Yes, that's my attempt at badass-face.
I'd attach the article but I want you to go buy the mag. It's the season preview issue, and features awesome folks like this dude, this gal, and this gang.
Go buy it! Before my mom sends her retirement community to ransack the Barnes and Noble...
Current luxuries include: Sleeping. Cooking. Bathing properly and regularly. Seeing plays. [Note: I'm sorry if I am about to miss your show or have already missed it. I still love you very much and support you fully.] Laundry. Writing.
I am doing all these things, but doing them badly. Though I never really did them all that well before... I am a restless sleeper, a boring cook, a reluctant bather, and a grumpy audience member. I rarely do my own laundry, and my writing-- well, I'm never happy with my pace and I have putrid work habits.
What else do you want to know? How my near-paralyzing fear of motherhood is playing out? Okay... while nothing could have adequately prepared me for the transition, like any other monumental life change you just go with it and it comes to you. But I don't need to tell you that.
What DO I need to tell you? How blindingly in love with my baby I am? Do you really need to hear that? Isn't it a given? Shouldn't I just complain incessantly about how tired I am, how little time I have for writing, how I am constantly covered in breast milk, how I am terrified of dropping/scalding/humiliating the tiny new human who lives in the Pack-n-Play at the foot of our bed?
Well, these are of course true. And of course I am a member of that lucky breed of Perpetually Dissatisfied whose heart-ache is like a skin rash that never quite vanishes, even when the itching isn't so bad.
But I have to tell you... I was also not prepared for the pretty calm that has settled into my pulse. Lying in bed in the morning with the wee one curled up on my chest drooling onto my T-shirt feels like nothing else in the world, except maybe a slow long kiss on the forehead from someone most deeply loved.
So yeah, that's how it's going. I am floating on a bamboo raft on an ocean of chill. It won't last. But I'm going to close my eyes and enjoy it for a little while...
Well, the good news is, I didn't cut the whole finger off.
Normally when he's eating he's incredibly placid. I'll look at him and think, how did two non-placid individuals create such a chilled-out baby? Perfect time to do a little personal grooming. One would think.
Perhaps I got a little cavalier. After all, his fingers are twice the size they were the first time I did it... That felt like I was performing surgery. This time I was like, no biggie. I could trim these suckers with my eyes closed.
Some parents don't go near their baby's fingernails. They use baby mittens. "Mittens," my earlier self snorted, "are for pussies. I scoff at your baby mittens."
After I was able to stop the flow of blood, I had to comfort my poor wailing infant-- which felt really strange and psychotic, to be soothing him right after I caused him immense pain. I had to pretend I was a different mommy, a non-hurting mommy. Someone even suggested I wear a distinctive hat from now on, to disguise my earlier self from him.
"That bad hat-less lady hurt you, didn't she... well, she won't come near you any more."
If that could be the last time I ever hurt my son, I will be a lucky lucky woman. But something tells me that's probably not the case.
A particle accelerator, Google? Really?
Have you run out of ideas, or do you have too many?
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ADDENDUM: Oh. (Thanks, la Ketch.)
... or suffer the consequences of explaining why you don't. (The consequences being, you will look silly. Because these are awesome.)
