it’s not about you

You’re all wondering what the hell happened to me, right? All, what, six of you? Well, me too.

The honest truth is, I’m having a bit of an identity crisis this week, coupled with mommy guilt, coupled with a lot of things going on, coupled with lack of inspiration and desires to quit, you know, everything, coupled with aw, hell, I don’t know. Oh yeah - my dad’s WEDDING this Saturday.

I actually REALLY want to blog, and to blog deep, insightful (and perhaps, inciteful) things. I feel like my last post just really SUCKED. I mean, it was the blog about the new car and it JUST SUCKED. Total yawner, I know. And it totally should have had pictures. What can I say? Ever since the New Year, I’m a little out of practice with the blogging.

Both the kids are taking up more of my time now - which, of course, is a good, no, a great thing - and I only have time to blog while Killian naps. Those are totally unpredictable, and there’s other things I’d like to do during those times, like, you know, shower, and stuff. So here I am typing away as fast as I can, not caring really if I’m even being coherent.

I actually have a lot of things running around and bumping into each other in my head that I want to blog about. I guess the good news is that I am actually talking to real live people about those things, so that’s good. It just means I don’t want to rehash them all out in blog-land. And I’m discovering that some people are REALLY TRYING HARD to find this blog, and while I don’t mind bobbing back up to the surface in the near future, I’m just not ready for that quite yet, and so (perhaps?) part of the reason I haven’t posted is to keep it off-radar a little while longer. [One thing I wonder, dear reader, is this - for these people who are trying to find my blog - why don’t they just e-mail me and ask me for it? Hmm. There’s a thought. This should be an interesting weekend.]

So on Sunday I was thinking about how there are all these moms of little kids I know who are always talking about how they don’t have time to do anything. I understand part of this - it’s the reason my bathroom floor is grossing me out right now - there are certain tasks that are hard to accomplish when you’re in charge of a baby who screams when you go out of sight. Girl, will I be glad when Killian understands the concept of object permanence.

Anyway, I was thinking how, while I can’t mop the kitchen floor when I want to, I still have a lot of discretionary time - we really don’t have a lot going on and I can pretty much choose to do with my days as I see fit (You want to go to the beach today? Sure!). And I’m wondering, what the hell are all these other moms doing that they don’t have time to spend doing what they want? And then I thought, a bit panicked, should I have more stuff to do? Am I not doing enough? And I started thinking about my mom, and wondered how she spent her time when we were little - I mean really little, like Judah and Killian little - and I tried to remember as much as I could.

The problem is, I can’t remember that much. I can remember a lot to when I was really little - to when Katie was a baby and even before - to before the old house on Gardenia was remodeled. I can remember the old living room and the playroom; I can remember eating at the old drop-down table in the kitchen; I remember when Mom and Dad had the front bedroom that later became mine and I remember sharing both of the other bedrooms with Kyle, and then the one with Katie. I can remember feeling Mom’s belly when she was pregnant with Katie (I was an early three-years-old); I remember the day she was born; I remember the day we overflowed the bathtub, and I remember Hurricane Alisha. I remember playing Star Wars and Legos with Kyle, and pretending to be Oscar the Grouch in the hallway hamper, and Katie destroying my Strawberry Shortcake tea set I was so proud of.

But I can’t remember my Mom a lot. I was trying to think how she spent her days. I know she did a lot of housework and cooked all of our meals. I know she took us to Russell’s and Kaplan’s and the TG&Y, and to the doctor and the dentist, and I know we went to other people’s houses and all that, but I wonder what she did with her time - her free time. Did she have free time? ‘Cause I do. And I can read blogs and news and look stuff up on the internet (and I wonder how my mom’s time would have been different if there had been internet when we were young). And you know what? I feel really guilty. Like I should use all of my time to spend with my kids - like I’m cheating them by focusing attention somewhere else.

But you know what, too? If all I did was focus my attention on my kids, I’d go crazy. I know that sounds callous, but if I were to ask anyone who HAS kids, I know they’d understand. They only time I get to myself is IN THE SHOWER. And I milk it as long as I can. Our friend Dan has started watching the kids one morning a week for me, and I’m hoping to use that time to work on photography and projects and get that going. But I gotta say, it’s BEAUTIFUL to know I can do whatever I want with it. Anyway, I digress (well, sort of).

So I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot this week, and I talked to Kyle about it - I wanted to know what he remembered about how she spent time with us and what she did in her free time, and he gave me a couple of things that were good. I put (both past and present tense) Mom on this pedestal, like she’s the perfect mother, the one I can only hope and dream to aspire being like, even though I know that’s ridiculous on several levels (and perfectly sane on the others).

It’s just, that with everything going on, with the wedding and the countless people asking me how are you? are you ok? what do you think? do you like her? do you not? are you happy? are you sad? and all the other useless questions that keep coming my way, AND with this being the 10th anniversary and how I’m discovering it is as hard as that first one, AND having been in San Francisco a year and thinking about all of that - that I’m really missing my mom these days, and I’m looking for ways in which I can identify with her.

Does that even make sense? Killian is awake. I had better go.

We bought a car last week. A NEW car. I had big plans to do a blog post with a picture of Bob (that’s our car) and everything. But I’m too lazy. Actually, that’s not true. We spent something like, three hours, at the Toyota/Scion dealership doing paperwork on Tuesday, and then I spent Wednesday morning getting car insurance quotes. We picked Bob up Wednesday afternoon (Bob is a white 2006 Scion xB), and I tooled around for the city a bit before I brought the kids home and we all took naps.

I spent all day Thursday moving all of our finances over to our new bank accounts - our bank is a national bank, but the computer systems are set up by state, which has made things slightly headache-y, so we got new California accounts - which means new account numbers and new debit cards. It also means resetting all of our payment options for oh, EVERYTHING we do. I took my newfound car freedom and went to Target on Friday. Then we came home and took naps again. Major outings with two kids, including one who wants to be physically attached to you and one who wants to try on everything in the store, are tiring. And yes, I consider Target a major outing.

But we got all kinds of cool stuff, including nice clothes and new shoes for Dad’s wedding, curtains for the living room (finally), and a kiddie sun tent for when we go to the BEACH. Which we will do. At least once a week. Because we have a car and we live in a city that has a BEACH! Exclamation point! Woo hoo!

We rearranged the furniture in the living room this weekend and hung the curtains and it feels really good in there. The curtains are going to be a huge help on both the privacy and the temperature fronts. We organized the closets (again) to make things more accessible. Our space feels “fresher,” if that makes sense. Which is a good thing when you have a family of four in a one-bedroom.

I like my curtains. And my closet space.

Did I mention we bought a car? A NEW car?

It happened again.

(03-14) 11:24 PDT Oklahoma City (AP) –

A 6-year-old boy stayed in an apartment with the body of his father for two days after the man died on their sofa, obeying instructions to never leave without permission, firefighters said.

The boy, whose name was not released, didn’t want to leave even after firefighters arrived, fearing punishment if he left, fire department Maj. Noble Lee said.

“He wasn’t as distraught as one might think,” Lee said. “I don’t think he understands the gravity of the past few days. He wasn’t as upset at the situation as he was about being outside the residence without permission.”

His father, Kevin Dale Judd, 52, appears to have died of natural causes, authorities said. The body was found late Monday after neighbors and a maintenance man reported a foul odor, Lee said.

According to a police report, the boy told police his father had been feeling ill and laid down. The boy left the room to watch television, and when he returned his father was slumped over.

The boy did not know to call 911 in case of an emergency, said Department of Human Services spokesman George Earl Johnson Jr. He apparently had not eaten in two days but refused food and water offered by firefighters and paramedics, Lee said.

Johnson said the boy will remain in DHS custody until relatives are found to care for him.

via the San Francisco Chronicle.

I was at a party last night and was talking with a friend about our babies. She and her husband gave birth to their first baby, a boy, in October, two months after Killian was born. One of the weird things about “parent culture” as I’ll call it, is the inability for parents to be honest about what it’s reallylike to be a parent - the good, the bad, the moist, and the ugly. Like, somehow, if we tell people the truth, they will all stop having children immediately. I don’t understand why it’s this way and I hate that. I want more honesty in my life and from others. This friend gets that, and I’m glad.

Another friend, several weeks back after the birth of her daughter, noted how hard and non-stop this breastfeeding thing is, especially in those first few weeks. My response was along the lines of, “Honey, even if we had told you, you wouldn’t have ever believed us.” It’s a fine line to walk when deciding how much to fill new moms in on - you don’t want to squelch their happiness and hopefulness, but you also don’t want to leave them woefully unprepared for the realities of new parenthood (p.s., labor hurts like hell, worse than hell, actually, but it’s totally doable - good luck).

When I worked at the birth center in Dallas, we would get calls from new moms during their first few days at home with their babies. Once I got a call from a new mom about three days after her birth. She told me that all her baby wanted to do, 24/7, was nurse, and she wanted to know what was wrong. I told her nothing was wrong, that that was exactly what her baby needed to be doing. She didn’t believe me and told me again in a couple of different ways, using different words each time (I guess hoping to get an answer that never came about what was wrong) how as soon as her baby stopped, burped, and slept for a few minutes, baby wanted to eat again. The disbelief in her voice was evident - HOW ON EARTH can something so small eat SO MUCH? Bedrest is there for a reason.

Anyway, this friend at the party and I were talking about our boys and what’s going on with them. Her son has taken recently to the whole, “if momma ain’t holding me, I’m gonna scream my lungs out” phase, which Killian went through a couple a months ago. She and her husband have had a tough time adjusting to life with bebe, and she asked me, while I was taking a sip of wine, “So how is it with two?”

I swallowed, turned to face her completely and said, “Well, I cry at least once a day.” I took another sip. “Usually spontaneously.”

There was a pause, and then we both busted out laughing. Sometimes, it wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t so true. There’s comfort in knowing you’re not alone, and that can help you just get through the day.

"The second anybody said, 'I think we have that painting,' (our) office got a hold of the FBI," said Spielberg's spokesman, Marvin Levy.

The oil-on-canvas painting shows children in a classroom with a bust of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. It was nabbed in a gallery heist and then resurfaced briefly in legitimate art forums before disappearing again. At the time of the theft, the work was 16 inches by 37 inches.

At the time of the theft? What? Did the painting change size since then? Did it grow and get strong, as Judah says? Someone needs to hire a new copy editor.