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!