Shopping Frenzy

Used to be politics at the grocery store was about campaigning out front and kissing babies. These days it’s in the aisles, and can take the joy out of shopping faster than a checker can say, “Debit or credit?”

I gratefully vacated the house early this morning to allow our brigade of house cleaners ample space to do their thing. Kate was at school so Paigey and I headed for Berkeley Bowl. We were desperately lacking anything leafy, fresh, or in need of refrigeration. (Children probably can live off of mini peanut butter sandwich crackers, but I’d rather not test that concept out on my kid.)

Despite some of the agro-hippie experiences I’ve had at Berkeley Bowl, it’s an undeniable bastion of produce, ethnic foods, groovy herbs, tinctures, green cleaning products, organic cosmetics and gourmet cheeses, micro-brews, seaweed, bulk quinoa, grass-fed meats, artisan yogurts–you-name-it. Plus you can get a coffee and a decent-tasting vegan pastry to quell your morning hungries as you shop. Even with its hassle factor, Berkeley Bowl makes you thank your stars that you live in a small rental house where the public schools suck versus anywhere else in North America.

Was a time when you had a list and just toodled along and picked up what you needed, right? Any brand issues were likely settled by choosing whatever it was your mom used, or getting what’s on sale. But these days, for me, it just ain’t that easy. Well, at least today it wasn’t.

My first quandary was in my apple purchase. I was able to cut through the 3,271 varieties of apples Berkeley Bowl carries in order to get Fuji apples, which Kate–child of foodies that she is–requests by name. But side-by-side are the bins of organic and non-organic Fuji apples.

Normally I’d just get organic, but I happened to randomly read the little sticker on them and saw they were from Chile. So, not local. The traditionally grown apples were from Washington state. Close by, and they actually looked much fresher and tastier than the organic ones. The organic ones were pale and starting to feel slightly spongey. I figured they were picked long  enough ago for them to make the long voyage from Chile all the way to Berkeley. You could actually see their jet lag.

I’ve got this nifty wallet-sized card that tells me what produce it’s okay to buy traditionally-grown–since they don’t require lots of pesticides–and what you should buy organic. Bananas, for instance, you don’t have to buy organic. Maybe ’cause-a the thick peel?! Strawberries on the other hand you should always buy organic. I think they’re mostly water and slurp up all those chemicals like sponges. I mean, don’t take my word for any of this. These are all the stories that I think I’ve maybe heard but likely just made up in my head.

Of course, the handy wallet-sized thing lives unhandily on our fridge, not in my wallet. It’s been there since my days of wanting the nanny to use it on her rare outings to the store for us. (That is, when we had a nanny.) Some day when I’m good and ready I’ll move it to my wallet where it can be of some use.

Anyway, Apple Crisis 2008 included the remembrance that apples require lots of pesticides. Though I countered that with the consideration that most farmers these days must be trying to keep chemical use down. And in Washington state of all places they’re likely to use groovy apple-growin’ practices, right? Maybe their farm is just barely under the limit for being qualified for organic status. (Yes, I truly had this thought.) Maybe I’m losing my mind by over-thinking this miniscule purchase. Wait, yes. I’m sure I am.

Before I was arrested for loitering in the apple aisle, I ended up getting the limp Chilean organic apples.

Then I was on to acquire the 24 other items on my list…

Pineapples sent me into another tailspin. They truly have five varieties and I couldn’t tell what properties constitute a good pineapple. I know pulling the center leaves out easily means it’s ripe, but many of them seemed over-ripe. I tried to remember if I needed these to be organic and decided I didn’t. The Del Monte pineapples looked decent, but I recently saw some 60 Minutes episode about how some of the big fruit companies are supporting large rebel factions by paying them off to let them do business in third-world countries. Or something like that.

I don’t even remember what kind of pineapple I got. I think I got one from Costa Rica, since I’d like to go there some day. May God forgive me if in buying it I’ve helped put a new machine gun in the hands of an eight-year old guerilla warrior. Hopefully it’ll at least be a good sweet pineapple

So as not to be more terrifically boring than I already am–or to incite fear in the hearts of my loved one that I’ve finally truly lost it–I’ll spare you a detailed run-down of all the other items I purchased. I’m sure there are some much better blogs that recount grocery lists. But I do have to mention my bread-buying efforts.

A gal wants a nice sliced sourdough, right? What can be so hard? I picked up a brand I think I’ve bought before. Then I notice that it wasn’t called Santa Cruz Bakery, but San Luis Bakery–though in a similar bluff-the-buyer font. I hate when companies try to rook you into buying their wannabe brands. (Please note that “wannabe” is in my blog software’s dictionary because it doesn’t have a squiggly line under it to indicate it’s misspelled. How weird is that?)

Anyway, I picked up another loaf from a place called something like El Faro Santa Cruz Bakery, which had a little amateurish sketch of a moustachioed baker in front of a wood hearth. Looked totally small-time hand-crafted, yadda yadda. But when I turned it over it turns out their attempts to pimp their bread as artisan are totally bogus. It’s made by Sara Lee! Out of St. Louis!

So then I assumed the other one, the San Luis Sourdough, must be made in California in San Luis Obispo. Nope. Also from St. Louis. And another Sara Lee product!

Is Sara Lee using the San Luis brand to drive discerning shoppers to their other more artisany looking brand? Am I becoming a paranoid conspiracy theorist? Does Sara Lee own my soul? Probably, but it’d take a lot of fine print reading to figure it out. And as far as I can tell, I’m nowhere near the St. Louis arch. I don’t think.

I mean, Avon owns Keihl’s and Ford owns Volvo. Weirder things have happened.

At any rate, I guess where this now-kinda-embarrassed-to-have-to-have-shared-it experience got me is the realization it’d be so much easier to shop at Wal-Mart and buy Lunchables and Ding Dongs for my family instead of reading labels to scour out any trace of dairy or soy, or concerning myself with organizations that are decimating rain forests while their executives lunch on spotted owl. (Potential solution?: Move to St. Louis.)

I mean, I swear I’m not even that political. Have I just been living in California too long? (Case in point, yesterday when I asked Kate if she’d like to go to the zoo with her friend Bowen she said, “Yeah! That’d be awesome!” Perhaps I should read the proverbial writing on the wall…) What I want to know is how does someone who really is clued into all this–not just straining to remember what their absent wallet-sized card tells them to do–manage to shop? It’s paralyzing!

With my grocery adventure behind me I went to the brilliantly named maternity and baby store Waddle and Swaddle, in search of some swaddling blankets that Paige would not spontaneously combust in when we’re in the summer swampland of the East Coast. A cute pair of tights I was looking at for Kate proclaimed they were “made with love in China.”

It made me think of a blurb I heard on NPR recently: There’s a factory in China that produces “Free Tibet” bumper stickers. Fucked up, but hilarious,
no?

Through my sister’s films I know enough about the human rights injustices the Chinese have dealt the Tibetans. Enough to make me sometimes kinda think about maybe not buying things that are made in China. It’s rate, but I sometimes do think of it. But something about the “made with love” thing was a bit much for me. It felt like an attempt at a work-around to reel you in. ‘Made by Nazis with love.’ Alas, no cute tights for Katie. (Though I guess if I really liked them I probably would’ve gotten them. See? My political intentions are flexible.)

After my two forays into local stores left me feeling like the last Californian who thinks about this stuff while shopping but still shaves her armpits, I made my way to Target, hoping the Rosie’s organic free range chicken in the trunk wasn’t breeding free range bacteria in the unusually hot weather.

Target provided a much-needed familiar consumer palate-cleanser. (When Paige and I miss a week of shopping at Target, the folks there nearly call to check on us that we’re alright.) The huge red doors flew open to greet us, and we rolled happily into our air conditioned, well-lit home away from home. Where, no doubt, after 20 minutes I likely managed to undo any of the thoughtful consumer shopping I’d spent the previous two hours wrangling with.

Ah well. Baby steps, right?

My Famous Friend, David

OMG! Sorry to sound like a text-messaging teenager but I just went to my bookstore (Kate has this way of calling all the places she likes “my toy store,” “my library,” yadda yadda) to buy the new David Sedaris book (which they were sold out of), and the woman working there casually mentions, “You can order a book and get on the list to have him sign it when he comes here.”

WHEN HE COMES HERE? Like to MY BOOKSTORE, just two blocks from MY HOUSE?? This news was nearly more than I could bear.

If you were about to ask me to do something on Friday, June 27th, sorry, but I’ll be waking up that morning in a tent in front of the bookstore, using a generator to blow dry my hair and iron my fabulous outfit, and preparing myself to get into the sold-out reading later that evening.

My diet starts now! My God. What. Will. I. Wear?

I mean I truly feel far more Tiger Beat pubescent adoration excitement over David Sedaris than I ever did over Shawn Cassidy, or, uh, Michael Jackson. And my feelings for them at one point in my life I must confess were considerable.

I don’t know if I’m alone in playing the Who Would My Celebrity Friend Be? game. It’s not like it’s really a game, but a form of day-dreamery. And puhleeze I really don’t spend all day sitting around thinking about this, if you’re starting to feel all like my life is so pathetic and tragic. Come on! I spend my whole day changing diapers, thank you.

Anyway, so my ex-best celebrity friend was Renee Zellweger. I know, I know, it’s a weird choice, but sometimes these people who you somehow envision as your good old friends from before they got all famous but they still have you as a womb-to-tomb friend, someone who really knows them and is steeped in the real non-celebrity world, someone who they give their cast-off designer clothes to and who they visit on the weekends after they’ve broken up with some famous drummer and just need to not be in LA and not wear make-up and not be followed by paparazzi and feel grounded by coloring in a princess coloring book with your daughter–sometimes you don’t pick those people in your imaginary game. They pick you.

So it’s not like I think she and I have a ton in common, or that she’d even necessarily be super fun to hang out with. (Not like Mark’s imaginary celebrity friend, who is–get this–Cameron Diaz! Someone who he thinks would be fun to hang out with because she seems “game” despite the fact that Mark himself admits that’s he’s not game.)

Anyway, at some point Renee just sort of stopped being my celebrity friend and I realized that of course it should be David Sedaris. And Hugh. I kind of thought maybe Hugh and I were the good old friends and then of course ages ago he and David got together and now, after so many years of me hanging out with them in Paris and Normandy and all those summer rentals in Tuscany that we did together–never mind all the wild times in NYC and their burrito-fest visits to me in SF–I mean after all these years it’s really hard to remember that I was friends with Hugh first since David and I are so close now. (Oh and Anderson Cooper and I are also dear friends. In my mind, that is.)

I a moment which could have turned into one of those times where you say “You know how after you floss your teeth you sometimes swallow the dental floss” to someone and they look at you like, “Are you fucking serious?” and then you nervously laugh and say “Of COURSE not. Of COURSE I don’t ever swallow my dental floss, silly!” Well, in one of those moments I asked my sister-in-law Lori who she envisioned her celebrity friend was. To be honest I can’t remember if she had her answer at the ready, or needed to think about it a bit. (I was too busy being thrilled that she didn’t mock my question.)

Anyway, I think she did think about it for a bit and said, “I think John and I would be a good couple-friend match with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. I figure John and Ben could bond over their Red Sox fan-dom, and Jen and I could talk about the kids.”

That was such a good answer! Of course I emailed David and Hugh right away to tell them all about it.

Diary of a Dairy Addict

Criminy. Paigey’s skin is still miserable. Or possibly even miserabler than it was.

Given the apocalyptic heat wave we’re having it’s no surprise that she’s got a heat rash on her yeast infection on her eczema. She’s scratched the shit out of all of the above. Oh, and let’s no forget the cradle cap. The poor girl’s just a mess.

Oddly, she’s devoid of a diaper rash, but as I write this I’m sure the most unimaginably vile one is starting to fester in her diaper.

Of course I’d just be undone about the whole dermal nightmare if it weren’t for the fact that coming off of dairy has been my own personal torture. It makes the scene in Train Spotting when the guy gets off heroine look like mild discomfort.

You might think I’m being a bit dramatic. Actually, like any good addict I think I’ve managed the problem well by throwing myself head over heels into another compulsion–stuffing myself silly with soy. I’ve got the vanilla soy milk, the soy ice cream, and the little Tofutti ‘ice cream’ sandwiches. I was also poised to buy some soy cheese, but when Sacha pointed out that the package said “American cheese flavor” I had to toss it back onto the shelf. (Even I have my limits.) It’s neither delicious nor convenient eating this way, but better a shoddy stand-in than none at all.

So today, in the throes of this heat wave as I’m happily packing the beach bag to meet the Friday Mamas at the lake and thinking ruefully of all the poor saps sitting in their cubicles, I look down at the poor red blotchy baby and have a stunning moment of maternal maturity. This baby, thought I, needs to go to the doctor before the heat wave rages on through the weekend, exacerbating her dermal woes and leaving her indistinguishable from Rosemary’s baby. (Or why I imagine Rosemary’s baby to have looked like. Did they ever actually show it in the movie?)

And so, in our squeezed-us-in-appointment, before even taking off her clothes to show him the really awful parts, Dr. Robbins, (a.k.a. our friend Dan) takes one look at smiley crusty Paige and says, “Oh yeah. Wow. So we need to really deal with this.”

And by we, guess who he means? Me.

Like some John Hughes movie I’m sure it’s easy to see where this story line is going. No, the popular boy at school isn’t going to suddenly see past Paige’s pustules and ask her to the prom. The treatment is I’m being told to stop eating soy too. Apparently one-third of the people who have dairy issues eventually develop soy ones too. And it’s looking like Paige is in that unlucky third.

Dan asked me to be exceptionally strict and vigilant about it too. No soy or dairy at all, not even a little butter used for cooking. I’ve got to totally cut it out of my diet altogether, and in ten days take hopefully-improved Paige to a dermatologist, and we’ll take it from there.

The fabulous week-old espresso machine that I got for my birthday will now need to be squirreled away in the basement so I’m not taunted by it. I mean, I don’t want to pull some kind of Kitty Dukakis move by making myself a latte using nail polish remover instead of milk or something. That’d just bring shame upon the whole family.

I know, I know what you’re thinking. The poor baby is suffering a horrible bodily pestilence and all I can think about is myself. But really, I do feel sorry for both of us.

Now poor Paigey now has a second prescription funk-fighter that’s steroidal. Three times a day I’m coating her with two different stinky creams that are probably one-part nuclear waste.  You try to be all healthy and groovy and organic, then you have to use something like that on your sweet little infant. Steroids! She’ll be in a ‘roid rage throwing punches at innocents in a bar before you know it. (Hopefully she won’t develop that ridge across her eyebrows that looks all Cro-Magnon.)

Okay, Kate’s awake and we’re off to run through the sprinkler. Hopefully I’ll wash away my bad attitude while I’m at it. 

Day 10 Off Dairy

This morning the cleaning lady didn’t cluck sympathetically when looking at Paige–or more specifically Paige’s skin–then cast me an askance look as if to say she’s not above handing me over to Child Protective Services.

It makes me think my abstinence from dairy may be starting to pay off.

Despite whatever progress we’re making it’s still a constant struggle to keep off the stuff. I feel like I should be in some church basement getting a pin for my 10 days “clean.”

Doctor’s Orders

Today Kate and I took Paige for her three-month well-baby appointment. Aside from her weighing 14 pounds and 7 ounces–putting her in the 90th percentile for baby weight–the biggest take-away was Dan’s directive for us to focus on Paige’s “skin management.”

Well won’t my cleaning lady be happy.

We got some tips on wrangling the cradle cap. No mention about the acne, actually. Then Dan mentioned that I should cut down on my milk intake. (Okay, so he might have said cut “out” the milk.)

Evidently my drinking milk is triggering the light rash on Paigey’s arms and shoulders. I can’t remember how he described the exact effect it has. He also said something about eczema–either that it is eczema now, or maybe that it could develop into it. I was a bit stunned and preoccupied. Cutting off my milk supply he might as well have asked me to disconnect an artery.

Mind you, I’m hardly the type to pour myself a tall glass of cold milk. That kinda grosses me out actually. But decaf lattes, cocoa with mini-marshmallows, and Dove Bars make up my primary food groups. If it weren’t for the fact that my Midwestern husband cooks a well-balanced dinner for us every night, I’d likely subsist on this holy trinity. They’re convenient comfort foods that also fill me up when I don’t have time to make something more substantial. And thus far at least, there’s no evidence of pitted fingernails, hair loss, or dementia to indicate I have scurvy or any other form of malnutrition.

In case for some reason the milk in my lattes wouldn’t count as “milk” per se, I needed to double-check on this directive with the good doctor.

Me: “So, no milk, as in, no lattes?”

He: (casually, as if he’s not dropping a bomb on me) “Yep!”

Ah well, I guess from now on out I’ll be getting my daily dose of comfort from admiring Paigey’s sweet skin.

Hipster Imposter

So tonight we are going to this gallery opening. Or is it called an art opening at a gallery? See? It’s clear I’m totally baffled about how to approach this. I’m not even sure what to call it.

The thing is, my friend John from RI sent me an email saying his friend, Josie, was going to be out here showing some of her paintings in this group show, wittily entitled Group Sects. We know Josie from our annual pilgrimages home for Forta July, and she’s a groovy gal.

So, I take to looking at her website, and it turns out she’s an amazing painter. Who knew? I mean, I knew she was a good heckler at the Bristol parade, and I was satisfied with that being the extent of her offerings to society. 

What’s more, she paints birds, which aligns quite nicely with my chicken obsession. (The topic for a whole other blog entry.) She and I send a few emails back and forth with me  saying things like, ‘Hey I heard about your show.’ And her saying, ‘Yeah you guys should come and where can I get the best burrito in SF?’ She also mentioned that she’d never been to the gallery before, but she’s seen it a bunch in “her art magazines.” She didn’t know what it’d be like but she’d be getting her hair cut just in case.

This from the platinum blond pixie with sleeve tattoos. Somehow I think she’ll pass fashion muster, even with her old haircut.

As for me, I’m anticipating someone suddenly pointing to me in my high-cut Costco mom jeans and shouting across the crowded room, “What’s she doing here?” Then a spotlight will move over to me, revealing me shamefully shoveling large chunks of orange cheese into my mouth and guzzling wine from a plastic cup.

What’s worse, we’re bringing Paige with us since, like her big sister did, she refuses to take a bottle despite Mark’s most valiant and ceaseless attempts.

So not only will I be outed for my lack of hipster-tude, I’ll also likely be trying to quiet/hide a squalling baby by breastfeeding–while balancing my cup of wine (yes, drinking and nursing–in public no less) and trying to not topple my paper plate of cubed cheese and crackers.

All this aside, the worst of it is I’m desperate to buy one of Josie’s paintings. So through this all I’ll be doing my best to convince Mark that despite the fact that I’ve just quit my job, we really should spent several thousand dollars on an immense 4×4 foot painting of a rooster. (Seriously.)

Thankfully, the one thing I am kidding about is owning jeans from Costco. I think I need to rack up a few more years at home with the kids before the nexus between value and fashion  that they afford me starts to make sense.

Don’t I Have a 2:00?

It’s so weird not working. Somehow I haven’t managed to purge the subconscious corporate brain activity from my psyche. So, when I’m not actively engaged in diaper changing, toddler taming, or maternal mammalian activities, I find I have this subtle nagging feeling that there’s something else that I should be doing.

Do I have a presentation to write? Employee to lambaste? Meeting that I’m somehow extremely late for?

I wrack my brain. Truly. Isn’t there something I should I be doing right now, while I have the chance with both kids sleeping? Are there voicemails from ornery clients on my cell phone that I’ve neglected to check? An issue of Ad Age I forgot to read? HR forms to fill out? For the love of God, isn’t there something other than this?

I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure I’m just coming down off of a stress addiction. And man, it sucks. I don’t feel it all the time, but it’s like the no ciggie after a meal thing. When I do remember I want it, I want it bad. I sweat and slap the inside of my elbow staggering around the house. Where’s my next hit going to come from? Certainly there’s some shit storm brewing ugly revenue-loss implications somewhere. Or an employee who is right now saying the exact wrong thing to a client?

But no. Often there’s nothing. The kids are fed, the house is tidy and often actually clean too. And I’m caught up on my People Magazine reading. Nothing is bearing down on me.

The best I get is a load of laundry I’ll find that’s lingered in the washing machine forgotten. I open the door, crouch down, and sniff to see if it’s gotten mildewy. Maybe I’ll have to re-do the load! Maybe it’ll all happen when Kate needs me to tie her shoe! Oh the challenge of it all. But, no luck. It’s just fine and I sigh and heave it into the dryer.

My heart races slightly when we’re dangerously low on milk. Only a quarter of the carton left, I think! I’ll need to get to the store quickly before we totally run out and Kate is standing forlorn–worse tantrumy–demanding “milkie” in her “new Sigg cup with the cars smiling on it.” But deep down I know that even if we’re suddenly milk-less, it won’t rock Kate’s world too extremely. Nor is it too hard to get to a store to buy some. There’s a glimmer of stress I work up around it all, but it’s hardly the hit off the pipe I’m needing, if you know what I mean.

The other day, while racking my brain for what it could be that I need to attend to, I remembered my long-neglected scrapbook project. It was something I decided to delve into when I was home with Kate as a baby. It would have been more efficient to simply sit on my front steps and burn wads of cash. But going to the scrapbook store and browsing at “papers” (all part of the “scrappers” lexicon) seemed to fill some void in me at the time.

After putting together about seven scrapbook pages chronicling Kate’s life–I barely covered events beyond the first days in the hospital–I decided the world of scrappin’ was not for me. I’d toiled and fretted so much over each page, working painfully to achieve supreme cuteness and creativity and never committing to using the permanent double-sided tape to adhere all the nostalgic crap down. When I wasn’t working on the book, I berated myself with guilt for letting life’s little and big moments pass us by without photos, collages, and puffy stickers to commemorate them. Like watching Leave it to Beaver as a child, where I internalized stress over every of the Beave’s misdeeds to near the point of bleeding ulcers, I knew this hobby was no fit for my OCD innards. It just wasn’t healthy to be cutting colored paper with scalloped scissors over and over again to make the perfect oval border to showcase Kate’s umbilical stump when I could be spending her babyhood engaging with her instead.

But now, with my anxiety level so dangerously low and my days filled with plenty to do but all of it mindless busy work, I can’t help but wonder if I could practice scrapbooking moderation.  It might just be the antidote to the What Now? Blues I’ve been having. Maybe I can control my scrapbooking–dole out just enough to myself each week to boost my blood pressure slightly and get me chewing my cuticles again?

It’s something to consider as I daydream during my next meeting with Paige’s poopy diaper.

Too Busy to Even Change My Mantra

With three weeks to go before my maternity leave started–which was also when the Christmas holiday was beginning–lots of things happened.
a) I got a new boss.
b) Three days later a client pulled out of some projects leaving a gaping hole in my P&L for next year, upwards of, well, a monetary figure with many many zeros in it.
c) We got a chance to pitch for new work.
d) My nesting mode reached bionic heights and I went on an obsessive Excel-monitored Christmas-gift shopping bonanza in all of the time that I wasn’t a) trying to make a good impression on my new boss, b) doing damage control over the significant loss of work to my team, c) writing PPTs to win a new client
e) I began to understand what being an insomniac is like, which for anyone who hasn’t experienced it should know totally sucks, but it does allow for you to run threw a lot that’s on your mental To Do list between 3 and 6AM.

Oh sure, I’ve been diligently taking my prenatal vitamins, along with a host of other supplements that will help my little inner parasite be the healthiest, smartest and most emotionally balanced being ever produced. But really, I don’t think all the other factors had a positive effect on me.

Working long hours, sitting in epic commuter traffic, subsiding on the copious amounts of holiday candy, popcorn and chocolate-covered pretzels, and trying to tap dance fast enough in front of a new boss that she doesn’t notice that the shit has hit my division’s fan–none of these things are pretty when you are waddling around nine months pregnant.

For the past month or so my internal mantra had been, “Cope, cope, cope.” When needed, I can draw on considerable reserves of energy, optimism and drive. And if I push myself hard enough, I won’t have enough time to stop and feel sorry for myself. This, plus allowing myself an occasional half-caf latte at Starbucks, can provide much of the necessary energy to light up whatever grid we’re on here out West.

Yet, aside from the lack of loving attention I’ve been focusing on this little baby-to-be, I was also dreadfully lacking the holiday spirit. Sure, I was get the family’s gift shopping done. But in the rote emotionless way an astronaut runs through a pre-take-off check list.

Then, something happened–but what was it? Oh, Neice Maia’s dance performance. Sitting watching a group of urban kids interpret the Nutcracker with everything from ballet to hip hop to break dancing, while my sister held Kate–who was enraptured–on her lap. It was just enough to make a knick in my steely outer shell of “Cope cope cope” and left me considering briefly a change to “Savor savor savor.” I got a small hit, akin to those you can get watching a grocery store commercial during the holidays when PMS makes you sentimental.

But it vanished more quickly than a spritz of fake Christmas tree scent.

Next thing you know, work was over. I was out of there. And then we were in the wind-up to Christmas. I realized that on the same day our nanny would be leaving us, it would be Kate’s last day of preschool before the holiday, our house was being cleaned for the last time pre-Xmas, and I was heading out for maternity leave. Thankfully my insomnia gave me plenty of time to process the convergence of all this the night before–while panicking about the appropriate gifts for the house cleaner, teachers and my team–all of which had been ruefully forgotten until my most awake refreshed part of the “day” over the course of the past month, which happened to come while lying in bed between 3AM and 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

And the other thing is, this baby has continued to gestate! Despite my utter emotional neglect. And while I was spending time realizing how unfocused I was on the holidays, I was even unfocuseder on how damn soon this baby will arrive.

3 weeks to be precise. And, given the holidays are past, work is behind me, and we’ve actually finally (and successfully, I may add) moved Kate into her new room and Big Girl Bed, I’m suddenly staring into a abyss of space and time in which thankfully there is one thing left I can do so I won’t feel totally bereft–realize that we are about to have another baby. That I am in fact. Out of this here body.

I never made the change from “cope cope cope” to “savor savor savor,” but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get “baby baby baby” in under the wire before I’m moaning in Labor and Delivery and it’s much too late.

Keep an Eye on Your Snakes

When I was pregnant with Kate I had the usual spate of irresponsibility nightmares. You know, the garden variety leave-the-store-and-forget-the-baby-in-the-shopping-cart type nightmares. Or the, “Where’s your new baby?” question that the kindly neighbor asks and you think, “Oh shit! That’s right! Where is she?” I also had one in which the baby was very small and I kept her in a Tupperware (before you judge me, I didn’t put the top on it–duh), and then I realized I forgot to give her water for a while–not something one generally gives an infant, but in my Dream Land it was appropriate. Oops!

Last night I woke Mark up in the middle of the night. “The snakes!” I implored him. “I forgot about them and they are loose!”

The situation being, that I was caring for two very large white snakes and realized that I was forgetful about ensuring they would stay in their bag or crate or whatever. I’d woken up from my dream, but was still certain that those snakes needed corralling before God knows what happened. (Sure, these snakes aren’t a baby, per se, but the lack of tending to them made me feel they ranked with the hapless mother dreams.)

Mark didn’t seem to care so much about this dire scenario. In fact, I’d categorize his reaction to the news as more annoyed than anything. “What?! I was asleep! It’s 1:45!”

Weird. If someone told me there were some huge loose snakes lurking around I’d hardly be feeling sleepy.

Anyway, ten minutes later after I assume we both dozed off, I woke up once more feeling an even more hellbent on imparting to Mark the extent of the danger I’d put us were in. I’d been irresponsible with these snakes–which it seemed were somehow the property of work, kinda like when you could sign up to take the classroom hamster home over a holiday–but with Mark’s help I figured we could get out of this pickle.

“Mark!” I called out to his side of the bed again. “The Sunset snakes! They are loose. I let them loose!” Again, Mark expressed apparent disinterest, and an even more ardent desire to sleep sans my reptilian jibber-jabber than he did when I first woke him up.

This morning after his alarm went off Mark informed me that I was talking in my sleep to him about snakes. “Oh, I was totally awake,” I assured him. Sure, it all started out with a dream, but when I woke up, the urgency I felt to get him to intercept the consequences of my irresponsibility was very real.

And he really didn’t seem to care much. Maybe I should scream out “Fire!” in the middle of his REM cycle tonight, just to see how he reacts.

Anyway, in the breaking light of day we laughed for a good ten minutes about it. But I still looked around good and hard before reaching into my closet for my shoes.

When I got to work I saw a woman whose family lives in San Diego, and realized where this whole snake thing hailed. She’d just told me that her parents are back in their house after the wildfire evacuation, but they have 6 inches of ash in their pool and throughout their yard. If that’s not bad enough, there are rattle snakes that have come down from the mountains (biblical, no?) that are lurking under the ash, so they’ve got to be vewy vewy careful when they walk anywhere outside.

Um, iiiiick!!!! A perfectly good plot line to inform my night’s dreams, no?

On NPR I just heard a sleep expert saying that pregnant women report having lots of weird dreams. It might be hormonal, the guy said, or it might just be because you’re sleeping less soundly and remember more of your dreams from waking up a lot. In which case you are always having freaky dreams, but just don’t remember them.

I think I’m just doing my part to ensure that my sleep–and God knows, Mark’s–takes on the restless and unpredictable pattern that having a newborn in your house presents. Just trying to ease the transition. And reinforce in Mark that as the man of the house, he has a responsibility to protect us women and children from whatever evils, real or imagined, dare to disrupt us.

Keep Yer Shirt On

It’s nearly impossible to anticipate the associations Kate will make.

Some of them are smart and surprising. Like when I mentioned to Kate in our recent trip to RI that we’d see my cousin Nancy, Kate said, “Pretty dress!” When Kate had seen Nancy at Easter Nancy commented a few times on Kate’s special holiday dress. “Ah yes, mother, your cousin Nancy. The one who commended me on my fine taste in formal wear.”

When she was younger and I was getting her used to sleeping in her crib, I’d prime for going to bed by saying it was time for “night night.” In turn, she made the connection that “night night” meant nursing, since that’s what we did before she went to bed. And she still has that concept in her mind a year later. One of her books shows a mother dog nursing puppies, and another a pig mama feeding her piglets. Kate, whose vocabulary has mushroom-clouded and can easily describe what she sees in a book, still points to those pictures and say, “Pig night night!”

So several months ago when Dr. Robbins proclaimed Kate precocious, he recommended we get her a potty and offer her a chance to use it before she takes a bath at night. If she didn’t want to, no biggie. Just get the concept going. (I’ve since learned this is called “toilet teaching” versus “toilet training.” William Saffire take note.)

Since Kate would always be undressed for her bath at potty time, she determined that using the potty is something one does naked. And now that she’s developed an interest in using the potty at other times of day, I have to vehemently encourage her to not strip down entirely for a quick tinkle. She doesn’t trust me when I say this though. So I’ve had to use the potty myself while pointing out in a loud sing-songy now-learn-this tone, “See? When Mama uses the potty she keeps her clothes on! It’s how big girls do it!” (Suggesting “big girls” do things a certain way is generally the key to Kate’s instant and enthusiastic compliance.)

So today, as I’m pulling down my own pants and outlining the merits of keeping them around my thighs versus taking them off to tinkle–along with my shoes, socks, and shirt–I remembered that this scenario has actually already been played out on the show Seinfeld. There was an episode where George was caught buttoning up his shirt after leaving a restaurant restroom. Jerry and Elaine manage to get to the bottom of the disturbing fact that George takes his shirt off to poop.

I’m open to Kate developing into whatever person she turns out to be, but George Costanza?

A few years ago (pre-Kate) I got together for dinner with my friend Marian. She was all aglow with news to share. Surprisingly, the news was that her daughter Nola had “pooped in the potty” that morning. Mar was beaming with pride. You’d have thought she’d won a MacArthur Fellowship. Childless at the time, I immediately concluded she was mad and/or that all parents are.

But today I too am bursting with poopy pride. Mark came into our room after getting Kate up this morning to announce that she’d pooped in the potty. He gleefully relayed the news: “So she peed, then she said, ‘Poopoo?’, and I said, ‘Yes! Yes! You can poopoo in the potty! And then–she did! I mean, so then I looked in the potty and there was totally a little turd in there!”

I was proud like a Jewish Mom on her daughter’s wedding day. I nearly regretted that Mark had flushed the evidence. (Nearly.) I should have called Marian then and there to apologize for my earlier ignorance. How was I to know?

Once I concepted the scrapbook page that would mark this scatological milestone (okay, not really), Mark and I immediately launched into a small parental panic over the fact that Kate’s interest in potty training has surpassed our research on the matter (though by now, 8 hours later, Mark has probably read everything ever posted online in English on this subject).

Our shared anxiety: What if we’re already doing something wrong? What’s the proper way to continue to encourage this delightful potty-pooping behavior? What are the best books on this topic?

And, of course, does this mean that she’s really advanced?

At any rate, one thing is for sure. I have every intention of breaking her of the stigma of becoming a Shirtless Pooper. She may be short, a little pudgy around the middle, and even a little whiny at times, but George Costanza she is not.