day at the spa right now. And now, 9 days after my son made a covenant with god, or at least his pediatrician, things went south. Or at least, they went south in that part of my husband’s mind dedicated to preserving as much of the sanctity of the snarklet penis lest his manhood be at all comprimised.

Last night was our first attempt at a date night. We had rented the best of monty python, and I picked up sushi when out running errands. Sure enough, I got home and the timing was such it was diaper-and-bottle festival hour. We got him settled down, we had just sat down and started eating when… let the wailing commence. I went up, grabbed the kid, and brought him down to the portable playpen, where he continued to fuss. One ill-phrased comment from the Lad to his hormone addled spouse later, and he had 2 crying family members on his hands. Some calming and soothing later, and the lad decided to try changing the kid’s diaper. Where lo, he discovered that one side of the Wee Manhood was looking red and angry near where the ring is still attached from the plastibell they use in circumcising these days.

It had been a long time since I’d seen the Lad go into a full on freakout, but boy did he. The snark emitted a shriek so high and shrill that it spiked the alarm lights on the baby monitor by me, and I went charging upstairs to find a husband who was already mentally running through scenarios in which the snark Loses His Penis Entirely, and he started yelling at me to call the hospital. No amount of rational discussion was working, as visions of desperate reconstructive surgery in Sweden were dancing through his head. Add into this that the lad had consumed no breakfast, no lunch, and had precisely one piece of dinner (a lovely maguro) in him, and you’ve got a recipe for incogent disaster. Snapping at him that if he didn’t calm the fuck down and stop yelling at me, I’d be spending the night at a hotel and he could deal with the kid solo was my next brilliant move. Usually this sort of thing is the equivalent of a giant neon sign proclaiming ‘you are being an asshole!’ and he snaps out of it, but his crazed worse case scenario we’ll be calling him Snarklette and in 40 years he’ll be on a Discovery channel show about gender disorders mental state, it was highly inefffective.

So off we went to the ER- and let me say, thank god this happened here and not in Chicago, where we’d still be sitting in chairs right about now. We were literally being seen by a nurse in under 10 minutes. On the way over there, the lad, having calmed due to the snark snoring happily in his car seat- and you know, if one’s cock is about to detach due to a horrible infection, a little ride in the car would not be enough to soothe one to slumber- offered that if I wanted to stay at a hotel that night it wouldn’t be a bad idea, I could sleep the night through. I allowed as how I wouldn’t be staying at a hotel, and when we were ensconced in a room at the ER we had it out about his freakout, and we were all good. And the snark, of course, kept sleeping. The child who had emitted a shriek that even Jamie Lee Curtis would have been envious of slept through being undressed, 2 different nurses flipping his little sad package this way and that looking at it, and having a thermometer shoved up his ass. At this point, the Lad began apologizing to me about the $75 copay we’d just had to pony up because clearly, newborn cocks are supposed to be angry and red and look like the STD flashcards student health had up on the walls to encourage condom use.

It turns out this is, in fact, completely normal and is what it should look like as the ring comes loose and free, and it- the ring, not the tiny sad angry manhood- will fall off in a day or two, and in the meantime it’s sore and raw and will cause him high shrieky pain when he has a really really wet diaper. The doctor managed to largely keep the ‘you people are nuts’ look off of his face, and we all agreed that a photo series instead of just a before and after of what this is supposed to look like would have been, say, useful. As I said to the lad, my people have been doing this for thousands of years and in far less sanitary conditions, it’s all good. At this, the doctor excused himself, slid the door to our room closed, and went and laughed himself silly.

I am sorely, sorely tempted to, er, save the ring when it does drop off, and present it taped to a card to the lad, but I don’t think I should joke about our son’s penis with him. “Do you remember the time you thought his dick was about to fall off?” is not the kind of fond baby remembrance we’re supposed to have.

I’m not cut out for a life in special ops, clearly. If I ever got caught by the enemy, a day or two of interrupted sleep patterns and a screechy noise played near my ear, and I’d crack like a rotten gourd and spill every secret the United States has, including W’s predilection for lacy thong panties from Vicky’s Secret plus the Colonel’s Secret Recipe.

I am on the dark side of motherhood (well, the dark side of new motherhood, as opposed to the women who wind up getting booed on Springer when confronted by their fucked up teenagers). I am a-swirly with hormones and left to my own devices with the snark for a big old slice of time each day while the lad trudges off to the office. Originally, he was not supposed to teach this year at all, but a professor left and they needed someone to co teach a class this term, and it fell to him. And so the time he should have had nothing cooking, he’s administering an exam and grading finals and crap. Plus, a shit-for-brains student whose blown off a reading course for 4 months has resurfaced, demanding his attention, and being a shit for brains. This has the Lad in a foul mood, which seems to manifest, at its height, when we’re roused for a midnight feeding, and let me tell you, dealing with a screechy infant and a snappish husband making deprecating remarks about how we’ll be up again in an hour and yelling at me when the kid pees when we’re rediapering just makes my night. I cannot believe this is the same man who, when confronted with a 3 am feeding, is cooing and loving and filled with wry humor.

I am not dealing well with being the sole resonsible adult left with the infant 7 hours of each day. Let’s face it, I’m still recovering from popping the sprog, and so this is a bit much. I am really really hoping the lad is serious about taking time off next week, and not working more than a half day- 7 hours is simply not a half day.

It’s not that I don’t love my child. I do. But the carousel of diapering and feeding and napping- and he’s a GREAT sleeper, but every day he changes up his schedule so I can predict nothing and plan less than nothing- is exhausting in and of itself, and when you add in the pediatrician demanding we stop swaddling and start putting him to bed in sleepers so he doesn’t sweat through the blankets and we only have 5 footed sleepers and why the fuck buy more if he’s putting on 3/4 of a pound every week he’s going to be in men’s sizes by the 4th of July at this rate so I’m doing laundry every 3 nanoseconds because he kicks so hard when being changed he flings off the Pee Nozzle Protector and THEN whizzes gaily everywhere and were any of you aware that a boy can manage to leak vast quantities of urine out the back how the hell is that possible their wee angry from circumcision manhood is up front for god’s sake but boy howdy they can and they’ll wait to show you this neat trick until they’re peacefully slumbering beside you in your bed atop the comforter where you put them so you could just fucking well eat your lunch and check your email and great now you get to strip the bed and do yet another load of laundry and go change the kid yet again well fuck all the sleepers are in the wash well except for the one you put him in for all of 30 minutes last night which is so big on him he shot his foot through between the leg snaps and woke himself up terrified by his own limb we’ll just put him in one of the goddamn ‘infant gowns’ and hope he sleeps and deal with any possible gender identity disorder issues in a few years it all gets to be just a little much.

In good news, tonight is sushi night.
And the portable bassinet is assembled and in the family room.
Which means the lad can freakin well handle him when he gets home, and if the kid starts shrieking while we’re eating, it’s not a trot upstairs.

It’s a good think the bebe is so cute. They’re like golden retriever puppies that way, so you forgive them the massive destruction they can wreak.

I’m not cut out for a life in special ops, clearly. If I ever got caught by the enemy, a day or two of interrupted sleep patterns and a screechy noise played near my ear, and I’d crack like a rotten gourd and spill every secret the United States has, including W’s predilection for lacy thong panties from Vicky’s Secret plus the Colonel’s Secret Recipe.

I am on the dark side of motherhood (well, the dark side of new motherhood, as opposed to the women who wind up getting booed on Springer when confronted by their fucked up teenagers). I am a-swirly with hormones and left to my own devices with the snark for a big old slice of time each day while the lad trudges off to the office. Originally, he was not supposed to teach this year at all, but a professor left and they needed someone to co teach a class this term, and it fell to him. And so the time he should have had nothing cooking, he’s administering an exam and grading finals and crap. Plus, a shit-for-brains student whose blown off a reading course for 4 months has resurfaced, demanding his attention, and being a shit for brains. This has the Lad in a foul mood, which seems to manifest, at its height, when we’re roused for a midnight feeding, and let me tell you, dealing with a screechy infant and a snappish husband making deprecating remarks about how we’ll be up again in an hour and yelling at me when the kid pees when we’re rediapering just makes my night. I cannot believe this is the same man who, when confronted with a 3 am feeding, is cooing and loving and filled with wry humor.

I am not dealing well with being the sole resonsible adult left with the infant 7 hours of each day. Let’s face it, I’m still recovering from popping the sprog, and so this is a bit much. I am really really hoping the lad is serious about taking time off next week, and not working more than a half day- 7 hours is simply not a half day.

It’s not that I don’t love my child. I do. But the carousel of diapering and feeding and napping- and he’s a GREAT sleeper, but every day he changes up his schedule so I can predict nothing and plan less than nothing- is exhausting in and of itself, and when you add in the pediatrician demanding we stop swaddling and start putting him to bed in sleepers so he doesn’t sweat through the blankets and we only have 5 footed sleepers and why the fuck buy more if he’s putting on 3/4 of a pound every week he’s going to be in men’s sizes by the 4th of July at this rate so I’m doing laundry every 3 nanoseconds because he kicks so hard when being changed he flings off the Pee Nozzle Protector and THEN whizzes gaily everywhere and were any of you aware that a boy can manage to leak vast quantities of urine out the back how the hell is that possible their wee angry from circumcision manhood is up front for god’s sake but boy howdy they can and they’ll wait to show you this neat trick until they’re peacefully slumbering beside you in your bed atop the comforter where you put them so you could just fucking well eat your lunch and check your email and great now you get to strip the bed and do yet another load of laundry and go change the kid yet again well fuck all the sleepers are in the wash well except for the one you put him in for all of 30 minutes last night which is so big on him he shot his foot through between the leg snaps and woke himself up terrified by his own limb we’ll just put him in one of the goddamn ‘infant gowns’ and hope he sleeps and deal with any possible gender identity disorder issues in a few years it all gets to be just a little much.

In good news, tonight is sushi night.
And the portable bassinet is assembled and in the family room.
Which means the lad can freakin well handle him when he gets home, and if the kid starts shrieking while we’re eating, it’s not a trot upstairs.

It’s a good think the bebe is so cute. They’re like golden retriever puppies that way, so you forgive them the massive destruction they can wreak.

One week since you looked at me.

Couldn’t resist.

We’re alive, more or less. I am slowly hitting the wall. I am realizing the week ahead is going to suck ass. I have a ton of work, and the Lad has a final to write and administer and grade, and then the outlaws arrive for the weekend, and the Lad cannot seem to actually tell me how long they are staying for, though they ARE staying at a hotel. Thank god. I’d go insane if there was someone under my roof other than me and the lad and the snark. Attractive though the thought of someone else handling night feedings is. Because of the lad’s schedule, it’s going to be me and the snark solo for a good 7 hours at a clip a couple of days, and that prospect is just exhausting and terrifying. Here’s to a glass of wine with dinner!

But! I promised dish, as it were, on 40 and clients and whatnot. So here goes, in no particular order.

-We have wonderful friends, who have sent chocolates (Thanks Matilda and Dog Faced Boy!) and very hungry caterpillar onsies (thanks Alanna!) and flowers (Thanks Leather Pants Grrrrl!) and hilariously excited messages (thanks King of the Hill People!). I have silly clients, who have sent bouqets of cookies and checks for the bebe accidentally made out to themselves, which I have then had to contact them and say gently, “I think you might have put a check in here by accident” and let them try to save face.

-We have wonderful friends at 40. The lad went over there to pick up takeout for dinner on Sunday, as a treat, and Michael the chef cavorted into the back and whipped up something not on the menu as a giant old FUCK YOU to my food limitations- a chunk of seared tuna so huge it blotted out the sun, and by seared I mean ‘held towards a candle for a few seconds’. He also insted the Lad get me, in addition to the appetizer he’d ordered, another one consisting of perfect spheres of raw milk goat cheese. Then they refused to let the Lad pay for any of it.

And I have drunk beer. And wine. And meyer lemon vodka lemonades. And lo they are good.