A little recap.

Today finds me back at work after a long and bank account-depleting week abroad. It’s always such a joy to pick up the thread of one’s life after a week away from it, don’t you think? Well; it is nice to be back in my own house and my own bed, and unbelievably nice to see my small baby again, but dropping back into work and the routine right where I left of is kind of a drag. That’s why it’s a good thing that today is the first day of my writing class. If I can stay up past 8:30 tonight, maybe I’ll even begin my first assignment which is titled “The Window.” Or then again, maybe I will sit around and second guess myself instead.

So, yes, we are back from Paris and London, both of which were wonderful if you can forget about money being an object. I hate to sound obsessive, but honestly, you wouldn’t believe how bad the exchange rate is. Of course I knew it in advance, but somehow prices seem to have gone up exponentially since I was there a year ago and the lousy dollar makes it that much worse. We didn’t have a dinner for much less than $200, and breakfasts and lunches routinely cost $50 - $75. And that’s for nothing special other than the atmosphere. I didn’t even buy myself anything too crazy – some books, a couple of forks in my green toile pattern, a shirt. Eeyore, on the other hand, racked up; it’s a lot easier to justify a bunch of small expenses, especially for someone you’ve abandoned so soon into their time on earth.

But anyway. I think R. really loved Paris; it would have been hard not to. We had perfect weather for walking around, which is what we did all day, every day. We saw a lot of sights, and strolled endlessly around the neighborhoods where they were located. We covered a large chunk of the center of the city on foot, which in my opinion is the way to do it. That way, whenever the mood strikes, you can sit down at a café and fortify yourself with a coffee (if you must) or a delightful glass of champagne with framboise (my preferred restorative, thanks). We had lovely dinners almost every night (one or two were duds complete with condescending waiters), always with a bottle of wine to wash them down. Yes, we drank like fish on this trip, but for the first time in 9 months we were also able to sleep in, so we did.

Just as a travel tip for you, if you are looking for a restaurant to try next time you are in Paris, make it Le Timbre. It turned out to be such a lovely, lovely little place that we thought about going back a second time while we were there. It’s just one small room with the chef in his little work space at the back, with one waiter, but they are turning out such delightful food and service that it was one of the nicer dining experiences I’ve had in Paris for awhile.

We were in London for such a short time we didn’t do too much other than walk around, but we did manage to make it to the Paul Weller concert I mentioned previously. It didn’t quite live up to the 20 years of hype I’d built up in my head, but it was still pretty great. Also, and unexpectedly, in the first encore Roger Daltrey wandered onstage and sang “Magic Bus,” while after that Noel Gallagher moseyed out for a rendition of the Beatles’ “All you Need is Love.” That wasn’t a bad re-entry into the world of concert-going.

There you have it. Not the travelogue you were expecting, I’m sure, but work has beckoned all frigging day long. I’ll upload some pictures tonight so there will be something to look at…

Bon voyage to me.

I poached this off of Libby’s blog.

1. There is absolutely NO way you can get me to skydive!
2. Green trees everywhere reminds me that summer is almost here!
3. I cannot live without my La Perruche brown sugar cubes. Talk about yuppie cheese.
4. Being married to R. until I die and writing a book are two things I'd like to try.
5. When life hands you lemons please don’t juggle them. Juggling is queer.
6. Baking Christmas cookies with my mom when I was very small is one of my favorite childhood memories.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to packing and eating takeout, tomorrow my plans include flying to Paris and Sunday, I want to ride a bateau mouche so R. can get a beautiful introduction to the city! And then have dinner at my favorite brasserie. Not a bad Sunday, really.

So, yep, tomorrow’s the big day and I am feeling completely unorganized. The house is a mess, there’s not much food in the house, I’m not packed, and I’m leaving my 8 month old baby for the first time and it’s for EIGHT DAYS. I’m trying not to think about that last one, but every time I look at his open little face it pops into my mind. However, we’ve gotten web cameras for our computers so that while we are gone we can hopefully chat with Eeyore and his grandmother. I hope that doesn’t freak him out.

Despite the lack of recommendations from you lot, I managed to cobble together what looks like a delightful gastronomical experience in Paris. I’ve got reservations at Brasserie Balzar, which is totally overrated but which is nonetheless one of my old favorites, a couple of “bistrots gastronomiques,” which are the newfangled bistros typically owned by upstart young chefs, and one classic French restaurant, Allard. One night I want to try Café Constant, which is a café/bistro owned by Christian Constant, a well-known chef who has an haute cuisine restaurant, Le Violon D’Ingres.

Besides all the eating, the plan is to have a good, old-fashioned sightseeing trip. Because I lived there for some time and have gone back reasonably frequently, I often spend too much time shopping and not enough time visiting the sights. R. has never been there, though, so I think that seeing some of these places with him will be a lot of fun. And of course, despite the crappy-ass dollar, I still intend to do plenty of shopping. And quaffing of wine.

We’re also going to London next weekend, where we are there for such a short time that I plan pretty much just to stroll and… shop. One very cool thing we will do, however, is to see Paul Weller in concert Friday night. Now, some of you whippersnappers might not be familiar with the “Modfather,” as he is known, but he is one of my all-time favorite musicians. He started out in The Jam, and was later in the Style Council before becoming mostly a solo artist. Wild Wood and Stanley Road are worth your time if you want to hear why he is a living legend (at least in the UK). I never thought I was going to get to see him play live, so this is really quite a treat for me. Not to mention – and this is pretty sad for someone who used to go to shows regularly – this is the first show I will have been to in a year and a half. I hope I remember how to look suitably blasé…

So that’s the plan. I’ll take pictures!

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.

Wednesday.

I’ve been trying to blog; really, I have. Work conspires against me, however, and when I get home there’s the usual beddy-bye routine and then dinner/sack out on couch with CNN. So let’s see; what’s been on my mind?

1. Why do the chocolate chip cookies that I bake in Colorado always turn hard 30 minutes after they are out of the oven? Before I moved here, I prided myself on my ability to turn out a perfect Nestle toll house cookie, but now following the same recipe yields lousy results (not that it stops me from hacking away at all of them with my pointy little choppers). I’m guessing it has something to do with the altitude, but what is it I need to change?

2. Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. I can barely even watch you anymore. I cringe every time I see what new “scrappy fighter” tactic you’ve embraced in your race to the bottom. Before the start of your campaign, I was a huge supporter; I was a die-hard defender and genuine admirer of you and Bill, lamented the passing of his administration, thought you were cool as grits, and was excited to throw myself wholeheartedly into supporting your campaign. Shit, I even voted for you in our caucus. But while in the abstract I still want a woman president, I’ve stopped caring if that woman is you. I don’t like how you’ve handled your campaign at all, and I do very much like how Barack Obama has handled his. Every time you throw some more nasty politics-as-usual his way, he manages to keep his cool and stay above the fray. I think that will be a real diplomatic advantage. Also, you can try to drum it into my head that he’s not experienced, or that he’s a cult of personality, but with respect to the experience issue: (a) I don’t completely agree with that, and (b) I don’t care as much as you think I should, and with respect to the personality issue: (c) I agree he is getting a lot of mileage out of his positive message and his easy charisma, but I don’t think it means he’s not a person of substance as well, and (d) I LIKE positive. You could learn from that. Basically, my support for you was yours to lose, and so you did.

3. My birthday is next week – 39 years old. I can hardly believe it. It’s not so much that the age itself freaks me out (although, okay, it does a little), it’s more that I’m not sure how I’ve already gotten to it. Have I really had 39 full years of adventures already? Does that mean I only have 39 more? And really, at least from the perspective of my 17-year old self, it just sounds fucking OLD. Over the hill. Irrelevant. Of course, from the perspective of my 38 years and 359 days old self, I know that’s a load of horseshit. If I could get off my ass and do anything new with my life, 39 would be a good age to start. That said, I have no plans on the big day to get off said ass; in fact, I’m taking the day off, taking Eeyore to school, and doing whatever I want all day long. So far that only involves reading and getting a pedicure, which might be enough.

In other news, Cindy over at Figs tagged me for a meme, and now I have to come up with five things about myself. As if the 100 self-absorbed comments in the sidebar weren’t enough!! But hey, I’m always happy to talk about ME:

1. I live 45 minutes away from some of the best skiing in America, and I can’t ski. As is the case for lots of things in my life, because I can’t already do it I say I don’t want to do it. Then I feel secretly upset with myself for letting myself constrain my own existence.

2. After spending most of my life in major urban areas (Atlanta, D.C., the Bay Area, London and Paris), I find I am happiest with the scale of little ol’ Denver. It surprises me a little, because it is a slightly dinky city, but it’s a very easy place to feel comfortable. My biggest complaints about the place are the lack of proximity to water and the expense of flights out of here.

3. I’m not proud of it, but I have a hard time identifying with people that I think are, by my own definition, a little rough around the edges. I suspect my bafflement and vaguely disdainful lack of identification is written all over my face, which surely endears me to these delightful, undoubtedly salt-of-the-earth folk. It’s like that slogan from Café Press: “Intellectual Elite – you say that like it’s a bad thing.” So I like the obvious fruits of an education: reasonable grammar, a decent haircut. Is that so wrong? (Yes, thanks, I know it is.)

4. I regret the loss of some of my most important friendships; some of them have ended for reasons I still don’t completely understand. Still, I do believe that friendships wax and wane according to where we are in our lives, and that some friendships are not meant to outlive the parameters of the microcosms in which they flourished. See, e.g., most of my law school friendships.

5. In the interest of living a peaceful life I keep trying to convince myself otherwise, but try as I might I just don’t like my choice of career that much. I would love to stay home to write a newspaper column, books of essays, a novel; but this is the real world and baby needs a new pair of shoes. Or he would if he wore shoes, so maybe that’s no excuse after all.

Women rock, too.

Reading Libby’s blog this morning made me nostalgic for playing the guitar. It’s been over a year since I played mine with any regularity, which is sad. Here are my guitars:

































They’re all shuttered up in their cases and stuck down in the basement these days; I haven’t had any time to play them and I’ve figured the loud music would bug Eeyore. Maybe I should pull out my Les Paul and learn to “rock” like Laurie Berkner, that chick who sings for the toddler crowd. Before that, though, I’m tempted once again to go to Ladies Rock Camp. I heard about this last year and thought seriously about going, but I was too scared to perform in front of other people so I decided not to go. This would be yet another of those opportunities in life that I’ve screwed up because I am too scared to try anything new.

For those of you not in the know, Ladies’ Rock Camp is actually a fund-raising arm of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, which is a summer camp in Portland, Oregon for girls who want to rock. The idea behind it is that the world of rock has been traditionally male-dominated, and so girls should have the opportunity to learn to make music, express themselves and generally rock out in an all-female environment. Obviously, this has a broader social goal of encouraging girls to embrace their individuality and to be comfortable with themselves, as well as to provide an all-female environment where the girls are taught to support each other (as is not always the case with day-to-day female adolescent life).

A few times a year, the camp sponsors weekends for grown women who wish that THEY could have gone to rock camp when they were girls, and the fee for the weekend funds the summer camp for the girls. For $350, you get a full weekend of musical instruction, form a band with other campers and write an original song, then perform it at a showcase on the Sunday night (the part I struggle with).

The October camp still has a bunch of spots open. I really want to do it, and yet I still feel that weight pushing against me about the live performance…

Today's blah de blah.

Here’s something I bet won’t surprise you: I’m not a fan of John McCain. Not only am I not interested in hopping on the Straight Talk Express to the nadir of world opinion, where we’ve already been headed precipitously over the last 8 years, I don’t like most of his viewpoints and I don’t like his grumpy old man attitude. He seems to get pissed off so easily – is that a good trait in a president? Then there’s his wife. I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but man, is she weird looking. She looks like she should be a resident on the Starship Enterprise. And what is she hiding in that hairdo? And of course today there is the article in the New York Times dredging up talk of an improper relationship with a lobbyist; he says it’s untrue and that he doesn’t take articles in the New York Times at face value. Maybe it’s because I’m liberal, but that statement is ridiculous to me. The NYT isn’t some gossip rag, for Christ’s sake. I should probably get on over to Fox News, where they are undoubtedly reporting the true story.

Back in the Democratic camp, I am frankly depressed by the whole thing. Each of Obama and Clinton has his or her strengths and weaknesses, but the race for the nomination has taken on a sour tone that I think has blemished them both. Obama’s inspirational tone has blunted her real achievements, and despite/because of her scrappy, nasty attacks on the wunderkind, she can’t seem to get any traction. Meanwhile, he rides a tidal wave of momentum on his message of hope and change, but nobody seems to be able to get a true grasp on just what he could really do for this country. Many of his promises seem destined to run up against old school bureaucracy when he arrives in Washington; I think it’s naïve to think that just because this charismatic guy has a hopeful message that he is going to be able to get the entrenched political machine to bend to the will of his cheekbones and oratory. I get the idea; the change is supposed to come from us, the citizens of the U.S. of A., but… since I can’t motivate myself to change my own life when I know I could only improve it, how am I going to get off my ass to rally for America?

Maybe having a kid will help that; when he’s older I can take him with me to be a walker at Planned Parenthood. Just kidding; I would never expose him to the freaks that hang around there. I have thought about volunteering there myself, but I get so incredibly angry I don’t know if I could stay calm when walking women from their cars to the front door. One time when I visited a P.P. clinic someone yelled at me from off the property and I gave them the finger. When I lived in D.C. during law school, there was a P.P. right around the corner from my Dupont Circle apartment. On Saturday mornings, a group of Christian teenagers, their heads bowed in silent prayer, would walk in a bovine circle in the front of the building. They would try to stuff fliers in my hand as I’d walk by, and I’d tell them to mind their own business. I was thinking much worse thoughts, but I’m sure it would have just added even more to their sanctimonious feelings on the matter.

Well! Politics and abortion; two conversational turds-in-the-punchbowl if there ever were any.

More outfits, you say? OK; I got this dress, too, but in blue and white.



















Won't I look cute in it?


















That’s pretty much still what I look like even if it was taken before being put through the wringer of motherhood. I guess I am feeling a bit exhibitionist today!

I know I left it around here somewhere...

I'm down and irritable today, and I was all set to launch into some bitchy diatribe about everyone and everything, when R. sent me this picture of one of our cats:














I found it very cute, and so maybe I’ll just let that other stuff go.

OK, except for one thing: I am hungry. I want to lose the last bit of my pregnancy weight, since I’m getting pretty tired of having a closet full of cute clothes I can’t wear, but I’m tired of thinking about everything I put in my mouth. And it’s not as if thinking about it has kept me from shoving a metric ton of chocolate down my gullet in the last week or two; instead I’ve just rammed the guilt on down in there with it. I’m on Weight Watchers, and I’m allocated 19 “points” a day. At about 50 calories a point, with a few points-free veggies thrown in, that equates to between 950 and 1100 calories a day. That’s starvation mode. I’m allowed 35 extra points a week to use as I choose, but the weekend comes and I blow through that without fail. The whole thing is frigging tedious.

Now there all sorts of adorable spring clothes appearing in the stores, but I’ve held off on buying anything much because I want to get back down to my old weight first. Still, I have bought a couple of little things that I figure I can wear now or weighing 10 pounds less:



















In this second one, it’s the Liberty-print shirt I bought, as I’m not quite sure just yet how I am going to handle bathing suit season. I’ve never worn anything but a bikini, but I fear those days might be gone – at least until I see my friendly neighborhood plastic surgeon. I’ve always been your typical, clean cut J. Crew kind of girl when it comes to bathing suits:




















But now maybe I’m destined to be this girl:














I think my grandma had a bathing suit like that.

So perhaps the compromise:




















That’s reasonable, right?

So really, it's my own fault.

Ah, the start of another weekend; the start of another 48 hour period without exhaling. I love that baby, yes I do, but weekends are pretty non-stop and no longer involve things like sleeping in, reading a book, shopping leisurely or eating other than on the fly. It’s now “what can we do that will keep the baby entertained and not screaming? Read him a book? Bounce him on my knee? Let him wobble on his back like a cockroach on his play mat? Wheel him around a mall or museum in his stroller?” Yippee! I’m teaching that kid to read by age 2 if it kills me.

I do have something nice and low key to look forward to this weekend, though, and it’s a massage – a Valentine’s gift from my husband. I am really looking forward to that, but even better was his gift to me of a subscription to Us Weekly! A husband who indulges his wife’s need for salacious celebrity gossip - THAT is a loving husband.

Tonight I am having drinks after work to celebrate my friend’s recent promotion to a vice president position in her company. I think am now the only one of my group of female friends who is not a vice president. Of course, there are not that many lawyers that are also vice presidents in companies, but there are some and I am not one of them. Sometimes I manage to comfort myself by telling myself that being a lawyer is totally different anyway, and I have my big, fine, expensive education to keep me warm at night, but honestly I find it kind of frustrating. Business people (that amorphous breed) make more money than I do, and at least in my own organization I don’t always see that they contribute more or work harder than attorneys. I think they see themselves as more on the front line, however, responsible for generating revenue, while lawyers are perceived mainly as an impediment to that goal. We’re so hung up on the minutiae of everything, and plus, you know, we’re boring.

I’m pretty well known at work not to fit that stereotypical mold; not to toot my own horn or anything (although Lesson One: If I Don’t, Who Will?), but I have helped to close several hundred million dollars worth of business for my company. So where’s my love? A while back, I complained to a friend about how I sure would like to make more money (as one of the aforementioned “business people” she makes probably about 3 times what I do). She told me if I wanted more money I should work for a law firm. I bit my tongue, but boy, was I pissed off. I’m an equal partner on teams tasked with closing deals for our company, so why is my contribution any less valuable?

I had my review yesterday and I discussed my prospects for advancement with my boss. It’s pretty much as you’d expect: if I want to move up the food chain then I need to put on my tap shoes for the powers that be. The eternal dilemma: more work/prestige/money vs. pretty good money/time to concentrate on home life? Will my thoroughly apathetic nature take over again?

Maybe I should hang it all up and become a painter, because I am REALLY talented:

Seeing the real me.

Today’s the big day where I work that bonuses and promotions are announced. There is a bonus, which is exciting, but less so for me because it will be prorated to exclude the time I was on maternity leave. Still, it’s way more than I ever got as a law firm bonus, so I can hardly complain. I also can’t complain about not getting promoted, since it’s only been a couple of years since I was promoted to corporate counsel and normally it would take at least one or two more to be considered for AGC, but it does put into relief for me that I don’t feel like quite the golden girl at work anymore. I’m worried that now that I have a baby, I am seen as unreliable or not a very hard worker. Honestly, I feel unreliable and like I don’t work hard enough, but then again I felt that way even when I was childless and promoted, so perhaps it’s all just insecurity. Being the mother of an infant just gives me new fodder for self-criticism, self-loathing, self-flagellation.

Speaking of babies, I have discovered something very new about myself in the last couple of months. If you read my old blog for the couple of years before I started this one, you know that I was pretty self-absorbed and spent a lot of time indulging myself. Why not? As a 36 year old, single lawyer with no apparent prospects for a husband or children, I might as well fill my time with whatever I enjoyed. I really didn’t mourn not having kids, because I had never had any exposure to them in my life, and really, I didn’t like them very much. So it has come as a real surprise to me that the best part of my day now is visiting my baby and all his little classmates at lunch. Of course I love seeing Eeyore, but the surprising part is that I am also happy to see all the other babies. I know them all by name, and they all recognize me now, too. Last Friday, this one tiny little girl who when I first brought Eeyore in had horrible stranger anxiety, so she would cry whenever anyone new came into the room, crawled onto my lap and held her arms up to me to be hugged. As I hugged her and stroked her nap-tangled hair, I could hardly believe I am the same person that I was before all of this.

The more I think about it, it sounds like a case of Stockholm syndrome - I’ve come to identify with my captors. My entire existence is ruled and dictated by a baby; it’s all I know now and so I’ve given in and embraced it. Cue the photo of me with drool pooling in the corner of my mouth.

I’m trying to decide if I want to make this a blog that includes pictures of me and my life beyond Eeyore. I couldn’t really do that with my old blog, and when I would post the occasional photo of myself I got comments like “you’ve jumped the shark,” as if I was a television series or something. Basically, people didn’t want to see what I looked like because it somehow spoiled the story. I don’t know if that would be the case anymore, since (1) there’s not much of a story anymore, and the things I say are unlikely to get me in much trouble if people knew who was saying them, and (2) all the people whose blogs I read currently and who seem to be reading mine all have pictures of themselves on their own sites. It’s a different kind of community – it seems friendly and homey, not something to hide behind with all my bad language and tales of Yankee Swaps. However, my husband doesn't think it's smart or safe to let the world know who you are. Part of me agrees with him, but then the other part of me notes that only about 30 people read my blog, so does it really matter if they see me?

For love of the mundane.

Thank Christ the writer’s strike is apparently ending. Sure, I’ve been able to entertain myself pretty well with a nightly dose of political commentary from the talking heads over at CNN, but I’m ready to have something else to watch again besides Max Headroom and his team of political hacks. So imagine my surprise last night when, after just winding up a Tivoed episode of House Hunters International, I flipped over to what appeared to be a brand new episode of Brothers and Sisters! Oh, happy day! And even better, despite a progressive sub-plot of the liberal Sally Field and Republican operative Danny Glover supposedly falling in love even while they clearly have no chemistry, there is another new one next week. Yay!

Speaking of House Hunters International, do you watch that show? It’s fun to see real estate in all sorts of different international locations, and it is ever so much better than the bizarrely mundane, original House Hunters set here in the U.S. of A. The American version seems to show people with not a lot of money circling classified ads for one bedroom condos and places with tacky, outdated kitchens. Why would I want to see that? R. and I tried watching one the other night, and it was like watching paint dry. A cheesy-looking young couple in Wisconsin wanted to move out of their beige rental into a house that would provide him with more “man-space” (“Look! Plenty of man-space for my two grills!) and her with more “girl-space” (“I loved my walk-in closet, but now I have my own room where I can sew and talk on the phone with my mom!”). Yes, it was truly fascinating. You know, like descriptions of what’s on TV these days.

So my mom left today for the annual arbitration competition in Paris that she helps to judge, and to which I accompanied her last year, and I am very, very jealous. She arrives tomorrow and her program doesn’t start for a couple of days, which means she has blessed time alone to do things like stroll, check out museums and SHOP. If I were there, I would throw Weight Watchers to the wind as I washed down my morning baguette slathered with Nutella with a lovely grand crème, knocked back my lunchtime croque monsieur with a nice glass of Sancerre, and shoved in my evening serving of foie gras with at least half a bottle of a St. Julien or St. Estèphe (not to mention the actual dinner and probably some profiteroles). Sure, I’d feel like shit by the end of each day, but so what? It all tastes so, so good. And then I’d bring home the magic with gourmet items like Monoprix-brand salad dressing and canned sauce for steak au poivre (Monoprix is like, oh, maybe Target?). Because like I’ve said, I’m all about the grocery shopping in foreign lands.

I can hardly wait until May.

Feminism springs eternal.

I have been wearing the perfume Lys Mediterranée since one day about 3 years ago, after smelling it on the woman dining next to me at The Wolseley in London. As I dined on the so-so fare, the scent of what I imagined to be the most beautiful, vibrant lilies kept wafting my way. I looked around, trying to spot the floral arrangement, but there wasn’t one. Finally, I realized that it was the perfume of the young woman seated next to me, speaking French with her father (or let’s hope it was her father). When there was a pause in their conversation, I told her I loved her perfume and asked her what it was. Fortunately, she was forthcoming, since sometimes women get a little cagey about their scent. She told me what it was, and said that one could only buy it at a small store in Paris and one other in London. Handily, that store, Les Senteurs, was just down the street from my hotel, and so the next morning I trotted over and purchased this rather expensive perfume, and I’ve worn it ever since.

This morning, however, I checked the website to see what it costs these days, since it is nearing time to replenish, and with the current exchange rate it has become rather prohibitive: 95 euros for the smallest bottle! It seems crazy to spend almost $150 on a tiny bottle of perfume, but I do like wearing a perfume that I’ve never smelled on anyone else but me and that French girl.

On another subject altogether, I got an email from Barack Obama’s campaign this morning entitled “Tell us your caucus story.” I wonder if I told them my story, they might stop sending me emails.

Tuesday night I went to the caucus alone. Eeyore has had RSV this week (another chapter in our lives newly fraught with anxiety and exhaustion), and even though R. had won our coin toss, he volunteered to stay home with Eeyore so I could go vote. Since we were both voting for Obama, we thought one vote was better than none; it would be our family vote. Ten minutes before I was supposed to leave, I started to freak out. As I brushed my teeth, I judged myself in the mirror and for once it wasn’t about my looks. Could I live with myself if when offered the choice for the first, and perhaps only, time in my life to vote for a Democratic woman who I knew could effectively run this country, I didn’t take it? Even if Obama genuinely appeals to me more than she does?

The answer was no. And so I came out of the bathroom, teary-eyed and wondering how R. was going to take this last minute change-of-heart. He wasn’t surprised.

“I knew before you did this would happen,” R. said. “It’s your vote; use it how you want.”

I voted for Hillary Clinton, but we’re still putting the Obama sign up in the yard.


And finally, here's a recent picture of our little devil.