I hate this fixation.

Lately my head has been too full of morbidity to write. Because R. and I are leaving for Paris on Saturday, we’ve had a mad scramble to complete our wills and make sure our affairs are in order before we leave. Obviously, the odds are small that anything will happen to us on our trip, but there’s always the possibility and it would be irresponsible for us to go without making arrangements for the care and feeding of young Eeyore. Well, guess what – focusing on a bunch of documents concerning my death and/or incapacity is really fucking depressing. Not only that, there’s something sort of weird about it which feels like a jinx – like thinking about it so much and planning for it means it’s going to happen.

I’ve never really given any thought before to what happens after I die, other than thinking in the abstract that it would be awful for my mom since as we all know, we’re supposed to die before our children. Frankly, I don’t enjoy having to give it more thought than that, and all of a sudden it’s the topic of the day, every day. I’ll be glad when we get the papers signed this afternoon, stick them in our files, and move away from the topic and back to things like retirement and college funds and wishing we were going to the beach this summer.

Other morbid thoughts are about the earthquake in China and the hurricane in Burma. I fear that it’s a sad cliché, but ever since I had a kid I get so much more emotional over any event where there’s been harm of any kind to children. Like, really emotional. Yesterday I was looking at some photos on the New York Times site and I had to turn away when I saw one of a mother grieving over her dead child. I got that awful, tight feeling in my throat which presages tears, and then there they were. I don’t really understand it; kids died and were abused and all sorts of awful stuff before I had a kid, and I could think in the abstract “that’s really awful” but now it hits me viscerally in a way I could never have imagined before. I guess that’s some type of growth on my part, but I can’t say I like it.

Tomorrow or Friday I’ll write about how excited I am for my trip so as to assure you all is not a giant bummer around our house.

Paperback writer.

After that morose entry yesterday, I realized I have to take this matter a little more seriously, and so today I am signing up for a writing class. I have no idea how this will pan out, but I opted for an online course instead of anything local. I would have preferred to take something live, but one of the downsides of living in a city where I’m not likely to die from a terrorist attack or a natural disaster is a strange dearth of writing classes. Perhaps the smug complacency that comes with knowing we’re the ones who will be left standing to carry on the human race isn’t an appropriate breeding ground for creativity, but I couldn’t find one introductory class to save my soul.

So the “Gotham Writer’s Workshop” it is. I had a tough time deciding between a fiction class and non-fiction, because even though when I think “writer” I think fiction, I’m not sure that’s where my interest really lies. After all, “Kate” is, or at least was, probably what you’d call creative non-fiction, and that’s what has seemed to flow most easily for me. But maybe that’s just a novel written in the first person; who knows. They even have a humor-writing class, which sounds very cool but which might be a bit ambitious (not to mention presumptuous) of me. Finally, I chose “Creative Writing 101,” since I really am starting at the very beginning and so I might as well go straight for the basics. I’m pretty excited about it; anything to get me off my ass!

And to add some color to the page, some recent pictures of the fam:

Impending mid-life crisis.

I suppose you’ve noticed I don’t blog anymore. What’s the point? I am in a cycle of endless repetition that doesn’t make for interesting reading. My head feels almost thick with the 5 or 6 things that fill it; they’ve expanded to take up more than their fair share of space until there’s no room for anything new or creative. I have a vague memory of a time when everything about me was thinner and lighter; neither my head nor my body felt like these immutable objects, rooted in permanence.

None of that is to say I am unhappy; quite the opposite, overall. I’m happy in my marriage and watching Eeyore learn and grow is indescribably wonderful. But beyond those two things, which granted are extremely important and make up the core of my existence (as I want them to), I’ve got NOTHING going on. Evenings are spent making dinner, watching an hour of TV, then reading for half an hour or so while R. studies for his architecture exams. This is certainly time I could be writing the Great American Novel or even a blog entry, but after a mind-numbing day at the office and scrambling to bathe and feed Eeyore and get him to bed, I can’t think of one thing to say that anyone would want to read. And so I elect to listen to or read somebody else’s words.

I’m hoping that this trip to Europe will somehow remind me of who I am; stimulate a need to find a creative outlet for myself once more. Something has to give sometime.

Everybody likes to eat.

Did you hear the story on NPR this morning about the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola?” Angola used to be a cotton and tobacco plantation, and even now continues to grow cotton along with most of the food that the inmates eat. Twice a year the prison hosts a rodeo, and many of the prisoners have concessions selling some crazy-sounding southern food made with the vegetables they grown on the penitentiary’s land, as well as crawfish from their ponds. They don’t get to handle or keep the money, but it sounds like the experience of having others compliment their food and getting to be out interacting with people not from the prison is what makes it worthwhile to them.

Many of the prisoners are there for life, and it had me thinking about what the hell that would be like. Angola is set on 18,000 acres of what sounds like beautiful land, but that can hardly make up for forty or fifty years living behind bars with other people with histories as unfortunate as your own. Can you even imagine that? Continuing to try to live your life knowing there is no chance you will ever be free again? How thoroughly bizarre to realize that THIS is your life; that there is no reason ever to have dreams of where your life might lead you, because it’s not leading you anywhere, ever.

So that’s pretty uplifting.

Since I am still a free woman, I can travel, and as you know (since it’s pretty much all I talk about), R. and I are going to Paris and London in a month. With the crummy dollar, we’re not staying anywhere too exciting, but I am unable to stay anywhere too budget without crying and generally being a royal pain in the ass so we’re not in total dumps, either. We are staying at The Parkcity in London, which gets good reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m a little concerned that it’s going to be one of those weird, battered-around-the-edges places you see when you’re coming in from Heathrow onto Cromwell Road, but hopefully not. As for Paris, I’m still looking because even though our hotel looks pretty cute, it’s in Montparnasse. That’s not an area I’ve ever been particularly drawn to, although it is easy walking to the shops of the rue de Grenelle, Le Bon Marché, and then over to St. Germain, and there are plenty of good restaurants nearby. And it’s 135 euros a night, including VAT, so that’s pretty reasonable. I think my problem is, as usual, I’m a five-star kind of girl with a three-star salary.

I really need to start making some reservations for dinners in Paris; does anyone have any favorites they’d like to suggest? I’ve already booked a place called Le Timbre, which is newish and popular, and I figure we’ll go to a brasserie one night to ensure I get an adequate dose of foie gras, but I wouldn’t mind branching out a bit otherwise from my same old standards. So… any suggestions welcome.

What bothers me today.

In the long list of things that I find disgusting, there is one that ranks pretty high: toenails sporting a French pedicure. I think the issue is that I already find toenails to be pretty gross sui generis, and especially so when they’re long enough to scoop dip out of the container. A French pedicure requires that the nails be a bit longer than normal, in order to fit that delightful white stripe across the tips, so with a glance I know two things about the woman who grooms herself in this way:

1. She doesn’t find long toenails to be disgusting, which is just bizarre, and
2. The rest of her is probably pretty tacky, too.

Because I can almost guarantee those toenails will be peeking out of a pair of high-heeled sandals or wedges purchased from DSW or some other low-end, warehouse-type retailer, and dollars to doughnuts there will be a toe ring involved as well. And where the shoes don’t merit enough attention to even come from Nordstrom, the rest of the outfit will follow suit.





















Lest you think I am a complete bitch, which, of course, I am, I will say that certainly a girl can pick up a perfectly charming little spring outfit at an inexpensive chain store. Yesterday I wore what I thought was a perfectly cute, reasonably tailored pair of “railroad stripe” trousers to work that I had picked up at Old Navy. However, I paired them with a pair of A.P.C. wedges that kept me from looking like I’d just given up. And the toes that were visible in MY wedges were a perky shade of spring pink. Maybe not everyone’s taste, but also not designed to rip someone else’s ankle to shreds if I stand too close.

And of course, maybe I am wrong; perhaps the beaches and restaurants of St. Tropez are alive with the tanned, white-tipped feet of the lithe and fashion-forward jet set. It is a “French” pedicure, after all. But I’m guessing that if you see a girl with such a pedicure in France, it’s more likely she shops at the Parisian equivalent of TJ Maxx than on the Faubourg St. Honoré.

Food.

Since I’m so busy at work I don’t have time to ruminate on any of the darker corners of my life or the world’s issues today, here’s another installment in my evolution into Martha Stewart’s grubby and less able little sister; the one who never left the shitty house in New Jersey, who drags one leg behind her and who can’t function if there are more than 5 ingredients involved in a recipe, one of which had better be cheese … but who still has the same dishes they both inherited from their mom.

So last night we had a friend over to dinner, and I made macaroni and cheese. I know; that doesn’t sound particularly thrilling, and in fact R. tells me that in one photo I took of the finished product, it looked like vomit. You be the judge:
















It may look weird, but I’ll tell you what: it tastes fabulous, it’s perfectly appropriate for a mid-week, casual dinner with friends, and there is nothing easier to make. This is important when you have one of these to deal with as well:




















Here’s the recipe.

Macaroni and Cheese

16 oz. rigatoni
16 oz. cottage cheese (I use 1%)
12 oz. sour cream (non- or low-fat)
16 oz. shredded cheese (cheddar or a mix)
1 egg, beaten

Cook rigatoni according to package directions. Cool. Combine all ingredients, reserving a little cheese to sprinkle on the top. Spread in a 9 x 13 casserole dish, sprinkle with cheese, and bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.

As you can see, Thomas also enjoys a little get-together, as evidenced by this picture of him reclining on the table after dinner.

I'm less a flower than a tincture.

I am an Echinacea What Flower Are You?

Huh? I found this quiz on Cindy's blog, and apparently this is me in a nutshell:

"You are a health conscious person, both your health and the health of others. You know all about the health benefits and dangers of the world around you."

Um, that is simply not true. I'm a lawyer, not a volunteer for Medecins Sans Frontiers. Now, apparently I was a shaman in a former life, according to the psychic who predicted my whirlwind romance and wedding (to a big, blond beefy football player-type), so maybe it's rooted somewhere deep within, but otherwise I'd say it's flat out wrong.

Couldn't I have been something a little more lovely; like, say, a lilac?

Who doesn't love dishes?

I know I have mentioned my collection of green kitchen ware before; it’s been an addiction for some time even if I have not added to it in awhile. When I was in college, my mother and her sister began to develop extensive collections of early/mid twentieth century dishes and glass. My cousin and I liked hanging out with our moms, but to do so meant endless visits to the antique malls of the South. One day, as my cousin and I hung listlessly around the doorway to yet another antique emporium somewhere off I-95, bitching about being bored, it occurred to me that these stores had a lot of dishes in my favorite color, green. As both my mother and my aunt were gobbling down every piece of cobalt depression glass in sight, I decided I would start a collection in green. Of course, I was in college so I had no money, but my acquisitive mom was happy to get me started and soon I was on my way with a green glass decanter and my first criss-cross refrigerator dish.

Over the years I have collected a pretty amazing amount of stuff; from Hazel Atlas bowls to Manhattan glass to a Fire King breakfast set to Bauer pottery to… you name it. Here are pictures of some containers out on my counter and of a cabinet of glasses.




















The containers are from the 30s and 40s, and the glasses are a mix. The hobnail glasses on the top shelf are from the 1910’s, and the tall glasses next to them are from the 50’s. The Ring wine glasses on the second shelf are from the 30’s (gorgeous, and a gift from my aunt for graduation from law school), although the ones next to them are 1990’s Target. The bottom shelf has green Manhattan glass tumblers and a bunch of Swanky Swig juice glasses from the 50’s (I think). Anyway, I get loads of pleasure from using all my dishes, and I can set a pretty fabulous table. I also have a large collection of mismatched plates from the 19th and 20th centuries, each having some element of green as their common feature. When I set a table with those, I often use my toile silverware, the site for which I linked to yesterday and more pieces of which I add when I go to France.















That company has all sorts of cute stuff, though, and I think I might add something new this time. I really like this Liberty pattern in “lime”, which I think will go nicely with some Cath Kidston coffee mugs I already have in green…

















Now I’m all keyed up for some serious shopping.

C'est lundi and je me sens pauvre.

You know what worries me if I let myself think about it for too long? Retirement. It’s a tough balance between trying not to live like an ascetic in order to fund one’s retirement (which has never been my forte) and not just blowing through all one’s cash only to wake up at 60 and see a thousand dog food casseroles on the horizon. I haven’t been the world’s best at saving for my future so far, and at 39, it feels like it’s already too late. So far, all I have managed is that I contribute the maximum to my 401k each year, and since marrying R. we also contribute monthly to a mutual fund and a gold fund. I’m sure that’s more than a lot of people manage, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still not enough. It’s particularly true at a time when I check my 401k balance and see that my “personal investment performance” is already down 5% for the year. Awesome. So I have essentially been throwing money in the toilet. R. reminds me that when shares are down, the money I put in simply buys more shares, so that when prices go back up, there are more shares to gain value. I understand this intellectually, but still I look at the balance that seems to have been sitting in the same place for some time now and visions of Sunday mornings with my spotted, arthritic hands struggling to guide the scissors through the coupon pages lodge in my mind.

Fortunately, in six weeks we will be spending our tax return on profiteroles, patterned flatware and Prêt-à-Manger duck wraps instead of sticking it in some sort of savings vehicle. That should go a long way toward easing my mind. I guess when I’m trying to think of another way to stretch boiled cabbage into another delicious dish, I can think back on the halcyon days when I thought nothing of starting every Parisian dinner with a slice of foie gras, or of gaily loading another frivolous treat from La Maison du Chocolat into my basket…. Paris itself will be a distant memory, too, but I’m sure if I look hard enough at the cracks in the cheap plaster of our one bedroom tenement apartment, I can imagine it’s a map of Paris’ arrondissements, the Seine flowing agelessly through.

Or, we can just retire there and I can look at the cracks of our Parisian tenement walls instead.

Pink like porkies.

So the good news is the baby slept through the night again last night, thank Christ. I was wondering if we were lost forever. Now I can see his one little tooth poking up from his bottom gum without having to pull back his lip to look for it, and I have to say it’s ridiculously cute. I guess I’ll need to learn how to keep it clean so it doesn’t rot right back out of his head, causing more sleepless nights.

But when one door closes another opens: now he has pink eye. Yes, pink eye. Not having been around a bunch of children, I haven’t seen a case of pink eye since my own 30 years ago, and it’s no more pleasant now. I called his school to tell them I was taking him to the doctor to confirm, and the director asked me to call if it was true so they could post a notice. Refusing to take responsibility for infecting the rest of the kids, when he obviously picked it up there himself, I said, “I’m pretty sure he got it there since it’s the only place he goes.” The director replied that no other children have it, so I lied and said I was pretty sure one other kid in Eeyore’s class had had it recently. In fact, there is this one boy who is always a hot mess of gooey snot and flame-red cheeks and nose, so chances are his eyeballs are red behind all the other rheumy trappings of babyhood. Whatever; I’m not above throwing some other hapless child under the bus to avoid looking like the gross family that nobody wants around.

I am a zombie.

My life isn’t even worthy of a blog post lately. I mean, don’t get me wrong; my life is wonderful (mostly) for me, the one living it. But for you? Eh. Not so much. Here are some examples of the drivel occupying my brain:

1. I don’t think I am ever going to be really thin again. I have a particularly doughy case of muffin top that is tiring me out, and not enough willpower to get rid of it. I go to the gym regularly and eat sort of reasonably (for a high school football player), but I can’t bring myself to stop eating and last I checked that’s the only real way to lose weight. Serious, boring, shitty deprivation. No chocolate, no wine, NO FUN and so no dice. I’ve never understood the women who claim to be satisfied by “just a square or two of really good dark chocolate;” because if it’s that good, I want even more.

2. I don’t think I am ever going to sleep again. We had two or three precious weeks where Eeyore was sleeping from 7:30 at night until 6:30 in the morning, and I quickly became accustomed to sleeping almost like a human again. However, he started teething recently, and the last few nights in our house have been total hell; like freshly home from the hospital bad. Since babies keep getting teeth until they’re about 2, it’s easy to imagine that this could continue until that time. No sleep = very difficult to remain upbeat about almost anything.

3. Paris. I think about it constantly now, and when I have a spare moment I’m scouring the internet for new restaurant recommendations. I’m pissed that my excitement is tempered every time I think of not being able to see Eeyore every day. It makes me kind of sick. Shit, I’m almost in tears every day when I have to go back to work after visiting him at lunch; how can this be anything but a hundred times worse? I miss him right now.

At this rate, I won’t have anything interesting to say here until I get back from France.

Thursday.

I wish you could buy H&M clothes online. Denver doesn’t have a lot of the basic stores you can find elsewhere in the US; stores that have pretty much been staples elsewhere for some time, like H&M, or IKEA. We only got Sephora here about 2 years ago, not that I buy anything there. I’m kind of a drugstore product person, from Eucerin red-skin lotion to Maybelline Great Lash. I do buy department store lipstick (MAC or Bobbi Brown) and blush (Lorac), but otherwise I have no idea what’s going on in the world of beauty and honestly, don’t really care. In fact, now that I think about it, I have really let myself go in that regard. I don’t remember the last time I got a pedicure, had my eyebrows waxed, wore my contacts and really did my makeup. It’s not that I think I’m some natural beauty that doesn’t need help, either; no, I’ve just become quite lazy. I would like to work on that a bit, especially with the whole being 39 thing making it all seem that much worse.

At lunchtime today I popped over to the gym for my “butts and guts” class (ouch) and then for a quick visit to see Eeyore. While there, I asked one of his teachers if she wanted to baby sit for him in a couple of weeks, because she’s always indicating she’d be up for it, all for the low price of $15 per hour (!). I’ve avoided it so far, because we have a couple of girls we use for $12 an hour, and I’ve always thought it could be a little weird having one of his teachers over to our house. I mean, what will she think, and what will she come back in and tell all his other teachers, because you know she will? But we really need someone for that date, and she and the babe really like each other so I decided to just get over it. I’m still thinking, though, about her impressions and the report back. Will she be surprised by how small our house is, so she’ll go back in on Monday morning and something like this will ensue:

Teacher Babysitter: “Now I know why Kate says she can’t afford to have another baby; she really can’t. You should see how tiny their place is!”

Lead Teacher: “Did she at least have nice things for you to eat? Baby A’s parents live in the foothills – they have an enormous house and they love me and they always have just what I want to eat. And Baby A loves me, too. And I baby sit for them all the time because they love me. I wouldn’t even have time to baby sit for Eeyore if they asked because everybody else always wants me and loves me. Eeyore loves me. He sits up and walks and runs and sings arias for me; I’m not sure why he doesn’t for Kate and R.”

TB: “They had a couple of cans of Coke and some string cheese, so no, not really. They had a lot of wine and bourbon, though. Maybe that’s where they spend their money. I looked through her closets; there was a lot of stuff but it was all kind of cheap. So was her makeup in the medicine cabinet.”

Oh, dear – do people do that? Go through your things, I mean? Not that I really care, now that I am a Buddhist, don’t you know.

I hope you're happy, too.

Not in the clique.

If I were not going to Paris in a few weeks, I would SO be somewhere tropical right now. Denver schools are on spring break, and so I imagine all the annoying families filling the resorts of places I would like to be. So actually, I would SO be somewhere tropical next week. It’s lovely weather here, but it’s not the same as having breakfast while looking out at the ocean, palm trees swaying in the breeze, thinking about the day’s activities of lying by the pool reading and occasionally hopping in the pool to cool off. Except those days are probably gone for me now that we have the heir; instead it will be a lot of entertaining the toddler. Whatever; it’s still better to be in that kind of weather. Next year, for my, ahem, 40th birthday (WTF!!??) we’ll definitely go somewhere warm – either to Hawaii or perhaps rent a villa in Mexico. I’m thinking Hawaii, though, since it’s been awhile since I’ve been there. Somewhere I can pretend 40 isn’t happening.

Last Friday I had the most junior high experience I have had in some time. After work, I strolled with Eeyore over to a friend’s house to hang out and meet some of her neighbors, who habitually congregate on the sidewalk in front of her house to drink wine and chat while their children all play. When I got there, there was one dad and a couple of moms, and I felt that little awkwardness that sometimes comes when arriving at a scene with new people. That soon multiplied into full-fledged self-consciousness as both the women showed that they had no interest whatsoever in talking to me. As I continued to try to make friendly conversation, the resistance I felt emanating from these two was palpable. All of a sudden my own voice sounded to me to be too loud; too eager.

To try to change the emerging dynamic I perceived, I lifted Eeyore out of his stroller to carry him up to sit on the steps with my friend. As I lifted him, my friend said “Eeyore’s crack is showing.” I said, “Yes, he’s got high crack. R. says he inherited that from me.” Bitch Number One said, “Oh, isn’t that nice. How lovely to meet you.” Properly chastised, I sat down with Eeyore and shut up to observe (since there wasn’t really anyone left to talk to at that point). Not one minute after I had made my remark that was apparently the height of crudeness, Bitch Number Two launched into a discussion with her child about pooping in the potty. Bitch Number One chimed in about poop in general. At this point, my friend offered me a glass of wine, but I had to get out of there. I mean, seriously. I can’t make an inoffensive off the cuff remark without being called on it, but it’s OK to sit around and talk about baby shit? No thanks. Still, as I walked home, I couldn’t help but focus more on having been rebuffed by these women than anything else, when I had been nothing but normal and friendly. When I got home and told R. about how it had felt like 7th grade to be largely ignored, I might have even shed a hot tear or two. And then I remembered that I am WAY too old for that shit, and fuck them, anyway.

Happy anniversary.

I met my husband two years ago today. I can’t believe how little of my life that is, yet how much of the big stuff we’ve packed in:





























It seems like only yesterday, and really, it almost was, that I had just started dating R. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his cat and an entire wall of books that thrilled me to see. One Sunday morning not too long after we’d started seeing each other, we sat on his couch and drank coffee, listening to Steven Malkmus and paging through one of his architecture books on Richard Neutra’s Palm Springs houses. That’s still one of my favorite memories in my life; I felt like I had stepped straight into my wildest dream of the world’s most attractive man. I mean, really; a brown-haired, well-read, cat-owning architect with good music on his stereo… I was in love.

Not too long after that, because everything about our time together has been compressed, he began coughing a lot. We’d lie in bed at night, and he’d suck these gross Halls cough drops like they were going out of style. Finally, he told me he’d coughed up a little blood that day, and the next day he was in the hospital with a DVT in his calf and seven pulmonary embolisms (emboli? I don’t know) in his lungs. The doctors marveled that he had a large saddle embolus and was still alive; they usually only found those in autopsies. Five days later he was out of the hospital, newly fragile in the way only people who have been broadsided by their own mortality can be, and a few days later we were engaged.

Some people might think it was a little quick to be making that kind of decision on the heels of a medical emergency like that, but I prefer to think it just cemented what we already knew. In fact, driving home from my first date with him, I’d announced giddily to the ether that we were going to get married. Since then we’ve done everything at lightening speed, but it has all felt just right. I still (after all this time) feel like I hit the jackpot.

Tuesday.

I had the opportunity to use one of my dad’s stock phrases this morning; one I had never been able to use outside the family before. A guy stepped into the elevator and started sniffing.

Guy: “Every elevator I get into today smells like an Italian restaurant. You know, like pasta, with a little garlic.”

Kate: “Maybe it’s your upper lip.”

I couldn’t have him thinking I smelled like pasta with garlic, after all.

Meanwhile, R. and I took our first weekend trip with the baby last weekend; we stayed with some friends in their new condo in Vail. Eeyore was the perfect guest, ensuring we would be invited back with his gummy smiles and sleeping through the night. It was pretty encouraging, actually, that we could go somewhere and our lives wouldn’t implode between sunset and sunrise. Our next trip with him is a visit to my mom’s in Palo Alto in June or July; now I’ll only fear the airplane trip. And GOD, do I fear that. I suppose I’ll just need to be carrying enough cash to buy drinks for every passenger on the plane, especially me.

Speaking of trips, even though it’s two months until our trip to Paris and London, I’m already starting to reach a bit of a fever pitch thinking about it. I’ve taken to watching European travel videos; pointing out to R. every last café, market and plane tree as examples of the fabulousness we will experience together in Paris. He’s looking forward to it, too, but he doesn’t work himself into quite the lather about it that I always do. For me, though, I think it goes back to my last post about the rather mundane nature of everyday life; having a fun trip to look forward to can occupy me as intensely as and for much longer than the trip itself. It serves as a little escapism from:

7:00: Wake up to cooing from other bedroom. Change, feed and dress adorable progeny.

8:30: Get it together enough to leave for work. Pile daily necessities for me (travel mug full of aging yuppie staff of life: Peet’s Coffee, La Perruche brown sugar cubes and half-and-half) and Baby (formula, rattle, binky, random shit) into Audi wagon and drive well-worn path to school and work. Late for work.

9:00 – 5:00 (or so): Work, goof off, work, leave.

5:15: Pick up Baby or run errand while R. picks up Baby.

6:00 – 7:15: Play with Baby, clean up spit up, bathtime, bottle and lullabies, inhale deeply of Baby’s head, bed.

7:15 – 10:30: Romantic interlude with R. and/or make dinner, watch TV, get in bed, read, sleep.

So… I know there are much worse lives out there that need escaping. Still, I do like to daydream about vacations, don’t you?

Navel-gazing Friday.

It’s often someone else’s blog that starts me thinking about a topic, and in this case it’s Libby’s picture of her beach. It’s a reminder to me about the nature of “happiness,” and the importance of recognizing that feeling happy or positive is completely within our own control. Happiness doesn’t come from external things or circumstances, although certainly events can have a positive or negative effect on one’s mood, and a negative event or state of affairs can cause one’s happiness to take a hit if she lets it. Let’s face it, if the very worst thing I can imagine happened, which is that my husband and child were somehow taken from me, I would be devastated. But it would be up to me to find a way to continue to have an appreciation for my own life and find some happiness or peace with what would remain. Or, of course, kill myself because I’m not sure if anyone could ever really recover from that, but let’s just say I decided to stick around on the planet for the rest of my own preordained earthly tenure.

OK, that’s way grimmer than I wanted to get on this topic. So instead, let’s just backtrack to having an ordinary life and trying to stay happy with that. Life can get pretty boring sometimes and it brings its share of disappointments. I think, though, that with practice we can learn to accept those things a lot more readily and hold fast to the preciousness of the things we do have that fill our days, and find the beauty and occasional sparks of excitement there. Really, this is a lesson I need to learn because I am the kind of person who can get bored with the repetitive nature of my daily existence pretty easily. I’ve had this talk with myself a few times when I’ve noticed I’m getting particularly antsy with the then-current state of my life, but that’s not the best time to try to rein oneself in with arguments of accepting the beauty in the mundane. At those times I had let myself get too far down the path, and was in a position (i.e., alone and responsible only for myself) to change the circumstances of my life. So that’s what I did at those times, rather than take to heart the adage that wherever you go, there you are.

Now, however, I am in a period of naturally occurring happiness, where there is not too much about my life I would like to change. Sure, I’d love to be wealthier and have more control over whether and how I work, how much time I could be with the baby, etc., but that’s pretty much it. It would be a good time to work on improving how I meet the challenge of dealing with boredom or unhappiness the next time it rears its ugly little head. The $64,000 question, then, is how do I do this? It seems like the kind of thing that can only be learned through some sort of spiritual practice, which is an odd jumping off point for someone like me who dislikes religion and who is prone to panic attacks from too much rumination on the nature of existence. We’ve talked about looking into Buddhism for our household; that could be a place to start, but it ought to be easier than that. Maybe it’s just a matter of making a habit out of recognizing the beauty or potential for contentment in every moment, and even announcing it out loud to myself to reinforce the habit? I could put myself on an hourly schedule; set a reminder on my Outlook calendar.

Hubris and other fun stuff.

Let me just start by saying that I feel terrible for his wife and daughters. But damn! What was Eliot Spitzer thinking? Actually, I find this kind of thing fascinating. Here is a man who has spent his public career making a big stink about fighting corruption and yet, as is often the case, has been naughty, naughty behind the scenes. What is it about some men whose personal peccadilloes cause them to be overly moralistic about the same issues in public? Take Mark Foley, for example, the erstwhile congressman whose public mission was the fight against child abuse and exploitation but who privately was sending lewd emails and text messages to teenage boys who had worked as congressional pages. It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon. Perhaps all we need to do is look to see which politician is moralizing the loudest to know who is up to no good; me thinks thou dost protest too much and all that.

In other news, I woke up this morning and almost immediately felt smothered by the fact that I had to go to work today. Then when I dropped Eeyore off at school, I felt quite miserable as I left him playing on the floor with the other kids. Not that I think it’s bad for him to be there; just that I wish I could be there with him, too. I can’t believe I am turning into this person, the potential “SAHM,” but I need to get over it because, like many Americans, I can’t afford not to work.

Only 2 months until our trip to France.

Friday.

God just gave me a little smack on the wrist for bad behavior. Everybody’s talking about tee shirts today, so I attempted to post one I found to add to the mix:













As soon as I reached with my mouse to click “publish,” however, I knocked my coffee over and it spilled all over my desk – including my desk calendar and the contract I was working on. Apparently God doesn’t reward tackily partisan statements like that.

But anyway. Last Saturday we had beautiful weather here in Denver; so lovely that we decided to get out for a walk.
















We headed to Wash Park, where the crowds were out in force. We found our own little patch of grass, and Eeyore had his first frolic outside:















This weekend isn’t supposed to be as nice. I am tired of winter. I want to be able to sit out in our back yard and have my morning coffee, maybe put a blanket under the tree and watch Eeyore crawl around. And the best: get out the baby pool! This year we have an actual baby for it, so that should be interesting.

















Meanwhile, R. and I have been discussing what we want to do about our housing situation. We love our neighborhood, but we also really want a bigger house and we’d especially love something that he designed for us. We’ve talked a lot about buying some land in the mountains so he can design us a mountain house, because it’s hard to think of any part of town we’d like to live in, including our own, where we could afford the land to build something. We’ve talked about “popping the top,” which isn’t something I’d ever really heard of until we moved to Denver, but everybody is always doing it here for the extra space and the end result is almost always hideous. It’s hard to do anything attractive with a little Craftsman bungalow, which is frankly already designed to be its own little perfect self as is.

But here’s our little place:
















As you can see, from the outside it’s no great shakes. It’s just this random, brick box, and I don’t even like brick unless it is served up as “exposed” or painted a nice, light color. Still, inside it’s very cute; light and bright with lovely wood floors, a good, open flow, nice arches between the rooms, and a great back yard. So it seems a shame to just rip it down and start over, but that’s what we are now thinking about doing. Our mortgage is not very large, so we could feasibly just scrape the house and build a new one and still have a smaller mortgage than we’d have if we bought a house in our neighborhood that was as big and nice as we would like. The downsides are (1) then potentially having a house too nice for our street, and (2) wondering whether a modern home would stick out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood full of houses from the 1920’s.

Still, others have already started scraping in our neighborhood, so we wouldn’t be the only ones. So far, the new houses have a tendency to look like this, however, so this could be our opportunity to improve things a bit.













I guess my real reservation is whether I think it’s appropriate to tear down a perfectly sweet little house that is just right for what it was built for.

Birthday cipher.

So the whole birthday thing came and went in a rather sad little fizzle. On the upside, I don’t really have to focus on being any older because it no longer matters how old I am; to the world, I am officially Someone’s Mom and therefore, individually irrelevant. When I think about it that way, it kind of takes the pressure off, you know? But on the down side, it also means I’ve sort of ceased to exist.

As I told you, I had taken my birthday off of work to spend it gloriously, selfishly alone. The day started off well, as I lazily had another cup of coffee and admired the flowers and presents R. had waiting for me in the living room when I woke up. R. took Eeyore to school, and by the time he got back, I was showered and ready to hit the road for some shopping. He wanted me to open his presents first, so I did and they were good ones. But then his phone rang. And then our home phone rang. And then my mobile phone… who was it? Who do you think? Eeyore’s school, of course, calling to tell me he had a fever of 101 and I needed to pick him up.

Driving downtown to get my overheated little boy, I had some decidedly mixed emotions. Worry for his health; can’t we go for more than a week without some frigging mysterious disease from his school? But really, more selfish thoughts took precedence over my concern, and I had to remind myself sternly and out loud several times that I AM THE GROWNUP and this is just how it goes. So I picked him up, he fussed and bitched all day, and now he’s fine. And, you know, there are worse things than spending the day with my baby, so it’s not like it was awful. I just would have liked to have had the birthday I had planned.

I know I had some other things to talk about, like the Tory Burch flats my girlfriends gave me for my birthday, but I’ll leave that for later.