01 May 2006

Thank You for Shopping at Mama Snee

A New Level of… Something

**This little piece has been deleted temporarily. Don't want to get Dooced.

Prime Time Fear

ABC is running a prime-time drama special about everyone getting birdflu from shaking hands, and apparently, from the preview, rooms full of people dropping dead. It is advertised as being “a step ahead of the headlines.” Ack.

For shame, ABC, for shame.

I Didn’t See It Coming.
I have mom-hair.
My friend and neighbor Heidi hooked me up about a month ago with a pretty cool shaggy moppy haircut, but I lack the primo styling products, expertise, and flair to make it happen. Besides, I usually leave the house looking halfway hip from the shoulders up, but after a few hours my hair stops being damp-ish and carefree and resumes it’s natural state: flipped-under bob.

My hair would be the envy of any pearl-wearing country club member worth her pantyhose, as it is somehow programmed to be stick-straight and curl under at the ends when it is cut chin-length. I have the perfect bob and the curse is that I want nothing to do with it. I want the hip hair that I had when left Heidi’s shop, but that hair was not meant for me.

A New Kind of Cake on Aisle 5
Although I do feel more at home in the fancy grocery store with my mom-hair. Yes, as much as I love my little eastside (Urban! Hip! Quaint!) community, our Kroger is totally ghetto. As in we still had the trough-style freezers up until last year that you may remember from grocery shopping with your mother when you could still sit in the cart. So I drive across the river, past my office, to the swanky Kroger with covered parking and a Starbucks inside the front door. Yes, I go to Starbucks.

Yesterday Bird and I made our weekly trip to the Swank Kroger. And by the time we passed over the river and through the ‘hood, Birdy had created a seriously rank poopcake in her little purple pants. I get all of my stuff together: bag, keys, list and phone and run around the car-beast to jump in the back seat and change the diaper, which was very ick, thank you very much, and then, holding a poopy diaper, baby, keys, bag, phone, and list, realized that I was childproof-locked IN my car. As in cannot open the car door to get out, because it is un-unlockable, because my car is so rule bound, like a goody-goody hall monitor. Like KITT if KITT was… well, you get it.

“What’s that, betsy? You want to unlock the door and exit from the back seat? I understand your situation, but the rules clearly state that children are not permitted to open the back doors when the car has already been locked.”

“But I am NOT A CHILD, Car.”

“I can see a child in the back seat with you, and the rules clearly state…”

I look at Birdy, grinning and sliding around, looking for something small and sharp--with metal barbs, maybe?-- to put in her mouth and choke on. I smell the wrapped-up poopcake. I curse. I am starving, and the combination of hunger pangs and shit-odor have me in their grip and I become crazed and start to panic. I decide that I will just call A. and ask him to leave band practice, across town, to come and let me out of my own turned-against-me-car.

Fotunately, before I dial, I realize that I can just push the little remote lock dealie on my car keys to unlock the whole damn thing, which is what I do, and we escape the Car That Loves Us Too Much. And I know that was the logical solution, (even though it felt like ordering a pizza from INSIDE the pizza place) and that it’s not a big deal, but the hunger/ poo-smell combination does a serious one-two punch on the ole sanity and one becomes desperate. I could have broken out windows, you know. I was LOCKED in a CAR with some SHIT.

We finally did enter the Kroger, post-drama, and I did get my fancy coffee for the week, and I did realize that the tank top I was wearing was probably best left in the “only at home” drawer, because after an afternoon of Birdy tugging at it, I was looking fairly trashy and boobaloobic, with a vaguely-stained, stretched out wife-beater tank top under an army jacket that hasn’t buttoned since before I got pregnant. But who cares—I’ve got the country-club Mom Hair, and that gains me entry into the Swanky Kroger, despite the might-have-been-drinking-beer-and-watching-Cops-outfit.

And let me tell you, that little Birdy of mine makes everyone’s day at the Kroger, giggling and squealing and grinning at everyone she sees.

Burrito of Motherly Despair

Another word about Birdy: she almost always falls asleep in the middle of her nighttime bottle. And then I snuggle her for a few minutes and take her upstairs to bed in her crib. She usually wakes up for a minute, but usually falls right back asleep with very little protesting. She’s usually asleep again before I get to the bottom of the stairs. I know—unheard of, right?

Well, last night, she didn’t fall asleep during the bottle, which is rare, but it happens. She was rubbing her eyes and clearly exhausted, but not sleeping. So I decided to put her down anyway, and she cried and wailed for what seemed like a very long time but was really only about 20 minutes, kind of tapering off into sad, sad, whimpering at the end, which is the part that breaks my heart and makes it impossible to enjoy the burrito with homemade guacamole that A. has so lovingly crafted.

I’m all for Birdy learning to be independent and put herself to sleep, and she’s proven that she can do it with almost no problems, but when she does have a rough time with it, I don’t like to think of her being so sad and upset and abandoned right before she drifts off. I don’t like to go to bed sad or angry, and I don’t like for Birdy to have to do it, either.

Oh, and I Might Be Completely Nuts
Because I filled out an application at the daycare we’re waitlisted for—the one we’ve been waiting on for 15 months now. Yeah, that’s nuts. But I don’t have a job yet and this one ends in one month, pretty much exactly. A job is a job and if it comes with reduced daycare tuition, well then it may be the job for me.

Also note that this format of blogging (what with the headers and all) was inspired by this woman. It makes windy gals like me easier to read.

Also, when I was walking today at lunch I called A, and ran down the events of the morning, including “I’m working on a blog.”

To which he replied, “Well then, you’d better get back to the office in a hurry.”

It’s always about poop with that husband of mine.

I guess I’m one to talk.

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