Potty training a boy, at least my boy, makes me doubt putting a period at the end of my name.
Anyone else experience that rush of adrenaline, ripping your kid out of a swing or off the couch, or out of the bath, at the hint they're pooping while attempting to potty-train? Then trip getting to the portable potty you brought to the park? Then find you're too late and now that you've pulled their pants down, it's worse than you ever imagined?
You really learn what good friends are when your kid poops their pants at your friends' house and you came unprepared.
Cole taught us over the last year he cannot be trusted to stop having fun to hit the bathroom.
We taught Jules about crying wolf. Spoiler alert: A wolf will petrify any kid into avoiding that. We may have forgotten briefly it eats the sheep and had it eat the boy, our voices slowing down to a quiet trail as we realized what we were doing, her eyes wide in the dark before bedtime, us curled around her on top of the covers. Oops.
There are many immature ways I still feel young but I'm nonetheless getting older (and wiser at an eighth of the rate). Old move: I got a pap smear for my birthday last fall. Immature move: I think I might start doing that yearly because I got a few extra "happy birthday's," giving my birth date to check in and so on.
Let's see, I watched Enola and The Queen's Gambit and fell in love with women all over again.
Oh – I got a new, full-time job! It's been great. Rewarding. Uses my skillset. Makes me feel like a grown-up. It also takes about 30 minutes to explain so I'll spare you.
In other literal news, I got the cover of Crown City Magazine again. In honesty, the key is the photo someone more professional took. Also got a Coronavirus at Christmastime feature for the Coronado Times. You can read more about my island Times life here if you're really, really bored – so these are basically some of my favorite people ever and I wish we could have writer get-togethers which they did before COVID and I arrived.
The writing and income life is good for once. If only I could make time to finish that pesky 30-something coming-of-age novel instead of blogging therapeutically.
I still like how I saw this on Twitter and thought, yep.
Anyone else have an Apple Watch and not know what to do with it? If you have one and do know what to do with it, please tell me. I'm tempted to donate it to someone who needs it. I still love you for getting it for my birthday, Cary, don't get me wrong.
Yet it feels like the giant blue pleather planner I bought when I was 12 and pretty much just enjoyed rewriting my homework assignments in my best (still really bad) handwriting and seeing a five dollar bill in the clear plastic pouch inside.
I proceeded to leave it in every store – racing back in a panic – when I put it down to check out an item.
Cary was gone for some training for a couple weeks recently. The C.B. Strike series on HBO MAX and frozen burritos got me though. Also my amazing mom-in-law. Grandparents may not replace your spouse. They may spoil your kids or not know where everything goes, or not know how to communicate every drop-off, pick-up and chore or errand like your more intuitive spouse after nearly 15 years of marriage. But they sure damn do make it easier when you have to change one less diaper, discipline one less time, deal with one less load of dishes or laundry, make one less even simple meal; and they provide that much more love.
Plus I didn't have to clean the microwave that was laughing at and taunting me. I wanted to shed a tear.
Because when your kids are getting in their car seats, talking incessantly or fighting, and you close the car door on their high, penetrating voices. And you pause. Walk as slowly as possible around to your own car door. It's one break. Adding a grandparent is a whole other one.
Then we drive home, Jules asking me about our our poor dead dog, girls marrying girls, me dying, God, heaven, giving birth (seriously all one in day)... And I’m like, I want them to ask and learn and find their way but also I’m just so tired and can’t even explain these things when tip-top. I mess up these conversations so much. Like I don’t have the answers, kid. Just be a nice person. But like tough when you have to be. Ugghh, good luck.
For some wins – what I live for – we watched Earwig and the Witch (also on HBO), the whole weird thing in peace, both kids rapt, me with coffee I made it all the way through without heating up. And we watched Frozen 2 for the millionth time (still so good) one night while they licked clean bowls of popcorn, also peaceful and laughing together in the near darkness because Jules makes it that way for a "special night" and we were close to her birthday – and I realized how much Cole is absorbing these days, talking about the "ice boat" and the "dark sea." And it's all worth it all over again and again.
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| Us toward the beginning of the pandemic, getting ice cream and eating it in the traffic median. 😳 |
