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Full Moons and Safety Glass
Full Moons and Safety Glass
Balancing money, time, self, and family
Member Since: April 14, 2008 Last Signed In: November 15, 2009 Blog Views: 3929 Send To A Friend Sign Guestbook Add as a Friend
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Today one of my friends had one of the toughest moments in all of Motherdom…the day you first drop of your baby at child care. Dun, dun, DUN!
What an awful moment. I remember the first time I dropped off. I had returned to work weeks earlier but Paul had been home for several weeks with a baby Ava and now it was his turn to work. I had the dreaded task of leaving—nay—abandoning her at day care. I cried in my car. I cried at the office. I cried when I picked her up that night. Little did I know that just four short years later (aka this morning) I would be gleefully running out of day care while Carmen threw a massive hissy fit about not getting to eat pizza for breakfast at home. HA! The joke's on you, sister! I get to leave and NOT hear you scream about things that only a two year old could possibly care about (your step stool in is the wrong place, I brought out the wrong sippy cup, you want to wear two mismatched socks). Yes, once again…this all happened this morning. You know I am not making this up. Plus, you probably could hear her screaming. I could hear it all the way to my car. As working moms, we struggle so much trying to balance time, husbands, money, day care, kids, work responsibilities, chores…the list just goes on and on. For example, I work downtown. If it is my turn to pick up the girls from day care and I don’t leave before 4:50, I can guarantee that J Street will be a total cluster and the trip to day care (which should take 20 minutes) will take at least 55--making me invariably late for pick up. This leads to much guilt on my part, stink eye from my provider (sometimes even a fine), and my children crying all the way home about how they were the last ones to be picked up. Nothing is harder on a working mom, though, than sick kids. Over the past two weeks my entire family has had the nastiest stomach flu I have ever experienced. I swear that I have never seen a thing like it. We thought we were through the worst of it and then, unexpectedly last Friday (yes…two weeks after she first puked) Carmen puked and—ahem—crapped everywhere A-G-A-I-N! Of course, I had to take another day off (make that four in two weeks) and take her to the doctor. Now, I know I am lucky--very lucky. Some families don’t get paid sick time. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. Nonetheless, I missed a Board meeting and other important work responsibilities during these days at home with Gatorade, rice, and bananas. And to add insult to injury, you can now add the distinguished title of “Poo Courier” to my long list of motherly duties. Yup. I carry poo. I carry poo in three little plastic bottles labeled with Carmen’s name, date, and time of expulsion. I carry poo to a lab so that they can give me the news that Carmen is suffering from giardia, swine flu, or more likely a bad stomach flu that just won’t quit. Keep in mind that these lovely little samples had to be collected. Yes, collected. By yours truly. Next time, I am hiring a pigeon to drop the specimen off at the lab. Or even better…get my husband to do it.
About six months ago, I started to notice something.
The world has a lot of background noise. A lot. The sounds of traffic, people talking on the mobile phones, music booming out of the car next to you at a stoplight, barking dogs, crying babies--the list just goes on and on. Keep in mind that I have never been too distracted by ambient sound. One notable exception comes to mind from about eight years ago when Paul and I sat through some pre-marital counseling sessions. The therapist’s cozy one room office was situated just off the park in old Fair Oaks. The park in old Fair Oaks also housed a battalion of ferial chickens and roosters. For ten sessions, Paul and I sat side-by-side on an overstuffed couch and waited for emotional breakthroughs to occur. As a critical moment approached, a fervent ****-A-DOODLE-DOO erupted breaking all of my concentration. All I could think about was KFC for dinner. It was ridiculous. We finished up our ten sessions and never went back. I blame the chickens. With two daughters under five, there is a lot of background noise in my life these days. There is the constant background soundtrack of stupid Scooby Doo that never seems to go away. In addition, my (nearly) five year old has taken to incessantly asking questions. Seriously, she can cram twenty questions into a 45 second time frame. She doesn’t even wait for you to answer. She just jumps right to the next question. My two and a half year old screams and acts like a two and a half year old all of the time. For the record, two and a half year olds are very noisy. They are very noisy while they scream “No!” and “I don’t like you!” and “I want to pick it out!” and “I don’t want milk!” and “Go away!” You get the idea. But it isn’t just the kids. Chatter and noise permeates everywhere. To combat this, I started to do something that I never thought I would do. I now walk around nearly all of the time I am in public wearing my ipod. Podcasts, audio books, and music drown out the background noise. And I love it. When I am outside “away from it all” or at least “away from most of it” I have no problem pulling out the ear buds. I love the sounds of rushing water or birds. I love listening to my kids laugh, play, and sing. All of the background activity, though, has really started to make me nuts. I like the quiet of my own head and thoughts. I like my NPR and Adam Carolla in bite-size podcast pieces. In a weird way, my ipod time feels almost like real alone time. I can shop at Target, wait in line at the grocery store, or walk around Capital Park during lunch time and feel like I carved out a little time for myself. I'll take what I can get these days.
Like so many others, I have been unwittingly sucked into Facebook. I have found old friends, scratched my head over friend requests from people who I have no earthly memory of, found a faster and easier way to upload and distribute pictures of the girls, and discovered which SATC character/muppet/Mr. Men character/alcoholic beverage I most closely resemble.
Yes, Facebook is a time sucker and makes me feel pathetic at least once a day. Usually when I should be doing something productive like reading or paying bills and I am busy searching for the shamrock someone hid on my profile. Well, this week, I found something else as a result of Facebook. Now, it probably isn’t the expected “find”…it wasn’t a lost love or a high school rival, or the 1 millionth Steven Cobert fan. None of that. Let me back up and explain that I am one of those rare people who left high school and never looked back. I never went home during my summers from college. I have never even contemplated attending a reunion (even with year 20 breathing down my neck). I only stayed in touch with a handful of people once I left town. It was nothing personal, I was just…done. So, all of this makes me feel somewhat guilty when I get friend requests from people from high school and I totally can’t remember them. My high school was huge, so I use this as my defense for why I can’t remember anyone. Really, I think I must have just had my head up my heiney. So, I went trolling through the two boxes of high school and college keepsakes to see if I could find my high school yearbooks. No luck. I have no idea where they are. No clue whatsoever. So, I will have no choice but to continue languishing in confusion while the friend requests trickle in. But I did find something else. Something fantastic. I found six hard back, old school Nancy Drew books. You know, the old ones with the yellow covers and the 1960’s Nancy who wore “traveling suits” complete with hats. I was thrilled. Thrilled because about three weeks ago I was searching ebay for these exact books. Ava and Carmen are obsessed with Scooby Doo. They have been obsessed with Scooby Doo for at least the last two years. I will scream or barf (possibly simultaneously) if I have to sit through “Which Witch is Which” one…more…time. Ugh. As Ava recently proved—after sitting through Harry Potter for weeks while Paul read to her night after night—chapter books are now an acceptable addition to the bedtime reading routine. I could think of no better chapter book to tackle next than everyone’s favorite female detective who uses brains and savvy to solve mysteries--and all without a Scooby Snack or meddling kid in sight. Thanks, Facebook. |
