Thankful

I’m so thankful for James that
I could just explode with gratitude.

Then we’d have gratitude blobs and
gobs on the floor
and the wall.

But you know what’s awesome about James?

He’d clean them up without a word.

Muir Woods, Nablopomo Fail

Oh well, life got in the way.
Like yesterday, after having 5 blissful hours in a row to work, I remembered two more projects still to do.
So here’s a photo of our one night getaway to Muir Woods.

We stayed at the Mountain Home Inn for a night. It is a nice place, but I think I screwed up. By merely scanning the reviews on Yelp and their web site, I assumed it was more of a spot for tired hikers to crash. When we got there, the arched eyebrows of the staff showed us it was a romantic getaway spot, definitely NOT the kind of place for a 4 month old.

They were nice enough to give us an upgraded room away from the other guests — so I’m over it. Motherhood and age does that to a lady.

(Previously I would have felt horrible about my misunderstanding for months.)

But you and my mom want to see the baby, don’t you?

Also, I keep accidentally spamming comments and then there’s no way to retrieve them. Apologies, I’m super bummed that I lost them forever. I loved the stories of the “sneak back and forths.”

(And if you know of a way to retrieve them in WordPress, do tell!)

Ladies lunch

helen jane and nora lea , originally uploaded by Clarefee.

In the day

Back in 1998, I worked at a web development company in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(Yes, that sentence you just read was correct.)

I had a joke with a friend, where we would attach this graphic to an email and send it back and forth to each other as an important attachment under a different name. Sometimes we’d turn the image into a pdf, a Word doc, whatever. We just sent the image back and forth week on week.

And ten [TEN] years later, this joke is still not old.

I had a similar joke with an old roommate.

I had this bottle opener — it looked like a fish carved out of mother of pearl. We would hide it in each other’s stuff. She’d find it in her purse one day, I’d find it under my pillow the next. We never spoke of the joke, but it was always comedy of the sneakiest order.

Whenever I mention these stories, I’m fascinated that everyone has their own version — I even heard one about an eight year old bag of sour cream and onion chips.

What is your sneak back and forth?

Today I drove to San Francisco.

I met some people for lunch about a web site.
And then I drove back.
Whew.

And then I made dinner with Rapini.
Right?

Tomorrow, the babysitter comes.
Whew.

I met up with a lady friend today. She told me about calling her Mom recently to complain about some motherhood difficulties.

Her mom’s response was, “Buck up.”

I said that I thought motherhood was a long chain of Buck Up moments.
(But I think I may have said, “Buck the Fuck Up moments.”)

That might be what people mean when they say your life changes. It’s not the love or the responsibilities, it’s that all of these new moments of tears and agony and insanity-inducing sleeplessness, all of these moments pale in the face of my pre-parenthood challenges.

And all that you get in response is “Buck Up.”

There are no commiserations over happy hour dirty martinis.
There are spousal trash-taking-out negotiations.
There are short tempers and loaded sighs.

And all of these moments pale in the face of my pre-parenthood snuggles.
Truly, no snuggles snuggle like a parenthood snuggle.

Buck up moments indeed.