Kicking it to Next Year

By which I mean this year, like, 2009, because apparently my blog went the way of my clean laundry.

By which I mean I didn’t put it away or, uh, talk about it or something.

Anyway:  all I’m here to say is:

1. My kid is a goofball nutjob glorious child.  Do you know what a lion says?
2. I am freaking out about some childcare issues.  I’ve entered a whole new realm of independent contractor difficulties.
3. I am writing my very first full-length play.  It is an adaptation, but I am still doing it.  (Which might mean more blog posts, let’s be procrastinationally honest.)
4. I forgot the rest of my list because I just noticed I’m supposed to be heading back to class for YEAR SIX of one of my favorite residencies.

Time moves on and in circles.  I like it.

I like you.

A. Confession

I just changed the password on an email account I’ve had for over ten years.

Let me say that again:  this email account, the one I’ve had for over ten years, was accessed with the same, somewhat easily guessable, absolutely not encrypted password until just now, because I finally changed it.

I know.  Why now?

I ask you:  why not?

Why not?

I ate cheesecake to celebrate.  Wait…I was doing that already.  What exactly am I confessing here?  I believe it’s that I absolutely don’t care until I do AND that I absolutely care until I don’t.  I topped the cheesecake with homemade jam, too.

(I didn’t make the jam.)

You guys, don’t try to deny that you like Tom Petty.

That seems like the most appropriate title.  Because I was trying to remember all the blogtastic post ideas I had over the past two months and I can’t remember any of them.  So I started thinking about how it’s getting all fall weather out (which I love, but am not quite ready for the summer to be gone) and then about how snuggly the cutesauce is napping in my lap (and you should see the outfit she has on…it includes a vest because we were going to go outside but then she clearly needed to sleep) and that just made me think of Tom Petty.  I could explain that better, but I think the runon parenthetical sentence maybe hints at how perhaps I need to start up with some structure.

The structures in process for this week include a variety of medical appointments, finally getting cracking on babyproofing of the house (she’s got something to prove, let me tell you) and writing a full-length play.

You know how I’m super good at procrastinating?  It seems to me that maybe I shouldn’t when it comes to this full-length play thing.  Luckily, I have deadlines and stuff.  And double luckily, I’m getting really excited about it, so excited that I’m not just brain writing it but have actually begun the process of writing things down.

Yesterday, whilst being examined for yet another root canal, my endondist asked me what my week was like.  I said it pretty much included taking care of the small one…that and thinking big thoughts.  He thought I was making a joke about being at home with a baby, but I was serious.  Because it takes big thoughts to figure out how to write a new adaptation of a very well known story that is mostly well known for the movie and how to keep the parts that need to be kept and not just ditch everything because people expect it.

Even if I weren’t writing a play, I’d still be thinking big thoughts.  Because motherhood is like that, too:  how do you be the mother that is you (and not someone else’s), keeping the parts that need to be kept and not just ditching things because they are the status quo?

I can tell you that this morning, after I lifted the Little out of her crib, that Yellow Dog told me it was clear from whom she’d be learning to make sound effects.  That’s not such a bad way to be a mom.  Neither are any of the ordinary ways, either.

To sum up:  I’m at home, loving up a kid while writing a play and I need two root canals.  And I’d be listening to some Tom Petty if I owned any.

Rural Juror

After 18 years as a registered voter, I’ve been summoned.

Downtown?  Nope.  County summons, my friends.  Civic duty is everywhere, for everyone (except convicted felons).

I immediately requested an exemption.  But not because I’m a felon.  Because of nursing.

I can’t imagine that my request will be denied given the circumstances, but I know that breastfeeding isn’t an approved exemption across the nation.  (At least, it wasn’t that one time I listened to that one radio program.)  I could have sent in three reasons for an exemption, but I just started with the one so as not to sound like a big ol’ liar.

Civic duties are not going entirely by the wayside:  kiddo is due for her next round of immunizations on Wednesday.  She’ll be old enough to vote in 17 years and six months.

Perhaps we’ll serve on the same jury some day.

(That could only happen in a movie at least as ridiculous as the fake one in the title of this post.)

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention that the summons says that hearing NOTHING from the court within 10 days means an exemption has been granted. (Hmmm, what does it mean if you hear nothing after 10 days?)  I just got an email from them, so I heard SOMETHING in less than 24 hours.  As it was an approval email, I have nothing to complain about but sentence structure.

Enchilada Pie or You’re Killing Me!

There is a story from my very youth, one I do not remember, in which my parents sent me to bed without any supper because I was such a wild thing.  Or, rather, because it was the early seventies and I’d done something imaginably requiring disciplinary action.  I was sent to my room and my parents listened while I went through the following stages:

1. Silence, ostensibly playing quietly
2. Growing frustration, ostensibly because I couldn’t leave the room
3. Banging on the door, ostensibly realizing my fate
4. Shouting “I’m starving!  You’re killing me!” over and over again, ostensibly because IT WAS TRUE

My mother tells this story with a mixture of humor and trauma.  I am relaying it now because Yellow Dog (I just had to edit his real name out; it seems odd to put in a nickname for something so personal as bedtime) is putting the sweethead to bed and it is killing me, much in the way I imagine my three-or-four-year-old self screaming such melodramatic words killed my mother.  (Though maybe not…it was the seventies.) I know my sweet daughter is okay:  she has had plenty to eat, she has a clean double-for-nighttime diaper, warm nightclothes and is in the arms of her loving papa.  She’s had a bedtime story and her Muppet bedtime lullaby sung three times.  I’m just not in the room with them.  And she is crying.  

I know she is just tired, that she needs to learn to be comforted by her father, that everything is okay and that we are giving her what she needs.  I know she is crying because she is used to me and me and me and that giving in to me and me and me is not fair to her or her papa.  Or to me, truly.

To be fair, she is not crying very much.  Just in fits and starts.  And it is her very tired cry–perhaps it would not be happening if we had started the bedtime preparations a mere ten minutes earlier.  She has been drifting into sleep and then waking a bit to fuss…all while in the loving arms of my very own one-week-from-two-years of a husband.  There, now she’s silent again.  I can hear the sweet singing of my tall love to my small love:  I’ve been able to hear that singing even under the crying.  Perhaps her cries were harmony all along.

And now Yellow Dog is in the living room with me.  Soon we’ll eat enchilada pie.  I baked it to combat the sad-making weather, but it will end up comforting me beyond that.  And just in case, we’ve got Trophy Cupcakes to seal the deal, a deal of parenting, a deal of partnership, a deal of family, a deal of love.

Little Feet

Those baby feet aren’t the best representation of this blog, but at least I took the photo–and made the child–myself.  (Perhaps aided in the latter by one Yellow Dog.

Regardless, here we are at a new stage of this dwindling documentation.  Will this new location mean more updates?  Signs point to no, but signs are often misleading.

…as are my intentions, inadvertantly.

Of note:  I just spilled leftover Thai food on the bed, but not on the sleeping baby.

Jet Plane

As in, “leaving on a.”

Today the babe and I travel to California to visit my father and his wife. And to eat tacos and avocados. (That part is mostly for me.)

I haven’t packed, there are three loads of laundry to do and a bunch of errands. We need to leave in six and a half hours. I don’t know about that laundry…but at least it’s all my clothes. Kiddo is stocked. (And I even made an excellent list about what I needed to bring for her…and am in the process of winnowing it down because I AM ONLY TAKING ONE CARRY-ON SIZED SUITCASE JUST LIKE I ALWAYS DO SO THERE.)

Best go check to see if the washing machine is free…

I Got Up at 5:25am

And the day just keeps getting better.

Seriously.

Like, I’ve gotten things done and it’s SUNNY outside and some news has been the indoor-sunniest of all.

I do believe a bouquet of popsicles in order, but as we have none I’ll settle for making a baby girl giggle while dancing in the living room.

Apres Malaprop Apropos

Ida and the Youth of Today are in rehearsal, setting blocking in a newly invented style called “Cyrano de Berger-block.” A trio of actors sits upstage right with a bulb horn while Ida discusses a note with an actor who has been working a different scene in another room.

Ida: Do you have your script? Great. I want you to add specific gestures here, here and–

Ida overhears something from the actors upstage. It does not seem appropriate.

Ida: –here. They should be as ridiculous and obvious as possible. Keep what you had for–

Ida hears it again. The word she hears is not swearing, but is most definitely not appropriate for general chatter from 10-to-14-year-olds in the middle of rehearsal.

Ida: –what are you guys talking about?

The trio looks at her without a sense of being caught. H. takes the bulb horn and demonstrates.

H: How they test microphones? Syphilis, syphilis, syphilis.

Ida grins. Her SM laughs outright.

Ida: Sibilance.

P: What?

Ida: Sibilance. A hissing sound. Like “sssssssssss.”

H: Oh. Sibilance, sibilance, sibilance.

Ida: Syphilis is something elsssssssse.

P: I knew it!

Fin.

Old Habits

In the olden days, when I did everything at once, I had a few regular absent-minded activities. The two most regularly repeated were Putting a Tea Bag in a Mug to Steep and then Never Drinking the Tea and Making Toast and Forgetting I Had Thus Leaving it in the Toaster.

I’m no longer doing everything at once (Yellow Dog may disagree), but I did something today reminiscent of old: I turned on the wrong burner and burned the shit out of our one baking sheet. (Dear Husband, this is the only thing you should find out about via the internet about me today.)

So, y’know. Stupid. And momentarily scary because the fire alarm went off while I was changing N.’s diaper. From the look on her face (and probably because of the look on mine) she recognized it as a Something is Wrong Sound but didn’t start crying or anything close. This was unsurprising as she is a very calm kid. I picked her up, nakey baby all, located the problem–glowing red burner under a baking sheet–put her down and dealt with the problem, even remembering to use a potholder. (That might sound pretty obvious, but all bets are off when you want to hurry back to a baby.) I turned on the correct burner and returned to the diaper changing task.

The sound of the kettle whistling made N. smile. Nice big baby grin.

It sounded like a train whistle, so maybe she thinks we’re going on vacation…which we are! (How’s that for a segue?) On Sunday I purchased plane tickets to fly to San Diego to visit my father and his wife.

I think the point of this post is that I wish I were there right now or that it were sunny here. Let’s make that sunny here: there are certain things happening right now that would be better dealt with in good weather. (Even if grey skies plus warmth makes me want to kick it in my track cleats.)

Another old habit being practiced today? Being incomplete in my writing and forgoing editing.

FORGONE!