Mama - sweet & sour

In the Anonymom family quest for meaningful together time, we've put together a schedule. We get Thursday evenings and half a day Sunday together, so Thursdays are fun time, and Sundays we get to do one "fun" thing and one "project" thing. It's scripted, but so far it works. We've avoided many a regretful midnight session on the sofa where we look at each other and say "where did the day go and why don't we have anything to show for it?"

Problem is, although our project list is long, our fun list was short and dwindled rapidly. Trip to the zoo? Check. Neighborhood toy store? Check. New eco-friendly hot dog place? Yep. Today we are due some fun time, but our short list is spent and all week we had a hard time coming up with something we wanted to do just for the hell of it. At one point I got what I thought was a great idea. Let's write down fun things as they occur to us and put them in a jar, to be drawn out as we're making plans each week. But the electric synapse-fired joy of inspiration hardly had time to be felt before my superego kicked in. A freaking fun jar? Who am I, my mom?

Now, I'm not one to think I should try to hold on to my pre-mom identity for dear life. I'm sure there's a reason our mothers were who they were, right down to the smiley-faced pancake breakfasts and the dulcet-toned baby talk. I'm sure the overly sweet exterior of that change holds within it a hardy nugget of survival technique. I'm not just making a fun jar because it's cute. I'm making it because I have to work to have fun. I have to write how to have fun down because it will slip my mind if I don't, and if I don't have more fun in my life, some part of me will surely curl up and die. So I make fun jars so as not to become the living dead. Kind of throws the cheesy aspects of motherhood into a whole new light, doesn't it?

So although there's a part of me that accepts this new mommier me, I just need a moment to acknowledge that yes, I see this happening, and yes I think it's a little lame. Just not as lame as fighting this mommy identity without understanding it first.

Hear that all of you non-breeders? I'm going deep into the heart of this parenthood thing, and I'm going to keep reporting back. But if it swallows me whole, and I don't remember who I was before job jars and behavior contracts and co-sleeping...just lay a flower down at the fork in the road where our paths diverged and let me know how things are going in your world.

Hmmm, this was all a little darker than I'd intended. Maybe I'm sadder than I thought about the death of my old identity? Perhaps my band's first composition (drawn from the song jar, of course) will be a dirge for my pre-mommy identity. I need some sort of Dark Crystal ceremony where I can merge the pre- and post- mommy woman into one complete being with all of their dark and light aspects. Anybody know where I can find a seventy-ton crystal and a three-sun eclipse?

Bedcycle built for two

We still have one side of a baby crib taken down, and Anonybabe's bed is pushed up next to ours so she can crawl from our bed to hers if need be, or I can pull her into our queen for a morning nursing before heading to work without fully waking her up.

A couple of nights ago, it was a little chilly in the apartment, and Anonybabe had fallen asleep in my arms. Instead of laying her in her cool crib where she was sure to kick off the covers, I thought, "I'll just put her in bed with us; it'll be cozy and nice."

It was awful! She was so restless. All over the bed and in the weirdest positions. She managed to kick Anonyhub in the throat and wake me up every hour or so.

The next night I laid her down in her crib, and woke up at 3am with Anonybabe standing in our bed with her hands on my calves, whining and wanting milk. So I nursed her and at some point she must have crawled back into her own bed to go to sleep, because I found her snoozing in her crib when my alarm went off.

She prefers her own bed, y'all! Hot diggety!

Loop me dead

If I have to listen to "Love Me Dead" play in a loop in my head one more time, I'm going to have to shoot me dead. I went down some sort of Ludo wormhole after my post the other day.

I watched their "Love Me Dead" video approximately 756 times in row. "How cute!" I thought. "How fun!"

Then I watched every freaking video journal entry they had about the making of their album. Interesting? Kind of. Sort of. Not really.

Why am I wired to go on these obsessive jags? I can no longer eat Cheetos because I ate them every single day for lunch in the 7th grade, and somehow completely fried my Cheeto appreciation center. I'll wear the same shoes pretty much every day until they fall apart. And I do this repeatedly with songs or albums I like, listening to them over and over and over again until the music that was once enjoyable turns on me, stalks me, plays itself over and over again in my mind until I'm screaming for mercy. In the middle of the night, in the morning when I wake up. The music that was once good to hear is ruined forever for me.

Anonymom rattles head, thunks it with the heel of her hand. Really. What's going on in there?

Let's talk about you and me

Have you seen this picture? It is of that Hanna Montana chick - Miley Cyrus, flashing a little lace to some camera. She is 15 or so, and apparently this has kicked up a maelstrom of reactions, especially since she is on one of those squeaky-clean Disney shows. People seem outraged that she is trying to look sexy, but shouldn't we be more outraged that shows like Hanna Montana present such a fake squeaky-clean image? Real goodness has a lot of dirt mixed in, a lot of awkwardness and a lot of poor decisions.

I mean, I guess we can get annoyed with our culture for idolizing sex so much. You can argue that our times are rotten, and that such a sexual culture seems destined to consume itself in the end, but I tend to think we are where we are and that doesn't mean sex is so bad, or even that 15 year olds trying to flex their newly discovered muscles as a sexual being is a harbinger of the end-times. I don't know where y'all grew up, but where I lived, thirteen to fifteen was about the age that kids really started to realize there was a lion slumbering inside of them, whether they chose to suppress it or not. Girls recognized the awesome power of flirtation; guys started to define themselves based on whether they could get girls to talk (or more!) with them. Being 15 means you have a lot of sexual power and not a lot of smarts. Miley's little bra flash shows that she is a typical teenage girl as I remember her: little self-obsessed, a little bit of an attention-hog, and trying to assimilate and process what American culture tells her she should be.

Is that really so bad?

And then another part of me thinks, is there something wrong with me for thinking this way? As the mother of a future 15 year old, shouldn't I be appalled at the state of teen girls today instead of empathetic to it? Now let me say that I feel a little silly even putting my opinions about this topic out there. I grew up in a household in which sex was considered a sacred special thing between only married people, or, as a fast track to ruin between non-married folks. S-E-X was a slippery slope to...something bad, and moral fibre could not withstand the nookie the way I heard tell. The reasoning for this was vague, but my father's scare tactics had their intended effect on me - I was too terrified to have sex until I was well past the age of procuring my own alcohol. My reticence to put out certainly had its perks. I was mature enough to handle the emotional fallout of sex when I finally had it. I was old enough to recognize my own mortality and the importance of practicing safe sex.

So although I enjoyed the byproducts of a sex-free pre-adulthood, I don't know that the way I got there was worth it. All of my decisions about sexuality were based on fear. I was too worried about consequences to experiment...let alone make the stupid mistakes that make people capable of real love. I think I had a really stunted adolescence because of this: emotionally, socially, & otherwise. So even though I'm sure lots of my peers were brought up the same way, I think it gave me a pretty myopic view on the subject of sex. Sometimes I think I overcompensate by having a careless attitude towards "it", and young teens' abilities to make smart decisions about it.

Unless things change drastically in the next 15 years, Anonybabe will be bombarded with such a plethora of sexual images and ideas that it would be silly to think she won't be trying to sort through them in earnest. It's a lot for a fifteen year old to take on. So what the hell do I teach her about all of this? I don't want Anonybabe making stupid mistakes...but I'd rather she felt it was worth it in the name of finding herself than to always sit back for fear of doing something wrong.

Mostly, I want Anonybabe to really feel she's in charge of her own sexual destiny, with all of the responsibility and power that goes with that gig. I hope she doesn't take herself too seriously, and I hope she decides to just wade right into the fray, do what feels right, make mistakes, love and lose as she chooses.

Life happens whether you make good decisions or not.

I can't believe I'm a parent. I so feel like I'm operating without a net.

Love Me Dead

Hee. Fun video about poisonous love. Catchy song to boot.


Or, alternately, the toothbrush version. These boys are ca-yoot!

Freshly borrowed from Deus Ex Malcontent's blog.

Bitching Post

I want today's lunch break back.

I spent it with the receptionist of our company. She's a pleasant enough girl, but has the very unpleasant habit of peeping at co-workers' W-2s and then complaining about the various salaries, perks, and benefits those people receive. And she's not complaining about some co-receptionist who has been on the job six months longer than she has. No, she complains that one guy gets a gas allowance (a guy who is on call 24 hours a day for emergency situations), or she complains about the president's six-figure salary (a very private man I've never ever seen goof off in the six years I've worked here).

"Must be nice," she rolls her eyes and gets an aggressive edge to her voice.

Now, I'm not defending or justifying these men's salaries, but do I really need to be worrying about them? If she's so gung-ho for six-figure bank why doesn't she go out and get it instead of begrudging it from someone else? Endure her own 20-odd years of corporate drudgery for some gas money?

Bah. Kids these days.

Oh! And the topper? We dropped in to a Hallmark store on the way back at her suggestion. (If you own or invest in Hallmark I suggest you read no further). What a pile of meaningless shit! That was one of the most depressing stores I've ever been in, second only to those Christmas stores that sell scores of St. Nicholas figurines. Reams and reams of paper that will be immediately tossed away and ugly, cheap, tacky tchotchkys that never should have been made in the first place.

Tomorrow I go back to eating alone in my cubicle.

Camels and steaks and pornographers, oh my!

Oh happy sigh.

Anonyhub and Anonybabe and I had such a lovely day yesterday. Wait, let me back up a bit. It was a lovely weekend in general.

We had some buddies over Friday night for some grillin' on the barbie. The steaks - they were good, the salad - 'twas amazing, and the wine (as evidenced by my wincing hangover the next day) - was four glasses too good to pass up. One couple brought their 2 1/2 year old daughter, and she and Anonybabe giggled their pink and beflowered socks off together. This both warmed my heart (Anonybabe won't be debilitatingly shy forever!) and made me a little sad (Anonybabe won't always need to snuggle her little head under my chin for comfort!).

Let's fast forward right through hangover Saturday and jump right to Sunday, shall we? (Drinking is fun but caring for a toddler while nursing a hangover is exponentially less fun).

Anonyhub left early to log some hours at work while Anonybabe and I slept in a bit, ate breakfast, took a much needed bath. Then we all took the el to the Lincoln Park Zoo, where a random assortment of free concerts were taking place in honor of Earth Day. The sun shone, the camels chewed their cud, Anonybabe got to gleefully crawl around in the grass and dirt, and then we got to take a long leisurely walk back to our bus stop.

A few hours gave us just enough time for Anonybabe to take a serious nap before we dropped her off at her babysitter's - a couple our age we are doing a babyswap with. She was a little clingy but we left without too much fuss.

And then! Anonyhub and I got to see the New Pornographers (sans Neko Case) play at the Vic. I've never paid much attention to their lyrics - they may be about death and taxes for all I know - but their music has this great drive to it. It can be a little too light & tinny on CD, but live it was great. We both walked away with huge smiles on our faces and machinations in our minds about the bands we were going to respectively start.

And when we went to pick Anonybabe up she was certainly jazzed to see us, but we heard she'd had a dandy time: chasing the two big glossy cats around the apartment, reading book after book (she was clutching one in her hand when we walked in and showed it to me, giving it a loud kiss for effect and then holding it out to me so I could give it a smack), and generally having a gay old time.

The Anonybabe, she has fun without the parents? This, my friends, is going to open up a whole new world of good times to yours truly. Par-tay!

Purple haze

We more or less vote Democrat in my household, and Anonyhub and I went to visit our right-wing republican buddies out in the suburbs this past weekend. I do try to steer clear of conversations about politics or religion with them. They watch a lot of Fox News and end up saying inflammatory things, and I end up getting all worked up and offended at them and it just isn't worth it.

So imagine my surprise when politics came up and it was an entirely pleasant conversation! It's nice to have exciting choices in this election, yadda yadda yadda...for the first time I considered voting across party lines, wakka wakka wakka...we confessed things that bothered us about "our" party's candidate, blah blah blah. I was so pleased!

And then I got an email from them today that blew our nice conversation to bits and I'm so angry about it. Ugh. Why can't I just fast-forward to a time when I don't get so bent out of shape about differing philosophies? Day-to-day, these friends are nice people, but sometimes they say things that just give me the jeeblies in the core of my gut. Sorry to be so vague with the details, but I have a long-standing history of being offended by this couple and I don't really want to air all the gory (read, petty) details of my moral outrage here.

Now. These are not my only GOP friends, and certainly not my only GOP acquaintances. Many of my respected co-workers are. My own dear Mama is a die-hard and I love her tons. I can see where the best of her ideals line up with the best of Republican ideals and that is why they are her party. And I was proud of her when she volunteered to help with the last presidential election, even though in my opinion her candidate was an unmitigated jerk-off. And we can discuss politics without getting all wound up about it (mostly this is her doing as she has always been the rational and level-headed sort). And I enjoy a lively debate with anybody who has good ideas to bring to the table, and the Republican party has plenty. The yin to my yang. I can think of one Republican-leaning friend who is probably reading this entry now who I respect a lot. (My point?: See?! I can have Republican friends! I do have a modicum of open-mindedness!)

So what's the word, birds? What do you do with friends whose outlook on life offends you to your core? Does it really matter? Do you distance yourself? Kick them to the curb? Let yourself get into a red-faced yelling debate with them? Avoid certain topics? Live and let live? Smile and say "we should get together" and then not?

The Story of Stuff

Pass this on:

Wisdom of our forebears

So I appreciate the real-time parenting advice of my peers a lot. Time moves at warp speed and memory is fickle, so I don't usually count on the how-to of the parents or in-laws to get me through the day. Plus, the times they are a changing and the 'rents don't always understand what we're going through (Debates on whether or not to get vaccinated? Why in the world?)

However, I feel like I'm getting no input from these seasoned veterans. I need some big picture advice.

I wish I could poll a katrillion grandmas and grandpas (and great-grandmas and great-grandpas) and ask them what the one thing is that they wish they could change about raising their kid. And then the one thing they are so glad they did do. I'm guessing some really good advice would rise to the surface.

That was fast

I made a vow last week to post a blog entry every remaining day in April.

Sometimes a bitch just doesn't have a lot to say, you know?

I thought about using today's entry to back pedal on some of my previous posts: I watched a lot of Louis C.K. clips the day I posted that Louis C.K. clip and came to the conclusion that he is one down and depressing fuck.

I thought about using today's entry to talk even more about how I talk too much about Anonyhub's parents and my love/hate relationship with them.

I thought about blogging about my writing classes.

But I think I'll just let things be. There's something to be said for keeping your mouth shut when you have nothing much to say. I like the momentum that post-a-day is giving me, but when all I come up with are little nada tidbits even I'm not much interested in, I don't think it's worth it.

You say tomato

Regarding Anonyhub's parents. We like trips to green city conventions and the Unitarian Church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. They like trips to Cancun and the Presbyterian church their family has gone to for generations.

They think we're sensitive and dour, but love us anyway. We think they are thoughtless and silly, but love them anyway.

Have I mentioned how many (6 hour one-way) trips they've made to see Anonybabe since she was born? A lot. They certainly know the way to a woman's heart is through her progeny.

Things I don't like about myself

I completely dig it when Anonybabe would rather hang out with me than Anonyhub.

And then I try to hide how pleased I am, and just end up with one of those half-suppressed, smug looks on my face.

Ha ha ha....ohh.

Okay, speaking of judging other parents until you have children of your own, I like this bit by Louis C.K., especially around the 6:20 mark. He's kind of an asshole about his kids, but I stand by him anyway. He cracks me up.

If you are averse to the word "fuck" or angry diatribes against one's own children, listen to some equally hilarious Bill Cosby for some PG-rated catharsis.

Bedtime is for suckers

Anonyhub and Anonybabe and I went to visit some friends of ours today; they have two kids. The oldest is 4 and the youngest is 2 1/2 and their bedtime is a fiasco of musical beds every night. The kids start around 7 pm in their own beds, then one or both inevitably wake up between 10-11 to crawl into bed with mom, which inevitably pushes the husband out of their queen size circa 1am to go sleep the rest of the night in the kids' bed. It is an absurd routine and I've turned my nose up at it from day one.

But get this, it's 11:33pm and Anonybabe is still chilling in the living room with us even though she is obviously tired. We've given her lots of opportunities to sleep but she's just not having it and after a while I just get tired fighting her. My friends' rationale as well.

An added bonus to our own bedtime circus. Anonybabe is still hitting me in the face a lot even though she cries big fat tears when Anonyhub tries to take her to put her to sleep. He gets no such love pats.

I was proud of Anonybabe today at the friends' house. She really loosened up and played there. She went so far as to make peeps. Some really loud squeally ones. What fun.

Saturday togetherness

Sigh. Anonyhub and Anonybabe are sleeping peacefully on the couch behind me. We just tackled cleaning out our storage area, which started with yelling and insults and ended in a lot of cleared out space. Not a bad day's work. I wish Anonyhub and I had the opportunity to yell at each other more often. I miss hanging out with that guy.

Who's the boss?

Last night I went to a concert with Anonyhub. It was everything I could've hoped from a night without the kid: relaxed, sexually charged. I drank a couple of beers and got a little buzz. Heard some good music.

But then we got back home at 12:30 and Anonybabe was still awake. She'd done well sitting with my friend but was a little spastic about seeing us again. She was obviously tired, and the beer I'd had had moved from making me lovey to making me feel belligerent. I was bound and determined that Anonybabe was going to go to sleep, no matter how frantic she was. I thought she needed to learn to settle down when it was time to settle down. I thought she needed to learn that I meant business when I said it was bedtime. So I wouldn't let Anonyhub take her to put her to sleep; I tried for almost an hour to get her to calm down and give in to the sandman. We tried walking the living room, laying on the couch with the tv on, sitting in the lazy boy, laying in our bed, laying her down in her bed, and on and on. She would almost drop off and then rally and just fight the sleep.

She was acting so crazy that I peeked into her diaper several times to see if she'd pooped; she was acting like she needed a change, but her diaper seemed fine. Finally I figured I had nothing to lose and plopped her down only to find that our babysitter had put a disposable diaper on Anonybabe with a cloth diaper cover over it. She was dry but she had extreme hot crotch. As soon as I took off the superfluous cover and put her pants back on, she calmly lay in my arms and went right to sleep.

So much for showing her who's boss.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best

Anonyhub and I made a schedule for ourselves the other night. He has to log in a certain number of hours per week at work, doesn't matter when. After a year of chaos and resentment on my part ("You're going to work now?! And you'll be there how long?!") we finally noodled out that a schedule might bring some peace to our household. (Read: he noodled it out. I might've gone on huffing forever). At least I could expect when to be disappointed that he wouldn't be around. Three evenings are fixed; he must work. Of our four flexible evenings, we have scheduled two for his work, one for "family night" where we all hang together, and one where a parent gets to traipse off and do whatever he or she pleases, each gets to go every other week.

Notice something missing? No, it's not more alone time, although that's a good guess. One night to one's self every two weeks surely ain't right.

We have planned absolutely no time to spend with each other without Anonybabe. Nada. Her bedtime is later than mine at this point, so that means absolutely no waking time with just the two of us unless it magically drops out of the sky. We do occasionally plan outings and ask a friend to babysit, to the tune of once a month, maybe.

This is not smart.

Part of the problem is that I hate leaving butt munch (aka Anonybabe) with people when I know she'll be uncomfortable. But I may just have to get over that, as will she. Ragamuffin (aka Anonybabe) can learn to have fun with other people. Or she'll learn to like a balanced visitation schedule with her papa and me ONCE WE SPLIT UP.

Giving up our alone-by-ourself time is a much quicker path to splitsville. Anonyhub and I both need a healthy dose of isolation to get through the week. So I've got to figure out a way we can go on a date regularly within our time constraints without breaking the bank.

Hire a babysitter? Once every two weeks? For just a couple of hours? Surely we can't afford not to.

Check this vanishing act

Anonybabe still hasn't laid off the "where's the object?" routine. Lately she's taken to "hiding" stuff down my shirt.

"Cleavage is a good place to hide things," I tell her. "But as soon as you wean you're going to have to start hiding things under mom's boobs instead of between them."

Anonyhub turned a little green at that one.

What do you really think of me?

I spent the last couple of days straightening up the house a little before going to work, and I threw trash out of the car before going inside last night.

My husband's eyes shone with appreciation. "Who are you and what did you do with my wife?" he asked.

Bastard.

Brain child

I could be wrong - Anonybabe is my first kid and I'm not around children that much - but for some reason I get the impression that my daughter isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I stopped paying attention to milestone charts after the first couple of months, but in general Anonybabe strikes me as charmingly, delightfully average.

This doesn't bother me much - I daresay it bothers me not at all since I've known several highly intelligent, socially-misfit assholes and several kind, generous and happy not-so-intelligent souls. I'm not saying brains and happiness are mutually exclusive, I'm just saying smarts aren't a magic ingredient to happiness. Smarts just are. They are a part of personality just like blue eyes, artistic tendencies, or a hairy back. You do with them what you will. Just drop in on your nearest Mensa convention. You'll see what I'm saying.

Besides, it would be nice if Anonybabe and I were playing in the same brain bracket. We'll have enough bridges to try to cross as we age without throwing an IQ gap into the mix. It's isolating to have the people you love function on a different plane, and although part of me would love it if Anonybabe had a mind like a steel trap, part of me is content to see her struggle through life like Anonyhub and I. I mean, intelligent people struggle lots; it's the "like Anonyhub and I" that just might give Anonybabe some camaraderie and comfort. Maybe not, but them's my thoughts.

Anonybabe and I went to visit my college friend last week. It's a friend I've only seen or talked to very sporadically over the past 10 years. Since I last saw him, he and his wife had had two kids. One is now a six-month baby girl, and the other is about the most darling three-year old boy I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

This boy was hella intelligent, but he was three, so it felt like we were on roughly the same wavelength. He told a few well-paced knock-knock jokes; he politely asked me questions to lead into what he wanted to talk about (i.e. what I'd had for dinner so he could let me know his favorite foods); when I pulled out a toy hippo Anonybabe and I were packing, he informed me that he had a poem about hippos in his room and would I like to hear it? He was awesome. And smart. I liked him muy mucho.

And I felt the very first pangs of kiddie comparisons ever. The moms I know - we don't really compare the kids - not really. I mean, I don't get this sense of competition. But I felt it with this college friend. It was coming from me, but I think it was due to my college buddy's lack of reaction when we discussed what Anonybabe was up to. Her words, her new tricks; they were obviously unimpressive to the father of this little genius. I think he had no concept of what an average one-year old acts like. I wasn't quite sure how to react.

Plus I was disappointed when he spent a lot of time during our visit listing his family's academic achievements (both are smarty-pants professors): how prestigious his wife's job is, how hard he is on his students and how he wishes his job were more prestigious, where his wife had been published, how many job offers his wife's best friend had gotten at top schools(?!) Keep in mind that I'm a college drop-out (although I don't think my friend knows as much since I quietly slipped out right before graduation and never much saw the use of going back.) I gathered that we just inhabited two very different worlds. Him: - academia. Me: so-very-not academia.

Don't get me wrong, I like this guy. He was one of the few gifted & unpretentious minds I knew at my school. Others may well remember it differently, but there was an air of such solemn insecurity in my classes. Lots of privileged high IQ kids with little sense of play or joy or what could be important in life other than being validated as "smart". Not even a few grandiose egos to help keep things interesting. The only kids who piped up seemed to be desperate to impress the teacher. At the time, this friend struck me as different. He told stories about how his dad stocked drug store aisles with temporary hair dye. He cracked self-deprecating jokes.

Anonyhub guesses that he just didn't know what else to talk about. He was the shy sort in college. He once quipped then that his level of comfort in any given social situation was inversely proportional to the number of people in the room. So he could have been struggling for material. Lord knows I've come across as an asshole around other parents when I'm at an absolute loss as to what to talk about. In my mind, I'm bonding with the person over how silly and over-the-top the baby-wearing moms of a trendy boutique are, but out of my mouth comes a monologue about how we bought only the state-of-the-art expensive diapers there. Only later do I realize how what I meant to say was edited down to make me sound like the opposite of who I wanted to appear to be....Socializing is hard, ya'll.

So I should throw my friend a bone. But the long short is that I liked hanging out with his kid more than him. And even a little more than Anonybabe. (Argh! The guilt! The shame!)

Perchance in a few years karma will come around, and someone else will get to enjoy all of the efforts I've put into making Anonybabe a pleasant child, while I sit in the corner and talk uncomfortably about how my local organic produce box is the biggest and best in the neighborhood. And my old friend will blog about how parenting has sucked all of the life out of me, but that daughter of mine - what an amazing little genius!

Monkey on my....you don't even want to know.

Okay, I'm slapping an NC-17 rating on this one - take a second look at the title line and be forewarned.

I've had my share of unwelcome sex dreams; haven't we all? Sex with a distasteful boss, sex with that asshole customer, etc. Whatever; I assume my brain is just doing its job processing random bits of information and that I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about it too much. Shrug it off to a lack of action and/or my subconscious trying to sort out a power struggle. I once heard someone say that dreams are brain farts. And that sounds about right.

My dreams got a lot more feral and violent when I was pregnant. Angry motorists raping other angry motorists, sex with a giant cat who was intent on biting or scratching my face off...again, I shrugged it off then, since pregnancy and childbirth are both feral and violent. My dreaming seemed like a pretty healthy and natural - if mysterious - way of working through that.

I've been quietly amused at how my sex dreams these days - if they happen at all - feature pretty vanilla sex with my husband and only my husband. I don't even have the sexual energy to get creative in my mind.

But a few days ago I had this detailed dream that I was married to a monkey. Not even a humanized one, just some ooo-ooo ahh-ahh chimp. Suffice it to say, the dream involved lots of conjugal monkey sex. Dream Anonyhub saved me from my poor choice in mating material, only to have a pissed off Monkeyhub turn into a mollusk with miracle-gro tentacles, grab me by the ankles, hang me upside down, and threaten to rip me in half.

Any armchair Jungians want to help me take a stab at this one, because it feels like my subconscious is pulling out the big guns to try to get my attention...about what?

Monkey sex dream disturbed the shit out of me, man. And I'm most disturbed by the fact that...it was disturbing, that it got to me at all. Am I troubled by my shriveling sexuality? My daughter? My desire to have more kids? What? WHAT?

Je-frickin-hosaphat, subconscious, step away from the bestiality and let's talk about this like civilized human beings!

Needless to say, I am eyeing the home pregnancy test aisle again.

Two, Three, or not Two, Three

I don't really want to be pregnant again or give birth again, much as I enjoyed it the first time around. I have this blind drive, though, to have a second child. Why? And more importantly, should I honor that blind drive or tell it to take a back seat?



I owe it to my husband and daughter to break it down. Anonyhub would like to stop at one. I like the family dynamic the way it is, and if we had another, nothing would ever be the same again. Of course I liked the family dynamic just fine before Anonybabe, and this is way better. Why not gamble again?

I do want more. More challenge, and more people I love like this around me. Given our introverted personalities, three in our house seems spare, a little lonely, a little intense. Four seems a little more well-balanced. Okay, honestly it doesn't seem more well-anything. I secretly like life to be just a little on the chaotic side, and what better way to introduce chaos than to have more kids?

But what kind of a reason is that? That's no better than just saying "my uterus wants." Maybe I shouldn't try to produce drama when there is none. Maybe I should work on myself before perpetrating a lot of sound and noise that signifies - far from nothing. It signifies another human being who'll need a responsible adult around making sure s/he has more than a guardian who is too busy acting out her deep-seated and unexamined desires.


I think a sibling would be a welcome addition to Anonybabe's life. Who else is she going to gripe to about her psycho parents? But she hasn't taken a shine to most other kids, and (shhh, don't tell our siblings but) Anonyhub and I could've both gone on quite happily being only children. Now that we're adults we're so glad to have our brother and sisters around, but as children our siblings only represented someone to torture and fight with.

So, life's a crap shoot. No matter what we decide we've gotta go on living. Any thoughts, you out there in internetland?

Foody Patootie

This past year's puritanical obsession with healthy food has been well chronicled here. Although I'm slowly becoming more balanced/less shrill about what goes into Anonybabe's mouth, I'm still paying the piper for it.

Last night we were having ham & eggs and I asked Anonybabe if she wanted a bite. "Just last week you didn't want her to have any ham because it's too salty and nitratey!" Anonyhub complained. He exaggerates. It was more like last month. But yeah, I did harp on him a little about that. I just know that I will only give her one or two bites, and also that I give myself a pass because my vegetable to Dr. Pepper ratio is way way better than Anonyhub's. Which has nothing to do with what goes in Anonybabe's mouth but has everything to do with getting to feel self-righteous about my eating choices.

I've got to give him props, though. Anonyhub did try the Ratatouille I made last night for her. He purposefully tried it before asking what was in it. He didn't eat any more after I told him, but I appreciate the giant risk-taking leap that was for him. The boy has food is-SUES, and I worry that Anonybabe will take after her father.

Given that she swoons for broccoli and brussel sprouts, I don't have much to worry about as yet.

Better than a Baby Book: This week with Anonybabe

The three of us got to spend a little time "tossing" a ball around on the living room floor two nights ago. It was uneventful, but it felt really good to all be doing nothing together. Last night Anonybabe started tossing small toys over her shoulder. At one point I made a high pitched "woo!" sound effect when she did it, and that was the game of choice on and off for the next hour or so. It was boring as hell after a while, but I was so tired that I was willing to sit there and yell "woo!" every time she pitched something up behind her to save myself from having to do something more engaging. She ended up getting really good air on her toys by the end of the night, many would fly across the room and land on the bookshelves or on my head.

Anonybabe pulled a pair of hoop earrings out of my ears the other night, and she'll find them on the coffee table since and hold them up to her own ears. She'll hold hats to her head, socks to her feet, and headbands on her head, crawling around the house with it perched precariously to one side. When we went to HR Block to get our taxes done, she played with a pair of sunglasses, getting them on her face and plopping forward to crawl away, only to have the sunglasses fall off so she'd have to start the whole process all over again.

She will not shake or nod her head, and I've been modelling this exaggeratedly for months and months, hoping I can get her to tell me her preferences from the high chair without pushing things violently away. No dice.

She still has just her two words (that we can decipher: "book" and "Pooh") but she's gibbering more.

She love to play this drum that Anonyhub has out on the living room floor. She'll grab its drumstick and pound away, swinging the stick in a huge arc, close to her hands and then up past her face and over her head...somehow she never makes contact with herself, only the drum.

She's discovered throwing items around the room and will do this for 5-10 minutes at a time, especially in the kitchen where she can hear a hard object clatter against the floor.

She continues to love bath time, and very much enjoys these foam "paper" dolls that stick to the walls when wet, and cried bitterly when we got out of the bath night before last.

She hits when she's upset, and took several wild swings at me when I picked her up to take her away from the trash can. She never tires of crawling up to her reflection in its shiny surface and giving it big open mouthed kisses. Ugh.

Slave

I just had to do 1 hour of work at work....1 uninterrupted hour!

My fear is that after the past six years of creampuffery I've endured here, I will never be able to live up to a real job again.

Anonymom Sad

Oh, snap. I just finished watching every Strong Bad email cartoon ever invented.

I feel like I just climbed a very pointless and very entertaining mountain. Kinda like Space Mountain. Hey! Maybe Anonyhub and I have more in common than I thought!

My favorite part was Strong Bad's brainchild, Teen Girl Squad