Shut Up Already

Don't Be Such A Baby

                     

BABY P AND ME

When I was seventeen, I thought I was pregnant.  I was only mildly perturbed, because while I'd always imagined that I'd have some kind of fabulous life after high school, it was still just a vague idea at that point.  I figured my parents would be a little disappointed, but get over it eventually.  I'd have an air of romance about me for a while, and then a cute baby to play with at the end.

I've been thinking a lot about that non-pregnancy since I've been playing fake housewife here in New England.  I took care of lots of babies when I was a teenager, and never doubted that I would have a few one day (four, including one set of red-haired identical twins.)  My plan was to get married at 25 and start having kids when I was 27.  I worried that I'd be kind of old to begin such a thing, but I wanted to travel and live in the city for a while first.

I know I don't need to re-list all of the things I'd never done at the point in my life when I made these plans: drunk a latte, eaten Thai food, used public transportation, taken a taxi, spent more than a week outside Ohio... 

I was always a good, accommodating kid.  I lived with someone who became unpredictably and disproportionately enraged fairly often, and I learned early to keep quiet and smooth things over and volunteer to give up whatever privilege or possession I had that might save my sister (a rather vexing and provocative kid) and I from an eruption.  I was easygoing and laid back.  I rolled with it.  It was a major part of my identity.  I never questioned that it was the best way to be.

When I moved away at eighteen, it was like that scene in Pleasantville when everything is suddenly in color.  I discovered a new, selfish side to my personality, and I made a new life to go with it.  I still don't get every ting I want,  but I get most things.  The primary and most important gift I give myself is freedom from strife and demands on my time.  I guard my physical and emotional space zealously, and I don't let anyone raise their voice to me or criticize me.  (This has been kind of a bugaboo on the job front.)

This is slightly unhealthy, I know.  I promise to go back into therapy as soon as I get insurance.

Anyway, I've basically fashioned a second, better childhood for myself over the last few years.  It's worked out well.  Giving one's twenties over to hedonism is as American as apple pie.  But now that I'm turning 30 in a matter of weeks, being a hedonist is starting to feel kind of dumb.  I don't drink much any more.  As you've all been made painfully aware, I don't smoke.  I eat a lot of vegetables.  I read as much as I want to.  I buy what i want, watch what I want. The most generous thing I ever do is take my dog for a walk.

Before I turn this into yet another essay about my sub-optimal personality, the kid question.  One other thing I lost or abandoned when I left home was the baby lust I'd had since I was eight.  People were already telling me what a good mother I'd be then.  If I'd had that baby I wasn't pregnant with at seventeen, everything would have been fine.  I'd have had some surmountable odds to over come, my family would have rallied around me, I would have stayed put in the town I was born in and most importantly, I never would have missed this other life because I never would have known about it.

Instead, here I am with my aging ovaries and shaky "career" and a sneaking suspicion that I'm not the marrying kind.  My mom would probably be happy to help me take care of any baby I could conjure up with a sperm bank, but she'd want to do it in Ohio and I just don't see that happening. 

Because I clap both hands over my eyes quickly as soon as the idea presents itself.  Sometimes I get bruises.  They're a good reminder.

I've learned two things about myself from spending all of this time with the adorable and demanding Baby P: First, I still have excellent baby wrangling skills.  I mean, I'm good.  I can always bend him to my will with my mad song-styling and distraction skills (and if you think that bending a 5-month-old to your will is nothing to brag about, my advice to you is to remain childless.)  I mix a mean bottle, and I have the ability to spring out of bed fully alert if he cries out in the night, no matter how tired I thought I was. 

Second, as much as I love him, and as unbearably sweet as it is when his face lights up as soon as he sees me and he lifts his arms to be held, I'm also incredibly grateful every time he falls asleep or reinforcements arrive.  Babies, though they smell good and make amusing squealing noises, are a little tedious and stubbornly immune to rationality.   They don't understand the importance of finishing the article, or reading until the chapter break.  Sometimes, they cry for no reason, and quite frankly I like to be the only person in my household who is permitted that luxury.

Maybe I would have been better off maintaining my false illusions about the feasibility of having a kid on my own.  I really wish I had a few more years of my twenties to figure this stuff out.

I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye I Say Hello

Hi.  I'm still jobless and uninsured and in Connecticut.  I did shower today, but I have been unable so far to fulfill my dual objectives of applying for at least one job and going to see a movie.

I did find sis and myself a fly hotel in midtown Manhattan for 100/night.  That gave me a brief frisson of accomplishment.

Later, I get to go buy rice cereal and formula, AND stop by the bank.  Envy me.  I've given myself stern instructions not to buy any junk food but it is hard as I have stripped all other pleasures from my life.

Which reminds me: my mother smoked while she was pregnant, and while she was breast-feeding me.  My neural pathways have almost never been without the sweet sweet elixir known as nicotine.  Perhaps it's not meant to be.  Maybe the early death I'm sure to suffer if I start smoking again is the Universe's way of controlling population.  Maybe I'm subverting the intended order of things by NOT smoking.

It's possible.

All of which is to say that while quitting has been easier in some respects than I would have imagined, my current quality of life is for shit.  Tell me, nonsmokers: how do you think?  How do you puzzle out life's mysteries without a cigarette and a beverage?  I honestly have no idea.  Also, since I am not smoking and not working, I have no reason to ever set foot outside my home.  This means most of you will never lay eyes on me again. 

See why I haven't been blogging?  Brace yourselves, because a series of posts about what taking care of this child has done to my ideas of motherhood is forthcoming, and existential crisis or no, I am about to turn fucking 30.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

More to the Good

Someone just sent me an email that contained the phrase "I'm having a freelance contract sent to you".  It's someone I don't even know, except through faking my writing skills, so I think it's a real offer and not a gesture made out of pity.  Now, when people ask me what I'm doing, I can say "I'm doing some freelance food writing for a new glossy".  (I'll also be scrubbing toilets for minimum wage somewhere, but whatever.)

I am this close to having business cards made up.

I'm Certain That We've Met Before

Stop the presses!  The sun is shining in Connecticut!

I'm feeling ever so much better than I have been.  Not only is the nicotine gone from my system, but I passed through the smoking gauntlet: drinking wine with former college roommates after midnight, while they smoked.  It was really, really hard, yet not as hard as I would have predicted.  Mind over matter, people.

Also, I have a nice chunk of easy freelance work to do this week, and a job interview.

On the down side, I am officially uninsured as of today.  I feel all sniffly and achy just typing that.  And at dinner on Saturday night, I forcefully insisted that I'd met the girlfriend of a friend of mine a few months ago, when in fact it was a totally different Asian girlfriend that I'd met.  It was one of those times  when you can feel the huge wrongness of the words coming out of your mouth--twice--but you just can't seem to stop. 

What can I say.  I'm a culturally insensitive redneck.

I comforted myself in the immediate aftermath of the incident by reasoning that no one else at the table had heard (it was a loud restaurant) and that if I wanted to, I could avoid Will for the rest of my life without too much trouble.  I hadn't been sitting down for 30 seconds--at the far, far end of the table from the scene of the horror--when my friend A. leaned over and said, sotto voce, Didn't I meet you at the wedding?  No? But I'm sure I did!  You're Asian, right?  (He was paraphrasing in case I didn't feel stupid enough.)

Just to offend a whole new group of people: I'm concerned that I look like a Tourette's victim ever since because I keep groaning aloud and slapping my own forehead every time I remember this incident.  Which is approximately every four minutes for the last two days.

So, Will, if you ever read this blog, which you wouldn't even if you knew about it because you hate me now, I'm sorry!  I suck!  It was dark in there and I didn't have my glasses on and I'm from a red state!  You and that other girl just seemed so happy that it never occurred to me that this would be a whole new girl (with whom you also seemed very happy--she's quite nice!)

My self-hatred is its own punishment.

You Don't Say

"Since nicotine itself has antidepressant effects... many smokers unknowingly smoke to self-medicate depression."

I'm feeling much better today.  Yesterday was my third patch-free day, and I felt like shit.  I thought I was getting the flu, but it turned out to be something called "quitter's flu", which s a form of nicotine withdrawal.  I'm angry that I ever started smoking, because quitting has been really hard so far.  I envy people that never have to go through it.

I'm hoping to get into the city this weekend and catch up with some friends.  Here's hoping.

Send Help

So, it snows a lot in New England.  So, FYI, if you had planned a relaxing retreat in coastal Connecticut--combining writing and job-seeeking with a few hours of infant care--there's a lot that could go wrong.

The baby could get the flu, for instance.  Toxic poo might dribble from him constantly, punctuated by periods of retching (and I mean frat boy retching, not baby spit-up.)  Then, maybe the two of you would get snowed in for the weekend, alone.   Maybe you would wake up on Sunday, reeking of sour formula, and realize that you hadn't worn a bra for a few days. 

Say the internet is down, and none of your friends call you any more.

Perhaps you're trying to quit smoking, and the whole wrold is the color of a box of Marlboro Lights.

Maybe you start to consider the baby's pacifier as a means of controlling your cravings.

Maybe you're bored with this speculative narrative voice.

I am.

I have 4 restaurant reviews and an artile of theaters to write today.  I spent yesterday driving all over New Haven looking for an internet cafe, and when I finally found one it was a  disaster.  They had some security settings that prevented me from checking Gmail and Hotmail, none of you people had left me one single comment, and my blog post got erased because mac uses different keyboard short cuts than  PCs.  Who knew?

I know this makes me uncool, but I hate Macs.

It's lonely in Connecticut, and I have writer's block. 

There's no diet Coke here.

Or chocolate.

I want a cigarette.

Wah.

Slightly Blue

I'm supposed to be working on an article on DC theaters.  And washing bottles.  And a shower might be good.

(remember how you started reading this blog for the blistering political commentary and the tales of crazy drunken nights?  And now I'm writing about washing baby bottles, and you never even got to read about me falling in love and having sex and getting married and getting pregnant, etc?  It's been a crazy year!)

Tomorrow, E. works her 30 hour on-call shift, A. is out of town, and a blizzard is scheduled to descend.  I wish I knew someone around here who would at least come over for lunch.  ON my own, I could easily settle in for a day of movies and reading some of the enormous books I brought, but the baby is the enemy of literacy.  I'm sure he'll appreciate the American novel at some point, as he comes from good reading stock, but at the moment is attention span is highly under-developed.  Like, two paragraphs, max.

I'm invited to a party in Brooklyn tomorrow, complete with a ride back to New Haven, but with the snow storm scheduled I just don't think E. is going to approve the trip.  I'm not sure I would if I were in her position.  Baby P is probably safest right here in his footie pajamas.  Auntie Cara, however, is getting a little restless.  I like it here, but I wish I had somewhere to go and something to do outside of this condo. 

I wish to almighty God that cigarettes were good for me and smelled like roses.  I could cheerfully eat a pack of Marlboro Lights right now.  I'm going to be one of those people who still dreams of herself as a smoker when she's eighty.  But at least I won't be dreaming while I'm hooked up to an oxygen tank.  Or dead.

(more...)

Minutiae

Tomorrow, it will be one week since I've had a cigarette.

Yay.

It's like saying goodbye to an old friend.  Or being abandoned by your best friend.  Or something.

On the way home from lunch the other day, I allowed the eensiest but of self pity to come out and said aloud for the first time, I really want a cigarette.  I teared up just a little.  My cousins were politely solicitous; they don't have any unseemly addictions.  But in general I'm OK.  Except when I talk about it or think about it, like right now.  I haven't ventured out of the house yet on my own because I'm afraid I'll pass a gas station and fall on the cigarette display like a pack of ravening wolves.  That's OK, because I shouldn't be wandering around places where money could be spent either.

Kids, don't start smoking.

It's a powerful addiction.  I hear.

In other news.. goo.  Goo goo ga ga.  Good boy!  What a handsome guy!  Show mommy how you can lift your head aaaalll by yourself!

Versus

So here I am in CT with my cousin E., her husband A., baby boy Patrick and Lily, a very nice half-Siamese cat who just might have to come home with me.

E. and I are six months apart in age.  I beat her out of the womb, and it was the last victory of its kind.  In retrospect, I should have gloated some.  While I was in bars with my parents, begging for quarters for the jukebox and slurping down Shirley Temples, E. was busy playing multiple sports and becoming valedictorian and then getting a full ride to college and an excellent med school.  She has a great husband and an adorable kid, and I've always been insanely jealous, to the point that I might not like her if she weren't also kind and fun and cool.

Greetings from Winter

I, nonsmoker and nanny, send you greetings from wintry New Haven, CT.

Things are going well here; the baby is adorable and I haven't had too much trouble resisting cigarettes.  I think it's a combo of factors: the patch, and being around my cousins, the doctors, that are making it easy.  More anon.