Monday, May 30, 2005

thoughts on baby raising

I have been depressed all morning. Questioning my life choices. I arranged my entire life so that I could stay at home with my baby. I got degrees suitable toward a part time teaching career. Period. I’m not employable in any full-time kind of way, despite having gone to grad school. I spend the day cleaning the house, watching my baby mess the house up, then cleaning it again. We watch Baby Einstein and then drive around the block until the kid falls asleep. Then I sit in my car alone in the driveway. You wouldn’t think that that would be the best part of the day, but it is. I read books. Check my email. I used to write stuff, but I’m still on strike now. Tired of failure.

Everyone says that raising babies is oh-so-important, oh-so-meaningful.

It never once occurred to me at any point previous in my life that everyone was full of shit.

Raising babies completely annihilates you. Raising babies is boring. And worst of all, raising babies is a temporary gig. It is not some divine life-calling. They grow up. They move out. Marry some ho.

I just want to shake the next person who tells me that when you lose yourself you find yourself. That’s a load of crap.

Because I am gone. And I haven’t heard a single fracking little squeak from anyone remotely like some stupid new found self.

Crazy kid

If there is one image that completely personifies my baby, it's the one I saw in the shower this morning: rows of tiny teeth marks in my soap.

Monday, May 16, 2005

My kid is going to hate me for this one

Everyone keeps thinking my crazy masculine baby is a girl. He'll be running around a store, dirt covering most of his 30 pounds worth of fat rolls, wearing a blue shirt with hammers on it, and someone will say, "What a beautiful girl you have!" I always want to say, "What on earth about my 30 pound hunk of baby fat dirty craziness (dressed in *man* clothes) is the least bit girly?!" But I think I know what it is. He's too good looking to be a boy. He's got these huge blue eyes, fat pink cheeks, and whispy little blonde curls that poke out from behind his ears. So. I just consider it a compliment when someone mistakes my obviously manly child for a girl. All they're really saying, I tell myself, is just how amazingly good looking he is. I just say, "thanks," and brace myself for his teenage years when the real girls will go CRAZY.

Whatever works

My one year old has a laptop (it's an old one that we only gave him to keep him from harassing us when we're on ours) and he couldn't get it to start. He pushed all the buttons twice and nothing happened. I got up, checked the chord and it was plugged in. Then I tried to turn it on. Nothing. Finally, he just picked up his football and hurled it at the screen. LO! It turned on. He just nodded his head, as if it's turning on was the only real response to expect from the football hurling. Then he started typing.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

You do freaking better

that's what I want to say to the next dang person who whines about JK Rolling's overuse of adverbs.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Call me crazy

I brought a piece of writing to my writing group that was secretly about something I had done in real life. I didn't tell anyone I was the protagonist, though, because I was too embarassed to admit it.

Their response was: "Your protagonist is OBVIOUSLY schizophrenic."

I said, "isn't it possible that, you know, under the right circumstances?, a normal person could do something like that?"

And then this one lady shook her head all disgusted and said, "Oh, honey. She may THINK she's normal but she is NOT normal."

And then everyone in the room started brainstorming about what horrible things could have happened to this person during her childhood that could possibly make her so psycho.

Yeah.