Can I tell you what's stupid? Getting dressed in October. It's going to be eighty degrees tomorrow. 

Although honestly maybe it's a blessing because what's also stupid is: Buying tall boots when you have calves the size of a grown man's neck. I went into Macy's on purpose and had no luck, shopped online until my eyeballs fell out of my head and had no luck, finally decided to take a shot on some boots from a popular plus-sized clothing retailer and guEsS WhAT now I'm hauling those boots to work with me tomorrow so that the UPS man can disappear them from my life.

The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep

She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep

She filled my life with color, cancelled plans and trashed my car

But none of that is ever who we are

...

Oh but all the wonders I have seen I will see a second time

From inside of the ages through your eyes

- BRANDI CARLILE, "THE MOTHER"

 

Planning: A third birthday party. When asked what theme she wanted, the birthday girl replied "Garbage!" 

Eating: The theme for my diet lately is also "garbage." This month it felt like it was either Joe or I at the doctor every week for one thing or another, and now I've got a weird gastrointestinal thing happening that I will not describe for you no matter how much you beg and plead. Anyway despite knowing full well that eating better will make me feel better, my personal vegetable to Funfetti cookie ratio is grossly out of proportion. GROSS. LY. 

Feeling: Fine, all things considered. I'm feeling a lot better about our apartment lately - not that I ever felt bad about it, you know, but just not settled. Yesterday I made time to decorate our bedroom a little so that it feels more like an actual bedroom and less like a thruway and that helped a ton. We've been moved in since April and I'm only just now beginning to feel like I've got furniture in the right places, mostly. Probably. For now. The yard was the part we were most excited about and there's still SO much work to do back there - we've got a lot of plants and some chairs and things but like. I don't know, we're thinking about throwing down some wood chips or something? Also I'm going to make a bench. I KNOW. 

Loving: Adventures with Joe. We spend almost every morning at the playground, which we both love. (One of the best things to come out of pandemic life for me was having the opportunity - after the months of quarantine, obviously - to socialize so much with other moms and develop some actual real friendships, all thanks to the playground.) But it's nice to break it up sometimes - the zoo is always a solid day trip pick because of the goats, as I've mentioned, and we've also become big fans of taking the ferry to the Wall Street pier to look at the boats and the water and eat ice cream and chase birds. We also accidentally started an unofficial tour of NYC carousels, so perhaps I'll have Joe do some guest posts on here reviewing each of them. 

Being tired of: This, for now. Also should probably get some work done so I can keep us in quarters for the goat food machines. Byee

is this summer are we doing it

  

Well, it's hot out and once again the top half of my body is a completely different color than the bottom half. Even if I wore long sleeves and no pants and walked on my hands these legs of mine would still glow like chubby lighthouses in the night. 

Last year I let an Ulta coupon convince me that I am a person who can afford to spend real money on self tanner and that helped but this year I just cannot be bothered. Sometimes I halfheartedly swipe at my shins with a (much) cheaper tanner from Target, but for the most part if you need to find me just check the local sprinkler pads for the strange two-toned lady sweating to death and eating snacks out of her kid's diaper bag. 

ALSO: How does anyone get anything done knowing that there are goats and ice cream cones just a train ride away? (Seriously, how? My employment is at stake here. Please help.) 

some phone pics from recent history and a story

The time the remote server went down because fairies chewed the magic cords or whatever and Diego happened to be in the neighborhood of my office with a vehicle so I had him pick up my desktop so I could use a different magic cord to do work and it was not a very good use of my kitchen table plus I couldn't stand in the kitchen at night and eat cookies without thinking of work so I 10/10 do not recommend. Thankfully it's back at my work desk where it belongs - right next to my work coffee cup and hooked up to its two monitors like God intended.

The time it was all just too much so we gave up went out for juice and cookies and it was really unclear if Joe liked her cookie because she ate the whole thing but she made this face the whole time

The time once a week where Joe spends the morning with her dad until her sitter comes and neither of them are very good at pigtails but both of them make her smile like this so it's okay

She's so good at feeling all of the feelings and I hope she never loses that - the donut, the slouch, the clutching of Bear's paw, the mean mug, and the single tear on her cheek... I mean, really.

As Seen By a WAHM: I would be more concerned about this but as a child of the nineties I used to position myself close enough to the TV so that I could use my foot to change the channel because we almost never had a working remote and I turned out mostly pretty fine so. 

The time we picked up bubbles and prescription drugs from the pharmacy and also did extreme sports

The time we met and fell in love with Julie, who is now on our Top 5 List of Favorite Park Dogs.

Loungewear

We're moving and I'll miss this light


~

Early on Saturday morning I went in to the office to get some work done in blessed, beautiful solitude. For some reason though, my alarm code wouldn't work and the alarm went off and I kept putting my code in over and over and getting sweaty as one does when they set off an alarm and I woke up my boss and eventually we got it sorted out and I did many hours of work and then I went to get my baby and eat tacos and pack boxes.

Earlier this week, I stopped at three different ATMs on my way home from work (yes that's right, twice in one week and I hate it but also love it but also hate it) and none of them would give me any money. In fact, they all had pretty rude things to say about errors and rejections. So I just came straight home and told the sitter that I couldn't pay her because I'm barely an adult and need a sitter myself and she said that she believed me based on the contents of my fridge and that it was okay I could pay her later and then she went home.

I realized as I was washing dishes last night that I'd been trying to disarm the security system with my debit pin and entering my alarm code into the ATM machines.

That's it, that's the story.

March in Montauk is, as the young folks would say, such a mood. 

(...are any young folks still saying that? A few months ago I went through my closet and unearthed a pair of brand-new AE leggings in a dusty rose color that I'd ordered in a size too small and never got around to returning. I thought to myself, "I know a teenage girl who would love these." Let me tell you something, I have never once in my life done a more wrong thing than forget that I'm thirty-two now and teenage girls don't necessarily think I'm cool even if I've let them borrow some books that their mom would maybe frown on if she'd read them herself. Teenage girls didn't think I was cool when I was a teenage girl, so I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway I sold the leggings to a nice lady on Mercari and used the proceeds to buy Joe a princess crown so it all ended okay don't worry.) 

So as I was saying, late winter/early spring at the tippity top of Long Island turned out to be exactly as socially distant as we thought it'd be. I'm already planning a solo trip for next winter - I'm thinking January this time, just me and a stack of books and a series of hot beverages and for breakfast every morning I'll go back and see Elaine the World's Most Reluctant Waitress and this time I WILL buy a t-shirt that says "I Flip For John's Pancakes" because Diego won't be there to tell me I can't. 

Speaking of Diego, we got into an argument on this trip. It was still a fantastic trip. We even extended our stay, although we left the resort and spent the last night at "Born Free Suites by the Sea" which I highly recommend for its price point off season, proximity to the ocean and to the liquor store, and the Paw Patrol beach toys in the closet. Just thought I'd share that, because you rarely see pictures of it but adult couples do in fact have arguments and still love each other so let's normalize getting pissed off and spending the night in different beds (I got the bigger better one that wasn't a pullout in the living room part of a suite but it had a toddler in it so not sure who really got the better deal there) and then spending the next morning still kind of pissed off but then sort of getting over it over the course of a few hours and some good coffee and deciding to like each other again even though the things you were pissed off about are Still Things. It helps even more to go to Montauk Brewery and drink beer out of paper cups at a playground across the street. Should I be a couples counselor? Yes I think so too. 

Other than our long weekend at the beach, our days have been pretty much the same as they've been for the last year. Every single time we walk to the park I thank the baby Jesus and all of his friends for weather that's nice enough to be outside in and for playgrounds where I trust that the other parents are still being as careful as we are. (Although, you can clearly see where we've all hit our thresholds for germ control. For example, the other day a group of us somehow wound up sitting on the ground in a loose circle while a bunch of the toddlers played with somebody's Easter eggs and there were two babies there too and one of them crawled over onto the other one's blanket and I swear to Bob Dilyn those babies HUGGED and we all screeched because it was the absolute cutest and I just wish I'd gotten a photograph because everyone deserves to see fat babies bump into each other.) 

People in other parts of the country and on other parts of the planet are having enormously different experiences than mine right now in this spot. (People in other parts of the city I'm in are having enormously different experiences than mine. Because that's how it always is. Because of how the world works. My goodness I am terribly smart and observant this morning.) March 2020 in New York City was a fucking trip - I remember how I felt watching the ESB blink red into my bedroom window, and so I can't blog about our weekend at the sea shore without acknowledging that the pandemic is still and always has been very real. If we're not wearing masks in these photos, it's because we're outside and are the only people around. NOT because I don't like them. Which, I do and I don't - I quite like walking down the road making faces that no one can see, but that's just me.

Look, I stayed home for literal months. Diego changed his clothes in the hallway every time he came home from work and showered before even saying hello. We didn't know anything so we had to just do everything, you know? And yes, I have Feelings about The Rules and The Way They Are Enforced But Sometimes Not, etc. But I just do my best. And I trust everyone else to also do their best, and I try very hard to remember that we all only see moments of each other's day and not the whole picture and it makes it easier to have compassion which is something I need to work on in general anyway so it's good practice. I will continue to wear a mask and stay the F away from people (Baby Joe hasn't seen her grandma or her uncle since Christmas 2019) until I'm fully vaccinated (FIRST APPOINTMENT THIS SUNDAY WHAT WHAT) and even then, you know, keep doing all the things. As we all should, because even if your cousin and your mom and you and your neighbor all had covid and "were fine," that isn't the case for everyone. 

It's difficult for me that there are people who refuse to even try and understand that, but I will not use potty words. I will just let you know that sometimes, in spite of my best intentions, potty words do cross my mind.

Well this turned into something I didn't know it was going to. It feels nice to be writing aimlessly, though. I threw these photos into this draft a few days ago and thought, "I'll come back later and craft some silly little paragraphs for in between the pairs of photos because I like the way that looks." 

I opened my computer to do some actual work, but nothing seemed more urgent than finishing my coffee and a blog post while Joe stands directly on top of the television and drinks too much orange juice. Actually no, that's a lie - I opened my computer to see what the weather looks like for today, and got distracted by work, and then got irritated and switched over to this. I will repeat a version of that for the rest of the day until I eventually crawl into bed to play Breath of the Wild until I pass out. 

I have started going in to the office once a week, and it honestly reminds me of when I went back to work after maternity leave and going to work felt like a break. That wore off pretty quickly as I imagine it will again, but I'll enjoy the feeling while it lasts. We're not "officially" open so there aren't many people there during the day, which is extra lovely because it's nice and quiet and I actually get a ton done while I'm there. Diego has been moving his schedule around to be home with Joe on those days, but we're going to start having the woman who used to work at her daycare come watch her so we can both work AND so she can start to get used to being around other adults again. She's still got another year before preschool, and I'm not sure if I'll be ready to put her into daycare any time this year. It just... depends. Like so much else. 

I was only joking before about her standing directly on top of the television but now she's dragged her little stool over to the tv stand and really is climbing up there so I should probably take her outside to climb on stuff that won't shatter or electrocute her. WHAT A GOOD MOM, I know. 

I'm writing this whilst listening to Joe rhythmically kick her headboard in the other room. Naps have become a real crapshoot around here - sometimes she conks out for two and a half hours, and sometimes she pops out of bed as soon as I leave the room and knocks over furniture until I let her out. It's not something I'm overly concerned about because her nighttime sleep is good, and it's actually nice that she can skip naps now without turning into a gremlin because it's one less thing to schedule our day around. However, losing that chunk of time during the day is a real wrench in the works-from-home. Which in turn impacts how much time I have for myself overall WHICH was already basically none WHICH is fine, it's all fine. Everything. Is. Fine.

Speaking of work, usually I do a few things on Saturday and Sunday to make up for all the time I spend at the playground during the week except that this weekend the remote server is down so I can't get in so all the things are just continuing to pile up and there's not a whole lot I can do about it but again, you know, fine. 

WE SAID IT'S FINE.

We bought a new stroller yesterday. I got our last one online while I was still on maternity leave and it's been fine but Joe is starting to outgrow the straps. Since my main/only requirements of a stroller are that it be large enough to fit Joe and light enough to carry up stairs and onto trains, I'm sort of limited to strollers geared toward traveling which don't usually have a lot of passenger amenities. (I'd get an umbrella stroller, only I use the thing every single day and we need the sun shade/storage space/cupholder. Are you bored to death yet? This is who I am now. Sry about it!) Anyway I wanted to look at some in person this time so we went to Buy Buy Baby and while I was off to the side explaining the mamaRoo to a fascinated Joe, Diego picked out one he liked and was already having the sales lady call it up to the register by the time I got back. 

Many hours later, I finally watched the last episode of The Handmaid's Tale (I had to take a long break because my postpartum hormones couldn't handle it) and wouldn't you know that June and Lawrence had a conversation that was almost word for word what mine was with Diego in that moment:

"You are not in charge. I am."

I'm going to lie down with the cat now. Peas be with you

Did I live with you in a past life? 

Was I your lifelong partner?

Is that why the idea of losing you torments me so much?

 

How long have I been without you?

- GABRIELA MISTRAL (IN A LETTER TO DORIS DANA)

 

Yesterday we walked to the store to buy more oranges. They're a fan favorite these days and the more I buy the more get eaten, which means many trips to the bulk store which is okay because that's where the good slides happen to be. 

Joe put her tiny warm hand in mine and I sucked in cold air and stifled a mild panic attack because it occurred to me how precious it is, the freedom to walk my daughter to the store to buy oranges. All of the separate, fragile pieces of that freedom - healthy bodies, money to buy things, time to go. Relative safety.

In my dream last night there were lots of people waiting in lots of lines in different rooms of a building where the hallways always led to different places. You had to take a test in order to get a vaccine, and the cost of the vaccine depended on what you scored on the test. I got a low score, which was good and the price that printed out on my little ticket was very low. "It doesn't mean anything," I kept telling the people around me. "I've always been really good at taking tests." I got to the desk where I was supposed to pay and get the shot but realized I forgot my bag in the last room. I spent the rest of the dream trying to get back to to the room where my bag was. I did find it, but then I couldn't get back to the room with the shots.