I have moved...for now

I've moved here for the time being... http://open.salon.com/blog/cedar_burnett

So, a bottle walks into a room...

Hombrelibre is gone on a business trip, which means its just me and the kiddo for the next three days and I'm, frankly, terrified of going batshit crazy. Any time I claim I'm not an extrovert I have something like this to remind me I am. I do Not. Like. Being. Alone. Even if "alone" in this case is actually being with an incredibly vivacious 7-month-old. I don't like being without fully realized grownup English-speakers.

The weird thing is, I haven't rushed to make plans during his absence. Usually, I have plans most days--a walk here, a playdate there. But this week I've been crippled with inertia. I don't know if my subconscious needs some alone time, or my Puritan experimenter wants to see how well I can do without help or interaction. In any case, I'm looking at several days with not a lot of breaks from a baby.

The baby in question is really entertaining and laughs at nearly everything I do, which is not a bad ego boost, but she requires a lot of attention. Not having other children, and having avoided children much of my life, I don't really have a barometer for normalcy on this. Is my kid an attention whore? Or are all kids attention whores? If I remember my own childhood correctly, with my near hysterical need to be as close as humanly possible to my mom and sister at all times, its all kids.

But now that its me doing the entertaining, I have to admit it can be a wee bit exhausting. I'm fairly creative, but after my fourteenth round of Things I Know Amuse My Baby (trademark) I'm looking around for an invisible person to step in and continue the sketch comedy while I take a nap.

Maybe I just need more material.

We're out of the woods, we're out of the dark, we're out of the night

I should change my blog name to A.D.D. O.D. this week because I feel like a fifteen-year-old in Chemistry class right about now. Distracted and twitchy, I'm day-dreaming my way through any free time and totally spazzing out while caring for my daughter. She seems to be enjoying it--after all, who doesn't want a mom who can make 16 different animal noises and then dance like an uncoordinated Michael Jackson for her entertainment. I'm like my own variety show.

I tend to get this way every Spring. I don't know if its psychological (whee! It's Spring! Let's party!) or physiological (Get moving to the summer feeding/hunting grounds, humanoid) but I'm clearly a victim of our unseasonably warm weather this year. Something about cherry trees in full bloom and wee daffodils poking out through the grass is making me want to don a flippy dress and go running through the park.

It's amazing to think that this is Indie's first Spring. Let that sink in. Her first Spring. Imagine if you'd never seen the world unfurl after a wintry sleep. Imagine if all you knew of the outside were grey days and rain and then all of a sudden there was sun and color and birds singing. It must be like the Wizard of Oz when it switches from black and white to color.

Fashionably Late

I was recently pregnant, as my gut would attest, and by recently, I mean 7 months ago. Those 7 months spent getting some semblance of my body back plus the 9 months I was knocked up and portly equals a reallllly long time (in fashion years) out of the loop. I basically spent the last year and a half wearing whatever fit and could be scored from a thrift store, so imagine my surprise when I came back to normal person land and found that the clothes are hella ugly.

When did we decide to fuse the worst of the 80s, 90s and some mid-century interpretation of the future and call it good? When did shoes that look like they were created by performance artists on meth binges become haute couture? From high end to low end, there's very little I'm digging.

My mother-in-law once said that if you wore it the first time, you shouldn't wear it again. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so that means I can't get on the flannel or leggings bandwagon. And skinny jeans? In a moment of sheer madness I bought a pair at my local Value Village with the intention of tucking them into boots. Somehow I forgot that only 14-year-olds and anorexics can pull off that look. Let's just say I looked not unlike a T-Rex shoved into riding boots.

Tunic tops make everyone look pregnant, and I'm frankly done with that. I didn't even wear them when I was pregnant, because they made me look fatter, so I'm not about to start now. At least I can get behind the long t-shirt look that's so big now. Modesty and the loss of my flat stomach have steered me toward this style--I think my butt crack flashing days might be behind me now.

It's hard to wake up and realize you're so far behind on the trends that it isn't even worth catching up. It's the clothing equivalent of sticking with all the music from your college days because you don't have the energy to find what's cool now. I used to scoff at people like that. I chided my mom for her wardrobe--"1982 called and they want that blazer back, Mom."--and mocked my brother's in law for their music taste--"Bands have come out after Pearl Jam, guys."--but I'm starting to see how easy it would be to go there.

Stores like Ann Taylor are starting to look really good to me, and I have officially left my Forever 21 days behind me unless they change their name to Forever 31. I'm just too old--too mommish to buy Smurf-print thongs and skull print hoodies. I don't want to be one of those women in their forties who still wear cat-ear hats and think they're being cute. But I also don't want to start wearing mom jeans to hold in my pooch. There has to be a happy medium. Maybe that's what being in your 30s is all about.

Mad Men and the women they love

We've been watching a lot of Mad Men lately, and it's gotten me thinking about my love of 60's clothes, my inability to emulate the hairstyles of that period (seriously, where do women learn that?), and the obvious miscasting of my body in this time period, when clearly it is of the vintage ilk. The show, not surprisingly, has also triggered a nagging desire to examine gender roles.

In Mad Men, the women cater to the men like mothers and whores, submitting and stuffing down their desires, thoughts, and opinions in order to be proper subservients. And yet, through all of it, you get the feeling the women think the joke's on the men, as they employ the tricks often utilized by the oppressed--manipulation, lies, beauty, and a tight-knit cameraderie. Books and books have been written on the subject of mid-century gender roles and I don't have the credentials or genius to add anything on the matter, but I do find myself doing the third (or is it fourth?) wave feminist thing of wondering what we as women have lost while we've gained so much in the period up until now?

From my perch as a modern day housewife, at least for the last four months, there's something a bit intoxicating at the idea that your husband goes to work and provides for you and the family, while your expectations are to run the household and raise the kids and all that entails. There's no nagging fear about re-entry to the workplace, no constant jockeying with your husband over how long you'll stay home and when you need to start contributing to the house fund. You don't have to find yourself defending your decision to stay home to everyone you come into contact with, from the grocery store checker to your relatives you never see but are somehow allowed opinions on your life decisions. There's no existential crisis over whether or not this is the right decision and are you going to destroy your career/marriage/friendships/finances by staying home with them. There is, in point of fact, freedom that comes with restriction.

On the other hand, I don't like anyone making decisions for me, and the idea of being essentially yoked by marriage and motherhood into a foregone conclusion doesn't sit well with me.

So this is what it's like to have time to myself?

I'd honestly forgotten. And clearly I haven't blogged in, gee, a long ass time. Long enough that I am now a mom for god's sake. A mom! Like a fish with a bicycle or an emo kid who washes their hair, it's all a bit incongruous.

I've been reading "Madness" by Marya Hornbacher, author of my beloved "Wasted," a woman of brilliance and insanity in equal parts. It's good--not as good as Wasted--but good, darn good. Her typical stream of consciousness vignettes of startling imagery interspersed with totally head-screwed-on wisdom style clicks with me, our thoughts like long-forgotten Legos snapped simpatico. I don't know if that makes me crazy, or what. Note to self: analyze later.

The book makes me feel a little off. Dopey. Drugged. Again, part of her genius and I'm sure, knowing her, wholly intentional. I find myself muttering absently as I pour my add-water-and-stir "chicken" soup into a bowl, giggling at nothing in particular after reading too much. My hands are clammy; my back sweaty. Maybe it isn't even the book. I have, after all, been starving and retching and shitting my way through the last four days, as I battled (battle) food poisoning Armageddon. Midget thinks it's norovirus. The word scares me, so I avoid it.

In the book, Hornbacher talks about her constant fear, during a cycle of depression, that she's stupid and has forgotten how to write. I get that. It's my fear as well. It gnaws at me; wakes me at 3 a.m. when a full bladder or a peep from Indie hasn't done the trick. "What if I'm dumb now?"I whisper into my drool-stained pillow. "I will be found out. I am a fraud." I get the desire for mania, for the manic bursts of energy-driven excess and creativity. Aren't all artists of all ilk a bit cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Or is that just the romantic myth? It sure seems to fit most of the talented freaks I know.

Signs you may be ready to leave your twenties

10. The word "club" makes you break out in a cold sweat and you don't own a single halter top, a curling iron, or a push up bra.

9. You spent two weeks looking for the perfect commuter bag, that was age appropriate and didn't make your back/shoulders hurt, then bored all your friends with a running monologue about the features of said bag.

8. You recently purchased a "skort" from an outdoorsy company because it was "practical," and you wear clogs almost every day.

7. You think guys in their mid-twenties are cute until they open their mouths and say something. Anything.

6. You can't sleep without melatonin, valerian, benadryl, wine, or some combination therein.

5. When a kid starts screaming at a restaurant, your first reaction isn't to smother it with a paper bag. Babies start seeming endlessly fascinating.

4. One night of stoned grazing causes you to gain a whole pound. Jogging starts to seem like the only viable option for fitting into your pants.

3. Someone mentions the latest 'it' band playing at the Showbox and your first reaction is "who?"

2. You compliment your 60-year old coworker on her outfit from Chico's... and you mean it.

And the number one reason....

1. You're spending your birthday dinner at an all-organic restaurant with your husband and mom, because that's what you wanted to do.