Once when I was waiting for Diego to be ready to leave work so that we could get on with our Saturday (ie, waiting for him and Zoe to finish playing “Baby Barista” and other fun games for children that involve hot milk and steam and labor violations) a woman asked me how I raised a baby in the city. She was sitting at the table next to mine and had already told me all about how she was visiting from Somewhere and had a daughter who was An Age and at the time I sighed inwardly and wished I didn’t have the kind of face that makes people want to talk to it and thought, “I don’t know, I’ve never done it anywhere else, idiot.” In retrospect she was a perfectly nice lady and was probably just bored waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom and I should be nicer or try to appear less interested, one of the two. (The second one, though.)
[Diego manages a café in midtown, I guess is relevant background information that may help those of you who struggle with context clues as much as I struggle with telling a cohesive story.]
You know what though, Past Lindsay, you need to calm down and not have rude thoughts about that lady’s chit chat questions because I (you) (I?) wonder “how” people “do” things, too. Like all the time. Only instead of asking those people how they do those things, you read their blogs or listen to their podcasts or watch their videos or sneak into their basements and stand quietly next to vents so that I (you?) can listen in. And her question wasn’t dumb; she probably meant like, how do you get anything done without a car to throw all the baby flotsam into? (On my end, I have questions for parents of babies with cars. Such as, how were you awake enough to operate a motor vehicle in those first few months? You drove yourself to the doctor/market/liquor store? How in the ever-loving fudge do you make it to any destination with a screaming child two feet away from you in a tin can? You have another space to keep clean!? In addition to your home!?)
I myself am interested in what other people’s daily routines are, particularly (these days) other parents. What’s the first thing you do in the morning? What does your kid do while you do that? What do you do next? What things are clean? What do you clean the things with? How do you organize those other things? Do you ever just lie on the play mat with your eyes closed and let the kids and cats crawl all over you and pretend you’re at a fancy resort? Etc. And if those daily routines are neatly encapsulated in a blog post or a video that I am not required to have a conversation with, EVEN BETTER!
In case you haven’t noticed I’ve been bLoGigiNggG again. It’s free and I already know how to do it and there aren’t any needles or strings involved which makes it the perfect hobby given that I am surrounded by small curious persons and cats. I figure if I start writing posts about some of the Things that make my Life Easier, I will A) Have things to write posts about and B) I can say “Oh, just visit my blog, HTTP:!;CREEDTHOUGHTS.INTERNET!” the next time a stranger asks, “How do you do it?” (because I am glamorous and impressive and many strangers ask me that). Also in seriousness, I'm making a real effort to be consciously appreciative of good fortune; I think that describing the way I utilize some of the resources I'm privileged enough to have access to will be a meaningful exercise for me.
Stay tuned for fUn!
