Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes

We almost didn't make it to BlogHer this year. First there was the no-small-matter of the sold-out tickets, but then, after a full-conference pass materialized courtesy of Joy, there was the stomping, trumpeting elephant in the room of having three dozen things we should be spending our dwindling money on instead of crosscountry flights and hotel suites and entrance fees to cocktail parties. Pre-ticket, the tentative plan was to just show up in Chicago anyway and hang out in the lobby grabbing at blogfriends as they passed, using the baby as bait. Deep down, though, I was second-guessing the trip entirely because how stupid was it to spend money we don't have to attend a conference I can't even get into? I hadn't said it out loud to anyone, but I'd pretty much made up my mind to spend that July weekend wallowing at home and trying to avoid BlogHer tags on Flickr. I told myself that saying no in situations like this is what being a grownup was all about.

So when I got the email that a full-price conference ticket was suddenly available on a first-come basis, I actually hesitated. I hesitated so long I feared I was hesitating too long. Prior to that, I'd been up nights sick at the thought of missing this year's conference--the one I'd dreamt of attending since the 2006 conference at which Mom-101 and Her Bad Mother spoke words of comfort that, at twenty-six, I still had plenty of time to have a baby --and now here I had the baby, and here was the magic ticket and, what the hell?, here was my cursor was hovering over Delete.

In the interest of lowering the trip's price, I considered every option save stowing away in the cargo hold of the plane. There was never the option of my going alone (I can't leave the baby; my boobs don't detach), and although I briefly imagined Wombat and I could go sans Simon, I realized I'd never even make it as far as the airport ticket counter without his help juggling baby and stroller and luggage. Forget public transportation in an unknown city.

I thought again about just scrapping the whole thing. Would I even be able to absorb a panel discussion with a seven-month-old shriek-and-wiggler in tow? Was I being a dick to insist that Simon come along because I was too much of a wimp to do it myself? Was I really willing to make all these sacrifices just so I could show off my baby? Oh God, was that all this was about anyway? Showing off? Blech.

Simon said the decision was mine. He said he would tag along if I wanted him to. He joked that when, years from now, we looked back at losing our house and having to live in a van down by the river, this would stand out as the turning point of our financial downfall. He was joking, but still...I apologized again and again and felt intensely icky about the whole thing. But wasn't it a sign that a ticket had fallen into my lap out of nowhere? Wasn't that the clincher? And wasn't it a happy coincidence that I'd just booked a freelance job that would exactly cover the trip's expenses? Was I supposed to just ignore that? Why wasn't this an easy decision? (Why wasn't the conference in San Francisco every year?)

Then this week BlogHer announced LobbyCon. And it's just the package I'd have designed if they'd asked me. Wombat won't be bored and/or a distraction during panels (because we can't get into them), Simon will have access to all the swag booths he really cleaned up on last year, and we'll all get to hang out as a family at the cocktail parties and afterparties. (I'm praying Wombat will be in good form during the evenings considering we'll be in an earlier time zone.) All this and for less moolah than my full-conference ticket, which I'm having no problem selling to one desperate-turned-lucky blogger. We'll spend the difference buying lunch at corner convenience stores in the downtown Chicago area. More importantly, we'll be eating lunch together instead of me trying to sneak a bite while Wombat's not looking and Simon grabbing something on the go as he vacations alone.

When I think of summer vacations, I think of the summer I drove with my then-boyfriend from Salt Lake City to our new home in Berkeley--over July 4 weekend, in fact, eight years ago (WOW). My mom packed us a picnic lunch, and we stopped along the shore of Lake Tahoe to dig in to pita-pocket sandwiches and baggies of cut vegetables, the same thing I used to find in my Garfield lunchbox on the first day of school. She'd even written me a cheesy mom-note on the napkin.

I remember thinking that this trip was the start of my new life, one that I hoped would include new friends with whom we could take long weekend trips to various glamorous locales. I wrote about it here, three years later, incidentally just before I "saw" Simon for the first time on a ski vacation to Tahoe with a group of friends. It was a dream come true, having ski vacation friends, because prior to that all our California friends had been fixed-income graduate students and destitute nonprofit employees. Despite our being in both demographics ourselves, we were always careful with money and could afford to take vacations here and there, although we almost never went because none of our friends could afford it.

Simon and I were on that ski trip together, back before we were an Us, back before we had a kid and a mortgage (and another mortgage). We're older and wiser and more stable now, and yet we can't really afford a summer vacation to Chicago (which will include a visit to our friends in Oak Park, the aforementioned "rich friends" through whom we met all those years ago.) I've written once before (mere months before we moved into this house, on a July 4 weekend, in fact) that we shouldn't look at life as a ladder but as a web. Now I'm thinking it's more like a dance floor. It's two steps forward and one step back as one becomes two becomes one becomes two becomes three. Swing your partner, do-si-do, and skip to the lou (to the loo?), my darlings. We're going on a vacation, on a family vacation, as a family. Put on your dancing shoes.

Keeping It Cool

Welp, the Universe seems to have solved that problem for us! From late Thursday night until late this afternoon, we had no "real" television programming, and as of yesterday in the middle of a Very Important Work Project, we had no internet access either. Awesome! Woot! Down with technology! Down with The Man!

Oh, excuse me, that must have been the withdrawal speaking. For verily it was not awesome, and yea, many tears were shed and garments rent.

I filled my days with Wombat listening to music and/or endangering his life (I let him wave around Linus's favorite toy; I stepped out of the room just long enough for him to roll off the bed and onto [a pillow before he rolled onto] the floor [phew]); and I filled evenings with Simon...watching the handful of channels we still had that weren't pay-per-view, meaning the same ten infomercials (RIP, Billy Mays) and a vast array of low-production, big-time-horrifying churchy stuff. (We had a handful of things saved on the DVR too, and nothing better illustrates the desperate state of affairs than the fact that rather than turn off the t.v. and do something with my life, I resorted to watching portions of the Tori Spelling reality show that had accidentally recorded in place of Tyra. Sad on so many accounts. Like a sparkly diamond whose many facets reflect not a rainbow of light but a rainbow of my patheticity.) (What? It's in the (or on the?) Urban Dictionary.)

But all was not lost! After pulling a full workday on Saturday (because, after a decade in the publishing industry, I still can't accurately estimate how long it will take me to index a 200-page book (note to self: FOREVER. It will take you FOREVER)), we spent all of Sunday in wine country, primarily to attend the first birthday party of one little Miss Nora Lea, and secondarily to be anywhere but trapped in our sweltering house without the cooling comfort of HD programming.

Despite it being hotter up north than in our house (was it really 106 degrees?), we were in good company, and there were homemade fried chicken wings, and who am I to turn down a chance to wrap my arms around a dear internet friend without having to resort to stacked parentheses?

We also took the opportunity to spend the free day in removed environs to go geocaching again. Which brings us to another thing I am also not good at estimating: everything having to do anything with geocaching. I suppose there's a sort of poetic beauty at work when what looks like a .7-mile walk turns into a two-hour hike through a forest, including some harrowing 45-degree descents and climbs and some intrepid bushwhacking through stands of poison oak and columns of buzzing, biting insects (I'm so bitten I look like I have the pox), but I'm guessing it would be a hell of a lot easier to appreciate that poetry if I hadn't also been conquering said wilderness in a ruffled skirt. Or if it hadn't been the hottest day of the year. Or if I hadn't ever heard a children's song that goes:

Poor babes in the woods,
poor babes in the woods,
remember, remember,
those babes in the woods.

They sighed and they sighed,
they cried and they cried,
those poor little children,
they laid down and died.

Dying was just one in a list of fears I entertained, which included getting arrested for trespassing, getting eaten by a bear/bobcat/swarm of insects/cannibal, going mad from heatstroke, getting back to where we'd parked to find the car burgled and/or stolen, and getting lost despite our high-tech handheld satellite equipment (that might run out of batteries!).

Simon, meanwhile, was just wishing he'd strapped the baby into some sort of carrying device more sophisticated than his two arms.

In the end, Simon's plan is working (he wants to trick Wombat into thinking we're an active, outdoorsy type of family), and even if we lose a few extremities to hummingbird-sized mosquitos along the way, we'll never say we didn't have adventures.

Addicted to You

You know, I think I figured out what the problem is: Simon and I like each other too much. At the end of the day, when the baby's asleep and we have two or three glorious hours all to ourselves, what do we ever do but waste it on The Daily Show or A Very Special Jon and Kate Plus Eight or yet another supersized episode of So You Think You Can Dance (two hours, folks? every week? really?) because plunking down in front of a screen seems to be the only easiest thing we can do together at the end of another endless day without waking up the baby.

(If you think I'm hinting at sex, let me clarify that I'm talking about another kind of sweating and panting: working out. We figured the only way either of us was ever going to work out consistently was with a buddy, and thus a most excellent exercise plan was born. Once upon a time not so very long ago, we shredded together two whole times in one week! We even took the introductory fitness test for P90X! (We both passed, but I think I pulled a muscle laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of even having this program in our house because, hello, I've been finding creative ways to avoid prolonged cardio since my ancient junior high gym teacher Ms. Adams proposed I run the mile along with the rest of the class--as if!--and now Simon thinks I'm going to sign up for this on purpose? 'Nilla, please.) Anyway, our house is as small as our wheezing is loud as our baby is easily woken, so in the battle of exercising vs. sitting on the couch, it's sitting on the couch FTW! *hangs head in shame*)

Of course, all day long I dream about what I wouldn't do if the baby would just. take. a goddamn. nap. But inevitably, when 9:30 rolls around, I'm suddenly uninspired to tackle anything more advanced than seeing how many salted, I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Buttered popcorn kernels I can fit in my mouth at once. For all the complaining I do about not having enough time for chores and hygiene (not to mention time for anything I actually want to do, not that flossing isn't a barrel of chocolate-covered monkeys), you might expect that the minute Wombat passed out I'd steal away under cover of night, up to the attic to make poignant video slideshows or down to the basement to organize our canned goods (hey, we all have our guilty pleasures) or even just take a few minutes to close my eyes and breathe and maybe pat one of the neglected cats on his or her forlorn little noggin. (Who am I kidding? All I really want to do is BLOG. (Loser!)) Even Simon has projects and chores he's been daydreaming about since Wombat was born, but unfortunately his pasttimes are all--how to put it?--freaking LOUD (woodworking with powertools and songwriting through amplifiers) and therefore outlawed by city ordinance after 9 p.m., but still, the problem remains that even on the rare occasion we have the energy to devote to one of our extracurricular passions, we only ever want to do things together (I know; barf), which means no blogging, no organizing canned goods, and no songwriting, even acoustic.

But still, there must be more to adult-life-after-baby than evenings devoted to studied critiques of Cat Deely's wardrobe and Jon Gosselin's earrings.

I suppose we could play cards, gaze into each others' eyes, make a contest out of how many popcorn kernels we can fit into our respective mouths. Beyond that, I'm stumped. The only other option is to--gasp!--spend some time apart pursuing our separate interests, but before we resort to anything crazy, tell me: What do you do with your A#1 main squeeze at the end of the day? How do you spend evenings at home when you're not out together making waves at society's grandest soirees or huddled in separate corners of the house updating your pwecious blogs and using Facebook to spy on kids you met in your junior high gym class? Come on, Internets! Give me hope that we're not all irredeemably addicted to the teevee!

Fixing

As far behind as I am online, I'm still making things happen in real life (but barely). The garden looks great, my knees are sunburned after another outdoor concert, we finally said farewell to the pumpkins that have been on our front porch since last October(!!!), the whole family is surviving without that extra carseat base and stroller, and I shower on the days that count. We're getting by.

Father's Day was Sunday, and although I was so consumed with the thought of Simon being a father this year that I momentarily forgot I had a father of my own (hi Dad! sorry the phone died on us but at least you were warned), I did manage to help the baby handmake his first card several days in advance of the big event. Leftovers from this project plus scissors and a gluestick (neither of which go in the mouth, son) made a fine gift featuring miniature cut-outs of a tie, a bottle of cologne, and a singing greeting card (inside joke) on the front and then a hand turkey on the reverse. Because when I think "craft" I always think "hand turkey," don't you?

It's been an exhausting month, what with the sitting and the rolling and the scootching and the crawling and the solid-fooding and the non-napping. I never feel like I'm caught up on anything, and every spare minute (because that's how they come--in one-minute blips) is a harried sprint to get part-way through ____________. I'm now finding the SAHM part the most difficult of my SAH/WAH/WOH split, and I think it's because when I'm SAHMing, I'm literally staying at home the whole time, not going out to run errands or play at the park (or, even better, run at the park). What this means is that while I'm holding the kid or feeding the kid or wiping the kid or clapping at the kid like he's a Golden Retriever, the corners of both eyes (plus the ones in the back of my head) are barraged with all the chores and projects and unfinished business that fill every nook and cranny of the house. At least once a day (and usually more often than that), I find myself cursing Wombat's needy non-nappingness instead of soaking up his wide-awake smiles and attention. I hate it when I'm overcome with the feeling that my son is a thing to be endured when I should embrace him as a thing to be relished, but hey, it happens.

Simon, meanwhile, continues to kick ass as a SAHD. He still doesn't do any housework beyond occasionally loading the dishwasher (and I suppose I have only myself to blame for being so particular about everything else that he's probably afraid to even attempt more than that), and he now has a standing coffeeshop playdate with our friend and her three-month-old daughter (Wombat's paramour, to be sure). After coffee, he and Wombat go "adventuring" and usually come home with a small trinket for me: a $5 watch, this mug, a bottle of jasmine oil...He's always hinting about how good it would be if I left the house now and then and maybe even maybe met up with a friend. Now that I think about it, though, he probably just wants me to buy him presents.

Honestly, though, I should just face it: the house is never going to be clean, my projects are never going to be finished, and I might as well just escape from it all for a few hours like he does. The only times I leave the house alone with the baby (you know what I mean) are for doctor's appointments, which isn't exactly what you'd call recreation. Take, for instance, my recent visit to the crotch mechanic* for an annual checkup: When we got to the office and I took Wombat out of his carseat, he was his usual charming self, winking at the ladies and cooing at his toes, but then as soon as we got into the exam room and I had to put him down again (he tells me the carseat is full of rusty nails and biting ants), he went nuclear. So there I was, standing in my socks, wearing an exam gown open in the front from neck to knees, and twirling the carseat around the room as I try to distract the baby with diagrams of ladybits. Look, honey! It's a duodenum!

When the nurse came in to take my stats (back to pre-preg weight! woot!), I had to put him down again, but by way of compromise I unclipped the belt and straps so he didn't feel like he was trapped. This is where I concede that motherhood is about learning from our mistakes, which I certainly did as I watched helplessly while Wombat arched his back, went limp, and then slithered out of his carseat and onto the floor at the foot of the table upon which I was immobilized by a blood pressure cuff and a nurse who was too busy counting my pulse beats to hear me say, "My baby...He's going to...I need to...Well, I hope your floor is clean."

And that was nothing compared to the ska-reeeeeming he did when I was supine and stirruped. One of the receptionist ladies stuck her head in to ask if she could hold him for me, and it's a good thing I'm not shy around medical professionals because there I was, mid-exam, making silly faces at my kid while being swabbed from whence he came. Again, not what Simon means when he says I should take the kid out and show him the town.

But hey, speaking of escaping and hanging out with friends and showing Wombat the town, guess who, by some miracle, acquired herself a ticket to BlogHer this year? Guess!

*"Crotch mechanic" © my dad.