Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Life

Things are going in some interesting directions of late.  I finally realized I was chasing all the wrong things in life, and put a halt to what I could.  And so I write this as your average mom/grad school dropout.  I've been in grad school for what feels like a billion years.  I got one master's degree, and graduated right when the market crashed and I had no hope of finding a job, and getting in shape and stripping was going to be more of a time commitment than school, so I just went back.  I was taking business classes, and almost at my post-grad certificate, when something in me just...broke.  I couldn't make myself go to class.  I couldn't make myself care about anything I was studying.  I missed my kid, and my husband, and my life.

So I quit.

Anyone who thinks this is not a big deal wasn't raised in my family.  In our family, you don't quit.  You keep plugging away at whatever you're doing and YOU BE GOOD AT IT or ELSE.  I never quite figured out what the or ELSE was, but my mom scared me enough that I didn't want to find out.  So I ended up doing a lot of things I really hated, and becoming deathly afraid of failure.

Which is kind of stupid.  I mean, everyone who was a success was a failure at some point.  Einstein, Bill Gates....there's lots.  Google that shit if you're interested.  I'm not making a list for you, my research days are OVER.  Quitting grad school was a good move for me.  I don't feel like a failure and my life didn't end.  I spend more time with my kid and I"m restructuring what I want to do with my life.

That whole "figuring it out" thing isn't going so well.  I took the good job with the good money and the good insurance, and I'm not leaving anytime soon because, you know, insurance is nice.  But I don't see myself there for life (which I think my boss realizes).  But what do I want to be when I grow up?

Really, a humor writer.  With a kickass job at a nonprofit on the side, saving the bay or local food or women's uteruses.  I want a job that lets me be the social miscreant I am at heart.  My next door neighbor is a stay at home mom, and she was just saying that she felt like staying at home was causing her to regress in her adulthood.  I told her not to worry, I go to work every day and I think I'm regressing, too.  I'm trying to remember what made me excited when I was young and stupid and idealistic, and to think about what I might actually be good at.  It's a scary thing to even put that out there, because there's such a small chance that I'd ever make it as a writer.  But you never know.

Now if only I'd figured out all of this and that money isn't what's important before I bought a lot of stuff I now have to work to pay for....

Sunday, March 11, 2012

And we're puking.

Had a few entertaining things to post on facebook today and realized I needed to update this thing.  Had gotten the kiddo to bed and was actually getting ready to type a new post, and I heard...that coughing.  You moms know what I mean.  That "Hmm, that doesn't sound like a cold cough, it sounds like he's going to...." and then you just run to the bedroom and try to get the kid to the bathroom before he unloads everything he's eaten for three days.

Today we actually made it.  Ben was impressed.  He asked me how I knew he was going to throw up.  I guess you just get used to these things.  And as usual, after the barfing and a bath, Henry was in pretty good spirits, so we'll just hope that it was an isolated incident and that it's not contagious.

All parents are laughing right now because of course it's not an isolated incident and of course it's contagious.  I'll be up all night and chances are I'll be barfing by morning.  It might not be the worst thing.  I've been eating like a 15 year old boy lately (it's Girl Scout cookie season) and could probably use a cleanse.  Maybe I'll even market it-I mean, if people will drink nothing but lemon juice and cayenne pepper for two weeks to lose weight, maybe they'll pay me to come over and have my kid cough on them!  Same results, but with less wear and tear on your asshole.  I haven't read too much on those lemon/pepper cleanses but I can't imagine the exit of those substances can be any easier than ingesting them.

Other than this fun event, these past few months have been action-packed.  Ben's contracting business is taking off, my new job and school are taking up a ton of time, and this kid...this kid is changing by the day.  We've got tons of words, a dinosaur fixation, much more relateability and empathy.  It's just a really fun time in parenting.  Today Henry threw his penguin down (he calls it his "baby") because he was mad at me and throwing a fit.  When he calmed down, I said "You threw your baby and that wasn't nice." and he picked his penguin up, hugged it, and said "Sorry.  Thank you."

How could that not melt your heart?

But all this development definitely brings a new sense of independence and a new sense of defiance.  Henry's perfected the go-limp-and-cry method of resisting my attempts to corral him in public.  Yesterday we got to see one of my uncles, who was in Virginia to take his son to play soccer.  As we stood on the sidelines, with many spectators, Henry decided to pull the immobile protest because I wouldn't let him lay down in a puddle.  As he laid face down in the dirt and cried, and other people looked on, I said "Hey, Uncle Larry, remember that time I was fifteen and I came home sloppy drunk and it was my dad's birthday?  This is what I get for that."  He laughed.

But I will try to post more, not only because my tens of readers would like me to, but also because I'm getting out and talking to more moms and running into the same kinds of issues and problems and fun stories.  So we'll all share in the cute things our kids are doing, as well as the meltdown they had in the grocery store, or the tube of eye cream they shoplifted from Target.  Not that Henry has done either of those things recently.

Not MY angel.