.........that you should always listen to the little voice inside your head.

You should have known better, my own little voice scolded as I looked down at the stoic face of my 20 month old. Why, oh why, would you ever wear white?

And of course, it was right. I did know better.

Don't you hate it that the little voice inside your head, the one that warns you not to do something, is not only always right, it is always so easy to ignore? My little voice had made several suggestions over the course of my busy morning. And like an idiot, I had ignored each and every one.

You don't need to run to the store for 4 items. Just send your husband on his way home from work, it told me. But I decided to go myself, anyway.

You should check your daughters diaper before you go, it warned. But I had just changed her and there were no smells emanating from her general direction. And when I asked her if she was poopy, she shook her head.

You shouldn't leave your purse in the car, it advised. But the giant, fully stocked, leather monstrosity seemed a tad bit over kill for a quick 4 item grocery run.

And of course, You shouldn't have worn your nice, new, white shirt, it needlessly and for the second time that day, pointed out. (This time, it was just being cruel, I think.)

So there I stood, in the frigid parking lot of the grocery store. I had already gone and in and come back out yet I hadn't purchased one single item. My daughter lay across the back seat of the car, immobilized by the winter coat, hat and mittens she wore and somewhat alarmed by the look of complete horror evident on my face.

And I had no idea what to do. Because there are just no quick fixes when you're dealing with vast quantities of poop. And my oh so helpful little voice was suddenly the soul of discretionary silence.

As I had discovered too late, (meaning somewhere in the middle of the grocery store) my daughter did indeed have a poopy diaper. And now thanks to the laws of time and space and just plain inevitability that poop had found it's way out of her diaper and was pretty much everywhere. Her adorable striped tights were saturated. Her purple woolen dress, covered. Her car seat cushion, marred. And her pink coat, tinged.

But the fun didn't stop there. Oh, no. This all started because I had chosen to leave the house that day dressed in a white shirt. So of course, it only stands to reason that the white shirt (not to mention my light green goose down vest) should be among the casualties.

Had I brought my purse, equipped as it is with both Kleenex and wet-wipes, into the store with me I could have perhaps stemmed the disgusting tide now so liberally spread about. But no. I had left that in the car. So when E started pitching a fit at the prospect of being set down in the grocery cart child seat (something she never does) and I slapped the back of her thigh in order to get her attention and consequently found my hand damp, I not only knew we had a big problem I had to walk back out of the store with that same big problem still on my hand. (I fleetingly thought of going into the store bathroom, but by this time E was wailing away and belatedly repeating the word "poopy" over and over and I had no idea where I would set her and her seepage while I washed my hands. And really, what would the point have been. I'd only have to handle her all over again.)

Once we got to the car, I laid her down on a scrap of junk mail and cleaned off my hand. Then I waited for inspiration. The prospect of driving home with a poop covered child in the back seat and a poop covered shirt on my person just did not appeal to me. But really, it was the only option. I may have had an extra diaper or two in that well stocked purse. But not an extra outfit. For both of us.

So I put her back in her car seat, tried to mentally block out the image of my stained shirt, opened several windows and drove back home. On the way I noticed a few construction workers checking me out. Or more, probably admiring the way my blond hair was blowing out the car window I so brashly had open on a cold November day. And I thought to myself, if only they knew.

I may have started the day futilely trying to look nice but the only attention I ended up attracting came in response, to my response, to the noxious odor filling my car. Ironic, huh?

So lesson, hopefully learned. Listen to my little voice. And forget the no white after labor day rule......it's no white after becoming a mom.

........that you shouldn't get you hopes up about a day in which you have nothing planned.......because there are no free days when you're a mom.

You might have initially felt a gloomy, rainy Monday the perfect backdrop for accomplishing nothing more than staying in and doing well, nothing. But let me tell you, it's a lost cause. Before you know it you will find yourself chasing a snot-nosed 20 month old around the house, trying in vain to convince her boogies are, number one, not hysterically funny and number two, not a good thing to smear across furniture. Then you will find yourself scrubbing poop stains off the velour toddler outfit that never got dealt with yesterday. The one that your husband actually had to look at, pick up and move so he could get ready for bed the night before. And as you are about to rinse said outfit, in the bathtub you were on your hands and knees scrubbing out not even one week ago, you are treated to the view of a brand new layer of slime and grime and your husbands hair. So leaving the velour outfit for later and the pile of laundry you've previously gathered, you dive right in and begin to, once again, rinse out the tub. But the drain, as you have mentioned to your husband, is quite slow. Soon the tub is filled with not only slime and grime and hair, but a good deal of tepid water. And it is at this moment that your oh so helpful daughter knocks an entire basket of clean folded towels, and her poopy velour outfit, into the stew. You exclaim something along the lines of "Noooooooooo!", which scares her and triggers a torrent of tears. You leave off everything, this time, in favor of comforting her. And if you really had any sense at all it is at this moment that you would admit defeat and abandon the whole mess, leaving it for you husband to take care of when he gets home.

But, of course you don't. Because, by golly, this is your day to do nothing! And you're anxious to start. So you throw in a load of laundry, ring out and hang to drip dry the towels that fell into the bath tub, put the poopy outfit into a bucket of soapy water to soak, add more water and bleach, to the still un-drained bathtub, finish the batch of pumpkin muffins you foolishly undertook somewhere before all this, feed your daughter her belated breakfast and in between each activity, wipe, wipe, wipe her running nose.

By now, it is 11:00. Which, when you realize it, begs you to ask one all important question; what are you going to do with all the time you have left before your parents arrive for lunch?

.......that even when you know you're doing the right thing as a parent, you still feel like a big jerk.

I could actually just leave things there and everyone in the world who is a parent would know exactly what I'm talking about. It's one of the many rather disconcerting little surprises you stumble upon sometime after having your own child. No one warned you about it. Not really. Sure you heard you own parents often say things like....."this is harder for me that it is for you" when they punished you. Or....."this is hurting me as much as it's hurting you" when they spanked you. And you never thought they were lying, necessarily. You maybe just figured they were merely trying to make you feel better.

But let me tell you, they weren't. They were trying to make themselves feel better. Because I have discovered......20 months into this parenting thing......IT SUCKS.

You know you have to discipline. You know you cannot let them have their way all the time. You know you have to be firm and ignore the whining and the tears and yes, the inevitable screaming. But even the un-shakeable knowledge, buried deep in the back of your mind, that you are doing the right thing, is absolutely meaningless in the moment. You feel guilty. You feel mean. You feel like a terrible, terrible person. And unlike your child's feelings, which will do a complete 180 in 2 seconds, yours linger. For hours. For days.

You have to learn not only how to talk your child through the appropriate discipline process, you have to learn to talk yourself through it as well; which is exactly where the whole..... "this is as hard on me....." speech comes in. I don't know if I'll ever say those words to E when she gets bigger. Maybe. I heard it and never got it so I hold out little hope for her. But someday when she's a mom and she calls me, fighting tears, to say how hard it is to put her screaming toddler down for a nap and just walk away, I say "I know honey, I know." And I truly, truly will.

.....the unwritten rules governing proper facebook etiquette. But someone really should. So here we go.

#1. If it requires more than ten sentences to get your point across, no one is going to sustain interest long enough to get to the end of your ramblings. They are called status updates. Not "all that I did today" short stories!

#2. If they are just a way for you to brag about yourself, people will see right through it. And get annoyed. Really, you may have just nailed the most amazing job interview ever, but if you think you've been subtle about blowing your own horn, you probably haven't.

#3. If you're going to gush on and on about your incredible love life, you genius children and your super, duper friends, do all your facebook "friends" a favor and invest in a private journal.

#4. No one really cares to hear all about your deep seeded anger issues when it comes to politics. Okay, so you have an opinion and you want to share it, fine. But if it involves the words "morons, conspiracy and someone should stage a protest rally", there are websites out there you'd be better off saving those intellectual gems of insight for.

#5. If you can't spell and are too lazy to heed the squiggly red lines that show up to supposedly idiot-proof your update, you don't belong on the Internet. Period.

#6. If you can't update the world about your life without dropping the F bomb, get a life. Because we are all assuming you don't have one if your use of the English language is that limited.

#7. Finally, if you must use inane, trendy abbreviations, save them for text messages. If you cannot resist smiley and/or frown face signs, save them for your comments to other peoples posts. If your own post is ambiguous enough that it's readers won't be able to ascertain your mood with out you providing a little colon-and-parenthesis-combo clue, reword your post.

......how quickly, after having a child of your own, you become your mother.......

I distinctly remember, at about age 12 or 13, waking up in the middle of the night to find my mother standing over me, feeling for a pulse in my neck.

Yes, indeed.

You see, it's really quite logical. She was afraid I was dead.

I had been battling a chronic case of bronchitis for awhile and pretty much coughing my head off each and every night. So my mom had taken me back to the Dr yet again to get a different medication. And this one had actually worked. My coughing stopped and I was finally and at long last enjoying a good nights sleep, not to mention letting everyone else sleep. But my mom, instead of praising God for the much needed relief and enjoying it herself, chose to believe that I had not gotten better from the new medication but had in fact died.

Thus the paranoid checking of my pulse at 2 a.m.

I decided then and there that my mom was a bit nutty. But little did I know that my rash judgement of her, not to mention the whole coughing all night situation, would come back to haunt me years later.

Fast forward through marriage, pregnancy and the birth of my own daughter, E.

E has had a cough for about a week now. Just at night. She sleeps through it. But I do not. I lie awake listening to her and praying there was something I could do and some way for her to get a little relief.

Well, last night she rounded a corner and in what I've taken to (hopefully) mean she is getting better, she didn't cough for several hours. In a row.

But me?

Instead of sleeping, instead of relaxing and enjoying the quiet, instead of slipping off the heavy garment of worry I've been wearing for a week, I was convinced she had died.

Flash back to my own childhood. Flash back to my own mom.

Wow.

I realized I have officially come full circle in my life.

I did not go in and check for my daughter's pulse; that urge I was able to resist. But I did completely understand what feelings and emotions and deep, deep love had prompted my mom to check for mine so long ago. And I realized it was not nutty at all. It was, and is, what being a mom is all about.

.....until it's too late.....how unrealistic weddings are when compared with the rest of life.

"The greatest conspiracy in modern history is not Watergate or the shooting of JFK; it's something far more ingrained and insidious in the way it distorts the truth. The conspiracy is marriage. It's not that I don't respect the institution and the belief I've cherished since childhood of what such a union could be. One heartbreaking and publicly failed marriage later, I actually revere marriage more at age 34 than I did as a blushing bride of 26.
The problem is that when a young woman announces her engagement, everyone is quick to roll out the matrimonial red carpet by throwing showers and obsessing over wedding day plans. This helps a bride prepare for the reality of marriage about as much as nine months of baby showers and nursery decorating prepare a gestating woman for the awesome task of raising a child: not at all.
Perhaps we are all guilty of holding on too tightly to our own Cinderella stories, thinking that the glass slipper of the perfect marriage will conform to us uniquely. Engagement, like pregnancy, is a fleeting and hopeful time, and those who have gone before hesitate to disrupt this dream with a dose of reality. So we carry a young woman toward the threshold of her new identity as wife and mother and abruptly drop her off at the curb, peeling out on two wheels with a honk and a wave and a wish for good luck."

That is a quote from an article written by Kristin Armstrong, of the formerly married to Lance Armstrong fame. I read it in a magazine about four years ago and found those opening paragraphs profound. Reading them again several days ago, I found them haunting.

My husband and I have attended several weddings since our own; one as recently as this past weekend. And though I have looked forward to each one with excitement and anticipation afterwards I just can't seem to shake this sense of confusion (to put in mildly) and depression (to put it accurately.)

Is it because while watching another starry-eyed couple embark on their journey of joy down the aisle towards matrimony I am reminded of how long ago my own fateful walk now seems? Or am I, as a seasoned wife, only too aware of just exactly what awaits that starry-eyed couple once they are pronounced legally joined for life?

I think the answer lies in Kristen's article. I think we in modern America do a very poor, if not disservice-able, job of ushering a man and a woman into their marriage. We start them off with a lavish, excessive show of.....of what, really? Materialism? A keeping up with the Joneses mentality? An unprecedented opportunity to go into debt? And it's as if we are collectively saying that elaborate hand calligraphy-ed wedding programs and the releasing of doves have something at all to do with the nitty gritty of making a marriage last.
We shower them with well wishes and gifts and words of praise. And then as soon as the limo has vanished from view, have very little input into any of the subsequent experiences they will undertake as a couple. We buy into, at the very least, and encourage, at the very most, the dangerous notion that married life at all resembles the 'fairy tale in all it's glorious trappings' beginning that the modern day wedding has become.

But don't brides and grooms deserve that day? Don't they deserve to have the world revolve around them for a little bit? Don't they deserve all the attention and devotion and fairy tale experiences? Actually, I think they do. But they need to understand, it is truly only for one day.

I was reminded of how truly 'one day' it all is last summer when I was the Matron of Honor in my best friend's wedding. I couldn't have been more honored, let me tell you. But I also couldn't have been more slapped upside the head by the stark, stark, let me say it again STARK, differences that exist between the bride and every one else in attendance.

I was, at the time, a relatively new mom. Nursing, I might add, about every hour. Or so it seemed. In between all my wedding duties I had to try and find time to locate a discreet place, undress to my waist (because that's the only way the dress allowed my daughter access to dinner) and try not to squirt milk all over beautiful expensive silk duponi fabric as I fed my child. And after removing said, no longer screaming, child, re-inserting industrial sized breast pads and re-dressing, it was back to the "party" for me. (Can you sense my enthusiasm? Can you?)

On top of all that I was still so hormonal and lacking in sleep that I took out all my stress and frustration on my husband. He and I did a lovely re-enactment of the Cold War that whole evening. In surroundings and amidst an occasion that are both meant to epotomize the very essence of love and romance and eternal devotion we hardly exchanged glances at all; let along longing, sentimental ones. When everything was said and done I was tired, hungry, (it's not just the bride and groom that don't get a chance to eat at their wedding) lonely and sad. We drove home to the joint and competing sounds of a monsoon-like rain storm pelting our windshield and our daughter screaming; because she had been passed around more than the appetizer trays that day and she just wanted to be held by me.

Depressing? Yes. Realistic to the rest of life? I'm afraid so.

Fast forward to this past weekend and this wedding. I thought I was more prepared. My daughter is older now; 15 months. I was glad I didn't have to deal with all the infant at a wedding issues. But I also knew toddler at a wedding issues were sure to be no picnic. It was my husband in the wedding party this time. He had to dress up. I, wisely I thought, chose to wear pants (it was an outdoor wedding) and a simple, easily removable top (we are still nursing) and indeed elected that my whole outfit come from a second hand shop so it could be discarded should any disasters ensue.

But I was still startled by the reality. While every one without young children and most of the men in attendance, including my husband, were able to devote their attention to the bride and groom, I and the other moms tried to quiet rambuncious kids. We bounced. We walked. We chased. We picked crying bundles up off the gravel and washed away the tell tale blood trails. We sunlotion-ed our offspring until they were able to slip right out of our desperate strangleholds. We sprayed them with enough mosquito spray to wear a new hole in the ozone. We fed them snacks so they could last until the dinner was served and then we fed them cake in ridiculous quantities. And finally we put then into car seats, sticky and dirty and crabby, and drove them home well past bedtime.

In the midst of all this 'celebrating', when I found myself separated from the other moms and changing a poopy diaper, in the middle of the vows, in some air conditioned closet, I was forced to look back at the woman I was at my own wedding, all love struck and glowing and naive and wonder.......what the heck happened?

And then it came to me: Life. Life happened. Messy, inconvenient, hard as can be, thankless, endless, monotonous life.

And I understood why we usher brides into all this without even a brief warning whisper of what is to come. Because who in their right mind would sign on for it otherwise.

And then I thought of God's much used analogy of Christ as a bridegroom and the church as His bride. And it suddenly made sense to me on a whole other level. Christ's return will be glorious and elaborate and decadent and like a fairy tale. We will be transported from tired and worn out, just plain trying to get by, existence and changed into the breathtakingly pure and beloved apple of God's eye. It will be like the most amazing of love stories. But with one huge difference. It will be real. And it will be forever.

....the real changes that parenthood brings. Of course you think you've got them all down before the baby comes. You've gone over them numerous times in your head. You've maybe even verbally hashed and re-hashed them over with you spouse, trying desperately to make sure he understands just what you two will be giving up so you don't have to listen to him complain about it later. And yet, somehow, despite everything you truly, ignorantly, perhaps even blissfully, have no stinkin' clue.

In the sheer mind numbing intensity of the early weeks (or as I like to call them: boot camp) you do begin to rapidly experience a few of the changes you foresaw. Yes, there is very little sleep. Yes, there is a lot of emotion. Yes, it's now a good day when you have time to shower AND pee without a several hour intermission. But those are only little changes. The seem like the destructive explosion of some bomb, that blew your life apart, in the moment, true. Yet in the grand scheme of things they are little. For you see, they are temporary. Your child eventually sleeps. The crying for no real reason fades. You have the time to go about your bathroom obligations at a normal humane pace (though you might have a spectator.)

The real changes, the ones you never saw coming (perhaps because you were so focused on the temporary ones) are profound and life altering. They are how you, as a person, now view life.

Once upon a time the world wide panic over some new strain of flu wouldn't really have bothered me. Now I hear the part about it being a particular threat to the very young and my heart is gripped with fear. Once upon a time I thought being in pain or being sick myself was pretty terrible. Now I know it doesn't hold a candle to watching your child in pain or sick. Once upon a time to look into the face of any child rightly seemed like looking at a stranger. Now no matter the age or the race I can't help but see my own daughter. Once upon a time I felt like a whole person. Now I know I'm not. And I never will be again.

Those are the real changes. Those are the reasons my seasoned mother-in-law would look at me with a knowing smile and indulgent tilt of her head every time I talked at length about some temporary little hiccup of an inconvenience and not say anything. Because she knew. (Nine times over.) And she knew eventually I would too.

Don't get me wrong, I did miss sleep and am so grateful to have it back. My husband and I do mourn the loss of spontaneous weekend getaways. And we both often wonder what we really did with all our free time before our daughter came along. (Actually forget before she came along! Who remembers that far back? I want to know what we did with all our free time before she was walking.) But now we understand. We may fantasize about going back to our former life every now and then but we never could. Because we aren't those people anymore. And even if we could be, if it meant life without our daughter.......we wouldn't want it.

....why your brain works overtime when you can't sleep.

I normally don't blog this late at night. I normally don't do anything (since becoming a mother, that is) this late at night; except for drooling and occasionally making it through to the end of a movie in one sitting. Which I usually end up paying for the next day and I'm then left to wonder how in the world I used to pull all those late nights, of long ago. I must have been nuts.

Tonight I am awake thanks to an insistent and ominous sore throat that leaves me slightly dreading the illness it is heralding in. And of course, since I want very much to just ignore my sore throat and fall asleep my brain is on over drive coming up with all sorts of interesting thought topics just to keep me awake. And therefore focused on my sore throat. So I can think of more ridiculous things. Just to keep me awake. And therefore......you get the picture.

Some examples of my random mental wanderings: where my daughter's secret hiding place is located. My husband and I know she has to have one. Too many things keep disappearing never to be seen again. Like the lid to our Vaseline jar. And the computer remote. And one of the butterfly window decals we just bought. One minute she has them firmly in hand. Then the next minute...POOF! Vanished without a trace. This does not sit well with me. As someone for whom a misplaced object quickly becomes an all-consuming must-find-now fixation (I take after my own mother in this) I am a bit on edge. The Vaseline lid was the first to elude us, months ago now. And I freely admit, I tore the house apart looking for it. (For one thing, how can Vaseline continue to be Vaseline with open exposure to the air?) But to no avail. Then the remote. Followed in quick succession by the butterfly. Maybe I should return all those board books I checked out from the public library. If my daughter's going to continue on in this "now you see it, now you don't" streak it might just be the smart thing to do.

Another thought: What am I going to get my husband for his birthday? This I actually spent more time considering. Yet it has a shorter paragraph. Yeah. That's how stumped I am.

Is my husband's cousin coming to visit Saturday? If so, is it for a meal? And if so again, what am I going to make?

My daughter hates milk. How can I manipulate her into drinking it? Maybe there are helpful hints on the Internet?

I have Bible study in the morning. In the whole entire course of this week, tomorrow is the only day I have to actually be awake, coherent and dressed before 8 and wouldn't you know it......it's 11:30 and I'm still up. Maybe I shouldn't go? Maybe I should email my regrets now? But what if I wake up tomorrow (assuming I actually sleep and therefore have something to wake up from) and I feel guilty for bailing yet I've already said they could go on without me......? Maybe I shouldn't email? Maybe I should just resolve to go, no matter what?

And on and on the thoughts circle; like a pack of wolves. I think they're trying to find a weakness in my sanity. I think they want to separate it from the pack and kill it.

You see, even my trying to make sense of the senseless is whacked. And slightly paranoid. (And I wouldn't even tell you how many typing errors spellcheck had to catch for me.)

Ok, well, here's to crazy thoughts. At least they are an infrequent enough occurrence that I am able to recognize them when they do show up.

....how isolating Winter really is. I find I never fully realize it until the thawing begins. Then, as the earth awakens, so do my senses and my social life. Neighbors I haven't seen for literal months suddenly materialize and have time to linger by the mailbox, stop by the open garage door and catch up on how we've been.

Smells begin to stir in the warming air; somebody's supper cooking near a slightly open window has never seemed so intense and so welcome. And the dead soggy grass, soured by months of stagnation, has never seemed so unavoidable and unappealing.

Sounds, too, that have long been muted and muffled by the constant blanket of snow roar into life. I can hear the neighborhood children playing and airplanes flying overhead, the distant hum of the freeway and, of course, the sweet, sweet melodies of the returning Robins and Finches, Larks and Blackbirds.

Somewhere in my mind is a vague recollection that last fall I was sick of all that noise and commotion. Back then I was ready for the respite provided by the cold, quiet solitude of Winter. But I've had my fill. Dormancy need last only so long. And like a traveler, sensing in the foreign wind the familiar call of home, I ready for a return to life.

....the exact, official, indicator of Spring. Is it indeed the vernal equinox; the position of earth and sun? Or is it instead the somewhat mystically interwoven ties between the full moon, Passover and Easter? Should we rely upon the daring of a testy old groundhog? Or is the gallant Robin, faithfully returning to a bare and wind blown land, a more suitable harbinger?

Back in my childhood years Spring traditionally began the first day Mom could finally hang the wash out to dry. It would be a nice day, of course. Warm in the sun yet with a cool wind sweeping the gossamer clouds across a pale blue sky, stirring the stark, leafless branches of the trees and reminding us that winter was not quite altogether departed.

Mom would have gotten up early that morning, while the sky was still a steely gray against the sunrise, and run the washer non-stop. By the time my brother and I had come downstairs, eaten breakfast and pulled on our mud boots there'd be any number of baskets, wet and waiting, to be hauled outside. We'd do that, working as a team. And after Mom got the clothespin apron we would all hang up the laundry together.

As always the sheets went first; their huge lengths of snowy white cotton still warmly damp and heavy. All winter long they had been hibernating in the deep drawers of the upstairs bureau while we favored the warmer flannel bedding. But now they once again resumed their rightful place of importance as Mom swung them over taut clothesline after taut clothesline until they formed thick white halls across our yard.

And that's when the true magic of the day began. Mom never received much help from us after the sheets were up. No, we were too distracted, too entranced by our imaginations. Those rows of cotton sheets, with very little effort, became new and exciting places; the snow Queen's somber palace in faraway Narnia. Or, as the brisk wind caught their right angle corners and set them flying, billowing up and whipping fine sprays of clean water into our faces, they became the great canvas sails on a pirate ship bound for distant lands, in search of exotic treasure.

We'd chase each other back and forth through them, ducking under and around, running this way and that until our boots were caked with mud and our faces were flushed with laughter and the sting of the cold wind. And all the while Mom would stand there, pretty as a picture, with her bun tugged loose by the wind and her skirt hugging her knees. She'd diligently carry on with the laundry, finishing off the bedding and starting on the shirts and dresses and my brother's little pajamas with the feet.

Eventually we'd tire of our games and she'd have hung up all the clean clothes there were and then it was off with the boots and into the house. Our afternoon routine commenced with very little thought of the laundry outside. Rather it was left to the devices of the sun and the wind until Dad came home from work and helped to bring it all in.

Then the house was filled with the distinctive and aromatic fragrance of the outdoors. Unforgettable in it's uniqueness, evocative in it's familiarity, it's the scent detergents are supposed to mimic but never do. Clean and fresh and new, like a deep breath, it filled the whole entire house with a renewed sense of vitality. And days later, when Mom tucked me into bed between the chilly layers of those same sheets and my brother slept snuggled up in those same foot-ed pajamas the smell would still be there. Sweet and comforting, like a lullaby it whispered promises of green grass and gentle rains and returning song birds. Promises of Spring.

I'd fall asleep remembering that perfect 'first laundry day' and dream of all the others that were yet to come.

....that schizophrenia is one of the symptoms of teething. You hear about the drooling, yes. The ear rubbing and frantic chewing, of course. Even the loose stools. I thought I was prepared, having anticipated all of that. But then came the sudden, violent mood swings. The happy one minute, screaming the next emotional instability. Call me naive I thought that stuff came later; like in the terrible twos or during the hormonally charged onslaught of puberty.
Alas, I was wrong.
My daughter is possessed. She is tight now in the very throes of teething and let me tell you any little thing can set her off. Putting on her bib. Pulling off a sock. Giving her a Cheerio when the much more enticing fruit puff canister is in sight. I’ve taken to relaxing some rules and offering some bribes just to gain a bit of peace. Whatever she wants I let her play with. Three things that really seem to work: the remote, the humidifier and Victoria Secret catalogs. (Don’t tell my husband about the first thing. And as to the last thing…..well hopefully the unrealistic images won’t scar her for life. I figure in her mind those women with their large bosoms are less fixtures of unattainable beauty and sexual shallowness and are instead something like items on a buffet menu.)
To compound this joyous rite of dental passage, my little girl decided she needed a cold on top of everything else. So along with the copious amounts of slimy drool we also have even more copious amounts of snot. (And by copious I mean astounding.) In between all the chin wiping, Vaseline smearing and oral gel applying my daily list of ‘to do’ tasks includes nose sucking.
I am one lucky woman.
With so much moist DNA free flowing around me I’ve elected to fore go the usual showering and getting dressed routine. I mean, really, why bother. Seeing as how the outdoor temperature is staying well below zero this winter I’m not leaving the house. Especially not with a sick, not to mention crabby, one year old. And what’s the point of getting clean and putting on nice clothes only to be coated in saliva and green shellac a mere 15 minutes later. So these days you’ll find me calming temper tantrums and singing ‘my favorite things’ attired in bandannas, slippers and sweat shirt/pant combos that were baggy on me before pregnancy enlarged them.
It’s amazing my husband still comes home from work at all.
Hopefully the process will be wrapping up soon. Already the milky white and razor sharp edges of those first bottom 2 teeth have surfaced. A lull in the storm (you know, before the upper 2 make their presence known) has got to be not far off. And well, colds can’t last forever. If the amount of readily available mucous is any indication of a body’s ability to fight off germs those suckers haven’t got much of a chance. There’s only one question though. When all this drama is over and I’m no longer cleaning faces and soothing crying spells what am I going to do with all my time. What’s more, what am I going to talk about?

...how much of your life you will spend occupied in 'busy nothings'. I can guarantee that there is precious little of my day spent staring off into space and I am usually so exhausted by the end of it that it's all I can do to pull the covers back and climb into bed. Yet I am always forced to ask myself, as unconsciousness lingers somewhere very near by, "What have I really done today?" And the answer? Unfortunately it ends up going something along the lines of, "The same things you will do again tomorrow." Thus the 'busy nothings'; all those endless, time consuming, must-get-done tasks that keep coming around and around and around. Dishes. Laundry. Teeth brushing. Diaper changing. Do any of us ever realize how much of our life is devoted to these things? Probably not unless we sit down and intentionally take stock. I dare you to do it sometime; to total up the amount of hours you invest every year in, say, getting dressed and getting undressed or letting the dog out or wiping toothpaste splatter off the bathroom faucet. It really is quite scandalous when you work it all out into bare facts and figures. So then why I am always in such an urgent hurry to get these things done? Why do I feel guilty when I miss one evening flossing session or let the laundry pile up or head to bed without having emptied the sink drain? Inevitably there is another opportunity to do each of these things waiting just around the corner. In fact, I will most likely spend the rest of my life doing these things. So why can't a mini-lapse from this 'to do list' of mine feel less like irresponsibility and more like a reprieve ? Why can't I embrace a chance to pretend, for one small moment in time, that I can escape the mundane assault of my every day routine? Honestly I don't know. But in an effort to save my sanity I think I'm going to give myself permission to slack off now and then. Nothing crazy, mind you. I'm much too "type A" to let anything slide for very long. But, well, the fact of the matter is if I'm to end every day a virtual zombie facing a virtual repeat of today's itinerary tomorrow I might as well shake things up a bit. And then, every once in awhile, as I close my eyes and ask myself the fateful question "What did I really do today?" I can smile, with both drowsy smugness and satisfaction and answer "Not everything I was supposed to."