I have no shame

I have a hole in my crotch.

Yes, I know we all do, but I’m talking about my pants.

It started out as a usual running around getting for work Monday—Getting lunches thrown together, eating in the car -- I carpool, so while M drives, I can read, eat, or repeatedly pick up Blue Eyes toys when she cries, “Pooh fell!”

And we stopped at work, M waved goodbye and headed for the bus stop and I dropped Blue Eyes off at her daycare. She glommed onto my leg, hugged me for all she was worth, said, “Bye-bye, Mommy,” and poked her finger through the hole just two inches south of my zipper.

And it was then that I realized, “Ah, yes. The seam ripped on these pants last week.” Then M. washed them. I folded them and put them away… on the top of the stack of pants in my closet. So, what was it that I grabbed for first? Yep. The pants with the window to my soul.

I guess I know now that I am a laid-back person. I have not tried to staple these shut. I haven’t panicked and gone to Target to buy more cheap jeans. I figure, eh, I have a desk job. My crotch will be tucked under Formica all day anyway. I’ll fix ‘em when I get home. Yeah, right. I’ll fix ‘em sometime this month.

And unless some perv is staring at my fly, they probably won’t notice anyway… until they read my blog.

Alone

Some people look at being alone as a bad thing. “I’m so alone.” What I would give to have a minute of alone. I have been living with my family in one room of our house since May 9. We’re on about week 10 of a long building project, and for 9 of those weeks I’ve been in one room with my husband, dog and almost-two daughter.

I love my family. There’s this complete awareness I get about my daughter when we sleep in the same room. There's definitely that closeness. She talks in her sleep like I did when I was little, like my husband does sometimes. I know when she’s having a bad day. She had a bad dream this morning. I heard her cry out in her sleep, “My juice! No, my juice!” (This is what a toddler’s nightmare’s are made of.) We’re changing daycares next week and I heard her cry out her friend’s name. “Emma!”

But what I wouldn’t give for a few minutes of alone. I’ve been getting enough sleep, seven or eight hours. And yet, I’m so tired. I want some time to read, time to just be me. Oh, what a jewel I had for all those single years—in college when I was unpopular and had all the “me time” I could ever use.

In the movie, Contact, Jodie Foster says that “No one, none of us is alone.” Oh, come on! Please? Not even for ten minutes? (And yes… I even shower with my daughter.)

*sigh*

Sometimes togetherness is overrated.

Manual Labor: Toddler VS Brick

So, if anyone ever asks you what’s so difficult about taking care of a toddler, you can spare them the usual “molding a young mind, shaping someone’s future” piffle and think about bedtime. Making a toddler hold still is like asking the same of a Jell-O mold. (They’re called jigglers for a reason.) Last night after returning to the pit-- I mean, home-in-process— I claimed the duty of changing Blue Eyes out of the crankypants she’d been for an hour and a half and into pajamas. M. went to move bricks.

I recently purchased a multi-ton quantity of brick pavers for the area that, in about a month, will be our patio. I love Craigslist. However, the pain in the tuchas part is moving them. Our contractor lucked out in seeing someone with a forklift drive by when he went to pick up the pavers. $40 later, he had two tons of bricks in the truck, weighing it down to 55 mph on the freeway. M. and I inherited the task of moving the bricks off the truck… by hand.

So, M. started moving them off the truck while I wrestled with wiggle butt to get her to lay down for more than 10 seconds—“Mama, juice!” “Mama, the dog leash!” “Mama, book!” “Elmo book? Cookie! Count! Ha, ha, ha!” “The end!” “Sing!” “No sing!”—

*sigh* Finally, after getting her to lay down by playing, “1, 2, 3, SLEEP!” I found I could pick up MY book…. And sit with her and watch her flip over, turn around, play with her feet on the wall, wiggle towards the edge of her bed, readying herself to sleep in the most precarious position possible. The more she agitated her blanket, the more she agitated me. “Don’t toddlers know that you can’t fall asleep doing somnambulant gymnastics???” Clearly, they don’t.

I traded my husband. I needed a break. So, I went and moved bricks.

There are nice things about bricks. Sure, they’re heavy, but they’re also stationary. You can put a brick down and it will stay there, without you even having to ask. If you drop a brick, it won’t cry. And if you drop a brick on your finger or toe, and you cry, “Ow!”, it doesn't giggle or say, “Silly Mama”. Bricks don’t (as M. has found out) flail and cry and kick you in delicate regions. Bricks don’t cry, “My wheelbarrow!” when you try and use it. Bricks don’t run away and climb ladders up to the roof. Bricks try your back, your muscles, your fingers, but not your patience.

Although they’re not as cute, not as cuddly, and nowhere near as fun, sometimes I just need to move bricks.

Blessed

Okay, so I wouldn’t say I’m that religious of a person, but these topics recently seem to point that way. Spiritual? Maybe. Either way, I’m grateful. Yesterday I had the bad news to be told that there is no work for you right now. This is the downside of my job. When there’s no work, there’s no work and no money coming in. Usually, I only have to wait an hour or four before work comes in; sometimes it’s a day. In the really dry spells, I may only work 10 hours in a week. That’s only happened a couple of times in the past eight years, but it does happen.

So, yesterday, when I found out that I had no work, I decided to treat myself, figuring that I could use a day off. I could have (and probably should have) done research on local daycares. But, no. Blue Eyes and I went to Disneyland. Some people feel pressured into taking their kids to D-land, but I’ve been going to Disneyland with M since we first started dating. We love theme parks. (We also write for an amusement park magazine, InPark Magazine/IPM.) So, it was not an entirely unselfish pursuit.

We have season passes and Blue Eyes is under three (read, free). So, we drove the 25-mile drive down to Anaheim, rode the “tram ride” and waved to “Mouse,” “Dog” (Mickey and Pluto—no way was I standing in those lines.) And we wheeled our way down to Pirates of the Carribean, where Blue Eyes had just as much fun winding our way through the line and hanging on the chain dividers as she did watching the waterfalls and skeleton pirates. For some reason, she kept pointing at the skeletons and saying “Dada”. I don’t know if she wanted M, thought the skeleton was M, or was mistaking me for someone else.

And as we went on the Haunted Mansion next, she became very quiet. As we had to wait as the cars stopped to let someone in a wheelchair on the ride, I asked, “Are you ready to go?” And her answer was a quiet, “No.” Selfishly ignoring her “no” (she’s gone on the ride many times before, usually sleeping through it) we got on again, and I let her stand up so she could see everything. She didn’t cry, but she did lean close to me, with my arm around her. I could tell she was relieved when we got off. For the first time, she was really noticing what’s happening around her and giving it meaning. Then we stopped for a potty break and a snack – apple and only the graham crackers shaped like Boo from Monster’s Inc. (She would not eat the ones shaped like Sully or Randal, only Boo and Mike.) Then, I got the call. I had an assignment and everything would be ready in a couple of hours for me to get started. So, I had two hours to ride something else, get back to the car and head back up to Burbank. We took some pictures in front of the Disneyland castle, went on the carousel and rode the horsies-- (I promised B.E. she could ride on a white one. They’re all white.) And went to work.

With all my worries—M working, paying the bills, working too hard, traffic, seeing my little girl—I really am blessed. And now, I’m at work. I should be working. So, off I go again.

Thank you.