Damned Indecision

Of course, just when my nanny frustration level reaches a peak of what I think is no return, something happens to make me decide to re-embrace Shelly. I know it’s a far-flung comparison, but I totally get how people in abusive relationships convince themselves to stick around. One day is bad, and the next day the person shows all their wonderful attributes. It almost makes me question myself. Was she really that bitchy?

So with the main issue being the have-to-be-home-down-to-the-minute, the day after our last “episode” in which I’d mistaken an early-home day for a late-home day, I hit a shitload of traffic going home. And traffic itself doesn’t even get to me any more. Who cares about sitting in traffic. It’s me envisioning the hell I’ll pay when I walk in the door late. And even cringing at the thought of calling to confess that a second night in a row I’m going to be late.

I mean, it is my lateness. So maybe I’m truly at fault… though she was pretty nasty that night. Oh God, see? I go round and round.

So I’m all scared and I call to say I’m in traffic and I’ll be late. She asks how late, and I want to say, “How the hell do I know?” but I just say, “It’s hard to say. Hopefully not too late.”

Then I steel myself to what is going to happen when I walk in the door. It’s like getting in trouble when you are a teenager and you decide that you can hear anything. All you need to do is stand there and listen to your mother rant on at you about whatever it is that you did, and you think that you can take it, you just have to stand there and listen and then it will be over. It’s just words, right?

So I summon my teen-like powers of negative energy rebuffing, and unlock the door to walk into a picture of domestic bliss. Kate is in her high chair, gurgling happily at Shelly and eating dinner. Shelly greets me with a smile and says she started giving Katie (as she always calls her) some dinner. She gives me a run-down of their day, and tells me more about the cold she fears Kate is catching. (She’d called during the day to tell me about it too.) She suggests I take her to a doctor.

Then the next day, which she has off, she calls in the afternoon to check on how Kate is doing and what the doctor had to say.

Oy! This makes it hard to stay annoyed with her. Am I crazy? Or worse, am I just lazy and don’t want to put the effort into finding someone else? Someone who is maybe better on the getting-home-late front, but doesn’t love Kate as much, or cook her healthy food, or take a geunine interest in teaching her things.

We’ve talked about finding another family with a baby Kate’s age or slightly older who might want to do share-care part-time. So, some of the time Kate would have a playmate, and some time she’d have solo nanny time.

Tonight when I got home, Shelly–all happy and friendly and cute with Kate and nice to me–reminded me I should post a listing to find another family. And I’ve been dragging my heels since I don’t know whether she’s a long-term solution for us. Why bring another family into the situation? And how can I write an ad, conceivably extolling Shelly’s virtues to someone else seeking a nanny, when I have my own issues with her?

If I were a friend with this problem the advice I would give would be to at least, at first, talk to the nanny. Express all the concerns I’ve had with her and explain that it’s been frustrating. See if there is a way to improve the situation. But somehow when I get home from work every night I just want to be with Kate, and don’t want to get into it.

If she could only be consistently annoying–and not totally great when she’s not being annoying–it’d be so much easier.

Maybe I just need to set a deadline for myself. By the end of the week I will talk to her about this. Ugh. I have never been one for these kinds of conversations, but feel like I’ve gotten better about them since I’ve had to give feedback to people at work over the years and learned to not shy away from it.

Okay. Resolved to do this now. Will report back with my progress.

Oh and P.S. The other thing I need to make a decision on is when to wean Kate. I seem to keep saying I want to, then get lured back in by wanting to give her what she wants, especially since I’m away from her for work and then feel guilty about denying her.

Must decide what to do, or decide to not decide on anything for a while. But will decide on that later.

Nannies and Boyfriends

Sometimes I wonder if my brain works very differently than other peoples’. It seems that I can’t have an experience without somehow tying it to something else in my life. I mean, I guess that’s how we all operate on some level, to process change. But for me sometimes it feels more like a game of Concentration. I turn over one Jack and know I’ve seen another Jack somewhere…but where was it? It’s fun to me to make the connection.

So Shelly. Our nanny. As I’ve not been shy about sharing, we got off to a rocky start. I was returning to work after a year off. Mark was traveling for business. Shelly was new to all of us. And in addition to the new job, new team, new industry, I had a new commute which I’d yet to understand the traffic/distance and timing ins-and-outs of.

Most of my family and friends offered their shoulders for me to unburden myself upon that first week. I was going to be 5 minutes late getting home on my second day of work, and Shelly’s reaction was less than easy-going. It was a stressful interaction with her that dominoed to Kate also being stressed, and especially without Mark here to help me wrangle with it, the whole experience lead me to question where she was truly The One to care for Kate.

Well since then the job has become less new. I have an understanding of the intricacies of the commute. Mark has been traveling less for work. And I ironed out some issues with Shelly’s hours that allow me more wiggle room in my drive home. She and I have also gotten to know each other better. And she and Kate have clearly forged a bond.

And yet, the outpouring of support from those family members and friends who had my back when I was sure the nanny should go, haven’t all caught up with our current state of contentedness. When they inquire whether we’ve found someone new, I feel the need to justify and explain why we haven’t and how we’ve had a change of heart. And still I worry that the kind inquirer won’t really believe me, or think I’ve made the best decision.

It leaves me feeling like you do when you and your boyfriend have a fight, or break up, or he just does something jerky. You do what any typical gal does–reach out to your posse for support. And often that support comes in the form of “you’re too good for him,” “you should ditch the dope” and sometimes even the candid I’m-telling-you-this-because-I’m-your-friend-and-care-about-you “I never really liked him in the first place.”

Which all gets a bit sticky once the incident that set off all the need for all the extra love and support is past, and you find yourself back together with said BF and feeling all butterfly-stomachy in love again. Those conversations in which you and you friends fantasized about him getting afflicted with a lifetime worth of he’ll-never-date-again acne suddenly need to be swept under the carpet by all parties. When both groups are together again, say, you sitting on your parent’s couch snuggling with the guy who they know did you wrong, you’re aware that your parents are secretly still cursing him, but you want them to see that he’s changed! He’s different now! Everything is okay–really.

Alas, I fear that’s where I’ve landed with poor Shelly. Will she ever meet a friend without them wondering what it was she was so hopped-up to get to that she couldn’t stay 5 extra minutes with Kate that evening? Are they judging me and Mark as parents who really should find another nanny but are maybe just too lazy? Or worse, don’t care enough about who watches Kate?

And maybe in my most self-doubting moments, do I fear that they are right?

In my Mental Game of Concentration, I have to compare it to yet another thing. It’s like looking for apartments. When you’re looking, you want it all–hardwood floors, fireplace, parking, walk to BART. And when you finally get a place you’re thrilled that you didn’t have to take that place that was so dark, or expensive, or whatever. But you still can torture yourself with the fantasy that the perfect reasonably-priced rental with a hot tub in back and a Viking range was out there and you missed it.

Ah, well. Yesterday I went for a walk with Kate when I got back from my work trip in LA. I was looking up at the Berkeley hills and remembering when we just moved here how I felt so misplaced in this neighborhood. (After a dozen years in Noe Valley, it’s no wonder.) But now, I look up at those hills and revel in their beauty. I look at our little local library and the coffee shops and people with their yoga mats tucked under their arms waiting to cross the street, and I think of how lucky we are to be here. Without a doubt, this is home now.

Our rocky start aside, I’ve been getting some of that feel-good vibe from Shelly recently too. Seeing the great healthy meals she cooks for Kate, the way she teaches her little games and how to blow kisses. The care and concern she’s expressed in the past couple days about Kate’s runny nose.

Hopefully some day all the friends who have ever heard me kvetch about Shelly will know that Mark, Kate and I feel content and lucky to have found her, and confident that we have the right nanny–even if there may be one out there who’s just as good who charges a little less.

Things Not To Do

Do not start a new job and leave your daughter for the first time with a new nanny who for all you know could be an axe-murderer in the same week when your husband is away on a business trip and on Thursday you’ll already need to take a day off and be all packed and get yourself and your baby onto a 6AM flight to go to a family wedding.

Do not get your period the morning of your first day of work and have miserable cramps. And don’t forget to take Advil before you leave the house and spend the whole day hoping that you’ll magically find some in your office in the 30 second breaks between your back-to-back getting-to-know-you need-to-make-a-good-first-impression meetings.

Do not wear a pink dress shirt under a black dress on your first day of work, thinking it looks cute until you arrive at the office and realize you look like an overgrown girl in a Catholic school uniform.

Do not take on management of a community event when you are starting a new job and your husband is away on a business trip.

Do not freak out that the nanny that you hired is possibly terrible and that your daughter no longer loves you after one day left with a total stranger who you hope she will come to like someday, but not too much.

Do not get lost on your first drive home from your first day of work and ultimately sit in extra traffic and have to call the nanny and tell her you’ll be late and can she possible stay longer–establishing yourself in her mind as irresponsible (and as having a bad sense of direction).

Do not cry on the phone to your husband after feeding and bathing a crying overtired baby who didn’t take an afternoon nap, making him feel terrible about being away on a business trip.

Do not spend an hour updating a spreadsheet for your community event planning (which you have foisted off on your benevolent friend) when all you want to do is space out and watch TV, then have your computer crash and lose all your work.

Do not underestimate the many emails and calls you got from friends asking how your first day of work was, sending heaps of encouragement, and making you feel somewhat validated that this is indeed a big transition and worthy of stress, exhaustion, and anxiety but given time could turn out to be just fine and maybe even very rewarding.

Do not give into the temptation to ask your husband to come home from his business trip early just because you miss him madly and feel bad that he feels bad that you feel bad. Do go to sleep grateful to have him and looking forward to how happy you will be to see him in the Houston airport on Thursday.

The People in My Neighborhood

So I’ve been interviewing for jobs (yeah yeah, haven’t even skimmed the surface here of all my thoughts on that). And I go to this one interview for a job and I’m feeling some interest and then they tell me about this other bigger, better job that gives me that whole “I still got it!” adrenaline rush and next thing you know I’m driving home thinking about hiring a full-time nanny and moving the whole family to the other side of the Bay.

Of course, when I woke up the next day all these thoughts had me breathing into a paper bag and I was hugging Little Miss Kate and kissing her head as if I’d just sold her on eBay and immediately needed to hand her over to her new owner. So, I stopped and thought (thanks to much great advice from Mark, Lisa and a host of other friends), let’s just take this one step at a time. I don’t even have an offer yet, and if I get one, maybe we don’t need to move. Ah…

Well, that lasted for 3 minutes until I bounced back into a frantic housing quest on Craig’s List while compulsively asking myself, do I like living in Oakland enough to commute? Do I like our house? Am I happy? Is chicken parm really my favorite dinner?

All this was exhausting. And so as I was sitting at the very desk where I’m sitting now, checking email and conducting other such electronic busy work, I saw my neighbor walk out of her house with her yoga matt tucked under her arm and realized that was exactly what I needed. It was evening, Kate was asleep and Mark was home. So I stumbled into the kitchen while pulling off my jeans and wondering where my matt was and asked Mark if he’d mind if I ditched dinner for a dose of physical and spititual well-being. Within 7 minutes I was unrolling my matt at the fab yoga studio that’s a block from our house and chatting with my neighbor. I was settled in on my sit bones and breathig deeply by the first Om.

After class my neighbor and I walked home through the tree-lined streets and I felt like I was floating–a totally different human then two hours earlier. How great that we live here. How great that my neighbor is a friendly yogini. This is something I might not get somewhere else, right?

Sunday I went to a meeting to help plan an event at a local kiddie park. They’ve added some new things–swings, picnic tables, etc.–and are having a community party to unveil it all. Another neighbor has been entrenched in this project from an architectural/design standpoint pro bono for years. So I sat in some woman’s cool family home–a beautiful Craftsman that I’d admired on walks before–and ate grapes and cookies and drank tea and met some other cool people who really love and care for and work hard on making Rockridge a better place to live. The spirit was contagious.

At the meeting’s end, the hostess walked us to the door and said to me and my friend Jacqueline (whom I’d enlisted) how good it was to have a new crop of young mothers working on this family/community stuff. She’s been involved since her now-15-year old was a toddler.

I am happy to carry the baton for the next generation! I pledge my allegiance to all things Rockridge!

And Monday. The night before Kate was up three times, which sucks because that means I was too (and will she EVER sleep through the night?), but also because I was having a, say, stomach affliction that had me running to the bathroom between tending to her. The next day I was pale and still sicky. I had no plans (unusual), and a baby who I’d be hard-pressed to deal with if she started to get fussy. The most distraction I could muster for her was a walk to Safeway, and as I’m slowly getting us ready to go out into the gloomy day, the doorbell rings. It’s Architect Mama Neighbor who smiles and hands over an armful of cute baby clothes for La Kate–hand-me-downs from her toddler. Our 5-minute visit was neither an intense bonding sesh, nor super interesting in any way, but it was a perfectly timed drop-in on a day when I was convinced there was no one else in the world but sicky me and little Kate. Hooray! If I continue to live here I may not ever be one of those people who dies and is discovered weeks later just because of the stench.

Yesterday, my kumbaya experience was capped off by Yoga Lady Neighbor who I saw at the schmancy local market. She was in a hurry–off to get home and eat before heading to the corner coffee shop where her knitting group meets weekly.

Do I knit? Or would I like to learn how? It’s a really fun and mellow group. Or, if I didn’t want to learn there, she’d’ be happy to teach me another time one-on-one. She has a bunch of extra needles I could use.

Well, as evidenced by my lame-assed attempts to contribute to the afghan that friends and family made for Kate, I don’t know that I’ll ever be a knitter. But I will be happy knowing that on Monday nights there is a group of friendly woman who are a’knittin’ and a’perlin’ just a stone’s throw away, who’d welcome me even if I were to walk in and profess my utter ineptitude.

So we are here. We live in Rockridge and it’s our home. For a while, I was lured into forsaking it, but then it became clear to me that there are so many reasons–some that I don’t even know yet–that it’s good and right to be here. So if I take a job that’s not in my backyard (or at this very desk!), I drive a little bit to get there. At least at the end of the day I’ll come home to the all the great people and places in my neighborhood.

I’ve Come a Long Way with this Baby–or Have I?

Today I’ve led the kind of day the thought of which sent me in a hysterical crying jag and breathing into a paper bag post-partum.

Three weeks into Kate’s life, while everyone else in my mother’s group was talking about their fears about raising a smart kid, handling breastfeeding challenges, and whether little Miranda would ever sleep through the night, I was wrangling with much different demons. I was crawling the walls with fear that I’d never leave the house, start watching daytime TV, and suddenly determine that scrapbooking was a fun way to spend a weekend with girlfriends.

Well let’s see. Today I got up, kissed my husband goodbye, and shuffled into the kitchen in my PJs to feed Kate. (No food in the house for me, so I decided to wait for lunch to eat.) When I put her down for her morning nap I wrote roughly 10 thank you notes for various Kate-gifts and other hospitalities that we’ve been the recent (and not-so-recent) recipients of. Then I showered and put on one of the 4 pairs of kakhi shorts I seem to rotate through. As a special treat to my self-esteem, I blew dry my hair.

Kate got up, I changed her using one of the new Costco-brand diapers. Intrigue! Will these diapers be as good as the Huggies she’s been using? Did I really save a considerable amount of money on them? (Whatever the outcome, we’re stuck with a 4,000-pack.)

Dressed Kate, mailed notes. Loaded kid into car for journey to Trader Joe’s. Shopped, returned, fed kid lunch. Started to make dinner–a one-dish Mexicana-type meal that includes a jar of Pace salsa and a can of refried beans. It’s a recipe I recently got from a friend with a one-year old, in exchange for my chicken salad recipe.

Read Kate stories, put her down for Nap #2. Finished assembling world’s simplest meal (my God, it’s a casserole) and realized that if people didn’t start having kids at older ages this whole slow-cooking/gourmet phenomemon might never have come into existance. Maybe a lot of other things wouldn’t either. Did Albert Einstein have kids?

Now Kate’s up again. Just now hearing her babble. So, I’ll get her up, change her (while noting the quality/absorbancy of the Kirkland diaper), and we will head out to visit Rose at the nursing home.

This is the day that I feared. I had a couple days of post-partum crying thinking that a day like today would inevitably cause me to internally combust. In those weepy moments I asked myself questions like: Why after 12 years in SF did we decide to move to Oakland? Why was it we wanted a baby? And why can’t I just strap her to my back and go about my usual life as if nothing ever happened? Back then I even remember wanting to admit myself to the nearest workplace for a good old familiar 12-hour work day.

What’s scary is today has been perfectly pleasant. I’m not sure if this is progress or not.

First Cross-Country Solo Flight

Tomorrow Kate and I fly to Boston alone. Mark comes on Friday, since someone in this family has to work.

Kate has already been on four round-trip flights, only one of which she and I took alone. It was a short flight to SoCal, and I figured I could withstand anything for an hour.

Generally Kate has done well on flights. She tends to lose it on landing and even though everyone says nurse the baby when you’re landing, they haven’t tried this with a baby who has no interest at that moment in eating and/or one who has already lost their shit and refuses the nipple you are woefully trying to shove in its mouth. Modesty, at that point, goes out the window–along with thoughts of ever leaving home again. But truthfully, for the majority of the flights she’s been great–with the exception of that one trip back from Boston, but that was so bad I think it’s damaging to my psyche to dredge it up from the deep place where I’ve repressed it.

So tomorrow Kate and I are staring down the barrel of a six-hour flight. My sister Ellen has flown to Asia multiple times with a baby and toddler and made it look like a drive to the grocery store. Until today I’ve been trying to emulate her and have successfully embraced a devil-may-care attitude about the whole thing–even when friends have freaked out at hearing that Kate and I were leaving before Mark. I figured a successful flight with a baby is 90% attitude, right? If I’m stressed, Kate will somehow sense it and will abandon her plan to sleep the whole time in order to persistently wail, writhe, and scream. If I adopt Ellen’s laissez-faire aero-Mom appraoch, hell, I may even get a good nap or two in along the way.

But today’s packing process has served to deliver a dose of reality. It started with the back-pack I bought to transport the car seat. When I have it on, I just need a pair of hiking boots to make me look ready to mount Everest. So, how it’ll work is I’ll wear the thing on my back as I gingerly negotiate my way down the aisle (while clutching Kate and our awkward and sizeable carry-on). If there is no one seated by me, I remove the car seat from the case (while still holding Kate?!), and buckle it into the seat next to me. If the plane is full and/or I can’t convince the masochist next to me to move to another free seat, I will have to take the gargantuan pack back down the aisle to be checked with the luggage. Oh phew–now that I walk through that in my mind I realize that should be noooo problem at all.

But wait there’s more. Luggage, that is. There’s the stroller (also checked at the end of the gateway), the world’s most immense roller bag, and the earlier-mentioned 20-ton pink carry-on packed with toys (all new and all hopefully endlessly captivating), diapers, extra clothes, food, spoons, washcloths. (Oops. Just realized I forgot a bib…) Oh, and the fragile squirmy 18-pound human.

So then, I shall muster and renew my sense of confidence and ease about this voyage! Attitude, attitude, attitude! And hopefully the kindness of a couple strangers along the way. (Shelly says that’s been imperative in her solo travels with kids.) I’m sure it’ll all be easy-peasy, but if you happen to have a free moment tomorrow, it wouldn’t hurt if you could look skyward and send some good thoughts my way.

Harboring a New Addiction

Gentle Reader:
(I’ve always wanted to say that. And the singular form of “reader” is no oversight. Hi Dad!)

Perhaps you’ve been perplexed by my blogging hiatus. Wither that stream of drivel she’s been so diligently doling out? Why can’t I get the latest mundane fact about Little Miss Kate’s development? [She is clapping her hands incessantly. V. cute!] And, moreover, does this mean I’ll have to get some work done now?

Fear not, G. Reader. I am back after having been drawn in by a force so mighty I’ve had no power to fend it off. I’ve been wooed by it’s charms and have now quite willfully, quite passionately, succumbed to it. It’s called Linked In. Yes, the online networking site has taken over my formerly “normal” healthy life.

How did this start, you ask. Innocently, I assure you. Last week Kate and I had lunch with the enchanting and always-amusing (okay, and well-dressed too) Andrew. In our hour together he managed to give me a run-down of no less that eight of our co-workers from The Former Agency. I was enthralled by stories of their shiny new professional exploits, and amazed that Andrew had the run-down on so many of them. There’s no doubt that Andrew can work a room, but he revealed to me that his tapped-in savoir-fair is due in large part to his love affair with Linked In.

So, I went home and decided to drink the Kool-Aid. Throngs of people have been extolling its virtues, but for some reason–even though many of them are folks whom I respect immensely (those who I don’t respect shall never know who they are!)–I was resistant to buying in

Ah, I say *buy* but there is actually nothing to *buy* with Linked In. Sure you can get some fancy extra bells and whistles for a fee, but in it’s most basic form, Linked In is free and a v. cool concept.

Essentially how it works is that you can email all the fabulous (and boorish) people you know from work or life and ask them to link to you via this website. As you comb through your mind, you think, “Wow. I know a lot of cool, smart people!” So there’s a fun element of popularity narcissism that goes along with it. Even if you grow lazy and don’t stay in touch with all the contacts who are linked to you, if they update their profiles when they change jobs, you’ll still be able to find them some day. And (if they so choose) you can see a list of all you contacts’ contacts, and so on, and so on. This is fun if you’re one of those people (like me) who likes reading the resumes of people you don’t know, even when you aren’t looking to hire someone.

Oddly, I’m not even looking for work right now. And maybe that’s part of the drive behind this for me. When I do think of the work-world (and it’s surprisingly not often) I admit to feeling a bit out of the game. So something like Linked In makes me feel more engaged. And when I rise like Phoenix from the ashes in search of my next plumb gig, I’ll be in a blaze of networking glory. It’d suck having to call someone who I considered a friend and be like, “You know, Kristen? Kristen McClusky? Brown hair, sarcastic, we shared an office for 3 years…”

The other thing is, with Linked In more is better. The more contacts you have linked to you, when you some day want to apply for a job at say, The Gap, you can easily find that one of your esteemed contacts used to work there and may have some advice for you, or someone for you to talk to there. And if you don’t have a direct contact who fits the bill, heck, one of their contacts–or their contacts’ contacts–might.

It’s a small world after all. It’s a small, small world. (Join in!)

So the more is good thing is just what I need to show that I can do a good job. My enneagram sign is The Achiever, and from everything from doing laundry to presenting to clients to signing my name on a credit card receipt, I want to do a good job, damn it. (At times, a very frustrating personality driver.) Therefore, I crawled into bed the other night at 12:30AM (this translates to 5AM for people without babies) causing Mark to ask what the hell I’d been up so late doing. “Linked In,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’m obsessed.”

So now, a few days later, I have not written in my blog. I’d love to say that I also haven’t showered or eaten or whatever, but we all know that’s not true. I *have* collected 63 contacts and have 58 outstanding invitations! I *have* compulsively checked email to see if the people who I invited to link to me have done so. And I’ve tracked down a hilarious old Kenyon friend, several other less side-splitting but still wonderful college folk, and many former co-workers who I’ve spent more time toiling away in an office with than I’ve probably spent with my husband altogether in the course of our relationship. I haven’t produced a child with these people, but I have produced myriad pitches, proposals, spreadsheets, PPT decks, you name it—many of which were nearly as painful to birth as Kate was, and took three times as long.

Finally, I have a confession to make. Sadly I have also, in essence, handed the crack pipe of Linked In over to my dear friend Julie. Since receiving my invitation to become one of my contacts, she has engaged in a fervid and relentless campaign to amass contacts. Before my email, she was a stranger to Linked In, so I have no one by myself (and my selfish desire to get at her contacts) to blame. Her husband emailed me today asking what it was I’d introduced her to, lamenting. “We haven’t seen her for days.”

Poor thing. Perhaps we can find some form of Linked In methadone and Julie and I go into treatment together. I’m sure between us, with all our contacts, there’s got to be someone who can get us into a really good program.

Short and Sassy The Sequel: The Dye Job

Yesterday I got my hair colored. I didn’t have time to get it done last week when I got it cut, so my dramatic transformation came in two stages. I got all-over color instead of the highlights I’ve been getting since age 16. I’m one of those women who doesn’t remember what her natural color looks like, and this color is allegedly one shade light than my God-given brown. It turns out my hair is really dark. I actualy like it(!), and it makes the new haircut look better too. But this morning I woke up and my cute bob was all fallen foward into a fluffly bowl cut and I realized I looked like Ginny Sacrimoni.

Missing Items Returned

I was always amazed when I’d hear about those older couples who had been married for decades, and when one of them died (typically the man) the woman would find herself smack dab in the midst of the 21st century without knowing how to do something like write a check. How on earth could someone let that happen? Needless to say, I’m free and clear of such a fate, right?

Well, the sad reality is that there are some things Mark just does and I steer clear of, and they’ve started to accumulate in our years together. At first it was driving places. I’d just zone out on the way, and years into visiting a friend in another town I’d realize when I was heading there alone that I had no idea how to get there. And all the tech stuff–it goes without saying that Mark sets up every computer, wireless network, etc. in our world. (Etc. in this instance is a placeholder for all the other techie things that I don’t even know how to refer to by name). Mark also pays all our bills online and I have sadly never done this, nor even-sadlier do I know how to. (Let it be known that he’s willing to show me, but we’ve never gotten around to it.) Scary as it is, I fear the can’t-write-a-check syndrome is not out of the realm of possibility for me. Unless I do something about it.

So yesterday when I went out to buy Kate a new high chair, I decided to take things into my own hands. Well, I actually didn’t set out with that intention, it kind of buillt up slowly. First, I decided to carry the large and heavy box from the car into the house *myself.* (Mark, the family sherpa, was at work, and my excitement over the high chair couldn’t be contained until 6:30.) I left it in the front entryway and lamented how nice it would be if only it was assembled and ready to use. Then, like a lightening bolt, the wild idea came to me: I could assemble it myself.

The instruction manual had to be written for the lowest denomenator of American intelligence, right? And sure enough, by carefully plodding away step after step, with Kate rolling around on the floor below me, I did it! Steps 1-19 completed with nary a hitch. My only concern was that either a screw was missing, or I somehow dropped it. As I searched for it on the floor I envisioned it puncturing my sweet baby’s small intestine on it’s way through her system. I couldn’t see it anywhere, so I just decided Fisher-Price just sold me one screw short.

Late last night when I took off my favorite super-big Billabong khaki shorts, I emptied my pockets of various things, and there she be–the missing screw! Huzzah! No middle-of-the-night ER visits once it made it’s way to Miss Kate’s adorable duodenum.

Around 1:45AM (Who am I kidding? It was 1:43. New parents know these things.), Kate beckoned for her once-nightly snack. When I reached into her crib to lift her out, I felt a hard thing inside her PJs. It startled me a bit more awake and I felt it again. Ends up it was one of her plastic stacking cups, the smallest purple one. Seems I’d sealed it up in her PJs when I was getting her dressed for bed after her bath. I know I was kind of rushing, but sheesh. When I’d cleaned up the bathroom earlier that night I’d wondered where that one had gone. Mystery solved.

A late entry into the digital age

I tend to be a late bloomer. Last in my middle-school class to get a bra, married at the tender age of 37–with a history of a host of other unintentionally fashionable latenesses. So, years into this whole blog phenom, I decided it’s finally safe for me to test the waters.

A disclaimer: Please don’t confuse me with anyone who has anything remotely lofty or thought-provoking to get off my chest. Mostly, I’d like to ramble on about the newest apple of my eye, light of my life, and silly smoochie-smooch–the amazing Kate Miller McClusky, age 6.5 months. And boy is she cute!!

But before I delve into her latest little life event or accomplishment (in the caliber of not spitting up after a feeding), the thing that is most on my mind these days is my mom. Monday marked 2 years since her death. (I’m someone who tends to shy away from saying “passed away” or worse, “passed on.”) Monday I woke up with a heavy heart, and felt fairly mopey for the whole day. In a weird way it surprised me. I’ve lived without her for 2 years, so why should this day be sadder than others?

There’s so much to say about being a new mother without my mother here to share it with. Mostly I miss being able to call her to relay the most mundane detail about Kate, and knowing she’ll relish it as much as I do. She was also a truly world-class grandmother to the grandchildren she lived to know (John and Rory, my sister Marie’s teens, and Maia and Tikloh, Ellen’s 7 and 4 year olds). The affection she seemed to dole out parsimoniously to us kids came in waves towards her grandchildren.

And part of why I wish she was here was just to plain show Kate off to her. Of all my life accomplishments, this is the biggest reason ever to say, “Hey Mom, watch this!” So, I’ll just assume she would adore Kate, find her cute as the dickens, and tease me in her super-sarcastic way about some or other of my approaches to motherhood.

Kate beckons… a likely end to most of my postings.