2013
Spinning My Wheels
I feel like I’m always cleaning yet nothing is ever clean. I feel like I’m blogging yet nothing is ever blogged. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before.
It should be no surprise that I work out a lot of things in writing (and I’m only slightly ashamed to say that I frequently steal jokes from my own website to make myself appear quick-witted in the rare instance I engage in real, in-person conversations with live humans), so when I don’t have time to come to this space and toss things around, my brain starts to feel a little bit constipated, for lack of a term that doesn’t reflect how much of each day is devoted to poop-related shenanigans.
In trying, as ever, to be a good internet citizen (which right now looks like one who tries to comment on every blog post she reads), I was able to work out something in the comments section on this excellent post, which I’m recording here because I want to remember it (because it’s a sad fact that after ten years of blogging, my memory is indelibly tied to what I’ve written down, which makes not writing things down feel like an act of intentional forgetting, which I HATE). Anyway, I’ll try to make this brief because my blogging situation is unrelatable to 99% percent of the population, so who cares?, and also because I have a few excellent photos of the boys from this morning that I want to share because they’re the perfect example of how easy it is to declare, “When I am a parent, I will never do X” and then you become a parent and BOOM, you’ve bought ridiculous matching pajamas for your children and you are not even a little bit sorry because WOOKIT DA CUTSIE TWINSIE-WINSIES, and this, uh, disorder is, I’m sure, extremely relatable.
So, the thing I worked out was this: Not all blogging is created equal. As this applies to my situation as a person who’s currently writing five(!) columns* for clients, plus the sponsored things that find their way here, I’m not actually spending many hours a week “blogging,” I’m spending many hours a writing as a freelancer, for money, which makes it work, not hobby blogging. This is an obvious epiphany but an epiphany nonetheless, and it’s turned out to be very important for me to realize that over the past year I’ve transitioned from someone who makes a bit of extra money from my hobby to someone who relies on money that comes from legitimate employment opportunities that merely grew out of blogging. When I have to fill in the blank that says “Occupation,” I realize I’m not just a book editor anymore, I’m a writer. This feels strange and good and accurate and lucky.
All of the above is also my way of saying that I’ve been working a lot, and I’m TIRED. Some days it feels like I’m spinning my wheels and will never get caught up, but then I take a step back and look at how quickly things are actually moving and changing and I realize that yes, my wheels are spinning, but this cart I’m on is grounded and we’re actually going somewhere. Even just typing that makes the load feel lighter.
I’m looking forward to having my days to myself again once Fox starts daycare in a few months because then I won’t have to work in fits and starts and mostly on my laptop from the car because that’s still the only place he’ll nap, but of course I’m also preemptively weeping at the thought of not having my littlest buddy on hand for snuggles whenever the mood strikes, which is pretty often because holy crap he’s just keeps getting cuter. He’s also walking. Not taking a few wobbly steps now and then but full-on walking across the room on his feet like the personiest person who ever personed. He turned ten months old yesterday and I’m bitter because I feel like I’ve been cheated out of at least two months of babyhood and also because I haven’t been able to record every little twinkle in his eye on my hobby blog. Waaaaah.
Some photos from this morning:
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! I LOVE THEM!!!!!!!
*If you’re interested in visiting me elsewhere, I’m continuing to blog for CafeMom about all things baby–baby gear, bringing home baby, baby milestones–here, and I’m also doing a campaign for them with Bisell and Febreze called “Pets and Babies and Rugs, Oh My!” about keeping my floors clean, which is good motivation for me to actually do that, and also, of course, HILARIOUS because they will never, ever, ever be clean. Over at Work It, Mom, I’m still at my basic “Working (on) Motherhood” column, I’m now writing for the Pregnancy and Parenting section, and of course there’s the craft blog, which I continue to be gut-bustingly proud of because although there are a lot of craft blogs out there, the world needs more of them geared toward busy [working] moms who may not always have the best craft skills and who definitely need quick and easy projects they can do with their kids and using everyday objects, a la this play tent made with shower curtains and a hula hoop and put together in twenty minutes in the car because my whole life revolves around things I can do in twenty minutes in the car, including this very post, for which I’m now all out of time, goodbye!
2013
Frankenstein’s Mother
I can think of thousands of adjectives to describe my sons, and the differences between them, but perhaps the most efficient characterization would be to say that Wombat is a noun and Fox is a verb. Verbs. All of them. He seriously never stops. Verbing around the house at all hours of the day and night. (At nine and three-quarters months, he’s currently able to take eight Frankensteinian* steps in a row, but only if he has the imaginary stability created by holding something in his hand. Wile E. Coyote physics FTWalk.)
*Yes, yes, I know it’s the monster’s creator who is named Frankenstein, but breaking rules like this is how an uptight chick like me lets loose on a crazy Thursday afternoon, and it’s also apropos because Fox is kind of a little monster and I certainly have days of feeling like a mad scientist, having created this thing I can’t control.
My mom was here last weekend, and it was nice to not only to spend time with her and to watch my children dote on her but also to have an opportunity to step back, to step outside the room of my life for a few moments and observe from an outsider’s p.o.v. what it’s like to mother these two small children. My mom was up with the kids in the mornings while Simon and I tried to ignore them and get some sleep on the other side of the door (which is half glass and therefore not soundproof at all), and while I was lying (laying?) there not sleeping, I had a bit of an epiphany. Listening to the chaos in the other room was a happy little jolt of reassurance that it is indeed chaos I deal with on the reg and not simply my twisted interpretation of objectively peaceful and relaxing events. It’s not that things simply feel, to me, like chaos because I’m exhausted and/or easily overwhelmed and/or simply poorly equipped for motherhood in general. It is chaos! Objectively! It’s not just me. (Phew.)
It’s not that I needed this moment to feel understood by anyone other than myself. I don’t need to have other people walk in my shoes so they realize what hard work it is to mother [my] small children. My husband gets it, and my mom, although thirty years removed from her own two small children, certainly gets it (and I was a verb baby myself, it turns out; is there a statute of limitations for apologizing for that?), so the person I really needed to get it was none other than myself. It is hard. That’s the truth of it, and that’s okay. Sometimes I wonder whether I allow myself to get a little melodramatic about the chaos (“The house will never be in order and the kids will never be clean at the same time and there will never be a moment of peace and quiet again and I will end up homeless and penniless in a van down by the river, etc.”). I worry about it even though I know better because, hello, this is NORMAL. This is what parenthood is. Both the chaos and the self-doubt. Who out there is saying, “Oh, having two small children is not hard at all! Tra la!”? No one who isn’t lying or about to get a pop of reality right in the nose, that’s who.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the heck out of my kids, and I love being a mom, but in the same way that I also enjoy the heck out of French fries and I love, say, twirling on the tire swing, I don’t want to do any of those things all the time. And I don’t do them all the time, thank god (I have preschool! I have an active co-parent!), and I’m grateful for that, and yet the thing with parenthood–the thing that people actually mean when they say parenthood means your time is no longer your own–is that I don’t always get to take breaks exactly when I want to. Parenthood often gives exactly zero fucks about what I want or don’t want in any given moment. Yes, a woman can be a mom and still go out with her friends or throw pottery in her art studio or take a circus class and learn to ride a unicycle or whatever, but she can’t necessarily escape to those parts of her life when she most wants/needs to. I can’t always get off the twirling tire swing as soon as I start to feel queasy; sometimes I just have clamp my hand over my mouth and ride it out. And even though there are moments when I’d like nothing more than to hop on the first unicycle out of town, even if it means wearing a costume of bejeweled spandex in front of a tent full of spectators, I also know that this show I’m in is the real Greatest Show on Earth. (I hadn’t intended this to go the direction of running away with the circus to escape the circus at home, but here we are.)
Anyway, I love my family all of the time, enjoy being with them most of the time, and benefit immensely from watching someone else temporarily ringmaster in my place (thanks, Mom!) every few months or so because it makes me feel normal, and as a parent that’s always a welcome feeling. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be awesome or amazing or extraordinary or stupendous or any other splendiferous adjective you would be pleased to see written inside your Mother’s Day card. That’s all great, and all of us are those magnificent things, we really are, and especially in the eyes of our small children, but we are also normal–gloriously, beautifully normal, which, when you think about it, is just another way of saying “We are not alone.”
I guess that’s my wish for all you moms this year: May you never feel abnormal or alone. We’re all in this separately but together.
2013
Three Four
Today is my birthday.
I got a planter and a garden stool and new slippers and socks with pigs and hearts on them and a face massager (wrinkle remover?) and a handmade card with a cement mixer (“because I know you like them!” “…”) and two bouquets of flowers and triple chocolate mousse cake and fishnet stockings (FROM MY SON) and earmuffs, naturellement, which I wore during dinner on the hottest day of the year.
All that and the baby also let me have what I wanted more than anything: a shower. Aim high in your latter years, kids. Aim high.
Here’s to thirty-four. (THIRTY-FOUR!)
