When did this happen?

I'm not especially bothered by the passage of time. At least, not yet.  I had some good times in the first few years of this past decade, but most of it I was busting my hump trying to get where I am now.   I don't love that I'm getting grey hair and it does feel weird to not be the target demographic for pretty much anything but strollers, but at least I have stuff.  Stuff is something I definitely lacked nine years ago--legit furniture, pots and pans that match, health insurance, whatnot.

The things I miss about being younger are cultural things that have just gone out of style.  What I'm basically telling you is that 1999 was my jam and I'm not ready to accept that it's over.  Does everyone pine for the time they were fifteen? What happened to 1990s J. Crew?  By the time I was old enough to afford any of it, it was a totally different thing. But I loved layering?!  Ally McBeal, my prophetess, where have you gone?  My law firm doesn't have unisex bathrooms, but I think of you any time my skirt is a little short.  I haven't thrown away my old cordless phone.  I'm just not there yet.

I didn't fully realize that I had passed the mark from young adulthood into full blown people-call-me-ma'am adulthood until I had a baby.  Getting a babysitter and not being the babysitter was a mind trip I cannot describe.  I feel like it was just yesterday (...said the old lady)  that I was watching someone's expensive cable while their kid slept and stressing about finals and wishing I could skip to the part where I had a nice house and didn't have to worry about mapping out my future.  Hello, 2005, it's me from the future. Hi!  Ease up on the eyebrow plucking.  

I've got expensive cable now.  I know now that parents have it because they don't ever get to go anywhere and it helps them feel less sad. HBO is the opiate of the people.  I don't have the freedom that I used to, but I do have stability.  Having had both, I'd take the stability every time.  That's what approaching thirty means to me.  Craig and were talking last Saturday night about that feeling we used to get in our early twenties around eight o'clock on Saturday.  That excitement that anything could happen and anyone could be there and ohmygod the stories we'll tell tomorrow.  Except, by eleven you realized it was the same people doing the same things and telling the same stories.  We still have nights like that, but they're fewer and farther between and end a whole lot earlier and less fuzzy, because the babysitter has to go home and we can't miss CBS Sunday Morning.  Fortunately, Charles Osgood is a confirmed robot and hasn't changed at all since the 90s.

How is it Tuesday?

     I’ve come to accept that there are things in life that I’ll never understand, like anything over eleventh grade math and how salmon know where and when to go upstream to have their salmon babies and if any salmon ladies are like, “No thanks.  I’ll just stay down here and not die.”  I can deal with the fact that some of life’s mysteries will stay that way, but some things must have answers.  Like, why do young girls make that face in pictures?  You know what I’m talking about.  That face.  The one where they raise both of their eyebrows and sort of smile like you just snuck up on them talking to themselves.  Sometimes they don’t even look at the camera.  What is that?  It’s probably the surest sign that I’m rapidly approaching the end of my youth, but I just don’t get it. I never did that.  I either smiled or I didn’t.  I can only assume it’s the dark side of having a camera phone and that wonderful teenage combination of self-absorption and disdain.  Even their fresh faces are over it.  Also, the skinny arm lean thing is out of control.  Now, every pair of young women in a photo looks like Chang and Eng.  They were connected, ladies, not being sassy. 

This has quickly gone from rambling to incoherent, but here are a few other things I’d like to address.  There should be such thing as night time daycare.  Craig and I worked this out.  A bus comes and gets you and your kid.  Your baby goes to daycare and has a wonderful time and maybe a snooze. You leave a substantial down payment.  You get taken downtown with a set pick-up time of, say, eleven.  Don’t judge. Eleven is plenty late for people with babies because babies don’t sleep in.  Ever.  Also, someone has got to do something about these baby socks.  I know, I know.  The debt ceiling and gun control, but seriously, this is a crisis that must be stopped.  Baby garters?  Spandex socks?  An end to cold weather?  Here’s a question.  It was actually directed at me from Craig, but I don’t know the answer.  Is there a way that a man with thick, mostly straight hair can have anything longer than a crew cut? He says to me, he says, Laura, I like the length, but not the puffiness.  Just kidding, he’s doesn't sound like a bootlegger.  I've told him his hair looks like Liza Minelli’s when it gets too long, but apparently that’s not helpful or supportive.  And lastly, do we or do we not like Jodi Foster’s speech from the Golden Globes? 

Food for thought.

Food for lunch. 

I’m out.

Resolute 2013

I haven't made a New Year's Resolution, but I'm gonna try to do a few little things in the New Year.  First on the list is trying not to go inwardly postal about gun control/anti-gun control memes.  Try, that's all I can do.  Second, I'm gonna try to resist feeling patronized about my parenting.  On my own, I feel pretty confident and calm about how things are going, even when they're tough.  He's been teething and not sleeping as well, etc., and I lose my confidence and become a nervous wreck about it around other people.  Why?  Because of the two responses from daycare workers, people in waiting rooms, mimes, general contractors, acrobats, and oral surgeons.  I made a few of those up.  It's either(1) he's fine.  Stop worrying and being a hysterical first time parent or (2), here's what you should do because I've been around him for forty-nine seconds and am, therefore, qualified to comment on his personality, habits, and preferences.  It's enough to rattle my confidence, for sure.  One woman, who shall remain on my personal prayer list forever, saw us at daycare and said.  "What a happy baby.  You're must doing a great job with him."   She should be lauded.  There should be a paid holiday in her honor.  I'm also going to eat less cheese because, come on, no one needs that much cheese.  I'm going to  make an effort to keep my (new!) house more organized than our current one.  I'm going to celebrate little victories, even if they seem insignificant.  For example, I've managed to avoid formula for the first six months of his life.  I feel guilty saying how proud that makes me, because I know how many people would feel some implied criticism of formula, but in reality, I'm just proud that I've achieved a personal goal.  I'm sure that sounds nutty to anyone without children, but it's cause for celebration in my life.  I'm going to cook more.  I'm going to take more pictures of the baby with the real camera instead of my phone.  I'm going to walk the dog more and, perhaps, give him a bath.  Currently, he gets a bath around the beginning and the end of the fiscal year.  He stinks.  2013 shall be The Year of Less Dog Stink.  Let it be written.  Let it be done.