Saturday evening ramblings
As good parents who didn't plan ahead and get a sitter so we could go see "Walk the Line," we're enjoying a lovely Saturday night at home. Rick hung up his flight planning for the time being - he's a pilot and has a checkride on Monday - and is working a crossword in front of the fire. I'm trying to tackle the Christmas shopping, which I mostly do online. I have no problem paying USPS, UPS, and Fedex to save me trips to the mall. Part of the problem is that I haven't seriously shopped in so long that I forgot how to do it. I wear classical styles that are never out and never in, my feet are such a weird size that I can only buy shoes on the internet, and I was spending my disposable income on race entry fees and sports equipment instead of low-rise jeans...as a female grad student in engineering, I could curtail bathing and still look and smell better than most of by peers, so why make an effort? Then I was wearing maternity clothes, which are nearly deserving of their own blog, but suffice to say that I was lucky to borrow a "magic suitcase" full of nicely-cut Gap Maternity and saved myself most of the hassle.
Anyway, Rick's crossword brought me a revelation tonight. He asked what the French word for "hour" is, since my four years of high school French make me the local authority on all things Frog. It's "heure," which I pronounced as correctly as I can manage.
"What? How do you spell that?"
"Heure," which comes out resembling noises that I recall hearing around 3am on Sunday mornings in the coed bathroom in my freshman dorm. We had bathrooms for men, women, and both, and nobody wanted to trash their own gender's bathroom, so any "heure" took place in the coed one.
"Are you serious?"
It dawned on me that requiring five letters to spell a word that sounds like an unfortunate aftermath is ridiculous. As if being conquered by an American seven times doesn't make them look silly enough...and a Texan at that...
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Speaking of college freshman, tiny babies have a lot in common with the people who we hope they will not become in eighteen years or so, though I believe that it's better to work out one's stupidity in a car-free environment while surrounded by friends than to do it later when one has actual responsibilities above any beyond maintaining a scholarship and/or getting one's parents' money's worth. Tiny babies and drunk college freshman guzzle liquids, fuss when tired, pass out anywhere, don't care about any bodily functions that may sound, throw up at whim, and have to be carried home by more cognizant people.
The sleeping part is currently quite amusing as little Natalie is stuck face-down at a 45' angle in the corner of her crib, with one hand stuck out under the bumper on one side, and the other stuck out the adjacent side. I had to suppress a strong urge to gently tug a little finger and see what happens. Let sleeping babes lie. (In a freshman dorm situation, I would have yanked it.)
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I think the caffeine from half a cup of coffee and small piece of birthday cake is making me loopy. The cake has coffee ice cream, devil's food, Heath bar chunks, and chocolate ganache. It's heavenly and obscenely rich. My birthday is actually 8 days from now, but in my family, we practice Festivus Movus, and my birthday got moved to last Saturday, when my parents, brother, and sister-in-law were here. Rick and I went out for my birthday date on Friday and saw the new Harry Potter flick (me: loved it, but it makes more sense if you've read it; him: was confused, haven't read it). Over the years, we have moved numerous birthdays, and nudged Christmas a few days in either direction. We also have moved Thanksgiving several times, including once when it was in February because my dad was working in India for three months and my parents had plans to visit me over President's Day weekend. There's nothing wrong with making your own rules sometimes, and I'm a direct descendant of Gov. William Bradford of the Mayflower, so I can eat turkey whenever I want.
Anyway, I am about to turn 32. I don't really care. In fact, I was happy to hit 30. Finally, an age with some credibility. I enjoyed my 20's, but I have no desire to go out partying any more, and I still get carded in places that card everyone under 30 when I go buy my case of wine every so often. I think the early 30's are an excellent age bracket - old enough to know things but not really near 40 yet.
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Beef of the month for November: the electricians who installed the light switches in our house apparently do not live in houses themselves. They may not have had to worry about positioning light switched in their own dwellings, assuming that their dwellings came from a factory like most of those in Harnett County. For example, when the switch for the fan is outside the Throne Room, things are just wrong. I always forget to turn on the light before entering and usually just do my business in the dark, which doesn't really bother me, but still makes me mutter rude things about the stupid electricians at each visit.
Here we go...
I decided to start dumping my inner monologue on something other than the shower walls, so I may as well use the internet.
The feminism and women's liberation movements of the 1960's and 1970's gave rise to a new demographic, which has yet to be truly recognized. We're the Gen X moms. Our parents are baby boomers who may have rebelled in the 60's, but who did a reasonably good job of passing along solid American values. In many cases, they provided strong negative examples. (Out of all of my high school friends, only my parents and those of one other guy are still happily married to their original spouse; most of the divorces happened in the early 1990's, though some are more recent.)
We were encouraged to work hard, do well in school, and get jobs. We're older than the Gen Y boomerang kids who were overindulged and/or overprotected and are trying to maintain their parents' standard of living in overly expensive parts of the country. Many of us were never told that girls can't do math. The top 5 graduates in my high school class were female. Getting married and staying home with kids was never part of the discussion. I never really thought about life after college; that probably explains why I felt so lost after I finished my MS and was finally just going to a 7:30-4:30 job every day, with no real goal towards which to work (solution: started running marathons). I accidentally stumbled across my husband after years of dating some terrific guys, and finally learned what people mean when they say "you just know" when you have met the right person. He's almost 9 years older, and has been ready for kids for years. When I got fed up with the Air Force and decided to go back to school, he was very supportive, assuming that I would eventually come around.
Sometime in the spring of 2004, not long after I turned 30, the idea of a baby was suddenly no longer intimidating. Parenthood sounded like another great adventure, albeit a challenging, expensive, lifelong one, and I suppose I felt that I had had enough adventures to be able to settle down for a while. So at peak fitness, after my first season of bike racing and best season of triathlon (feeding my accomplishment-junkie streak and justifying beer/chocolate/wine consumption), I got pregnant. I hated being pregnant. Sure, it was nifty feeling a life growing inside of me and yada yada yada, but I saw it as a means to an end. I hated feeling sick and fatigued early on, and didn't enjoy blowing up, especially after years of working so hard to maintain my size. My due date and graduation date were the same, which provided some extra motivation to get through the PhD program. Natalie finally showed up 11 days after my "due date." I had a tough delivery (for the experienced: this included about 3 hours in transition, sans drugs) and was suddenly thrust into motherhood.
Plenty of women get to experience the helplessness, sleeplessness, and cluelessness of those first few weeks with a baby. Most forget it. Let me remind you: IT IS NOT FUN AT FIRST. I had no idea what I was doing, and fortunately had my mom around to at least make sure we ate. Babies are nonlinear systems, and don't come with a little monitor screen that says "HUNGRY" or "OVERTIRED." After all that education, I was in totally foreign territory.
Fortunately, Natalie was sweet enough to start sleeping through the night around 2 months, and I started to get my balance back a bit. Unfortunately, we moved from Tucson, AZ, the Center of the Universe, to Fayetteville, NC, at the behest of the Air Force. I won't slam Fayetteville much because I don't know it yet, but I will say that Harnett County, NC is a pathetic, backwards place which you should avoid, and if you already live here, I'm sorry. For example, they have corporal punishment in schools (YES, IN 2005), and they don't recycle. I have been recycling for about 20 years and am offended by this. Our neighborhood is nice enough, but I really feel like I'm biding my time. Thanks to email and cheap long-distance, I can still keep up with my friends in Arizona and elsewhere.
My crummy location is a lot less important than the issue of the Gen X Mom demographic. It seems like almost all of my friends are having kids this year. Here we are, a bunch of 30-something new moms who are formerly professional, often in technical fields, and all of a sudden we're thrust into the traditional homemaker role. We don't naturally measure success in terms of loads of laundry completed. We need more intellectual stimulation than Sesame Street, and we want to talk about something other than potty training. We have egos that were stoked by professional success, and now there's little or no recognition of our former accomplishments, which is part of why I am hanging on to my military reserve job. We want the best for our kids, but are trying not to be as indulgent or demanding as the soccer moms. I suppose that we need to learn to apply our creativity to parenting, and need to learn to draw fulfillment and satisfaction from just being moms. (Oh, and a few of us are dads, too, though I only know one true stay-at-home dad, and they probably have more angst about lack of recognition, etc. than the moms do.) Meanwhile, we're trying not to beat up our husbands, as we are fully aware from first-hand experience that going to work is a LOT easier than staying home with a baby, assuming that work is an office job and the boss isn't a complete jerk. Our husbands are different, too - most of them are interested in being good fathers, and make a conscious effort to be involved. Household division of labor is still tough to balance.
This blog will follow me around as I try to be a good mom and wife, juggle my part-time jobs (95% online), and maintain my sense of self so that my daughter can grow up to be a strong woman. After all, we're taking over!
TITLE: Brain in a 4-oz jar - the stage 2 baby foods come in 4-oz jars. Some of them are grey and mushy...and some days, I feel like mine is about that big.
