Baby Girl is not officially two months, but this video is burning a hole in my hard drive. Here we are getting so fresh and so clean, clean. The wee one hates every second of nakee time, but we believe in the power of a good scrub every so often. Since this footage was logged, she has gotten much better with baths, and her mother has since found the time to comb her own hair and track down an outfit that does not make her look like an elementary gym teacher sans the whistle.
- Blogging cheerfully; I am full of snark.
- Plucking my eyebrows; it has been weeks.
- Parallel parking; I hold out for the space that can fit several army tankers to open up so I don’t have to maneuver into spots that monkeys can’t negotiate.
- Watching YouTube videos; I am really never in the mood to watch poorly filmed videos about the latest dance craze to “Soulja Boy” produced by people with too much time on their hands but it is part of nightly show-and-share with Lovey Loverpants so I concede. (Watch me eat my words in a few days time when the Two Monther video of Baby Girl is posted).
- Reading about the election; it all seems rather regurgitated right now, no?
- Getting hysterical about the recession; every day people live in abject poverty, die of AIDS, suffer injustice and if anything is worth getting hysterical about, it is not the price of gas spiking such that I cannot fill up my SUV.
- Eating lunch that is not wrapped in cellophane; ahh, another granola bar it is!
- Having the volume up high; my daughter could go live in Guster’s bongo set and still sleep like a…like a baby and meanwhile there is muzak playing in the mall and it is splitting my skull in two.
- Not having marshmallows in my hot chocolate; when I look up “complete” in the dictionary, this is what I see:
It was early evening, the time when he would usually still be seeing the last of his clients and then heading to the grocery store to pick up our week’s haul.
It was the first time since the fall that he had had a Sunday off, not counting holidays. Whether he was seeing patients at the hospital (Job #2) or at the private practice (Job #3), he has worked six days a week since October, and we’re not talking scooping ice cream, young. It wasn’t so bad when I was pregnant. My mood swings were such that he was probably glad to leave the house and contend with the certifiably crazy at the hospital, rather than combat the hormonally crazy at home. But now that we have a wee one with the Precious Moment Figurine face, Sundays come and it is harder and harder for him to leave us, and harder and harder for us to watch him go.
[WARNING: Pillagers et. al., take note! We have a vicious guard dog and booby traps near every entrance should you try to seek harm on Sundays.]
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Loverpants took a pay cut shortly after we bought the condo, which was at the same time we found out that we were expecting. Although the pay cut has caused us private pain, I am not private about discussing the pay cut itself because it was not his fault, nor was it dealt in a manner that was very dignified, in my opinion. My husband was stoic on the outside, but I know he was stressed on the inside. He immediately began looking for additional jobs in light of his desire to continue to pay the mortgage AND eat. I went to work, went to school, and incubated our unborn child and felt like I was contributing my lot.
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Sometimes the pager startled us at 4am. Because I would need to drive the car to work 3 hours later, Loverpants would have to log online to see if a zipcar was available. Then, at 4am, he would shower, dress, and ride his bike (through less favorable neighborhoods) to the zipcar, take the zipcar to the hospital, conduct the psychiatric screening and sometimes find the patient a bed at another hospital. He would then fight traffic to get back to the clinic by 9am. He would work until 5pm and then, sometimes, he would have to ride his bike home and locate another zipcar to go see patients at the private practice.
Weekends would come and I would feel disappointed when he was too tired to go out.
***
When I think about the people who made the executive decision to roll back salaries at my husband’s clinic, I used to want to curse them. Now I want to thank them. The pay cut has caused a significant strain on our finances and it has certainly stolen some precious hours of sleep for both John and myself. But it was the wake-up call that I needed.
Our first year of marriage, I spent every other week in tears. I struggled so much with my role as a wife. The adjustment to sharing an apartment the size of a Lego block as well as all of the requisite chores within it was daunting to me. It had been so much easier to do it all myself, on my own schedule. Communicating expectations was a huge stumbling block for us, and the only reason this ceased to become a stumbling block when I was pregnant was because I pretty much kicked back for nine months.
But now I have put the proverbial Big Girl Pants on and I’m running to catch up. I get it now. We were dealt this financial setback because we needed – or maybe I needed – to learn how to be a team. I don’t begrudge my duties now, nor do I want to make John’s burden any heavier. I rinse out poop-drenched diapers with my bare hands, I wash floors at 10pm, I let my husband nap for hours — but I am no hero. I am a team member. I have an important role to play in keeping our home a viable, warm place for my family, and it is honestly a delight for me to do so. Perhaps I am still eeking out the preggo hormones, but I feel happier now than I have felt in a long time, largely because I have found contentment, rather than burden, in others depending on me.
But godliness with contentment is great gain. ~ I Timothy 6:6
There was once a ridiculously cute baby bunny rabbit whose mother never wanted her little bunny to grow up so she attached a camera to the end of her own hand so that she could take pictures ad infinitum of the bunny rabbit so that she might always remind herself of the wee bun bun and ward off the influences of the world that would cause the bunny to grow into the kind of girl that should no longer be wearing a bunny suit. The End.
Special thanks to the Sousa Family for supplying the props.
My friend Nissa gave me the idea to hold a sort of flea market online. So here’s the scam. You see a book below? Five moneys. Shipping included. Paypal gladly accepted. Other payment arrangements, inquire within. E-mail me at kendratheadverb at gmail dot com. Books that are crossed out like this have been claimed.
Farewell to Arms, A by Ernest Hemingway – paperback. Excellent condition. London/Paris by Andrew Gumbel, Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls – Good condition.
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver – paperback. Good condition.
Telling True Stories eds. Mark Kramer and Wendy Cal – paperback. Excellent condition.
