I’ve still been sick, but then that sickness turned into panic.
Oh! Clients!
The reason my clients get such a deal is that I’m a self-run business with the risk of becoming knocked up and getting half a month’s worth of flu!
I’ve been frantically trying to catch up from twelve days of being under the weather, still requiring twelve hours of sleep a night and coughing roughly twelve times every hour. Sorry clients! I promise I’m digging myself out of this!
This coughing is the crap.
This coughing with a newly occupied belly is really the crap.
This coughing whilst trying to load groceries into the car is major crap.
But enough with the complaining, there are other goings on in my life.
1. I’m still updating the (oops) wines blog. Remember that? You should check it out. See, in February when I haven’t been posting here, I’ve posted some of my more daring slow cooked recipes and this month, I’ll be posting some springtime entertaining tips.
2. I’m slowly categorizing all of my past posts. This is a great outlet for my nesting instincts taking over. helenjane.com is so very 2001.
3. Speaking of nesting instincts, we’re shaking this here house on its head! Moving furniture, new flooring, couch covers from Bemz, media cabinets from Pottery Barn and even considering the possibility of a baby joining us in the next few months.
See, we have talked around the idea of a nursery, we’ve selected the space, we know there will be furniture in there, but somehow “nursery theme” hasn’t made it into our lexicon.
My sister gave us the gift of some adorable homemade onesies last weekend (our first baby gift!). And she told me how scared she was of offending me with her taste. Now these were plain, gender-neutral, organic white onesies with little patches she’d sewn on the butt. It is hard to get less offensive than that. But then I remembered some of my comments from last week.
“I hate absolutely everything from Babies R Us.”
“Rattles are just so, phallic.”
“If anyone gives me any children’s clothing that says anything remotely related to “Diva,” “Jock” or “Daddy’s little anything” on it I’ll punch them in the face.”
I know, I know. I’m a horrible mother-to-be. I should be grateful for every filthy, pastel, secondhand item I’ll get, regardless of how many penis-shaped rattles are on it. I know, I know.
But I just think as a general rule, I hate baby stuff. I hate gender stereotyping, I hate the cartoony clothing, I hate the messaging people put on their children, using them as tiny billboards for Mom’s political leanings. I hate the colors, I hate the whole thing.
I heard a recent author interview on Fresh Air with the Meg Wolitzer about The Ten Year Nap, her novel about stay-at-home parenting. In the interview, she speaks of the loss of irony that comes with motherhood. She says that there is no longer room for irony and that slowly, that reaction fades to memory.
Not so secretly, I think that’s where my hate and fear of all this baby stuff becomes tangled, in mourning the loss of irony.
Moms don’t have space to be cool, distanced and ironic, the job description doesn’t allow for that. It allows for sweeping mooshy love, it allows for murderous rage and painful sleep deprivation and continual loss as children grow from stage to stage just as you get comfortable with the one before.
Pastel baby stuff covered in rattles just serves to me as a reminder of that loss.
No wonder my sister is afraid.
