The Missing 72 Hours

I don't have an iPod. Mark does, and loves it. I don't need one because all of my music is right here on my computer, and god only knows I don't stray to far from it these days. I was always partial to Music Match over iTunes, because iTunes doesn't have the database infrastructure that I like. But Music Match has given me one-too-many "Error: this program will have to close messages" despite numerous upgrades. So iTunes it is. And to fully jump on the bandwagon, here is my iTunes shuffle. My rules - I only skip songs that are from music only Mark listens to and music I've recently downloaded, cough, and haven't decided if I'm done evaluating it or not. On with the show:

The Amazing Crowns: Mr Lucky
Hillbilly Hellcats: Hillbilly Cats
Misfits: Halloween
NoFX: My Heart Is Yearning
Screeching Weasel: I Don't Want To Be Friends
Dave Matthews Band: Crash
The Clash: Four Horsemen
Morrissey: Little Man, What Now
All: Scary Sad
Bouncing Souls: Chunksong

Interesting. Pretty much all punk songs today. I thought there'd be more country, rockabilly, and/or indie selections.

As it is, I doubt I'll even listen to these today because it's beautiful, sunny, and warm out today so the Manling and I will be going for a walk. But before I go, I need to share this. One of the perils of being a SAHM means you don't really need to know what day it is, name or number. All I knew this past week was that the end of the month was coming up. I made mental plans for the 29th, 30th, and 31st, only to realize a few days ago that they don't exist in February. It's like a time warp. I've lost 3 days. And I want them back!

The Hospitality Trap

Here's another post by the lovely Tertia that I could've written word for word. My problem, like hers, is that I can't cook, and I desperately want to reciprocate for the dinner parties I have been to at K&R' s and M&E's houses. There is another one scheduled for next Tuesday at K&R's house. And to compound matters, A&C are also invited. So that makes 4 couples, and the 2nd dinner party held at K&R's house. Luckily, it's a potluck, and I'm going to make the ribollata (that's pretty close to her recipe) a la Rachael Ray. (God I love her!) I'm starting to feel really uncomfortable about this, though.

Not only do I not cook, I also don't entertain, plus I also don't have appropriate furniture. I know, it sounds stupid, and I should hope people would like me more than care about furniture.

Let me explain. When I moved out here, I had a dresser, a folding table, 4 folding chairs, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and a futon. Mark similarly didn't have much furniture. We've bought a few pieces here and there, and are especially fond of the dining room table. The problem though is that it's barstool height, and although it has a really nice leaf to make it bigger, we only have 4 chairs. Not really enough to go around for 8, or even 6 people. And we can never get any more because we got them as a special buy from the Home Despot. (I knew we should've gotten a few more!)

And our living room is dominated by a hulking entertainment center and 2 overflowing bookcases full of DVDs. These tend to pull the eye away from the other furniture that is in there: hand-me-downs. The first beauty is a blue velour-y type stuffed chair. Not very comfortable but will do in a pinch, although its primary function is to hold the mail I throw on it until I decide whether its immediately recycled or not. But the pièce de résistance is the Sleeper Sofa From Hell. It is :

• Covered in a lovely very worn floral print, ripped in many places, yet covered by a lovely "velvet" chocolate brown slipcover, but peeks out jauntily at the corners as the slipcover creeps towards the center crack. Ever see Crooklyn? You know how the missing dog is found in the sleeper sofa? I find myself never allowing the Manling to be left alone on the sofa lest we never see him again
• .Structurally deficient in the cushion area. Much like a bedgraggled grin on a jack-o'-lantern, the cushions will not line up in any semblance of order. The left cushion gamely tries to walk the line, the center is sucked into the pits of Hell (as noted above), and the right cushion sticks out, trying to kill itself and end its misery by plummeting to the floor below.
• Usually coated with a fine patina of dog hair (although, she too, to protect her from disappearing, is not allowed on the couch), my hair (I shed about a pound a day), baby spit, and food crumbs. Because despite our love of the dinig room table, we eat primarily on the couch.
  

The furniture issue, combined with the I'm a lousy cook issue, has given me anxiety. Here I go and make some friends, only to alienate them by not reciprocating their hospitality. I read the comments to Tertia's post with such great anticipation. I LURVE the idea of a barbeque, but that is a few months off.

And did I mention the deplorable state of the yard? I think we have Denver's version of Love Canal back there. It must be a Superfund site because despite valiant efforts on Mark's part, grass refuses to grow. We first seeded the lawn. Then we put in an underground sprinkler system. Last year we even laid (layed? where is my grammar nazi??) sod to no avail. That I'm not so worried about though. This year, we will attempt more sod, after reducing the area by some cautious and optimistic xeriscaping. Or as we saw at the Home and Garden Show, we will purchase fake putting green grass. It looked so real! Much better than the Turf Paint in vogue a few years ago. Ok, I'm kidding, but desparate times call for desparate measures.

Myspace Junkie, Internet Stalking, and Las Vegas

Ah yes, I must confess, I do it too. I recently found out that Myspace is owned by the Rupert Murdoch/FOX evil empire, and I still can't stop. Where indeed are my principles??

After thinking, which I have ample time to do since I don't work outside the home, about my current state of friends, I started remembering friends I've had in the past. And mostly how I'm a bad friend in terms of staying in touch, and how I've lost touch with many of my friends. I decided to do somthing about it.

First I utilized the services of the kind folks over at Switchboard.com to look up as much information for free that I could find for one of my accomplices back in high school, D. I knew he last lived in a particular city, and when they came to my wedding, I found out he was dating this woman, N., who we had also hung out with back in the twentieth century. Lo and behold, I found her name now had his attached to it!!! So I assumed they got married, and I sent off a brief letter to the last known address. About 3 weeks went by and I figuerd they had moved, and/or thought I was insane. When all of a sudden, I got a phone call from D., who said yes they had got married, had a 15mo. old son, and moved to Las Vegas!!!!! I've been messaging them via Myspace, and will probably hook up with them next month.

You see, every year for the last 10 yrs, my mom, the NASCAR fanatic (we call her Nascar Nance), and my stepfather (his handle is Vidalias- which is another post entirely) go to Las Vegas for the race. The last 3 years we've joined them but thought we couldn't go this year due to conflicts with Mark's vacation. I decided I was going to go anyway with the Manling so he could visit the grandparent units (GPUs), and I could visit D&N. Mark tells me after I tell him of my plot that his vacation runs concurrently with the GPUs' so we could all go. The deal-maker/-breaker will be what will we do with our dog for those few days. I'm really excited though. What a series of surprises. But wait, there's more!

When I originally set up my Myspace, I hadn't attached any schools, figuring I hated everyone I went to high school with, I completely lost touch with my 1st college friends, everyone I know from my 2nd college detests Myspace except for the few "friends" I already had, and my 3rd college was a waste of accredation by any educational review board. But after my thoughts reached back to high school, I realized there were a few people I missed. So I added the school and browsed the alumni. Lo and behold again, 2 (M. and J.) of the probably 5 people I honestly liked showed up. Messages with them, blah blah blah, and 1 of them just happens to be coming to Colorado next month and is going to look me up!!!

Motherfudger. I just looked up the dates J. will be in CO and of course it's during the same period as the potential Vegas trip. I will have to do some serious finagling to get this all to work. Must go spend some time diabolicizing now. Hmm.... What to do, what to do...

Not So Donna Reed

BrooklynGirl wrote a post about being a SAHM that really hit the spot for me. And then my friend E. lent me this book called How She Really Does It. I want to talk about both.

So BrooklynGirl says she never really imagined herself as a SAHM. Me neither. I have 2 college degrees (both B.S. literally and figuratively, but still), and never really liked kids. And here I am. I don't feel like I'm doing all that great of a job with the Manling, and like she says, it seems like most of the highlights are just due to developmental milestones rather than what I have done. I love being at home with my son, and I am really grateful (to whom I wonder?) to be able to have this "luxury." I just kinda wonder why I'm not satisfied.

I didn't leave a fabulous career, I don't enjoy cooking or cleaning or other tasks involved in running a house, and I have no idea what to do to raise babies.

Maybe my dissatisfaction comes from the feeling that I am wasting my education. But honestly, I was doing that before I opted out of the paid workforce. I am very unhappy with my choices that up to pregnancy, I had not sought out any even entry-level jobs in my field. I so very much see myself doing work for either a smaller government or a non-profit agency in the planning field. I love everything I learned in the Land Use/Planning program, and although I don't want to be anything more than a basic user of G.I.S., it's a great tool to complement work in that field. And I worry that when I do go back to work, either through financial necessity or when the kiddo(s) is ready for school, that my marquee value will be zero and I will be unwanted.

I had worked for the last 5 years in a big box home improvement store, and was good at what I did. I was the go-to-gal, the one who had all the answers. It was easy, I could get away with murder and do my own thing. Although I wasn't doing anything in my field, I was good at what I did. Now I don't even have that sort of feeling. I am a miserable housekeeper.

I started feeling guilty that Mark has to work so hard at his big box retail job to support the three of us and then come home to an unkempt wife, cluttered house, and have to forage for his own food. So I've been trying to do more around the house. Attacking the clutter was pretty easy, and I'm slowly whipping the house into shape. And I try to get out of pajamas and look decent by the time he gets home, but feeling depressed doesn't help that out. And then I'm trying to cook more.

Before I get to the cooking adventures, let me finish up about that book I mentioned earlier. I bugged E. to let me borrow it because I thought that it would give me some idea about how to balance my home duties and job duties when I do go back to work. And I thought it might inspire me and tip the scales to me going back. Wrong on all sides. The example of the "She" who's "really doing it" that comes to mind: Vera F-ing Wang. Like she, or really any of the women profiled, is at all typical of my life experience or that of my friends. We have to work. I don;t consider myself working class, but more solidly middle class. The women in that book "do it" by having staff, and the kind of jobs that allow the most flexibility like AM news anchors or upscale bridal designers. Sure there were some attorneys and doctors, but still. These people have probably 6-figure incomes. What about us, the little people? I was thoroughly disenchanted and even more depressed after reading that book.

On a more positive note, I found a book I truly love: Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats--A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners (A 30-Minute Meal Cookbook). My cousin got me into watching her show and I was pretty impressed that she made practical meals that looked delicious and fancy from start to finish in the 30 minutes her show aired. And she didn't use frou-frou ingredients. I saw the book when I was out at my "friendly" Sam's Club (that's another post) and picked it up. Out of the 365 recipes, I think I marked over 150 as things I would possibly eat, which is an amazing amount for a cookbook for me.

I've made 3 so far: pretzel coated chicken, a stale bread tomato soup, and prosciutto, garlic and herb cheese chicken roll-ups. All were very very good. And I made them all with only a little bit of anxiety, and Mark's assistance. I call him the Big Cheese when he helps, which is a throwback to my old 7th grad Home Ec class days.

But I get pissed off at myself. I don't want to be a good housekeeper or to be a good cook. I don;t feel like those things are what I want to be good at. I'm reluctant in so many ways to be a SAHM because I don't like that stuff. I HATE HATE HATE doing dishes more than almost anything. (Ironing being the only home-related thing that comes to mind that I hate more.) I enjoy time with my little Manling, and wouldn't give that up for anything. So I don't grin, but I bear it.

I feel like an anacronism, a throwback to the Donna Reed era. I feel like staying home is a smack in the face to my feminism and feel dis-empowered. Yet at the same time I feel like I should be grateful, like I said, that I have the opportunity to stay at home. I only wish that I could feel like I'm not "just" staying at home, not "just" a mom, etc. I wish that doing this most important job of raising the youth of today was something that society thought was financially equitable, socially important, and most especially, something that would make me feel like I'm still an important part of the world. It's rough.

Old Number 2

We had birth class reunion on tuesday night. Eight of the ten babies and most of their parents came. Of those, only 3 were born vaginally, and only 3 were girls (not the same ones). Everyone breast fed, or at least gave breast milk for the first two months, and at least 5 of us were still going strong, tho one mom was still an exclusive pumper. And only 2 of us were cloth-diapering. It was really interesting to see all the babies and to notice how the personalities of the women came out if full effect now that we weren't pregnant and miserable. There's a rumour that there will be a 6 month reunion, too, but I doubt it.

The topic of second children came up. I heard a few people talking about how this is it for them. I was surprised by that only because in my experience, having this child o' mine has been the most amazing and wonderful experience. And I was never a child/baby person. The Manling has been such a wonderful baby: so happy and pleasant; no colic or attitude or problems. I think a lot about baby number 2. Depending on our financial situation, I would consider trying again starting in May. I guess we'll see.



I'm really enjoying instant messaging. I like being able to talk to people without actually having to voice things concstantly, since I'm so bad at small talk, and it's nice to be able to ignore or end conversations if something else is going on. My cousin says it's nice I'm talking to real people rather than just reading about the ones whose blogs I follow. I wish I could IM w/ some of them - like my blogging heroes Julie and the G&D Tertia . They write so wonderfully, with such wit and verve and humour.