I realized that all these years, I had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck me under and drag me out to sea.
I’m continuing with the Happiness Project idea of choosing a Word For The Year.
Two years ago my word was JOY. In the face of becoming a full time stay-at-home-mom with a gross social deficiency in making friends with other women, moving to a new town, supporting John in opening his own law practice, buying a house while still owning two-thirds of an unsold condo, and hitting year two of birth control induced hormonal imbalance, I needed to focus on looking on the bright side. Hah.
You know I’m a sucker for a brand new calendar. I get excited about re-starts. A new journal. Empty gradebook. Clean sheets. Serenity now.
So obviously I’m not against New Year’s Resolutions. I tend to make them and I tend to keep them. In my adult life, the secret to my success has been to focus on but one resolution for the year, and to make it realistic.
I can only remember a few specifics.
There is, yet again, so much to write about.
But somehow, a human who only weighs about nine and a half pounds is trumping all things that seem important. Right now.
Forgive me if posts get a little out of order here.
A week ago, a whole bunch of kids were shot at school.
Though I was home all day, I didn’t hear about it until after three o’clock. Carter and I had just picked up Eliott and it came on the radio. It was the top-of-the-hour news brief on what is normally a pretty tame radio station, and I wasn’t paying much attention. Eliott immediately tuned in to “children” and “shot” and started asking questions.
I am t-minus five days until official due date and so freaking restless I looked at both the plunger and some long handled kitchen tongs in a new light this week. I can’t say there is a lot of difference this time, from the first two. I had the same kind and the same length of morning sickness with all three (exactly sixteen weeks). I probably have generally gained about the same amount of weight and look basically the same as I did with the first two.
I’m not sure why I’m so restless. Have definitely had more general pain this time around (back pain, mostly, but also that kind of pain that feels like you’ve fallen on the cross bar of your bike, only from the inside out). But otherwise, this isn’t like the worst pregnancy in the world.
Thursday November 15th
11:35am: Hang up customer service phone call.
3:25pm: Email
Directions for your recent return: please select from one of the following methods for returning merchandise [Eddie Bauer Carseat Protectors (2)]: (1.) Print this confirmation email and make return in store. (2.) Follow the link below to print your return shipping label. Note: shipping charges will be deducted from your return total and applied to your original method of payment.
Alternate title: Why Target Can Go to Hell
I do this every single time I have a baby.
Curse, this store, I mean.
Continue reading “Why Only Half of Us will Be Shopping at Target in the Afterlife”
Today’s pet peeves are brought to you by radio interviews with allegedly “educated” individuals, as well as actual published print material edited by people who claim to have degrees in things like English and journalism. I can’t take it anymore.
You could let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here. -Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
I often envy many of my friends here in the south, who chose to go to college close to home, and have since settled and are raising their children within mere miles of family and life-long friends. Though John and I are both somewhat adventurous by nature, and moving far from home has not been difficult for us (socially or otherwise), there are times when it is easy to throw myself miniature pity-parties in the name of access to free family babysitting, holiday visitations that require getting together for a big meal then promptly returning to our very own beds the same night, or simply the ease of conversation that comes in the presence of someone who knew me before I was Mrs. John Wait, or Eliott’s mom.
This is why, it does not cease to amaze me, that in the seven years we have been married, and in the three different cities we have lived, somehow John and I have managed to find ourselves among people who embrace us like they do their own family.
I have just about made the full switch to absolute and total mall avoidance at the holiday season. It could be Hanes Mall itself that has finally done me in, what with it being the most major retail shopping center in Winston-Salem, and ever so stupidly placed less than a mile down the road from all things non-department store (aka: Target, Kohl’s, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, and Sam’s Club).
It could also be the fact that I lack compassion for most people, generally speaking, but especially high concentrations of stupid people. Driving cars.
Not sure what our city planners were thinking when they decided to put everything you might ever need in a holiday shopping trip at the single crossroads of two main streets (and just off the highway for that matter), but I’d put money on the fact that it’s enough to cause Mother Theresa herself to mutter four letter words under her breath.
In the name of Fall, and what I assume is a hormonally induced burst of creativity, I have found myself in Goodwill and Joann’s Fabrics more times this month than I have all year. I have wielded felt, a hot glue gun, duct tape, and duct tape sheets. And thanks to Google Images, I’ve surprised myself, artistically speaking.
Without further ado, I’d like to provide evidence that as the cleanest most type-A parents to ever live, every once in a while, we aren’t total deadbeats in the name of fun. (What you do not see pictured is the stick horse we created for Kindergarten Wild West Day, nor the backup costume that doubled as Hey Diddle Diddle, the CAT and the Fiddle for Nursery Rhyme Party Day. Perhaps an update, soon.)
The UnderToad 