That felt awful

Was out walking around my neighborhood yesterday (literally around - it is a loop and I know that if I do five loops it equals two miles).  Anyway, out walking, had the baby and the dog with me.

Loop one: walked past neighbor leaning on his car, calling for his son to hurry up and come outside.

Loop two: neighbor and son are in the cul de sac, tossing a football back and forth, looks to me like they know what they are doing.  My dog tries to pull me, the stroller with the baby and himself over to investigate and possibly take the football and run off.

Loop three: neighbor asks me if I am new to the neighborhood.  No, I have been here three years.  Really, says he, wow.  I don't know what to say to that so I reiterate the three years bit.  Plus, I walk around the loop A LOT so it's on him for not seeing me before.  Where do you live, he asks.  I point, he asks if we have the yellow Beetle, I say yes.  He asks what I do.

I say that I left my job to stay home with my baby ohbutIalsoamacommunicationsconsultantfromhome.  Before I can rush that mouthful out, oh, says he, and asks what my husband does. 

I head off on loop four, alternating between mentally hitting myself in the head for saying that I stay home with my kid and drowning myself in guilt for feeling like that was totally lame.

But he was the one who acted all dismissive when I said that, so he shouldn't have made me feel badly.

But I am the one who felt badly.  

So again I ask you, why do we hate mamas?  

Peevish

There are a few things in this world that really, and I mean *really*, rub me the wrong way. Try as I might I just can't get over my annoyance when these little thorns pop up.

In no particular order, a few of my least favorite things...I feel like I've written this before...

* When you are filling out a form, be it an application, a survey, online or in hard copy, whatever, and you are asked to select gender, why is it that "Male" is always listed before "Female?" Alphabetically, it doesn't make sense and if it's just random, well, those are pretty great odds to come up male all the time. I think we all know the answer to this one - it's so entrenched that we don't realize it anymore, but it's because men are thought of as superior to women. I really hate that.

* When people find out I gave birth to my healthy daughter at home they immediately ask one of two things: a) how far away do you live from the emergency room (because birth is an emergency, right?) or b) what was your backup? I want to say my backup is my midwife who was there by my side. (I've had to delete the rest of this paragraph because apparently I was feel pretty rageful when I wrote it and not only was it snippy, it didn't make as much sense as I thought it did).

* When people don't wave when you let them in front of you while driving. I just don't get this. I wave emphatically and have even been known to flash the peace sign for an exceptionally kind let-in.

* When people try to hook up my kid. No, she doesn't already have a boyfriend; no, I don't want her to meet your strapping eight-month old lad. She's a BABY. Let's let her be one, shall we? I'm not pimping out my daughter.

* Myself when I don't get back to a good friend. I hate it when I do that.

* Bad spelling and poor grammar, because I am a nerd. Although sometimes these are the things I find the most hilarious, because I am a nerd.

How I am

Any time in my life I have tried to keep a journal it goes fairly poorly. I won't write in it for months and months and then, when I get a hankerin' to jot down my thoughts, I open the journal, realize I've been negligent and attempt to write down everything of significance that's happened since I last wrote. Once I finish that, I'm overwhelmed and my hand hurts so I put the journal back down and don't pick it up again for a few more months...wash, rinse, repeat.

So I'm going to avoid the urge to cover the happenings of the past five and a half months in chronological order and just go forward from here.

In online, too pressed for time to type out the whole thing, soooo 2010 parlance, I am now a SAHM (stay at home mom). In fact, when we bought our new car recently and *I* was filling out the loan application, the car seller guy told me to list my husband first because I was a HOMEMAKER.

I almost became a dealership burn downer after that.

To be fair to myself, I am just starting out on my own as a "contract communications consultant" (I came up with that term in order to be prepared for all the cocktail parties I am going to these days). I have already completed a few jobs and am looking for more. So I will be making some money.

Just not as much as I used to.

Which means that we have a whole budget situation to rejigger.

When the bacon arrives in the bank account, do we each get a bit that we can spend on whatever? Does it all go toward shared expenses and we no longer get to do the whatevers? Does hubs only get to do the whatevers now that he is the one bringing home said bacon? How am I going to pay to get my hair cut?

What about when I buy stuff for the baby during the day, or go grocery shopping? Do those purchases need to have pre-approval because I am not the one who gets the paycheck?

How do people work this out? More importantly to me, how do smart, professional, forward-thinking, similar-minded women who are in my boat (because I know there are a lot of them, more than you would think) work this out?

I am used to having my own money that I can spend on my own things - if I buy new mascara because I read about it in a magazine and then it makes my eyes water, I don't want to feel bad about buying a different tube of mascara the next day. Nor do I want to suffer through and wear the eye-watering mascara.

So what do I do about the mascara now?

Feminism is...

Following up to the last post, the end of this article has a pretty nifty, short description of feminism: Drunk on Not Working.

Baby Addiction

Hi, I'm a new mom and I have a baby addiction.

Hi, new mom.

It started out innocently enough - the first few days after she was born I was uncomfortable going anywhere (in my own house) that was far from her, for fear she would start to scream and need to be fed immediately.

It turned into a nervous internal voice waking me up to turn on her little SnuggleNest light to make sure she was a) still breathing; and b) not gagging on her own spit up.

Now, it's gotten to the point where yesterday, when hubster took a nap upstairs with said baby and left me downstairs, I made food, cleaned some stuff up and then had no idea what I should be doing.

For me, this is different than the idea of baby as narcotic (see this great article sent to me by another new mom friend: Katie Roiphe: My Newborn Is Like a Narcotic. This isn't necessarily something pleasurable - it just is.

The article got me thinking. Yeah, I call myself a feminist and have done so for a long time (feminism - the other f word). Yeah, I'm taking a significant chunk of time off from work, more than I have taken since I started working some decade and a half ago. Yeah, my plans after that aren't even firm enough to be called plans, just ideas about what life could be like if this, this and this happened.

So, yeah, a lot of which which I'd based my personal sense of strong and female on in the past has been twisted into a new form of my life. I haven't yet gotten friendly enough with this new life to figure out why it is uniquely female and inherently strong.

Right now, my baby addiction is functional - I need to do things for this baby to make sure it lives and grows and thrives and bonds with me. When I'm not there, I worry I'm losing those chances to build that deep bond and trust that will benefit both me and this child as she grows. I know, and I hope, that soon that addiction will change into something more like the pleasure high from a narcotic.