Tightening My Belt

Everyone is in cutting-back mode. It's tough, after a few flush years there - the economy was booming, I was working full-time, there seemed to be plenty of money to go around. But now I'm reminded daily that I need to be conserving.

I started writing down everything I eat and everything I spend these days, because I read somewhere that this is a proven effective method for reducing such activities. It's supposed to give you the willpower not to reach for that extra cracker or make that impulse purchase, because you know you'll have to write it down later. Alas, it does not seem to be working for me so far. I just gamely list my consumption at the end of the day: "3 handfuls potato chips, 1 slice cheesecake, Heath bar..."

Another strategy is to be willing to put even the smallest bit of food back into the fridge. This is what my parents do (and they're not even trying to cut back). When I visit them, I find things in their fridge that I would never have bothered to put away - like two spoonfuls of pasta sauce in a little Tupperware container, or a slice of apple. I would just scarf that stuff down and wash the pot.

Then there's the strategy of finishing everything in your cupboards and fridge before you go shopping. It's supposed to ensure that you really use what you buy, instead of letting it expire.

Finally, you can always just be too busy/tired to fix something to eat, which is how I am today. And it's only Tuesday.

Mama Bear

Now that my daughter is walking, trips to the playground or around the neighborhood are potentially a lot more exciting for her, because sometimes I let her out of the stroller to walk part of the way. It takes roughly 10 times as long, of course, because she stops to investigate every leaf, crack in the sidewalk, piece of litter, or ant that she sees in her path - and often stops dead in order to point at a dog or squirrel, or turns around and walks the other direction. But she loves it. She'll toddle down the sidewalk doing little shrieking giggles of joy that she can get places under her own power, and is being allowed to do so.

Then we get to the playground. When she was little, the only thing she could really do was sit in the swing while I pushed her. Now she can toddle around in the sandbox, pick up toys, climb the steps on the junglegym, even go down the slide on her belly. All of this stuff is so much fun for her. I stand around watching her with a stupid grin on my face, or sometimes try to make conversation with the other moms there.

The other kids are often a pain though. Part of the reason we go is for her to see some other people her age and get some socialization practice. But there are usually some kids just a little older than her, like 3-year-olds, who are stuck in the "Mine!" phase and aren't much fun to play with. When they see her coming, they immediately grab away all the toys and glare at her. If she does manage to get her hands on a little plastic shovel or something, she generally goes up to the closest other kid and holds it out. She assumes they'll take it and say "thank you" and then hand it back in a minute, the way we do when she gives us stuff. But the kids never hand it back, they just snatch the toy away. She stares at them, then looks up at me in bewilderment, plainly saying, Is that okay, what just happened? Or are you going to do something about it?

I always wonder - am I supposed to step in? Should I pull a toy away from someone else's kid, possibly making them scream or cry, in order to give it back to my kid? Because I'm a nonconfrontational sissy, I usually just smile encouragingly at her, as though nothing happened. Or I try to find something else to give her, but often the older kid immediately snatches that from her too. Grr. I want to kick sand in those kids' eyes.

Then there are the kids in the 5-7 year age range who are roughhousing, who are so busy chasing each other around the playground that they occasionally run right over her, knocking her down. Usually boys. But there was a girl last week who, in a fit of pique, threw a toy at my daughter's head. And there was a kid of unknown gender who threw open a gate, smacking it into her so that she fell to her knees. I rushed to pick her up and comfort her as she sobbed. The kid's mom was right there and I expected her to at least tell her kid "oh be careful honey," but she didn't.

I think I'm so used to being easygoing and letting other people call the shots in social interactions that I'm expecting, all the time, the other parents to do something about their little darlings' behavior. I know if my daughter took a toy away from some other baby, I would take it from her and hand it back. But the other parents never seem to step in. And I just feel weird about disciplining other people's kids. I'm scared that some kid will go running to his mom: "That lady took my shovel!" What's wrong with me, that I'm afraid of 3-year-olds? Where's my fierce mother instinct?

Holidays

I was thinking of "home for the holidays" the other day, and I got an amazing rush of holiday nostalgia. Winter sun slanting in through the bay window in the living room. Music playing from the stereo, so lively and bright in the morning that no one wants to sleep in. The smell of bread and cookies baking. The cheerful, warm clatter of activity in the kitchen, my mom emanating a sense of comfort and peace as she bustles around. The knowledge of days off from school stretching ahead, and the prospect of family meals, presents, or other special activities. Most importantly, all of us being together. It seems like we need a special occasion to all join in a common pursuit. Normally my brother disappears into his room, my dad is watching TV so unavailable for conversation, and it ends up being my mom and me chatting in the kitchen - which is nice, but I like it when it's all of us.

I wonder if you ever manage to recreate that feeling of comfort in your second family - the one you build with your own spouse and children. So much of feeling happy at the holidays, for me, was basking in the sense of being cared for, of being a small cherished piece of the family unit. When I'm in charge of recreating that for my child, I can do it, I think - but will it feel as comforting for me?

Maybe I'll just enjoy it vicariously through her. I've noticed that many of the joys of parenthood come from living vicariously as your child discovers things. It sounds like it wouldn't be as good as experiencing things yourself, but actually I think it is. I get this huge glow of pride and happiness whenever she's happy.

Starvation

I just came across a picture online that breaks my heart. When I saw it, I almost started crying. It's a photo of a baby in the last throes of starvation, all heavy head and stick-thin legs, trying to crawl toward a United Nations food camp while a vulture watches in the background. The baby looks too young to even know how to crawl yet. According to the caption the camp was a kilometer away. I wish I was there so I could pick up that baby and carry it to the camp myself. Or adopt it. I can almost feel how its bony little body would feel in my arms, how I would be afraid of cracking a rib as I carried it.

How can photographers take pictures of things like that and then just walk away? (As this one did - he apparently left the scene immediately after taking the picture so no one knows what happened to the child.) I know their job is only to document misery, not to alleviate it, that they don't have the resources to save every starving child they see, that they can't save one and leave others behind... but still. How could he not have intervened this once to carry the child that 1-kilometer distance that meant the difference between life and death? I know it's not that he wasn't affected by the scene. This particular photographer committed suicide just a short time later, alluding in his suicide note to the overwhelming pain in the world. He's right about that. The capacity for suffering in this world seems to have no limit.

Why I Don't Mind Paying Taxes

Baby on my hip, I walked cheerfully out of the bank, holding up my car keys and jingling them to amuse her. "Keys," I said cheerfully as I unlocked the car. I tossed them on the front seat to have my hands free for buckling her into her car seat. Then I kissed her on the forehead and slipped into what biologists term a fixed action pattern: locked the car doors, shut them firmly, and walked around to the driver's side, reaching into my pocket for my keys as I went. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no! There was my baby, grinning up at me from the back seat. There were the car keys, sprawled on the front seat. There were the four doors, firmly locked. Ahhhh!

As the first jolt of panic hit my heart, I ran around the car trying the doors anyway. Of course none of them opened. Then I ran back into the bank. There were tons of people standing around in the lobby waiting, but my stride got the attention of the employee at the main desk, who glanced up at me in alarm. "I just locked my baby and my keys in my car! Can I use your phone?" I blurted. The phone didn't have a long enough cord to reach the counter, but he was nice enough to dial the number for me and hand me the receiver.

Quickly, I told my husband what had happened. He has the only other key for the car. "Can you come meet me?" I asked. But how? We only have one car, and we live about a mile from the closest train station. He would have to catch a bus to the station, then it would be a 45 minute ride to the closest station to me, then he still would have no way to get to the bank. As we talked, I thought of the sun beating down into the car. Of course, I had parked in the sun. "There used to be a spare key hidden on the car," he remembered. It was in one of those magnetic boxes you stick under the front bumper. "I'll go look," I said, and hurriedly hung up.

A few minutes later, I was road tar and oil up to the elbow, and my hands were bleeding from brushing over the fragments of glass embedded under the bumper. I couldn't find the box, though. I think it probably fell off years ago.

Next I sized up the car windows and tried to decide which one to break. If I could smash the little one in the back, I could probably reach in and unlock the door. But I couldn't see anything in the parking lot that looked sturdy enough to smash a car window with. No rocks or chunks of asphalt or anything. I also felt anxious about putting a rock through a window when my daughter's car seat was right there - even if it's supposed to be safety glass.

I ran back into the bank. The bank guy winced slightly as he noticed the oil and grease all over my hands, but he dialed for me and handed me the receiver again. "I can't find it!" I told my husband. He advised me to call the police. So in a minute I found myself speaking to a 911 dispatch operator. "Is the baby in distress?" she asked. "Not yet," I said. In fact, the baby had fallen asleep at this point, but that didn't diminish my panic much.

It probably only took a few minutes for help to arrive, but it seemed like ages. I leaned over the back of the car and tried to block the sun with my body while I waited. Inside the car, I could see my daughter's face was red and there were droplets of sweat beaded on her brow. She flopped around uneasily in her sleep. Finally, in the distance, I heard a siren - gradually getting louder - oh my gosh, is that for me? I had expected a single cop car. Instead, there was a giant rescue squad ambulance van, about as big as a fire engine but without the ladder. It took up most of the parking lot. A couple of guys in their early twenties hopped out and came over to the car, and, with a nod of greeting at me, started working on the problem.

First they wedged a tool that looked like an ice scraper into the side of the door and levered it open as far as possible. Then they used a pump to crack it open even more. With a wire they tried to roll down the window or jiggle the lock mechanism open. Minutes passed. After a while one of them glanced at me and spoke for the first time, with a sheepish grin: "It usually doesn't take this long." At least now I know the car is hard to steal. It took multiple tries with different tools from their kit, and about 10 minutes of work, before the door suddenly popped open. "Yes!" one of them said.

Quickly I opened the back door and hauled the car seat out so my baby could get some air. I gushed some thanks to the rescue guys, who were all business ("all in a day's work, ma'am") as they headed back to their van. The bank customers who were standing around watching the scene dispersed. I drove to my parents' house, which was nearby, so I could call my husband back and reassure him.

Later that afternoon, I got a couple of spare keys made. Of course, this will probably never happen again. But if it does, I'll be ready. And in the meantime, yea for 911 and emergency rescue services!

Umbrella Angel

When I stepped out the front door, it wasn't raining. When I got on the bus, it wasn't raining. But on the way to work, the skies opened. By the time I arrived at my stop, it was a torrential downpour - water sluicing off the top of the bus down the windshield, wipers barely able to keep up - and I didn't have an umbrella. I scurried over to a nearby cafe and took shelter under their awning while I tried to figure out what to do next.

My office was three blocks away. First I thought I should just make a dash for it, but I saw a few people splashing along the sidewalk without umbrellas, and they were soaked to the skin. One guy was wearing a nice suit, plastered to his skin. I didn't have any dry clothes at the office that I could change into. I tried holding my backpack over my head and made a quick foray out, but the rain was so intense that after only a few steps I ran back. I wondered if I should just wait it out, but worried that it might be a while.

While I was standing there in an agony of indecision, a woman walked up to the cafe under a big umbrella. I barely glanced at her, but envisioned a perfect world in which she would just give me her umbrella. In this world she would say, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

Then she said it again, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

I turned and realized she was actually talking to me. She said, "You can bring it back later. I'll be here until six." She gestured at the cafe and I realized she was an employee there. I said, "Really?" I couldn't believe my luck. Here was a total stranger offering me salvation. I practically fell over myself thanking her. It was a good umbrella too, one of those great big ones that stretches out about two feet on all sides.

Walking toward my office, I felt flooded with gratitude. Whenever something happens to make me think that people aren't particularly nice - like that boy in the library - I get a reminder that indeed, most of them are, and that nice things happen far more frequently than not-nice things.

The office routine was petty, and my boss was in a foul, vengeful mood, as she has been for the past few months. But I felt like I was just floating above it. Nothing could touch me. I took the umbrella back at noon, and passed it over the counter to her along with a bunch of flowers. She's my umbrella angel.

Recapturing the Innocence

The other night we went out to dinner. Usually I check to see if I'm wearing a clean shirt as we head out the door and that's it, but this time I felt like dressing up a little more. I put on a flirty little dress from my college days, and some makeup, and even a necklace. I felt like I was trying to be pretty for my husband to remind him what it was like when it was just the two of us out on a date.

Of course it ended up being our usual dinner out, tag-teaming, one of us eating while the other held the baby and tried to keep her from fussing. It was late and she was tired and fidgety. No romantic gazes across the table; we were too busy keeping water glasses out of her reach and snatching forks and knives from her fretful grasp. No stimulating conversation either; we talked about her nap schedule and how many Cheerios she'd eaten that day. As soon as the check came, we hustled out of there. That's life with a baby.

Next week we're going on vacation - without her. I'm going to miss her terribly. I won't be able to just let go and enjoy this trip as fully as I did our honeymoon (the last trip we went on) just because part of my heart will still be at home. But it will be good for us to get away and reconnect.

In a way this trip will be about recapturing that time when it was just the two of us. But I don't have any illusions about those days. People always sigh and say about their pre-kid life, "Oh, it was so great." In reality, I remember feeling pressured and anxious all the time, worried that he wouldn't want to marry me, that I was getting older, that we wouldn't be able to have children. Overall, despite the stress of everyday existence, I'm happier and more relaxed now than I was then.

Snub

Yesterday, in the library, my daughter took a shine to a 10-year-old boy who was picking out books. She toddled up to him (yes, she walks now!) and tried to catch his eye, giving him a winsome smile. He walked away, so she followed him. I went after her and found him crouched down pulling out another book from a low shelf, while she watched him. She was grinning - she likes kids, even big kids. I smiled at him too, kind of a "my baby likes you!" smile that I've shared with cashiers, old ladies on the street, and various other people she has flirted with. But the boy just looked back at me stone-faced and said, "Can you take him away."

The smile crumbled off my face as I said sure and picked her up. I wanted to snap at him, "It's a girl!" or "She wasn't bothering you, just looking," or "This is public space, you know." I know not everyone likes kids, and not everyone is going to think my kid is cute. I don't expect that. All the same, the rejection hurts. I felt glad that she's so little she didn't understand she was being rejected - all she knew was that I picked her up and took her away.

I guess it will be even harder when she's old enough to recognize rejection for what it is - when a preschool friend doesn't want to play with her, or the other girls in her class don't think she's cool, or when she's grown and a man she loves doesn't want her. I don't know how I'll help her deal with those things. All I can think to say is, "But *I* love you!" and sometimes Mom's love just isn't enough.

Money Again

Recently I was reading about debt and savings. Just a couple of generations ago, most Americans lived within their means and even were able to sock away some savings every year. It must have been a great feeling of security to know that, even if your daily grind wasn't much fun, you were "making progress" all the time toward a better lifestyle and a comfortable retirement.

Now, it seems like everyone has thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and everyone is signing up for first-time-homeowner mortgages that are about 20 times my annual salary. I come across articles all the time about people who, after decades of hard work, had no savings to show for it and were plunged into bankruptcy by an unexpected illness or the loss of a job. And the housing market is swooping around like a rollercoaster. One couple we know bought a house a few years ago, then watched as the value of their house plunged to half of the mortgage they had committed to.

Whenever I read those articles, I eagerly check out the tips for saving money at the end - but it's always mundane things like brewing your coffee at home instead of going out every day, or trying to carpool instead of driving to work by yourself. I don't drink coffee and I ride the bus. And those things really don't save much money, anyway. I can't pat myself on the back for my coffee-free lifestyle or my lack of credit card debt because people who DO go to Starbucks every day generally earn a lot more than I do. And they have much greater earning power and potential for advancement. I feel like, even though I have a solid education and a good work ethic, I'm incapable of earning any more money than I do now. I can't envision a job I would be capable of landing and doing competently that would pay more than the one I have now. I had a lot of potential back when I was in school. It bothers me a bit that I seem to have maxed out now at such a low level.

Wasting Money

I've decided I can't be trusted with money. I have made some stupid decisions recently that I wish I could undo.

First, I forgot to buy more minutes for my cell phone before last year's minutes expired, so I couldn't roll them over. And it was a lot of minutes. No amount of begging and pleading with the phone company convinced them to give me my minutes back once I realized what had happened, two days after they had expired. Man! If only I had remembered in time! I just wasted the annual salary of a family in India, by letting that slip my mind.

I also got caught by one of those speed trap cameras. I was going 35 in a 30 mph zone and it cost me $40. There's the salary of a family in... uh.. Namibia.

I also seem to go on these spending sprees with food, mostly at farmers' markets where the produce is beautiful but the prices are high. Farmers' market food is a good thing to buy, but I don't need to buy as much of it as I do. My parents spent a weekend in New York and all they bought was a couple of bagels. They literally got by the whole weekend without buying anything else, because the hotel had a continental breakfast and they were "too tired" to bother going out to eat after a full day of activities. I am never too tired to eat. The amount of food that I buy and tote home and prepare for our family and eat, in huge heaping portions, is prodigious. We're only two people and an infant; there's no reason to go to the grocery store every few days or to spend several hours every evening puttering around in the kitchen. I bet I open and close the refrigerator 30 times a day. Good thing our utilities are included or I would be fretting about the electric bill too; as it is I only have to deal with the guilt of adding to climate change by wasting energy.

I also am not very savvy about investments. I just want to lock my money up for as long as possible, in some inaccessible location where I won't be tempted to spend it on organic rutabagas, speeding fines, or unused minutes. I think that really I should just gather up all my savings and give them to charity, before I fritter them all away.

Invisible

I just Googled myself, as I do from time to time, and was pleased to find that I'm still invisible to the all-seeing Eye of Google (like the Eye of Sauron, sweeping across the landscape). I don't have a Facebook page, and I don't show up on any alumni sites or even on my company's website, except on one obscure page that you have to be searching for in order to find. Anyone looking for me would have to conclude that I just vanished into thin air after graduation. I like that. Privacy is safety. I feel like I shed a lot of spam and baggage associated with my old life when I got married and changed my name, and so far the new one is clean and unknown to the spammers and stalkers of the world. I wish my daughter was as invisible as I am. Her name pops up on a few pages, unfortunately.

It's hard to articulate why I want to be invisible. It just seems better that way - as though, in a deep cool forest, I was walking without a trace, leaving no footprints, slipping through life untrackably.

The Worst Possible Outcome?

One of my coworkers just had a baby - well, his wife did. Last winter when I was talking with him about pregnancy and babies, he mentioned that they were going to have a natural childbirth. It's funny how emphatic some people are about it. He said, "We are going to go natural," and told me about the Bradley classes they were taking. Another coworker chimed in, "My wife went natural with all three of our kids. Women don't need epidurals and all that stuff. There's no reason more births shouldn't be natural."

I listened and nodded - indeed, during my pregnancy I was steeping myself in Ina May Gaskin's Spiritual Midwifery and a Bradley guide and many other resources that all said the same thing - , but when he said that I couldn't help thinking with a funny little shiver, what if labor goes differently from how you planned? How do you know it will all work out? It also seems odd for a man to be making those kinds of decisions for his wife. Since she's going to be experiencing the pain, it seems to me it should be entirely up to her. Of course, perhaps these guys were just repeating what their wives were saying, but it sounded to me like decisions they were imposing on their wives. And how can you ever require someone else's pain tolerance to live up to your preconceived ideal?

Anyway, after I had congratulated him and heard all about the new baby and gushed over the adorable pictures, I casually asked how labor and delivery went. He said, "It was, frankly, completely awful. She was stalled at 9 centimeters for hours and hours, we tried everything, but she just couldn't progress. So it was a C-section. The worst possible outcome. Very disappointing."

Again, I got a funny shiver in my spine, like he was disappointed not in the situation, but in her. I felt like saying, "I'm sure she did her best! How can you be disappointed, when she's given you this beautiful son?" I really felt for his poor wife. I think they were so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Bradley classes that they started thinking women who have C-sections are copping out, and no matter what I'm sure she feels his disappointment as a form of judgment on her.

I also wanted to say, "That's not the worst possible outcome! My goodness. The worst possible outcome is a dead baby. Or a brain-damaged baby. Or a dead wife." Birth is a scary, dramatic event where a lot of things can go wrong, very quickly, and the C-section he's regarding as a terrible stain on their record likely saved the lives of both his wife and child.

In the end I just made sympathetic noises and said, "But you have a wonderful healthy baby, and your wife is all right. And a few years down the line it really won't make any difference how it started." He said he guessed so.

It makes me feel glad, first of all, that I wasn't clinging so hard to any particular vision of how my labor and delivery would go that I would feel crushed afterward when the reality turned out different. And that my husband was so totally supportive of everything I wanted. And that I can look back on my own labor experience with such a happy, peaceful feeling.

Nice Things People Have Said

"What a cute baby!"
"She's adorable."
"You have a beautiful child."
Purrr. These are things that random strangers took the time to say to me as I was out walking around the neighborhood with my kid.

"Is she yours? Wow... you're so young."
Not really, but it sure is nice when people think that!

"You have body dysmorphia disorder. I think you look great."
- my husband, after listening to me bellyache about my belly

Ugh

Why is a visit to the DMV always such a soul-crushing experience?

Read This Book

I just finished reading an amazing book called The Diary of Ma Yan. It's the real diary of a thirteen-year-old girl living in a rural area in China, that was published after it fell into the hands of a journalist on a rare visit to the region. The area is so arid the government has declared it uninhabitable. About three million people still live there, scratching out a hand-to-mouth existence. Ma Yan describes her struggles to get an education, at a tiny school a 12-mile-walk from her home, and her deep admiration for her parents, whose ceaseless exhausting labor is barely enough to feed the family. She especially admires her mother, who has a serious medical condition that causes her such pain she occasionally sits down moaning in the middle of the wheat field she is harvesting - but the family can't afford to go to a doctor. No matter how hard the parents work, they are just one breath away from starvation. Ma Yan describes trying to concentrate on her studies when the only thing she has had to eat in the past 48 hours is a single bowl of rice.

I was awed and moved by this description. I felt like the discrepancy between this family's situation and our own - which until then I would have rated near the bottom among our circle of friends, since we are living in quite a small apartment with not even a separate bedroom for the baby - was extreme, nearly obscene. I looked around at all the evidence of wealth in our apartment, the Made-in-China baby toys, the fancy artisal organic cheese in the refrigerator that we are able to afford, the overflowing bookcases, the color TV and piles of CDs we hardly even have time to listen to. We have so much food that I complain about eating too much. It made me feel sick to think that I was munching away on blueberry tart while elsewhere in the world, young mothers my age are literally starving.

I can't imagine how all-consuming and horrific it must feel when your children are in real danger of illness and death, when your whole family is really just one catastrophe like an illness or a particularly bad drought away from destitution. It reminded me of the quote: "We all cultivate illusions of safety that could fall away in the knife edge of one second." (Barbara Kingsolver)

To assuage a bit of my guilt I called up one of those international aid agencies and pledged to sponsor a child in India. I have two other sponsored children, one in Brazil and one in Honduras. It isn't very much money and it only touches a few individual lives - when what we need to address the global disparity in wealth is huge sweeping reforms and changes to the global currents of trade. But I feel slightly better. Mainly I just wanted some family on the other side of the world to feel that they weren't suffering in utter loneliness.

Very Berry Good

Last week I went blueberry picking at a local farm and brought home six pounds of berries. They were sunwarmed and so ripe and plump they almost fell off the bush and into my bucket - and into my daughter's hands and mouth (I was wearing her in a harness on my front and she was reaching for the berries with both hands). Blueberries right off the bush are really different from the ones you get in the pint boxes at the store - much sweeter.

Now I need to do some serious situps to make up for my excesses. But blueberries are healthy, you say. Yes indeed they are, but as I found out when I got home and reached for my cookbook, the best ways to eat them - after right-off-the-bush - are: slathered with cream, baked in a tart, in a pie, in a cream cheese pie, rolled in sugar, etc. I made a blueberry jam crumble and a delicious blueberry jubilee tart that I have been noshing on all week.

So far I've been able to avoid bringing any more sugar into the house, though. I did all my baking using supplies on hand. This blog keeps me honest.

The Kiddie Years

There was a magician show just beginning in the children’s room at the library when I stopped by to return some books, so we stayed and watched it. It was so lame. The magician had to fill an hour, so he spent ages just warming up the crowd, getting the kids to chant his name, pretending not to be able to hear them until they yelled it, pretending to lose his magic box of tricks, getting everyone to sing the ABC song with him, asking the kids what their favorite colors were, etc. I can sympathize with the difficulty of entertaining 40 rambunctious toddlers and their associated nannies, mothers, and young siblings in laps. But the show was so lacking in content. Finally about 15 minutes in he did a trick where he pulled a scarf inside out and it changed color. Then he went back to having the kids chant his name.

My kid stared at him skeptically for a few minutes as the show was starting, then turned her back on him and spent the rest of the time looking at the baby sitting behind us. After 20 minutes I’d had enough as well, so we left.

Suddenly I felt acutely depressed – envisioning the years ahead of children’s theme birthday parties, sing-alongs, Disney stuff, Chuck E. Cheese outings, and so on that we will have to attend. You have to do these things with kids, right? I mean, she thought the magician was dumb. But soon enough I guess she’ll be into this stuff, and I'll just have to bear with it. I have to learn the stupid Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes song and that other one about the cheese standing alone, and find out who Dora and Hannah Montana are, and take her to Jonas Brothers concerts, or she’ll think I’m so uncool she won’t even be talking to me by the time she’s a teenager.

Maybe she'll turn out to be a weird socially awkward bookish child like I was, more interested in books and horse camp than boys, and so completely out of sync with her peer group that she doesn’t even notice she’s out of sync with them. Then I can give her all the horse books I loved as a kid, and we can bond over them.

Chocolate Rain

I went out with friends to a posh new restaurant specializing in chocolate. The menu has appetizers, salads, and five-course desserts all oriented around chocolate. It's amazing what variety there is - everything from chocolate vinagrette for the salads to grilled cheese topped with melted dark chocolate to chocolate-kahlua elixirs, and of course lots of desserts like fudge bars, white chocolate cheesecake, cream pie dusted with cocoa, and fruit plates decorated with curlicues of drizzled chocolate.

Most people order the themed five-courses, but in the spirit of restraint I just got a goat cheese and beet salad (yum) and the tiramisu. It was extremely good. One of my friends ordered the same thing but took some of the tiramisu home to her boyfriend, claiming that she was feeling ill from all the chocolate and couldn't finish it. I could definitely have eaten more chocolate. I can't really imagine having eaten so much chocolate that I couldn't eat a little more. I think I just have a higher tolerance for it because I habitually consume more. I'm like a smoker who can handle high levels of nicotine coursing through my system. She's thin as a rail and eats whole-wheat sandwiches with no mayo, carrot sticks, and small helpings of everything. Her body was probably like, "What IS this stuff?"

Most of the time I'm pretty happy with the way I look and with my food choices, but lately it has been more of a struggle. I feel myself descending into a newfound antagonism with food. I used to actually prefer healthy food. I never even liked chocolate very much until recently. But now, suddenly, I can't get enough of it. I crave fatty things like potato chips and cream and butter. I went into a Firehook Bakery last week and bought one of their giant chocolate espresso cookies. It seemed very unlike me, at least the old me, who I guess was like my chocolate-lightweight friend. The new me has a post-pregnancy belly bulge and a hummingbird's keenness for refined sugar. I even wander over to the kitchen at work sometimes just to see if there's any leftover food up for grabs.

I want to be better about all this stuff, embrace the no-mayo sandwiches and stop snacking all the time. I feel occasionally disgusted with myself when I look down at my paunch. Until recently I could justify the frequent eating with, "I have to keep making milk for the baby. Now's not the time to go on a diet." But now that she's a year old and is drinking formula and cow's milk in addition to breast milk, I could wean at any time.

What makes it hard is that I don't always feel strict with myself. Other times I look at myself and think I look fine, that there's no need to be extreme. Or, I simply feel unable to resist eating one more cookie.

Well, they say the first rule when you're in a hole is to stop digging. So here's my action plan. Starting now, I won't buy any more chocolate at the grocery store - even when the white chocolate bars that I love go on sale for $1 apiece and every cell in my body is urging me to stock up. No more ice cream or pound cake either. Or brownie mix.

I figure I can coast for a while on the cupboardful of sugar that I currently have. After that runs out, it will get hard. But I know that if you do a thing routinely, you start to enjoy it (which is the vicious cycle that has turned me into such a chocolate fiend), and if you can get out of the habit of it for a while, you stop enjoying it as much. So wish me luck - here I go!

The Shirt I Didn't Buy

There’s a thrift store across the street from where I live. It’s mostly old-lady clothes - saggy stirrup pants and garish blouses that smell like mothballs. But I still browse there occasionally; I've picked up some good deals from the children’s rack where most items are 10 or 25 cents.

I almost bought one toddler-size shirt not because it was cute but because it was just so awful. It had a picture of a pelican on it, and there was a flap of plastic attached to the shirt that was the top half of his beak, so you could lift it up and look inside his mouth. Inside, there were some shrimps hanging out at tables and drinking martinis, and there was a little stage with a jazz band (the performers were also shrimps). A banner across the top of the pelican’s beak proclaimed it to be “The See Food Lounge.” Hilarious! For 10 cents, I thought, I have to have this shirt. But oh my gosh it was ugly. In the end I didn’t think I could bring myself to put anything that ugly on my child. When I went back a couple weeks later, it was gone – so I guess someone else got a kick out of it.

Nature Deficit Disorder

I took the baby for a long walk yesterday. I felt the need to get out "in nature" - I was reading a book about camping in the Alaskan wilderness, and just wanted to be out somewhere quiet, in the cathedral-like gloom of a forest, with no one else around. The closest I could find was an old closed-off road that goes through a park. Technically pedestrians aren't supposed to go back there but it was the only woodland within walking distance of our apartment. So I headed down the road carrying the baby in the Snugli. Little birds flitted across the path in front of us. The wind shifted the trees overhead, making the patches of shadows dance. I thought about "the need to be versed in country things" and hoped that as we walked she might absorb some of the peacefulness of the setting and somewhere in her subconscious a love for solitude and nature might be sparked.

But five minutes into our walk there were things I couldn't tune out any more. Like the persistent honking of traffic from the highway next to us. And the regular pounding of hammers from a crew of roofers nearby, followed by the buzz of jackhammers from a construction site that we passed a little later. And the glimpses of houses on both sides through the trees. And the strong reek of raw sewage that apparently the city dumps directly into the creek (are they allowed to do that? really?). As the path dipped under an overpass, I saw a couple of orange construction cones and a sign that warned that this was a lead removal area, and that eating and drinking were forbidden. We kept walking, but we couldn't get away from it all. At all. I then began to worry that at this formative stage the baby might learn to associate woodland with the stink of sewage, and would grow up to hate nature.

Maybe we should move to the country. If we can find some place in the country with decent schools, liberal politics, and no confinement agriculture facilities nearby.