Get a Snack, This is Going to Take a Minute

Here I sit on Friday, noodling around the internet, once again wishing someone would just post a blog already. And hey! Okay, I will! This is a familiar moment to me, not unlike every single time I play any kind of card game that involves other people and taking turns, where it will be all quiet on the western front for, like, 8 minutes and then I’m all “oh, is it my turn?” Yes, Mama Snee, it is your turn.

New Hair, Please
I’m getting ready to break my own rules and schedule a haircut. I’ve had an epiphany, and for the first time in my life I might walk into a salon and have some semblance of an idea of what I want to happen, besides just sitting in the chair and meeting eyes with the stylist in the mirror and saying “change it?” when asked “So, what are we going to do today?” That is, providing I can get a haircut appointment in the next nine goddamn months. As I mentioned, I’m currently seeing other stylists, and now that I’m out in the field I have a lot of numbers and no callbacks. I am not a hairdo playa, it would seem.

In my opinion
There is no Tom Cruise baby. There just isn’t.

Regrets

I regret not breastfeeding longer. For several reasons. Most practically, I can’t afford the formula. Now that Birdy’s knocking back 5 8-oz bottles a day, that stuff is getting expensive. I’m pretty sure I could cultivate a nicely polished drug habit for this kind of money: we’re going through about 2 cans a week, at $24 a pop. I don’t think I need to tell you that this is $200 a month that I am not making at my current part-time, not-for-profit job.

But also, and more importantly on the breastfeeding issue:

1. I was really good at breastfeeding. Talking to my best girl out in the Very Far Away West, I’m realizing how lucky I had it. I was, in addition to being a D-cup (formerly an A-cup, yes, thankyouverymuch) a milk machine. I could have fed two babies. I was good at pumping, and Birdy was good at latching. With some normal frustrating moments, of course, but overall it was going quite well.

2. One of the reasons I stopped breastfeeding was that I was going back to work. I made a decision that would ultimately affect my financial situation quite drastically in addition to the health benefits to my child based on a job I didn’t even like or intend to keep. Because it was all men in the office and we had a one-seater bathroom and it just seemed like a hassle. And yes, it would have been hassle. But I should have made it their problem, not mine. “Only eight weeks of maternity leave? Okay, sure! And when I get back, I won’t want to bother you with the pesky nutrition of my child, so I’ll just change everything around so you won’t have to wait for the bathroom, okay?” What was I thinking?

3. Okay, yes, it was a hassle. And I did pump at home for a while when I started back to work, but only at home, and I supplemented with formula. The pumping was a bitch, and I felt like my life revolved around my boobs and that drove me nuts. But you know what? I had a brand-new pink baby, and my life revolved around her, and HER life revolved around my boobs. Why did I fight that? I was just starting to get really good at it, 4 months later, Why did I give up so easily? Because it didn’t fit into the parts of my old life that were still hanging around? Instead of saying “I’m back to work! Where can I pump my boobs? And we’re gonna need a bigger fridge!” I tried –in this case, anyway-- to make adjustments and carry on like I’d just tripped on the sidewalk and didn’t want anyone to notice. And I think, in part, because I was afraid of losing my job, which was going to happen one way or another anyway.
Next time, I will be breastfeeding as long as I possibly can, because I sure as shit cannot afford this golden powder anymore. And hopefully I will be in a position where it won’t even be an issue.

Blog News

(I don't know what is going on with the spacing, but Blogger, you are pissing me off)

I think I might take the link to this blog off of my myspace page. (And my hits are going to go way down, but I shouldn’t even have that damn sitemeter, so I shouldn't care. ) I’m learning that EVERYONE is on Myspace. Everyone is on the internet, true, and it’s not that I don’t want people to read my blog—it isn’t that at all. But linking to it from Myspace really ruins the semi-anonymity, if you can even call it that.

There’s a Seinfeld episode where George is having lunch with his mother, who is proclaiming herself to be a “divorcee,” wanting to get an eye-lift because she’s now “out there.” And George says, “You can’t be out there. Because I’m out there. And if I see YOU out there, there’s not enough electricity in the world to shock me back into coherence.”

Think of that quote and me, and work/family, and Myspace. Make any sense? For the most part, I’m fine with this blog being public. But going to get the mail drunk in your underwear and maybe somebody drives by and sees you is a different situation than, say, having someone mail photos of it to your mother-in-law. So if you’re used to getting here via Myspace, just go ahead and bookmark it some other way, because it’s about to come down.

Class Notes

So, in class on Thursday, Girl 1 kind of found a soft spot in my heart, with her earnest and strangely phrased questions during lecture. She’s smart, and her brain is just starting to bloom in that post-high school way. It’s endearing.

But I still can’t stand the other one. Not one bit.
Example: Our teacher was talking about advancements in prosthetics, and concluded with “I don’t know if we’ll ever see a prosthetic limb fully integrated into the nervous system in our lifetime.”
Girl 2 says “oh, we will!”
What, you workin’ on that one, Girl 2?
I find myself muttering A LOT in that class. I am the grouchy old lady who mutters.

If only I would have said
Talking with some no-kid friends last weekend about babies, and talking about the pain of birth, and fear, and I wish I would have had this that I read in Brain, Child—Of course, I do not have the magazine with me (because I am working, duh), but it was something about being reborn when you give birth. About not forgetting the pain, because you don’t, but about leaving that pain behind as a part of your old life, as you start this new life of motherhood. I wish I would have said that, instead of “yeah, it hurts, but you kind of get over it.” Ah, such an eloquent speaker, no?