Shut Up Already

So Freaking Tired

I'm back from Philly, but I am not at all recovered.  I worked over 60 hours in 4 days, much of it spent on the move. 

My feet hurt.

But I loved it, really.  Maybe meeting planning is where it's at for me.  Who knows?

I'm having a hard time knowing what to blog about lately.  I'm spinning my wheels a little bit, and while I think that's what I need to be doing right now, it isn't excellent blog fodder.  I'm a little stymied by how many people are reading this thing lately, too; on the one hand, I'm glad because it keeps me from spilling undiluted angst all over the interweb, but on the other hand...hello, I have a lot of angst, as an unemployed, single, 30 year old woman who has no idea what she wants to do with her life.  I find myself wishing that this blog was a secret, so that I could be less circumspect about what I say here. 

But then I'd have to be more circumspect about the existence of this blog--or at least a little circumspect--and that would kind of suck, too.  Readership is, at the end of the day, how I measure the success of this thing I spend so much time on.  I wish that weren't true, but it is (well, level of readership and number of comments).   But, true to every other experience I've ever had, the more successful this project becomes the more dissatisfied I am.  I wish I'd done it all differently, want to start over, etc.  I am my own worst enemy that way, and even recognizing what's happening doesn't stop the process.

So, I'm so tired I can't sort out my thoughts.   I feel restless and anxious lately, and bored with my whole life.  Every day, I become convinced that what I need and want is something totally different than what I needed and wanted yesterday.  On the one hand, I kind of think that restlessness is my lot in life, and that a certain level of unhealthy anxiety is my genetic legacy, so I just have to learn to adapt and use it (them) to my advantage.  But I get so tired of second-guessing myself all the time. 

I have a whole other entry stewing about work-related stuff that I've realized since I've been back here, but I'm too tired to post it now.  Later, dudes.

Call me C.J.

For your enjoyment, some Costa Rica photos.  Many of the ones we took turned out horribly, so.  More to come.

I am sick as a dog today.  Are there any tropical illnesses that manifest as a ferociously sore throat, stuffy head, and gasping, wracking cough?  If so, I have it.  Also, I'm peeling from my "tan" and my joints and eyeballs hurt so much that I'm squinting and shuffling around like an octogenarian.  I was supposed to be immune from respiratory illness as a result of quitting smoking and if I'm not, the deal is OFF.

I went on a tour of the White House yesterday.  I've lived here for nearly 12 years, and in all that time I'd never visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  Nor, as it happens, have I set foot inside the Capitol building.  Or even on the steps.  In fact, I avoid the "federal city" almost entirely.  I'd like to suggest that it's in protest of the way the Feds treat DC, but the truth is I'm just lazy and tourists give me hives.  Anyway, it was a cool tour.  We saw the White House press room (incredibly dingy and small) and I got my picture taken standing behind the podium, pretending to be C.J. from The West Wing.  We toured the West Wing lobby (a lot like a Marriott lobby, with better art) and the Roosevelt room, Oval Office, Rose Garden, and area where the Situation Room is located.  The tour was courtesy of my friend K. whose family has some VIP connections, so our tour was a little special.

Highlights:

• Our tour guide asked the kids in the group if they could guess why the Oval Office desk was raised up a little bit:  "One of the recent presidents was very tall.  Do you know who that was?"  "President Kerry!" the kid shouted back.  Guide flinches.  "Uh, noooo..."  To hear that phrase shouted out, as we stood at the door to the Oval Office...pretty sweet.
• Big photos of the POTUS are everywhere, including a couple of him in that flight suit on the aircraft carrier.  That appearance, you'll recall, was widely considered to be in bad taste.  Not so in the White House, it seems.
• Lots and blots of photos of the POTUS clearing brush.  Crawford landscaping it still a major priority, it would seem.
• At on point, I turned a corner and came upon a HUGE photo of Dick Cheney's head, staring right at me.  I nearly umped out of my skin.  That man is terrifying.  I've heard people refer to him as "grandfatherly"; I feel sorry for those people.  Their family reunions must have been hell on wheels.
• Tour guide quote: "Adults may recall a lot of talk during the last Administration about a hallway off the Oval Office; you can see that area to the right of the desk." <Adults stampede children to get a view of the place where The Deed was done.>

Booorrring

I'm working!  I went on vacation!  I'm 30!

How many times can I post on those themes?  I'm thinking of going back to politics.  But I'm too bored to start reading all of the newspapers and magazines I'd need to in order to be well-informed.  Scathing political commentary from me right now would add up to "Tom DeLay's a dickhead", and you all knew that.  (And he used to be an exterminator, which is funny.  Makes me think of Dale from King of the Hill.)

I have had the same unread New Yorker in my possession for two weeks.  That is an effing SCANDAL in Cara-ville.  Also, I only finished one novel on vacation.  And it was a fluffy little thing. 

Is warm weather making me stupid?  -er?

What I really would like to be doing right now is re-designing this blog.  I wish I had some facility with Photoshop or something similar, but I don't.  I have artistic vision but no artistic talent.  That's why I make sure to have a coterie of graphic designer-type friends in my stable at all times.  (Ahem, Park Slope.  I know you're reading this.  Check your email.) 

This is only my second day of 9-5 ing it, and I'm already so tired.  So.  Tired.

Behold...

...a thing of beauty:

It's my new mp3 player!  Only mine tells me things in English!

What?  It's not an iPod?

Well, no.  It's also the third mp2 playing device I've purchased.  It was going to be an iPod, but Best Buy had no iPods and I'm pretty sure at this moment that my sanity cannot survive another trip to Best Buy, Home of Employed Social Misfits.

Here's how it all went down.

Last Wednesday, I reached my donations goal of $247.50.  Well, that's how much I had (amazing, and I thank you all sincerely) and I decided I couldn't wait any longer.  So I dropped el nino at daycare and headed off to the big box store.  Once there, I spent quite a bit of time weighing my options with the incredibly unhelpful, sullen, and possibly drunk Marisa.  I had totally planned to get an iPod, the 20 GB one, but once there I was overwhelmed by my choices.  I kept asking to see the different players, and Marisa kept heaving huge sighs and bending over like she had a 300 pound man on her back to get them.  Finally, after much nail-biting and many phone calls to my sister so she could Google specs, I selected the 20GB iPod, priced at $299.99. 

I had originally had my heart set on just an iPod mini, but then I was all, why shouldn't I get 14 more gigs of memory for only 50 more dollars?  And THEN, once I'd convinced myself of that, I was all, why shouldn't I get one of the new 30GB color models, so I can upload 25,000 pictures ad view them at the touch of a button?  Yeah, yeah, that's what I should do!  So I felt positively virtuous when I decided to settle for the 20GB model.

Please note that I do not have a digital camera, and also no job, so no plans to acquire one any time soon.

Let's take a moment to think about how pretty the iPod is, even down to  the box it comes in.

         

My hands trembled a little when I finally touched it, out of excitement, yes, but also an overwhelming urge to slap Marisa.

Then, with tax and the replacement plan and everything, the total came to $380.

I was about a half a mile down the road when the nausea became really fierce and I turned around.

I have some money problems, people.  My therapist says that money problems like mine are typical of a person whose inner child is in pain.  My inner child is in AGONY, and I love to spend money.  And as much as I love to spend it, I hate being poor ten times more.  I have full-on panic attacks when my account starts to dry up.  Which is often.  Consider this:  I'm about to be thirty, and I have never had a savings account.  I can't get a credit card, even those Capitol One jobbies they give to third graders now.  I mean, I have Issues.  Ask me how many times my phones have been turned off for nonpayment.  Or if I've ever, say, defaulted on a student loan.  Or if I owe my library anything in the three figure range.  Blockbuster?  I scoff.

So, as a jobless person who is about to spend a much-anticipated week on vacation, I returned my beautiful iPod and bough a much less beautiful Nomad.

 

Doesn't it look comparable?  I was so proud of myself for making a responsible decision.  Its price, including tax and the replacement plan, was exactly what you gave me, internet.  Like, to the penny.   I was a little sad that it's the size of a TV remote and as heavy as a sack of flour.  But with 30 GBs of memory!  And the carrying case included! 

We spent a beautiful hour together, listening to Nas and Lorenna McKinnit, and them the piece of shit stopped working.

So today, I returned it and I was going to just get an iPod so I could be one of the cool kids and have tech support from all my friends and buy accessories, like the little iPod hoodie that I want more than world peace practically.  But they were out of iPods.  No re-stocking date in sight.  It felt like a sign, and since Costa Rica waits for no woman, Marisa and I came to a silent agreement that I should take the Rio and just get over myself.  It's shiny.  It has a wheel.  It costs the same.  And who am I kidding that I need 20 or 30 gigs of music storage

I'm waiting for it to charge up right now.  It's very silver and shiny, but not ostentatious.   I may be tempting fate by writing this entry before its actually demonstrated its functionality to me, but I have a good feeling.  Even though I did snag my sweater--OK, and cut my hand--on the stupid blister pack it came in.

But the blister pack is gone, and Rio and I are together, and that's all that matters.

Thank you, internet.

Hump Day

The baby is home sick, but he's not really sick.  His daycare providers are hysterics.  I'm trying to be brave, but today is my big freelance day and it's very inconvenient.  Plus, the housecleaners are coming so I won't be able to get anything done.

I was working away yesterday, really in the zone and oblivious to the world, when I looked up and saw that it was snowing like crazy.  A closer perusal revealed a white world, so I reluctantly decided to go get the babe early.  I hate driving him when the weather is bad.  People here cannot drive.  When I stepped outside, the wind nearly knocked me off my feet.  I had to stop three times before I even got to I-95 to scrape the car.  It was a total white out.  It took me two hours to get to day care, when it usually takes about 20 minutes.

I cried, a little.

And now we're home together.  Whee! 

In other domestic news, I made an excellent casserole last night with brown rice, turkey, asparagus, mushrooms, and cheese.  It was perfect snowstorm food.  And I have discovered a nearby farmer's market.  I don't talk about this too much, because I am already such a fucking geek, but I am obsessed with produce.  The amount of time and money I can spend at a farmer's market or farm stand is shocking.  I'm thinking of taking the baby there today to wear him out so I can get some work done this afternoon.  Alas, it's only -10 degrees here right now.  If it gets up to 20 we're outtie.

I don't want to beat this topic to death, but I am now halfway to realizing my materialistic iPod dream. Donations have been heartwarmingly generous.  I promise to pass on the good karma some day.

Connecticut Redux

I can't be alone in thinking that this baby looks positively edible.

Guess what the P in Baby P stands for?  I'm not counting on this fact ameliorating my sadness at being with him instead of a bunch of drunk wankers on St. Patrick's Day.  Irish pubs may be lowbrow, low-class, cliched places to be on March 17, but I don't care. 

I'm back in CT, if you haven't cottoned on to that yet, and it is NOT snowing right now.  I expect that it will soon.  I will be here until April 8, trying not to eat carbs.  (I'm pretty sure the baby is a carb bomb, so I'm not actually going to eat him.  He's also sick, again, and I am trying not to ingest any virus as I'm still not over his last one.)

Speaking of my recent Worst Cold Ever, I have a pain in my left side, just beneath my ribs, that is normally kind of dull but becomes excruciating hen I sneeze (which I'm already doing a lot of) or laugh (I gave that up, along with my job and smoking.)  It's reached the point that I would totally see a doctor, except i don't have any insurance or any money.  I am staying with two doctors, but I don't really want to ask them to palpate me.  I may have to, though.  I'd hate for something in there to explode and compromise my trip to Costa Rica.

Well, I think I'll go google possible diagnoses for myself.  If you're a member of my family and you're reading this, chances are you've already decided that it's cancer, because that is always what we decide when a mystery ailment presents itself.  To you I say, step off, because since I quit smoking I am IMMUNE to cancer.  Definitely guaranteed not to die of, nor even contract, any kind of cancer, ever. 

Go google that statement yourself and you will see that it's totally true.

More Bad News from the Hinterlands

Thanks a bunch to those of you who have contributed to the iPod fund.  You certainly aren't obligated to, but I sure do appreciate it.  I was having second thoughts about how tacky it was to put up that donations page, but then I saw that I was almost 1/3 of the way there in one day.  It can't be THAT tacky if it's so effective.  You guys rock.

I was going to write a funny post about a business trip I took to Tampa a few years ago, as a forn of repayment for your generosity, but just now my mom called to let us know that she and my stepfather have officially split.  She's moved into my grandmother's house, and he's moving to Michigan.

It's weird.  I feel a sense of dislocation, similar to what I felt when my mom's siblings divorced their spouses, who had always been as much my aunts and uncles as the blood relatives were.  But that was different because they all shared children, so I knew I'd be seeing all of the exes at every important event, not to mention the mall and the post office and everywhere else in our little town.  This is different, because there's nothing to bind my mother and stepfather together except their mariage and a few tedious administrative details.  I don't know if I'll ever see my stepfather again.  I don't know if he'll ever see my aunts and uncles, who've been as siblings to him, or my cousins, who have always known him as Uncle G., again.  I don't know if anyone's going to care. 

They've been married for twenty years.  I was in third grade, my sister in second.  At their wedding, she locked herself in the bathroom and sobbed inconsolably the whole time.  Things didn't get much better until we left home.  But, after we did leave home, everything was peachy.  He liked us as adults, he just never wanted children, his own or us.  He only wanted my mom.  Except apparently, things haven't been peachy, and we just didn't know because we've been here and they've been there.

Anyway, I think my mom will be happier in the long run.  That's what's important.  I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to be feeling.  And I'm a little horrified to think of my mom dating again, and I'm a lot horrified to think of her being alone, while we are so far away.  These last few years have been tough on my notion of my family and who they are and how they are, but this is the weirdest thing to happen yet.  I've known is was coming for a while, but still.

Of Art and Leisure and Penury

Home again, home again, where the mice roam and my sister and I fight constantly and where I make no money.

It's good to see the dog again, though.  I think he grew.

We had a good weekend in New York, despite the fact that the baby succeeded in his nefarious plot to infect me with RSV.  Somewhere about halfway through our walking tour of Manhattan, from the Met to Brooklyn, I went deaf for a while.  It was a very unpleasant experience, but I was a trooper, despite any snide comments you may hear to the contrary.  While intrepid tour guide Josh and my sister have many good qualities, empathy is not among them.  Though I was permitted to go back to the hotel and take a nap before our assault on the Brooklyn Bridge.  We covered a lot of ground, and I may finally have a grasp on Manhattan geography.  Every other vsit I've made there has been a whirlwind series of cab rides from one meal with old college rommmates to another. 

I saw The Gates, and my learned critical opinion on the matter is: good.  They are especially pleasing from far away, when you can just glimpse some saffron Home Depot Orange through the bare trees.  We got some particularly nice views of the installation from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was awesome, though not as awesome as the MOMA.  And the best thing about visting these museums, besides casually dropping it into conversation, was that we got to cut to the front of every line and get in for free because Josh has a corporate membership!  Y'all know how I love to cut in line.

And I still want to live in a mouse-free apartment in Brooklyn.  I love Brooklyn.  I like Manhattan too, but there are too many people there.

So now I'm home, about to start my first official day of copyediting.  I already got one additional day per week from the same company, so that's good.  I'm up to almost ten hours per week of steady employment!  Woo-hoo!  I'm thinking I may need to pick up a lucrative part-time sideline.  Like maybe whoring.

I'm definitely going on a fabulous vacation for my 30th birthday, but I don't know where yet, even though Sis keeps threatening to tell me.  I just have to concentrate on not pissing her off between now and then (any more than I do just by being in her presence, yet not under her total control) so that I can have the pleasure of waking up somewhere tropical and having to deduce my location based on the language and culture (i.e, middle-aged European tourists?  Dominican Republic!  Drunk Midwesterners?  Cancun!)

Unto the Seventh Cousin, Five Times Removed

Baby P. is home sick today.  He's been feeling puny for a few days, coughing like a smoker.  I tried to take him to day care anyway, because I wanted to make banana bread, but when his 'teacher' took him from my arms and discovered that she could feel him wheezing through her fingertips, she said he couldn't stay.  "Baby P,"  I crooned, rubbing his fat cheek with my thumb as she held him, "how's it feel to be rejected from day care, when you're the son of two overachieving doctors?"  The staff laughed nervously.

I called his mother, who was in the midst of removing someone's uterus through their vagina.  (OK, I'm not sure what surgery she was performing, but that is the one that grosses me out the most.  If it is possible to remove a uterus through a vagina, there is more potential for horror in this world than I knew.  Back me up here, sisters.)  I told her the scoop, and we agreed that a visit to the germ factory known as the pediatrician's office was probably prudent.  I assured her, via her med student who was acting as go-between since E. had her instruments up someone's hoo-ha, that I wouldn't mention the fact that she'd dropped the baby on his head this morning unless the pediatron specifically asked.

As one who has suffered from bronchitis throughout my asthmatic, smoke-infested life, I'm pretty sure that's what the baby has.  I feel for him.  I think he may be suffering from an illness that was intended for me, because smokers who quit usually get bronchitis or a chest cold as their alveoli telegraph one another to carpe diem and they begin working frantically to expel accumulated tar.  So while Baby P is coughing up 15 years worth of my accumulated tar, and making a terrible and piteous racket while he's at it, I haven't coughed once in the past 5 weeks, excluding the other night when Jon Stewart said something funny while I was pouring Diet Coke down my throat.  (Pause while I look out the window and think about how much I love Jon Stewart. A lot.)

Meanwhile, the bananas are totally rotting on the counter top.  I was going to give him a taste, too.

Lo siento, Baby P. 

Fact of the day:  did you know that very curly eyelashes and creases under the eye are associated with childhood asthma?

I'm feeling very guilty because the people who were supposed to start watching Baby P when I leave on Friday have backed out.  Now, E. has to rush to find someone and I am obsessing over who it will be.  How will some stranger know how to take care of him?  He's a very finicky baby, who needs things to be done a certain way.  For the life of me, I can't imagine a person who's not related to us that will do the job correctly.

I'm like five minutes away from sympathetically lactating.

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.