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what doesn't kill us...

Today has been gloriously productive. I got some laundry done, caught up on email, baked brownies, read my favorite journals all leisurely-like over coffee, and updated the journal I write at babycenter.

I let Joey help me make the brownies, since they’re for Eli’s birthday. I pulled a kitchen chair up to the counter and let him stir as I added the ingredients. He looked so adorable while he was stirring that I couldn’t handle it and so I had to immediately run for my camera. In the time it took for me to sprint to the table and return, Joey had lifted the spoon out of the bowl, dragged it over his chest and up his face and finally, into his mouth. He had fudge brownie mix in his eyelashes, but that didn’t even matter because as I was cleaning him up I realized that I let my child eat raw eggs! I’m not calling poison control yet, just watching for signs. I should’ve known this would end badly. Just like coloring with crayons, painting with gel paints and playing with the PlayDoh Fun Factory. Something always goes fucking wrong.

And of course, while I was standing there at the counter, inches away from Joey, contemplating how much damage a tiny bit of tainted egg could do to a toddler, the kid slipped off the chair. He was in his socks but he was so excited to be helping me bake that he was vibrating and sort of hopping up and down with delight. During one of his hops, his left foot slipped off the chair and down he went. He wasn’t hurt because the cabinet was there to break his fall. He just slowly slid down the cabinet door by his head and shoulders and landed on the floor on his bum with a little thud. Then of course he screamed for a few minutes because of the frustration of it all, especially when I moved the chair back into the dining room signaling the end of fun stirring time.

I can’t wait for the day when we can do fun things without Joey somehow getting hurt. But I know it’s my fault for trying to do things that aren’t always age-appropriate.

Last week went by in a blur. My mom was in the ICU until Saturday, and then she was moved to intermediate care. She had a couple of small strokes brought on by pneumonia, but there isn’t any permanent damage except the strokes sent her heart into a weird rhythm that her doctors finally got back to normal yesterday. She’s still in the hospital but she will most likely be coming home sometime this week.

I have so many screwed up feelings about what is going on right now. Luckily, Eli’s mom was around last night and she talked to me for a while and I felt so much better after that. My relationship with my mom hit bottom a few years ago when I began to realize that she is who she is and nothing I can say or do will ever change her. I began trying to let go of my anger toward her for not being a better human being, and for conducting herself with so little grace in this world that sometimes it’s hard to not punch her in the face when she says the things that are on her mind.

To put it into perspective, I’ve been more worried about my dad through all of this even though he is not the one physically suffering. Some people might take a serious illness as a turning point, and maybe try to heal and make some changes. But I have the feeling my mom is going to take the other road. The one where she turns every emotion she’s feeling into easy anger rather than dealing with feeling sad or scared or helpless. She will probably become even more angry and bitter and pissed off in the coming weeks, and I feel sick when I think of what my dad will have to deal with.

I thought about getting my mom something to read like some kind of book that might bring inspiration or introspection; of course this means something eastern. But everyone I mentioned it to who knows my mother just laughed at me and told me to stop trying to make things better. Have you ever seen the movie called What Dreams May Come? When Chris’ wife kills herself and goes to hell, and he finds her but cannot get through to her? THAT is what it is like trying to talk to my mom. Except without all the spiders.

sociopathic filter

I have a rich inner life. It’s like this filter I have on the world where information, whether it’s a story someone is telling me or something I see, enters my mind and becomes warped into something entirely different. And the scenarios I imagine are endlessly amusing. And so I laugh, sometimes hysterically, when it is sometimes not appropriate.

It’s why when my friend, who works with children with developmental challenges and drives around with her car packed with toys, called to tell me she was in an accident, I dissolved into hysterical laughter. It was all very serious until she got to the part where all of her toys flew out of her car and scattered all over the road during the impact, and she had to watch as cars driving by on the highway ran them over. An immediate picture flashed into my mind: a musical apple bobbling around in the road for a few seconds before being run down by a speeding Fed Ex truck.

It’s why during a frightful snowstorm recently, when my dad called to tell me the plow ran down their mailbox,  I immediately assumed the plow guy took a go at their mailbox on purpose. It had to be intentional because the mailbox sits atop a GRANITE post and is decorated with fluorescent labels and warning flags. So we talked about conspiracy theories for a moment until the thing I imagined next sent me into laughter so intense I tripped over Joey and we both fell into the Christmas tree. I imagined the mailman going to deliver the mail later that day and having to get out of his truck and crawl around on the ground digging to find the opening to their mailbox.

Once when Eli and I were on the way to visit his parents, we saw a package lying in the middle of the street. I told Eli to stop the car so I could get it and when we opened it we realized we’d scored two jars of designer meat marinade. There was no address on the box, but it was sealed so we took it home with us. When we read the label, we realized it was a special kind of marinade that you have to inject into a roaster. So we went to Walmart to buy a marinade injection kit and we couldn’t find the injection kits, even though several people assured us they really existed and we’d be able to find them at Walmart. So I went up to a kid wearing a Walmart smock to explain what we were looking for. And if you’ve ever shopped at Walmart, you know that the only thing an 18 year old Walmart kid can help you with is video games, but I figured what the hell, it was worth a shot. I explained that we needed to shoot up a chicken with an herb basil seasoning we found in the street so where are your chicken syringes? The kid just stared at me until Eli leaned in and asked him where we could find meat thermometers. He figured they would be in the same section and he was right. The whole time we were in the store I couldn’t stop grinning about how stupid it was that we were buying a whole special instrument so that we’d be able to use the seasoning we found on the ground. It’s so delightfully trashy. (By the way, the chicken was amazing. Buttery and delicious)

A guy I used to work with had to wear an orthopedic boot on his foot because of an injury to his ankle and one time I was walking behind him on the stairs when his boot slipped and he slid down the last five stairs and slammed into the door at the bottom. I laughed so hard I bit my own tongue and I must have swallowed a bunch of air because I had horrible stomach cramps once the fit passed. I probably should’ve offered sympathy rather than laughing in his face, but he executed the skid so gracefully it was like watching an Olympic event for the handicapped (which, you can probably imagine, is exactly what was going through my mind. Full body cast pole vaulting!)

I’m trying hard to entertain myself today by thinking of things that are funny because everything has been pretty serious around here over the last few days. My mom got sick earlier this week with what we thought was just a cold. But then there was the fever and back pain and then she was confused and having trouble finishing her sentences. I’m having a hard time reconciling the fact that I just saw her on Sunday and she was fine and today she is in intensive care and her doctors are throwing around words like stroke and neurological damage. And also there may be something wrong with her heart. It’s hard to believe my mom is only sixty years old.

I guess my filter isn’t working for this because I can’t imagine any scenario that makes what’s happening anything but horrible.

charming idiosyncrasies or grounds for divorce?

This morning Joey woke up screaming in his bed at 6:15. This is always the way. On the days I’m off Joey is up at the crack of dawn, but when it’s Eli’s turn to be home with him, I creep around the house quietly getting ready for work and later I hear fantastic tales of how the baby slept in until 8:30!!! I’m beginning to suspect that Eli wakes the kid up on my mornings home, and it probably happens when he is BLOWING HIS NOSE in the shower.

A while back I made a list of my quirks; the things about me that make me an annoying person to live with. And I promised to reveal some of Eli’s quirks, so maybe that’s where I should start. Eli is infinitely easier to live with than I am, I’ll just put that out there right off. He doesn’t trash the bathroom with his beauty products, he doesn’t soften his eyeliner on the lightbulbs, and if he lived here alone, the bathroom floor would be clean and smooth and not a sticky, gooey mess of spray gel buildup and hair balls. However, Eli is gross in his own special ways, and I should probably take a moment to tell you about it.

As I mentioned above, he blows his nose in the shower. Every. Single. Morning. And it’s not just a gentle little blow. It is a blow forceful enough to clear every sinus in his head and it tapers out at the end into a grating honk that sounds like the mayday call of a ship trapped in fog or a flock of geese being clubbed. It is horrible.

No matter what kind of shirt Eli wears, it can be a fuzzy sweatshirt or a plain old tee shirt, he ends up with a ball of fuzz in his belly button by the end of the day. The ball of fuzz is composed of stray hair and random lint and ever since I discovered this phenomenon (end of the day belly button scum) I go looking for it. I don’t know what’s special about Eli that he collects such an enormous amount of belly button lint throughout the day, but it disgusts and also fascinates me. I always have a clean button, and even if I tried to force a lintball to collect in my belly button by shoving starter lint in there in the morning, I’d probably still end up empty by the end of the day. I think it has to do with the depth of the hole.

Eli farts in bed and when it happens I fantasize about being in bed with a man who is still concerned enough about impressing me that he will hold his fire even if it gives him a stomach cramp.

He drinks the milk from his cereal. I know this is probably a very normal thing to do but it turns my stomach every time. I don’t like the idea of milk drinking to begin with, though I’ve made some adjustments to my anti-milk attitude since Joey came on the scene with his baby habit of drinking gallons of the stuff all day long. But at least Joey’s milk is contained in a sippy cup and I can pretend that it is water. But when Eli finishes his cereal, and brings the bowl up to his lips to gulp down the leftover milk right out in the open, my stomach rolls and I wish for him to choke so that I will never have to see it again. But I suppose that would be worse because I can’t imagine having to resuscitate a person with a coating of cereal scum milk still on their lips.

Every morning Eli makes sandwiches for his work lunch and leaves the knife he uses to spread the mayo on the counter. And sometimes the mayo smears on the counter and I touch it with my hand while I’m making my coffee and then I feel gross all day long. I didn’t realize I have a problem with mayo until he started with the sandwiches. This may be my problem.

Eli is losing his hair on his head but it’s starting to grow more rapidly everywhere else on his body. The most amusing thing to watch is Eli getting ready for a haircut. The first time I saw it I had to ask him what the hell he was doing with the razor on his ears. It turns out he grows long spindly hairs along the outside of his ears, you know, the shell part, and when he gets into the hairdresser’s chair the little hairs stick straight out and catch the light like his head is one of those glowing fiber optic balls. He also grows nose hair like nobody’s business and I’m surprised he can smell anything at all from the amount of hair packed up in his snout. I’m pretty sure he trims it because sometimes when we’re in the car I notice a stray hair that is creeping its way out of the protective shell of his nose and all I have to do is mention it and when I look the next time it’s gone. I’ve also caught him grooming his eyebrows with his razor. I suspect if he went natural for about a month his entire head, from neck up would be completely covered in hair. Except for his upper skull.

He will spend all day Sunday snacking on candy and when I suggest making something for dinner he looks at me like I'm some kind of hungry cow who wants to eat all the time. "I'm still full from lunch, aren't you?" And he will say this to me seven hours after our lunch of toast, while standing in the kitchen holding an M&M bag and chewing. Also on the same theme, he will drink five Pepsis and eat a pound of malted milk balls in the evening and then complain when he gets heartburn or a headache.

Hmm. I thought there were more. Oh! I thought of another one. This one is very specific, but troubling nonetheless. Sometimes when I am doing laundry at night, I tell Eli to take off his clothes so I can wash them. There’s nothing worse than finishing the laundry and then right before bed, Eli takes off his shirt and sweatshirt and jeans and socks and underwear and puts them in the laundry basket and then there’s a whole pile of dirty clothes when I just finished washing everything. So I tell him to strip and sometimes I touch his clothes too quick and they’re still warm from his body. Like warm socks and warm underwear. This one may also be my problem because I’m pretty sure Eli can’t control the fact that he has body heat. Now I realize I’m making it seem like I’m Eli’s maid, shuttling his clothes straight from his body and into the washer. But this only happens when I go on a cleaning binge and I’m having one of those days where I can’t tolerate having anything unclean in the house. This happens probably three times a year.

So those are Eli’s quirks and now back to what I was originally talking about before my tangent. Joey is screaming in his crib, and I’m trying to sleep since it is barely past six in the morning. So Eli takes Joey out of his crib and puts him in bed with me hoping that it will calm him down a little and he will go back to sleep in my arms. And it worked, because he calmed down and stopped screaming, but not because he was sleeping, but because he discovered my hair. A few strands had gotten loose from my ponytail and were swaying around in the air, so Joey spent a little time running his fingers over them before turning his concentration to freeing more strands from my pony tail. One by one, he slowly ran his baby fingers through my hair, tugging and freeing the strands, and yes, it was annoying, but not annoying enough to keep me from falling back asleep. I woke up twenty minutes later when Joey had managed to free enough hairs from my ponytail to wrap it around in his hands and start pulling at it violently like a rope. When I woke up, a big chunk of my hair was pulled out of my ponytail in the front and it was sticking out of my head in a frizzy mess from being caressed by little fingers. Kind of like when you run scissors along ribbon to make it curl. Except in this case, the ribbon was ATTACHED TO MY HEAD.

I don’t know what’s so fascinating to him about my hair but I’m thinking about cutting some off the back and making a pretend mama head for him to play with quietly in his crib while the real head sleeps.

white cat, white cat, covered in tea

Julian is a bad cat. He does things every day that make me want to kill him and it’s just a very good thing for him that he’s cute. Just a moment ago I looked down and saw Julian playing on the kitchen floor. He was running and sliding and flipping around on the tiles like a fish. A closer look revealed what was going on—he had gotten a hold of a tea bag and he’d somehow managed to bite it open to get at the loose tea, which he then spread all over the kitchen floor so he could play in it. I called Eli in to look at what was happening in the kitchen and what he did is brilliant beyond words. Eli flipped Julian over onto his back and ran his body along the floor. Static electricity caused the loose tea to stick to Julian’s fur and once all the tea was stuck to the cat, Eli walked over to the basement door and put Julian down on the stairs. He’ll shake the tea off in the basement and we don’t have to sweep anything up. Brilliant!

I was shopping for books on Amazon while Julian was destroying a tea bag two feet away from me. This is what I’m getting:

Books for Joey:
Diary of a Worm
The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Book for me:
Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth

I know a lot of you guys have kids, so if you know any books that are especially great, please suggest them to me. I’m getting tired of the selection we have around here, and I'm getting desperate. If I have to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? one more time I am going to set it on fire and hurl it off the back deck. And that will just scare the baby.

big box of joy

I was going to spend Joey’s afternoon nap watching a movie. A chick flick; a movie Eli won’t watch with me. I cleaned the house this morning and got the laundry going and after lunch, once I put Joey down for his long afternoon rest, I closed the shades, lit some candles, and settled in on the couch with my coffee for a nice, relaxing afternoon movie. I made it through twenty minutes and then I had to turn it off because it was so stupid. In case you’re wondering, the movie I rented is Must Love Dogs and it made me realize I Must Choose Better Movies.

I thought about reading for a while, but I’ve been reading too much lately. There shouldn’t be a thing as reading too much, but when you’re losing hours of your days and staying up late nights because you’ve got your face stuck in a book, it’s maybe too much. I need to slow down and remind myself that the books will keep and I’m not in a race to read the library.

So I was looking around thinking about what I should do when I spotted an empty pill bottle lying on the floor where Joey had been playing with it before his nap. The kid likes toys, but he takes the most delight in snagging everyday household things to play with like measuring cups or toilet paper rolls and even my empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cups he sometimes manages to liberate from the trash. He walks around proudly clutching these things that are essentially trash, and if you try to get them away from him he throws screaming fits of baby rage. It’s just easier to let him be. I learned this earlier in the week when I had to let him drag a metal measuring cup around everywhere we went, including Target and the grocery store, because each time I tried to pry it out of his grip he’d burst into tears like his heart was breaking into a million pieces. It’s just easier to grocery shop with a child banging a metal cup against the cart handle than listening to him scream his way through the store. I’ve just learned to ignore the pitying looks of other shoppers who probably think I’m too cheap to buy my kid some fucking toys to play with and instead give him any old piece of crap that’s lying around in the kitchen.

So I decided to put together a box of random household items for Joey to play with. I went through the house looking for things that would meet two criteria: 1) must not be choking hazards 2) must not be toys (in the traditional sense). I cleaned everything up and put it all in a big box and now I can’t wait for the kid to get up so we can have Trash Christmas.

Here’s the box:

And these are the contents:

-Dunkin Donuts cardboard cupholder tray (cut up)
-red plastic taco holder
-empty plastic applesauce cup
-leftover Christmas bows
-two pieces of 6’ long cloth ribbon: purple with yellow polka dots, green with gold trim
-plastic spoon from Wendy's
-empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cup (with lid)
-empty package of eclipse gum (outer slide wrapper with inside gumholder)
-adjustable liquid measuring spoon
-old Brita water filter fitting
-sample size pill bottle with cheerios inside (I thought about trying to pull off the label because it’s for a crazy medicine, but I decided that removing the label may threaten the authenticity of the piece, thus rendering it undesirable as a plaything)
-Pampered Chef chip clip-large
-plastic panda tag that came on Joey’s build-a-bear lion (that’s three nonmatching animals for one toy. It’s a build-a-BEAR, but it’s a lion, and it was wearing a tag with a picture of a panda around its neck)

And if I know my child, his favorite item will be the pill bottle, which he will want to carry around everywhere, not realizing nor caring that he will be telling my secret to the world.

last call

Eli and I went out last Saturday night and because of how little we actually do this--get out of the house for fun things like hanging out in dark bars late at night drinking beer and listening to loud music without the fear of waking a baby—I didn’t want to come home. When I was a kid, we had to come in from playing at night once the streetlights came on. Last call is my adult streetlight and it’s still as painful as it was back when I was a child. I’m never ready to call it a night.

We went to see a band and after the band was done playing we went downstairs to the club. The DJ was playing terrible music so everyone was just standing around drinking beer while the lights flickered over the huge, deserted dance floor. It’s always the beer that does this to me, but as I looked out over the dance floor, I could feel my inner dancing queen revving up. I imagined myself out there, spinning and twirling under the lights and then suddenly I had to be on the dance floor.

I tried to convince my friends that they should dance with me, but no one was drunk enough to get out on the dance floor alone in front of a bar full of people. I wasn’t either, but we were in a bar in a city we never hang out in, where no one knows us except for the people in our group.

The perfect place for a disco solo.

So I walked out into the middle of the floor by myself, stood there quietly for a second feeling the music and letting the lights wash over me, and then, once everyone was probably starting to wonder about the girl just standing there in the middle of the dance floor not dancing, I busted out my very best Saturday Night Fever pose.

And it was AWESOME.

I got a few cheers, but before I could do more Eli pulled my disco fabulous self off the dance floor and back to our table. Where I spent a little time explaining that I was not drunk. The music and lights just bring out my inner dance freak.

When I went to the bathroom I found a blue glow necklace on the sink that someone had left behind and it was still glowing strong. I never stopped to wonder why there would be a glow necklace in the bathroom, I just put it on my neck and wore it for the rest of the night. And when we got home I kept it on and wore it to bed so Eli could find me in the covers when he got back from taking the babysitter home.

I kept the necklace on even after he found me, and it needs to be said: there's nothing like the blue glow shining off your lover's skin to take sex to a whole new level. It's like fucking a superhero...even though now that I'm out of the moment, I can't think of any glowing blue superheroes. Only muppets. I guess I may have been a little drunk.

I’ve decided that we need to make a habit of getting out a little more, and it would be fun to go to random bars in random cities where we can dominate the dance floor and shake our groove thang in complete anonymity. Unfortunately, Eli doesn’t like to dance so I’ll have to find a different date. But how do you go about wording something like that in a personals ad?  Probably keep it simple.

Married white female looking for Just Jack.

picture pages picture pages

Here are some photos from my camera. I take pictures all the time, but mostly in my house because I forget to bring the camera any time we do something interesting. I don't have pictures of Joey's first ride on a carousel horse, sledding in the snow, or playing with another baby at the park, but I do have hundreds of pictures of him eating in his high chair and standing in the living room.

The state of my living room after a day of playing. It’s like living in a toy store. But in the evening, once Joey is in bed for the night, I gather up all the baby debris and deposit it all into a huge deck box in the corner of the living room and our home once again looks like a place where adults live. We bought the deck box because it’s huge and we thought we could fit all the toys in it. Since Christmas the box has become cramped and each night I have to get in there and dig around to reposition the toys and make them stop singing.

This was a gift from my best friend for my birthday. It’s the most random present I’ve ever received, which is why I cherish it. She said she knew right away that I would love it, and the weird thing is…I do. But I don’t know why. And yes, it’s really autographed. Now I’m going to be receiving all kinds of mail from rabid Lisa K. fans and all I have to say is: Don’t bother, bitches, because you can't have it.  It’s MINE.

And behind Lisa is the dopest lava lamp in existence. It’s over thirty years old and it still delights me as much as it did when I was a child and I would stare at it on my grandmother’s shelf for hours watching the lava stretch and twirl. I took a picture of it because with a toddler in the house, I can’t guarantee its survival.

Here's my nightstand. I bet you're wondering who that is in the picture. Let's take a closer look:

Jude and Ewan enjoying a relaxing Sunday morning in bed together. I keep this picture by my bed because when I look at it I know that everything is right in the world.

Pipe cleaner animals are my favorite toy. First up we have the spider:

It was the first toy I made, but it was a little boring so I then made a mutant:

This is superbug, technically not a spider, for it has triple the legs and it is also the wrong color. I tell Joey that this is what happens when spiders are exposed to environmental toxins. Or eat candy.

My lunch. Rice, corn and salad. I tried to get Joey to eat some with me but he has developed an almost eerie intuition about healthy foods. He doesn’t even need to taste them to know he doesn’t want them in his mouth.  Any time I try to approach him with something healthy, he clamps his lips shut tight before I can get a grain of rice or a piece of vegetable anywhere near his mouth.

This is the sticky hand of a child eating a jelly sandwich for lunch. The default lunch food that always meets baby standards. Usually given after several failed attempts at healthier fare.

The trees in my backyard. I live practically in the woods, which I used to love until my neighbors’ house got broken into and I realized that houses close to the woods make excellent targets for crime.

It has been so warm lately that I was tricked into thinking it was spring. This is my new spring bag I bought the other day when I was out shopping for sunglasses. And of course, the minute I get my spring gear all ready, the temperature drops, the snow falls and I am reminded once again, it’s winter still, jackass.

Okay I found one taken outside of my home.

This is the park down the street where we go to hang out when the weather is nice. Joey ate his first worm here. It is also where he has had many violent confrontations with small friendly dogs who are stupid enough to approach him hoping for a friendly pat on the head, not realizing that toddlers do not pat dogs, they hit them. 

I tried to place Joey in the grass and have him sit there while I ran far away to take a picture that would look like he was all alone in a field. But every time I ran away, he would roll forward and start crawling after me screaming, and ruining the effect I was trying to achieve: Happy baby sitting alone in a field quietly pondering the meaning of life.

Meanwhile, the child would happily break his own hand off at the wrist to get away from me whenever we're walking around in a crowded place full of danger. Like the grocery store.

narcolepsy is not sex with cadavers

I just took 90 pictures off my camera.  Most of them were from the dodge ball tournament Joey and I had going this week after I bought a two-dollar plastic ball at Target.  You know the balls they keep in those tall wire containers that are big and light like plastic balloons?  Best two bucks I’ve ever spent. We had hours of fun kicking the ball around at each other in the house, and every time it ricocheted off something breakable like a glass candleholder or a window, I kept thinking about that episode of the Brady Bunch when the boys broke Carol’s vase with a basketball and Peter kept saying, “Mom always said, don’t play ball in the house.” And I was thinking about how Joey is lucky I’m nothing like Carol Brady because my motto is more like “Let’s play ball in the house, and if something gets broken we can blame the kitties!”

I accused Eli of slipping something into my diet coke last night because I came home from work, drank a diet coke with some pizza and then fell asleep on the living room floor for an hour and a half.  Joey was playing in my hair the whole time and jumping on my spine and I was still comfortable enough to sleep through it.  When I woke up, Joey was in bed for the night, Eli was in the shower and Friends was on TV.  I had carpet marks all over the side of my face that was smashed against the floor for 90 minutes and there was a wet spot next to my mouth from drooling in my sleep. This must be what narcolepsy feels like.

I had a lot to do this morning and I blew it all off. I was supposed to go to the lab and have my fasting blood drawn, but I screwed up my fast when I ate a piece of pizza for breakfast. I promised myself I would go through the stacks of bills and try to make some sense of them. They’ve been sitting in a pile on the table taunting me for a few days now, so to resolve that I moved them to a corner of the counter that’s hidden and put an oven mitt on them just in case I glance over. I used my bill time this morning to make two postcard secrets that I am going to mail later today. I know I’m too late to make it into the video but maybe they’ll show up on the website.

Anyway, I was going to show you some random pictures from my camera, but Joey is up from his nap. Next time…

time goes by

The days are going by so quickly lately.  I feel like I roll out of bed, spend a couple of hours doing stuff, and then it’s time for dinner.  Which is ridiculous because there are 12 hours in there that I’m not noticing. Yesterday morning I went to leave for work but when I got out to my car I remembered that I forgot to take my medicine so I ran back inside.  Eli and Joey were eating breakfast and Joey’s eyes lit up when he saw me walk through the door as Eli exclaimed, “Hey look Joey, Mama’s home from work already!”  The sad thing is, that’s what my life feels like lately, everything is accelerated and days pass by in a blur.

What is happening to all the time?  I remember when I was in school or when I was pregnant and feeling every moment of every day pass as though I was trapped forever in the present and time was standing still.  I wish for a day like that again.  A day with so many hours to fill that it feels impossible to come up with enough to do to pass the time. And just this week two people asked me, in casual conversation, if I was still living at home with my parents.  I don’t wear my wedding rings and I don’t have a baby strapped to my body when I’m at work so I guess it’s not obvious that I am much to old to be still living with my parents.  People who first meet me always assume I am a college student.  When I laugh and say that I live with my husband and my son I get weird looks until I confess my age.  As complimentary as it is to be told I look youthful, I’m getting tired of having this conversation.  Just as how I got tired of having the conversation about my military background.  “You were a soldier?” “Yes.” “No...” “Yes.”

I don’t fit my stereotype very well.

So it’s a small consolation that even though my life feels like it’s speeding away from me faster every day, my appearance doesn’t reveal my secret.  If only I could get rid of this nagging fear that one day the years will catch up to me all at once and I will age two decades overnight.