non sequiturs

You've been warned. The past week has been one of those stretches of time where I've felt incredibly busy although I really don't have much to show for it. My in-laws came to visit over the weekend so I spent a good portion of Saturday morning cleaning in order to have the place look decent for their arrival but today I find a colony of ants on our kitchen floor picking up every stray crumb, if I could train them to march it over to the garbage and then march right out of our house through the crack at the bottom of the door they could stay. But I don't think that's going to happen. So now I'm going to have to look up humane ways of getting rid of them which seems like an oxymoron and always makes me think of Temple Grandin and her work on designing humane slaughterhouses for cows, she's been on NPR and Oliver Saks wrote about her, very interesting lady. So yeah, I've been a bit of a whirling dervish lately and I think this post is going to come out sounding the same. When my father-in-law was packing up their bags to drive back to Huntingdon he wound up inadvertantly packing up my diaper bag, with my wallet in it, so while I wait for it to get back to me via priority mail I'm driving without a license and using Toby's Discover card and am always on guard that I'll suddenly be arrested for driving without a license or using my husband's credit card. Being a rules based person this is risky living for me, before you know it I'll be wearing a thong and stilettos. No, like the ants that won't happen either, my butt and flat feet would never let me get away with that. And speaking of my butt I've been reading about smart lipo, where you get shots and your fat melts away, sounds sort of suspect to me yet vaguely appealing too because the backs of my thighs aren't what they used to be. I wish I could have appreciated being skinny when I was because now I'm not and I can see that I was clearly insane to think I had big thighs when I was wearing a size 4. I frequently feel like I've got maternal ADD. I never used to feel so scattered until I had children. I am not one of those parents who can carry on a conversation blithely while their children are off playing. I'm constantly on guard for the next catastrophe that might befall my clumsy progeny so I tend to not hear what someone has said or will cut myself off midthought in order to rescue Oona from falling off one thing or another at the playground. I love my children to pieces and I love being a Mom, even though it has increased my anxiety considerably, but there are times when I wish I could carve out more of an identity for myself aside from being a Mom who worries constantly and curses a blue streak while driving. I feel like I've changed so much since becoming a Mom. There's the superficial, physical changes - people talk about smoking and skipping sunscreen having a detrimental effect on your skin, having two kids to fret about and getting melasma during both my pregnancies has ravaged my face. Um and there's no way without surgical intervention that a Mom who has breastfed will have perky boobs afterwards, at least that's my excuse. So my outward appearance is a bit bigger and crumpled with a frumpy wardrobe and personality wise I'm not nearly as much fun. I'm quieter than I used to be. I think I'm kinder and more thoughtful and a better listener but at the same time I'm also much more judgmental, which is horrendous because that judging doesn't get me anywhere and more often than not just makes me feel worse about myself. I'm trying to get back into reading which I truly love and is something I miss a lot since becoming a Mom so you'll see my book link, I figure if I put up what I'm reading I'll feel compelled to finish it.

So back to the beginning (of this post) when the in-laws visited Toby's brother and our neice came over to visit (her Mom was busy with schoolwork) and we gave the two girls a bath together which started out good but quickly devolved into crocodile tears. Poor girls, they're 4 weeks apart in age and I feel this has set them up for a lifetime of comparisons, at least that seems to be the way things are going so far. Ugh. Toby and I are looking to put our house on the market next summer and to move out to the suburbs because the public schools in the city are less than stellar and I can't deal with cars driving by once it get warm and blasting music at a decibel that makes our windows shake. Plus our neighbors across the street (two young guys, I'm guessing early twenties? and an older man in his forties maybe?) just put a confederate flag sticker and Germany sticker on their monster truck. Nothing says class like advertising that you're a white supremist! I never recall seeing confederate flag stickers in the NJ/NYC area (Toby thinks I'm crazy on this point) but here I see quite a few, usually on American made trucks and frequently driving around in my neighborhood. GRRR!!! I just want to beat people that put that shit on their cars, it's so offensive. I told Toby I had an idea about making ribbon magnets for cars that said Ugly American and giving them out for free so people could randomly place them on Hummers and racists driving monster trucks. It really should be an actual bumper sticker but I can't commit to something which could damage a car even if the person driving the car is an ass! As I said earlier... busy week, not much to show for it.