Water main broke at work yesterday so I got to come home a little early! Free time for Supa!
Pictured:
1. a better idea of the design, 2. jumble, 3. burp cloths,
4. singer? barely know her!, 5. ingredients, 6. return of the Helmet of Domesticity
Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.
So! Can I brag, just for a moment? My son just turned two and he’s already in Advanced Placement. HA! Take that, anxiety-ridden self of early 2005! Not only is he turning out OK, he’s so danged smart that the day care ladies are sending him to the 3/4-year-old room for part of each day so he can work on his letters, numbers, shapes and colors with kids who are “on his level.”
Iain told me that the other day and I cried, a little. I’m prouder than the time Owen peed all over the wall when he was 11 days old.
Each new thing he does or says is completely fascinating to me. Where once there was a blob, there is now a small person. And the sheer volume of knowledge this little tyke has absorbed in the last two years blows my MIND. Take language. It’s fucking amazing to see how he picks things up. He can say four-syllable words (uncomfortable, bacitracin). He tells jokes (“Owen pee onna ceiling? NO! Ahahaha!”) and stories (“Miss Margaret tie shoe. Leo cry. Owen eat muffin.”). He “reads” his bed time stories with us (filling in the appropriate words. You need to hear him say “but not the armadillo” because you would PLOTZ.). And he can count past ten all the way to thirteen. He skips twelve and hits seventeen twice, but hey. He’s counting.
And he can spell his own name. I show him the letters every time I write his name on his sippy cups for school, but I didn’t realize it was sinking in until we were at Target the other day. He was staring at something (a sale sign, I don’t know) and said, “Oh. Dubboo. Eee. Enn.” By JOVE he’s GOT IT.
If you point the letter A he can’t identify it yet, but if you place it next to B and C he can. I can just see the cogs turning in that little noggin of his. He really is going to be smarter than his parents and THEN what a creek we’ll be up, and us without our paddles.
Actually, the fact that he’s so fun and interesting and quirky and intelligent is what gives me hope for doing this whole baby thing again. I see that I only have to make it through the first year and a half, two years, before the next one will be someone I really like hanging out with, too, not just a screaming drooling bundle of need. I love my bundles of need, don’t get me wrong. But toddlerhood is its own reward.
Ha ha ha haha. Google “drinking playdates baltimore” and you get: me. Party at my house!
The other night, under the spell of Pregnancy Insomnia, I strove to find some sort of zen-type mechanism that would help me clear my head of project ideas and To-Dos and chill the motherfuck out. I decided to find my happy place.
This is what came to mind: lying on a fluffy blanket in the narrow backyard of the house I occupied when I lived in Sandusky, Ohio. It’s the middle of a hot July day. The air is hot but not humid. I can hear a lawn mower from a block or two over; even better, I don’t hear the damn weaselly little yippy dogs belonging to the neighbors. Everyone else is at work, inside watching soaps, or hanging out at Cedar Point. There’s the scent of Tide detergent in the air, from my wash hanging on the line. And no bugs.
I tried to figure out why the hell this was my happy place. It’s not like Sandusky’s a particularly happy town. It isn’t. It’s a faltering municipality that’s been let down by both the tourism and the auto-parts industries. And it’s not like I particularly enjoyed the schedule I had for the ten months I worked there at the local rag: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., with Mondays and Tuesdays off. (Let’s face it, an introvert on the night shift is not exactly the life of the party — were she even available to attend said party.)
But the summer was good. I lived within walking distance of the county library, the waterfront, and a locksmith shop (useless but true). I had a cell phone and a washing machine (no dryer — hence the line out back), a television and a microwave. Iain, my fiance, was 400 miles away, but he liked to take long drives every couple weeks, so things could have been worse. My roommate, Brandi, was incredibly tolerant of my nicotine addiction and late hours, and the woman downstairs was as discreet with her male visitors as could be expected, considering her bed was obviously situated directly below my living quarters.
Some people might loathe being alone like I was. Brandi worked days, so I could go a week at a time only seeing her at the office. The other young people at work were nearly all reporters — day shift — so there weren’t many folks to hang out with. But I loved all that solitude. In hindsight, even the relative poverty was nice. Can you believe that my share of the rent was $180? For a two bedroom apartment, the upper half of a house. In 2002 dollars. And I probably spent $25 a week on groceries (Mountain Dew, crackers, macaroni and cheese). And I still was somehow living paycheck to paycheck. But I weighed about a buck five and I was tan, tan, tan.
(Not as tan as when I interned a summer at the Richmond Times Dispatch; then I was at the apartment complex’s pool every single morning from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., reading Chuck Palahniuk and listening to my knockoff Sony Discman. I loved being on the night shift then; thanks to my roommates Chrissy and Noreen, it was like I had TWO weekends instead of zero weekends. Party alla time, intern-stylee.)
So I was tan, from backyard sessions and from long walks down empty sidewalks to the dying downtown district. Once there I’d shuck my T-shirt, revealing an incredibly boring bikini top to go with my cutoff jeans, and sit on the edge of the water fountain in the deserted Schade-Mylander Plaza, reading or listening to music. Nobody ever came by; everyone did all their shopping at the Wal-Mart out on Route 250. Even if someone did come by their only entertainment, apart from a bookworm in a bathing suit, would have been to read the handbills advertising a long-ago Earth Wind And Fire concert that was to have played at the local theater, which may or may not have been defunct at the time. The theater, I mean, not Earth Wind and Fire. Such is the way of the small town these days.
So. Not that I miss those other, olden days, exactly, but rather the simple pleasures. Hot air and green grass, eyes closed against the sun, having a wealth of hours and nothing particular to do. No wonder that comes to mind when I’m trying to relax.
Enough out of me; how about you? Paint me a picture, either of Sandusky, if you’ve been, or your favorite way to fall asleep when you can’t stop thinking of shit you’ve gotta do. In the event that I start to remember the burning-tire smell of that town I’ll need a fallback.
