Will I Ever Be Hungry Again?

Oy, am I full.

I think it’s the culmination of a week’s worth of eating. And with each meal I’m surpassing my body’s natural step-away-now-you’ve-had-enough signal, and even the back-up i’m-serious-stop-all-intake-immediately warning sign and continuing gorging myself convinced that there’s some under-utilized gastro-intestinal space somewhere where I can pack away a couple more Christams cookies, pieces of gingerbread, Toblerone chocolate, or in the case of this past lunch, a simple cup of hot chocolate. How is it that of all things it’s one small liquid beverage that managed to send me over the edge to bloated sloshing Santa-belly mode. Forget the Betty Ford Clinic. My first stop post-holidays is Over Eaters Anonymous.

In one famous moment in my shared-memory life with Mark, we ate dinner at some German restaurant in Hayes Valley called Supenkutchen (go with my spelling here). We were out with our incredibly fabulous friends Scot and Sheryl, and some friend of theirs who was in from Europe or somewhere who was probably a world-famous cyclist, though I wouldn’t have known. So this dinner. Well, first off, it’s a German restaurant, so it’s hardly the 70’s diet dinner of cottage cheese and canned fruit, right? But add to that the fact that they serve post-War portions at this place: two gigantic slabs of meat, with a pound or so of schnitzel on the side, on a platter that’d fit your Grandma’s turkey, along with the requisite pints of beer. I have to burp just thinking about it.

After that meal I was so full, so miserably overstuffed physically and so filled with self-loathing for having gotten myself into that place, I was over-the-top Crabby. Famously Crabby. I mean, I was lashing out at myself and others with the helpless frustration of a boa constrictor who’s trying to digest a small goat.

Now, if ever I am crabby (rare an occasion as it is), Mark and I measure my crabbiness on a scale relative to that night.

Scot and Sheryl and their maybe-famous guest ended up staying at our grand Noe Valley flat that night, and as I changed the sheets on the guest bed I remember biting Sheryl’s head off when she asked something meek, kind, and innocent like, “Can I help you?” You’d have thought I’d already bitten off enough that night.

At any rate, all the food, plus the intermittent gloom of the weather, and either too much sleep, or not enough, have left me feeling somewhat logie this week. I’ve gotten to sleep late thanks to Grandma Peggy being here and spending lots of QT with Kate, and we’ve all taken Family Naps (TM) when Kate has taken hers in the afternoons, but still I’m finding myself somehow sleepy.

Maybe slowing down and relaxing–which I generally tend to find stressful and have trouble comprehending its popularity–has exhausted me.

Yesterday I dragged myself to yoga, and despite how smelly I realized my feet were once class was underway (somehow my personal hygiene has also dropped off this week), I think it was a good effort to shake off my lazy sleepy holiday schlump. Today my stomach muscles feel slightly sore which is gratifying.

I think it’s from yoga, and not my excessive food intake, but it’s anyone’s guess.

Another theory: Kate has somehow tapped into the wellspring of my energy and is wielding it wildly for her own personal gain. The gal is on a general all-out blitz. She officially started walking this week. And not just the we’ll-crouch—and-hold-out-our-arms-while-she-walks-towards-us thing. She’s now often walking on her own volition to get around. Sure, at times she stumbles and sways and falls on her ass. And part of the time she still opts to crawl. But she probably gets that from me.

And that little mouth of hers is working as hard as her legs. We were in the car the other day and Mark turned to me and said, “My God will she ever stop?,” and in that way that there’s some annoying background noise that you hadn’t noticed until someone points it out, I realized she’d been talking non-stop for the past half-hour.

“Baby, baby, baby, doggie, Santa, Grandma, Dadda, baby, baby, baby, doe, doe, doe. Uh-oooh! Uh-oooh! More. More. More. Rabbit! Rabbit!”

For the love of God, it’s exhausting just listening.

But she’s our own little Energizer Bunny Love Bug. And with all her drunken sailor walking, and the accompanying bar-fight facial bruises, scrapes and contusions she’s collected on her mobile adventures and interactions with Christmas present toys, the gal is ridiculously adorable. So much so that one must grab her and squeeeeze her and give her no less than a hundred kisses, like it or not.

And mostly, she’s got better things to do. Now she wriggles out of your clutches and says “Doe! Doe! Doe!,” which if you choose to accept it is her way of telling you she’d like you to put her down. She’s got places to be, man.

And if there’s anyone to blame for her being wired for action, it’s me. I’m just hopeful that at some point soon we’re able to re-distribute the energy levels between us a bit more equally. It’s weird not being the one whose stumbling around wildly and talking non-stop.

Nearly Christmas

I’ve been a cookie baking fool. Over the course of the past few weekends I’ve been producing cookies at a furious pace and maniacally labeling freezer bags and Tupperware with cookie types and dates and storing them up for Christmas. Then to top it off I made cranberry bread this morning. I’m like a conscientious squirrel readying myself for the long cold months, and I can only imagine if I were one of the other squirrels I’d hate me.

But the fact is, aside from the by-product that it will be nice to have an assortment of cookies for those who stop by for some McClusky family holiday cheer, I think the cookie baking somehow turned into this nostalgic refuge for connecting with my mom.

There is something about getting your house ready for Christmas when you’re the one playing Santa. I want it to be nice. I want the tree to be pretty–not over-the-top fancy, but sweet and nice and covered in ornaments that have meaning to me or Mark and someday when she’s old enough to grock it all, to Kate.

My mother kicked ass at Christmas. Not that she’d ever take any credit for it, and not that she was showy about it. But she made pinecone wreaths, she baked and cooked special food, she hacked down her own tree with an axe and made a profusion of Chex Mix.

Going through all the motions this year I’ve given myself time to do it without stress and panic and the fear that I wasn’t going to have time to do everything I wanted to do. Even though it’s taken time and energy and planning, it’s this weirdly rewarding act—getting ready for Christmas—which was totally devoid of external pressure. How comforting it is putting a perfect double batch of Mark’s family chocolate cookies in the freezer.

And part of the comfort of it all is the knowledge that I’m doing the things that my mother did year after year—and since this is the first time we are having our own Christmas and not going home to RI, doing this all myself has made me realize all that goes into it. She’s been on my mind so much as I set out the manger figurines, or wrangle with fresh garland that I’m determined to frame the front door with, or put the cards in the little red wooden sleigh every day after Mark and Kate and I open them together. By repeating this well-worn ritual that she performed for so many years it’s like I’ve somehow been hanging out with her.

Part of the connection comes from the fact that so many of the decorations, the manger, the sleigh, the ceramic angels that lean towards each other and kiss–and are surprisingly not tacky, though in describing them it’s hard to imagine how they couldn’t be. So many of the things were hers. And I think she knew that of all of us I would cherish them the most. I think before she was even sick she said that I’d get the manger “one day.”

Peggy arrived today, and after going to a Christmas party we came home and got Kate to bed and watched a movie called The Family Stone. I guess I’d put it on our Netflix queue at some point thinking it was a light-as-a-feather comedy about a guy taking his girlfriend home at Christmas and she’s all New York and uptight and they’re all mellow and quirky but tight-knit and they give her a hard time.

It turns out the movie, while also being about the anal girlfriend thing, was more about this amazing family who lived in this huge old house that was totally enviable, but also a real family house with the requisite set of mismatched coffee mugs. Diane Keaton plays the eccentric but crazy-with-love mother of five distinctly different but successful in their own way adult children.

Somewhere towards the end, I realized that somehow my perspective on movies like this has totally shifted. I’m not identifying with the horror of being the child whose parents make a scene in front of the new significant other. I’m not picturing myself as the derelict daughter who wants to make the girlfriend’s life hell because she’s protecting her brother. I’m totally putting myself into the mother role—even though the mother is probably in her sixties in the movie. I’m thinking about how great it would be to have a brood of five children, who are all unique and fabulous and who unconditionally adore me despite my idiosyncrasies. I’m relieved to see that as this mother I’ve managed to hold onto my smart and funny husband who I still connect with and who isn’t afraid to hug and kiss our adult sons and tell them how much he loves them. From the snow-covered house to the cute gay son to the high-thread count sheets and patterned wallpaper, it was a nice daydreamy kind of fantasy.

I kicked Mark who was lying on the couch next to me. “Five kids,” I say. “How great is that?”

And of course, before they spell out what was going to happen in the otherwise light and breezy movie, it dawns on me that, of course (duh), the mother is sick. Just when you might be nearing the point of finding the family all to perfect in their garrulous noogie-giving love for each other, you realize that they are about to lose their most central character.

So here I am. Having spent the past few weeks channeling my own mother and hoping that somehow from wherever she is seeing me and admiring the fine job I’m doing of feathering the McClusky family Christmas nest. Then after renting an unsuspecting holiday hoax movie I’m suddenly crying over the fictitious dying mother who I wanted to be, and over the searingly sad pang of goneness of my own mother. No gut-wrenching sobs, mind you. Just the kind of weepiness that anyone would get watching a movie like that, but at a deeper, more personal level.

Maybe my mother is communicating with me through my Netflix queue. I swear I don’t remember ever having picked that movie, but it seemed to have made its way to me at a perfect time. Maybe I needed some sort of culmination to it all. Some big emotional moment to work out all these stray thoughts I’ve been having about Mom, so I can settle into Mark and Kate and the here and now and focus on the great new Christmas we are about to have–thanks in no small part to all my hard work.

We Were Called Up

Last week or so, one night as Mark was falling off to sleep, he groggily mentioned to me that he got an invitation to the French Laundry holiday open house.

It was bizarre. Sharing this information so off-handedly, and so many hours after having actually gotten the invitation. Within seconds I was straddling him in bed pumping him for information as if I were giving him CPR.

Since Mark had interviewed Chef Keller for a Wired story, and then attended another event where he was at Boulevard, Mark has managed to get in with His people.

Once I managed to drag every detail he remembered about the invitation–which was sitting on his desk at work, right out in the open!–my heart was racing wildly. To us, this is like an invitation to The White House. Or better.

We had a couple plans already for the party day. Maia’s ballet class was performing The Nutcracker. Whatever. She’s eight. There will be other performances in her childhood that we can attend. And our friends Megan and Jason, who have moved here after an episode in San Diego, have invited us over a shameful number of times and somehow fate has intervened every one. This time, I just had to shamelessly admit to why we wouldn’t be there. Thankfully, Jason understood the magnitude of the social occasion that we were privy to, and even went so far as to say they’d take our place if we suddenly fell in. (Leaving the guests they’d invited to their holiday party to fend for themselves?)

Well, like all days one looks forward to, this one came and went. Today we packed Kate up and took her to Shell and Don’s where we had a sitter watch her, since they were off at their own thing. I’d fretted over what to wear. Of course, the perfect outfits were all trapped at the dry cleaner and I decided it wasn’t worth it breaking in to emancipate them. (The dry cleaner already hates me for bringing them so many Kate-vomit-strewn clothes recently.) So I took a skirt that was too formal for a daytime party and paired it with a sweater that was too informal for the skirt, and put on some cute shoes and looked and felt all mismatched.

Of course we ran late. Of course I’d envisioned arriving at the stroke if 12:30 and staying the full four hours. But when we did pull up, we were almost surprised to see people pouring out of the place. The garden packed with folks, the balconies seemingly spilling over with people packing food into their mouths and clutching champagne flutes. We got to see this group several times as we circled around looking for parking, and Mark commented that we weren’t the only guests. Of course I’d known that, but someone seeing all those people was dismaying. There were so many of them! Eating my food! Drinking my French champagne! And where was Chef Keller, waiting to personally greet us with a holiday wish and maybe even a little gift of chutney, with a green ribbon on it?

My disdain for the other guests didn’t relent once we were amidst them. They were everywhere. And instead of the subdued and exclusive party I was envisioning, I felt instead like I was elbowing my way through a Filene’s Basement sale. There were food tables stationed with servers, but lines to get to them. At times, at the dessert tables, platters would remain empty. When we were inside my coat was too hot and I needed to fumble with it and my glass and plate with no assistance from the first-rate staff. At one point I noticed a tablecloth had a large dark streak of some sauce across it. Sure the food, when we got some, was good. But the whole event did something to tarnish my impression of Keller’s perfection.

At one point in the tent, I was chatting with a co-worker of Mark’s who had randomly been invited to the party from a local Napa friend. I turned to see Mark, who was standing next to me, chatting with Him. He’s so thin and looks kinda old. He was wearing a dark suit and bright red clogs.

Mark touched my elbow and graciously introduced me. “My wife Kristen.” And I looked at him and stammered something about everything being so lovely and happy holidays and then embarrassingly I said what “an honor” it was to be there. I was a bumbling star-struck foodie, standing humbly before a world-class gourmet great.

I didn’t mention to him about the spilled sauce upstairs on the fois gras table. I mean, everyone has their moments of holiday recklessness, right? They slosh a little run over the edge of the punch bowl and who’s to worry? It’s a party! They overcook the Swedish meatballs and still set them out on the buffet table.

Today wasn’t perfection. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned. And damn those people who showed up in jeans. Jeans! But despite it all I think I’m willing to give ole Thomas a second chance.

Crazy Boozy Mama

Tonight when we came home from Mark’s company Christmas party I did something I never do. Mark was driving the nanny home, who had worked a Herculean workday, and I decided to boozily tip-toe into Kate’s room to admire her sleeping cuteness.

This is something friends of ours do without fearfulness of waking their wee ones. Mark and I have tended to not want to do anything to possibly jeopardize the nice sleep-sleep, so have not made this part of our repertoire.

Anyway, tonight I barreled in there to take an innocent peak, and, of course, totally woke her up. (See? This is just why we don’t do this!) And the cutest/saddest/funniest thing is that she rolled over, and I was just expecting her to settle back in—thinking this is one of the sweet things parents who look in on their sleeping babies witness—but instead she flutters her eyes open and looks up and me and says as though she’s been up for hours, “Hi.”

Which of course I internalize to, “Hi, boozy Mom. You are waking me up for no reason and I will now have to work through how screwed up this is over the course of years with an expensive and potentially inept therapist.”

The second she woke up I felt like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment. ‘”Don’t mind me! Just your obsessed-with-love-for-you boozy imbalanced mother here!”

Well, maybe sometimes you need to do something reckless like that just because you are filled with love. And sure, a little bit of bourbon too.

Pygmy Tree and More Puking

On Saturday I gathered the family in a stern holiday-spirit march and forced them out the door to Half Moon Bay, where a Google Search (TM) had informed me that there was “one of the largest choose-and-cut live Christmas tree farms in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Despite the fact that Kate barfed all over me in the Safeway parking lot the day prior, it seemed perfectly reasonable for me to pack her into the car for a 45-minute drive for Christmas-tree-cuttin’ fun.

About a half-hour into the drive she started kinda whimpering. I offered her water and cereal and she definitively shook them off. Then nearly 10 minutes to our destination I looked into the back seat and got some sort of telltale “I’m gonna spew” sign from Kate. Mark pulled over. Thankfully, giving her some fresh air seemed to intercept the sickies, but did nothing for our feeling of being bad parents for having taken her out.

At that point though, we were almost there, so we didn’t know what else to do other than persevere. At the entrance to the farm we stopped at a small hut that had a friendly “Pick up your saw here!” sign on it. After years of post-9/11 air travel, this seemed utterly disconcerting. Here is a venue that requires you to pick up a saw before entering. It was so perverse, I had Mark stop so I could take a picture.

The hot blonde local teen working the saw-hand-out hut gave us some spiel about where the different kinds of trees were and how it was we were to find and cut and pay for our tree. As we pulled away I confessed to Mark I didn’t really listen to/follow anything she’d said. And in an uncharacteristic moment he said he hadn’t either. (If he turns his brain off when we’re together too, what’s to become of us?)

Well before we had too much time to fret over not knowing where to go or what to do we stumbled upon the “warming hut” which was producing fake snow and trying really hard (and tragically) to give off some alpine woodsy cachet. We pulled over since I’d read there was some Santa-photo op, and with Kate’s poor performance with Santa the day before I thought we could traumatize her anew and/or hopefully get a good (and free!) picture for a holiday card.

But really what happened was we bought some over-priced slice and bake Christmas tree sugar cookies and Kate freaked out when we asked a stranger take our picture with a guy dressed in a Rudolph costume. Turns out she likes Rudolph as much (or little) as she likes Santa.

When we ventured out again for the project at hand—the contrived “we will cut down our tree as part of our tradition, damn it!”—we were totally confused by what the kinds of trees that Mark and I like are called. We were even uncertain that we liked the same kind. Mark seemed set on a short-pine tree, but I had no idea what the needle-length was of my ideal tree.

“I think I like Noble Firs,” I said, trying to sound cool. “Or wait, is it Scotch Pines?” So we drove around a labyrinth of dirt roads following little hand-painted signs and trying to figure out what it was we liked and wanted and where that might be found. In the few times we ventured out of the car, I cared less about getting a tree, and more about photo ops with Kate. Prop her up, take a picture, she falls forward planting her hands in the dirt and yelps, I brush it off and re-prop her for more photo fun. Yes, I was that Mom.

Finally, we found the type we both like—Noble, I think—and realized that all the Noble Firs were teeny. Or maybe at least in this little foresty nook where we were. Was this all the Nobles that they had? We did another lap and found another section, at this point getting well into overdueness for Kate’s afternoon nap. So, determined, we traipsed around and looked for The One.

And thankfully, even with Mark I do maintain some sort of awareness of what is reasonable for me to ask. What I really wanted to do was say, “I know this was my idea, and I dragged you all the way here, and Kate almost barfed on the way, but I really don’t like these trees and let’s just go back to the place 3 blocks from our house and get a tree there.” I kinda knew that saying that wasn’t so much an option.

But all the Noble Firs were so damned puny. I was hoping for majestic, and instead we got what we referred to as our Little Teapot Tree (i.e. short and stout). It ain’t tall, I tell you, but it makes up for its height with its girth! So, $75 later we left the tree farm. We cut our tree and had our experience and made our tradition, and now have a Charlie Browner of a tree to prove it.

Today Mark asked me if it was just him or was our cut-our-own-tree adventure not exactly the scene from LL Bean that I was hoping for. And I had to confess that it wasn’t. But it made me feel like Mark and I had come a long way.

It reminded me of the time when we were first dating when we decided to make our own pasta. We called Shelley and Don to borrow their pasta maker—a wedding present that was gathering dust even for them, hardcore cooks that they are. Mark and I decided to make a lasagna. and slaved over producing perfect pasta and our own sauce. The project took all day. I mean ALL DAY. And when we finally exhaustedly sat down to eat it, I had the horrible secret realization deep down inside that I couldn’t really tell that the pasta was homemade. And that maybe I’d actually even had lasagnas with store-bought pasta and jarred sauce that I even—gasp!—liked better. For shame. Of course, it was too early in our relationship to admit this to each other. So we both cooed over how delectable it was, hiding our secret disappointment.

It was kinda that way with our cut-our-own tree. Here’s all the trouble we went to, and we have an overpriced pygmy tree to show for it.

The next day we ran an errand at Ocean Supply Hardware, and as much as I was chanting internally, “Don’t look.” Don’t look,” I looked at the trees they had for sale in their parking lot and they had some really tall and beautiful Noble Pines for just $45. Oy.

Sunday evening we were invited to the neighbor’s for a Hanukkah party. And Mark had been moaning a bit about not feeling well, but truly I suspected 90% of it was a lack of desire to venture out to a party that wouldn’t be populated with all people he knows and loves. But he surprised me and rallied, coming to the party even when I said I was happy to pop over there solo with Kate. After a half-hour of chit-chattery with various folks, he looked me in the eye and said he was going home. By the time Kate and I got back 20 minutes later, I heard the retching from behind the closed bathroom door.

Kate’s Both Ends Flu has not only made its mark on Shelly, the nanny. Now Mark has fallen prey to it too, and spent today home from work moaning and, as he put it, “throwing himself a pity party.” And this morning when Shelly arrived, she looked green. She started feeling sick on Thursday and is still not in the clear—so I sent her home and called in a sick day for myself to care for Mark and watch Kate.

So now, with the two other people aside from me who are regularly in contact with Patient Zero Kate, I can’t help but feel that there’s a target painted on my forehead. It’s only a matter of time until this plague strikes me too. The pediatrician’s office today told me over the phone that, yes, this stomach virus is going around, and it takes 4-7 days to get over. (Mark was not too pleased to hear that.)

Shelly called tonight and still feels crummy, so it’s unlikely she’ll be here tomorrow too. So if you’re overcome with a desire to stop by Chez McClusky, know that I’ve nailed a large Quarantine sign on the front door. I’m just cowering inside by the overpriced pygmy Christmas tree, waiting for the sickness to strike me too.

Not So Much about Santa

The rains are here. Well, not at this moment, but they arrived yesterday and today is all gloom and impending showers. So now I’m charged with having to translate my concept of a white Christmas to a wet Christmas, seeing as it’s the first year we’re staying in California for it.

In the past, I never worried if I wasn’t in the Christmas spirit as I was working through the month of December and doing my Christmas shopping in palm-tree-lined Union Square. My single-gal tradition was always to go to Brooklyn for a couple days to visit with Mike and Lorin before heading home to RI for the holiday. And if I wasn’t absently humming The Little Drummer Boy before, I knew I’d get a turbo dose of Christmas once I touched down in NY. There is something about the cold, and the frenzy, and the hanging with Mike for our traditional holiday fancy dinner out, and sure, the store windows in Manhattan, that mere mortals can’t combat. Like it or not, Jewish, Islamic, Catholic, you get swept up in it.

This year we’ll be here. And Peggy is coming which will be great. But there won’t be snow or good bagels, or Aunt Mary’s Christmas Even 7-fish feast, or my mother’s sausage stuffing that Marie always makes, not to mention Marie’s exceptional pumpkin and apple pies. She somehow got the pie-perfect gene from Mom.

So yesterday I took Kate for her picture with Santa. She’s been looking at Santas in books and ornaments and storefront displays, and can even say something approximating Santa. But seeing him in person sent her into utter freak out. I mean, sure, the guy was some fifty-something unemployed hack with yellowed teeth (the ones he had) and an intermittently surly attitude. But still. Here we were, driven to Marin, where we’d met up with Shauna and Baby Kieran, our Yeshi-midwife friends who we’d fallen out of touch with and had Santa pics taken with last year. And once we got into the little Santa hut and I approached him, Kate clung to me like a panicked koala. And just moments after I’d told Shauna while waiting in line that Kate only nurses at night and before naps, she starts frantically signing for milk while looking at Santa wild-eyed.

Ultimately we got a shot where Kate’s halfway on my lap and Santa’s and I’m leaning out of the way. Kate isn’t actively crying, and nor is Santa, but both of them look like they need someone to cut them a break. I think we’ll reserve the Santa pics for the grandparents this year, and come up with Plan B for the Christmas cards.

Kate slept on our drive home, and as she was waking up I pulled into the Safeway parking lot, feeling ambitious that I’d make dinner. After unbuckling Kate from her seat to put her in the Ergo pack, she looked up at me innocently and let loose a fury of vomit. Twice.

I was drenched, she was drenched. And the diaper bag with the wipes was on the floor of the front seat, buried under 4 large shopping bags. It could have been buried in the ground and would have seemed easier for me to get to.

For the first time since having Kate I was truly stumped. How do I move the two of us, her on my lap facing me with her legs wrapped around my waist, with a pool of puke balanced between us, to get the wipes? And really, even if they were right there at hand, the wipes seemed an utterly inadequate tool to handle this job.

Someone pulled up in the parking spot next to me in a huge SUV. I was sitting with the back car door open, mentally floundering about what to do. I considered yelling out to the woman for help at least getting the wipes. But she was worlds away and was gone before I summoned the words.

So I clutched whimpering Kate to me and waddling around the front of the car, balancing her and the pool of puke. I managed to open the front door and prop myself against the seat edge pushing back all the shopping bags. Then I started stripped us down. Kate’s jacket, her beautiful handmade sweater from Mrs. Brown, her sweet ivory velvet dress (all fancy for her Santa pic), and her also-sopping tights. Without a better thought at hand, I dumped the clothes in a pile on the ground in the parking lot.

At this point Kate is cold and crying. And then it starts to rain. (Of course.) I peel off my cashmere sweater and add it to the heap. Thankfully I’m wearing a tank top.

Amazingly I had a change of clothes for Kate. I’d brought it in case the dress got annoying for her to stay in. So, while she bawled at top decibels now, I dressed her, and with one hand while holding her dumped the contents of one of the shopping bags on the car seat and piled the puke-strewn clothes into it. At least were only 5 minutes from home.

So we’re three days into this little virus thing, which the nanny called on Thursday night to inform us she too became plagued with. It’s got to end soon.

Undeterred by it all I have every intention of forging on with holiday-spirit-making activities. I got up early with Kate and readied myself to make about 5 different kinds of Christmas cookies–some from Mark’s family traditions and some from mine. I may even tackle the Italian filled cookies that are a bear to assemble, but my mother always diligently produced. And unless she’s looking Martian green, we’ll trundle Kate off to a Christmas tree farm to cut down a tree and ride on their little Christmas train later today.

If it kills me, and all of us, we will get in the Christmas spirit, damn it.

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

It’s True What They Say About Puke

Your own kid’s puke that is.

I’ve heard people say that when your own kid is puking you aren’t overcome with being grossed out because you’re too busy being concerned. I found it hard to wrap my head around that concept. But today I experienced it first-hand, and it turns out it’s true!

Our adventures in barfdom began at 7AM when Mark went to get Kate up. She was sitting up happily in her crib which was spattered in vomit. Her hair was sticking out in every direction like Phyllis Diller, but chunky. And the stench. Oy! Poor gal didn’t even realize she could have gotten some major attention given the scenario. Until of course we started fretted and cued her to whine and cry. Being demanding has a learning curve I guess.

Mark hosed Kate down as I dashed out the door to a client breakfast. I’d been up in the wee hours, dragged myself out of bed and got all dressed up. It was particularly trying, seeing as it was a work-from-home day, and I would have otherwise stayed in jeans and been slovenly–and slept in as late as possible.

I hopped on the highway, got ensnared in a massive traffic pile-up in the approach to a tunnel, then realized I was on the wrong highway. So I sat in tunnel traffic two ways (argh!!!) since I had to turn around after going through tunnel one way and sit in SF-bound traffic to get back through the other way to finally arrive somewhere near my starting point 25 minutes later, and running desperately late.

I called the client once I was on the correct highway where there was clearly an accident since traffic was moving at 5MPH. Omitting the barf-covered baby and the wrong-highway misadventure I blamed my lateness on the current traffic hell realm and promised into her voicemail that I’d be there as soon as I could.

She called back 10 minutes later. Traffic was loosening up and I was moving along. I was even feeling somewhat optomistic about my progress. Then, laughing, she said she thought I must be having “a senior moment” and informed me that our breakfast meeting was set for NEXT Wednesday. At which point, stomach sinking with the thought that this whole nightmare was utterly avoidable, I glanced across the highway where I’d have to turn around to head home, to see traffic at a standstill.

An hour and a half after having left the house–two and a half hours after having woken up–I returned, stripped off my work clothes, tossed on my jeans, and started my work day. Lovely.

Shelly was home watching Kate and informed me she had, as Mark and I call it, “broken poopies” Poor girl was wrangling with the old Both Ends Flu.

So by late afternoon when a rash started developing on her face, reminding me of that weird hoof and mouth virus that Baby Owen just had, I headed to the pediatrician. Where of course she was perky and energetic and babbling with the doctor about kitties and pigs and such. In fact, she pointed to the doctor and proclaimed “doggie” in the waiting room, which all the nurses at the front desk found incredibly funny. I guess they like seeing the docs cut down to size sometimes, especially by one-year-olds.

They weighed Kate and the doc who saw her looked in her file to see when she was weighed last. 10 days ago. Yes, I’d just brought her in for her soupy cough and we’d seen another of the pediatricians. So of course I was then convinced he was making some notation in her chart like, “Alert: Mother possibly suffers from Munchausen’s by Proxy.”

On the way home with Kate seeming so totally fine, I decided to stop at the little local market to get some dinner stuff. As I go to unsnap Kate from her seat she mutters something, turns to me and gushes forth a sea of puke. Then does it again, but more the second time. She was drenched, as was the the carseat, and eventually me–who was desperately trying to determine if I should let her be, or try to unbuckle her mid-barf to hold her head forward. And once she was done the scariness and the yucky taste etc. had her howling. Not to mention me trying clumsily to drag her out of her seat onto my lap.

And it’s true. Even when I finally freed and hugged her wetly to me, I didn’t squeam about the nastiness at all. I was just thinking of my poor baby. And questioning my own judgement that she was okay enough to run into the store with. (No, I didn’t still go in!)

When we got home, the poor little sweetie and I had some quiet time reading books, then I gave her her second bath of the day. And even after two Silkwood-strength wash-downs she still had the vague stench of stomach acid in her hair. And it didn’t gross me out one bit.

Please please please don’t nothing bad happen

There is a mundane rhythm to my life these days, peppered with ecstatic happiness.

Mark’s job is good. He’s become a regular media darling. This morning, for instance, he was on Morning Edition on NPR, and he was amazing. That great resonant sexy voice of his that I fell in love with over endless epic phone calls early in what I was too gun-shy to even call our “relationship.” And he was articulate, like he is. Explaining something that someone else using other words would not convey in nearly as compelling a way. That’s my boy. I got into work and one of the women in production said, “I heard your husband on the radio this morning,” and I broke out of my I’m-the-boss-and-mostly-professional mode to gush for a few minutes about how great he sounded and how smart he is and how proud I am, and then I sort of shook myself out of it and said, “Okay. Have a good morning,” and wandered off to my office.

And my job is good. I mean, there’s a reason when in every one of my interviews people prattled on about the employees there being “salt of the earth.” The thing is, they ARE. I mean, I’ve been searching like a truffle sniffing pig for some office politics and have yet to unearth any. It’s almost creepy. And Thursday I’m co-hosting a holiday party with the editorial director that it appears people are genuinely looking forward to. I mean, in our team meeting this morning I felt like that intangible element of team-ness was really taking shape. Two months in and I’m no longer looking out at everyone there as them, and feeling more like a natural part of things. (Sure, I still think they’re the Bad News Bears in some client meetings, but with firm gentle guidance I’m hopeful we can even make progress there!)

And Kate. [Insert proud mama rant jam-packed with love here.] What can I say other than she continues to dazzle and delight us. Our trip to North Carolina was another wonderful touchstone with the Miller clan. Kate discovered the joys of getting to know a dog up close with Chuck and Ann’s beagle Zoe. Day One she peered down at her from my arms. On Day Two she woke up in the hotel where we stayed chanting “doggie.” Day Three she sat in the middle of the living room and let Zoe lick her face. And in the course of all spending the days together, I walked upon scenes with Kate and her grandma and/or great grandma that were too sweet for any Kodak film to ever capture. And as the report goes (since I was in DC with Amelia and company), on the traditional post-Thanksgiving shopping day, Kate greeted every mall shopper she encountered with a “hi.” Mark claims she said that no less than 200 times.

Wal-Mart: If you’re hiring greeters on the other end of the age spectrum, we have your gal.

And sure, the nanny has put an occasional bur in my saddle. (You know, that ‘ole saddle of mine.) But overall, even when it’s just the coming home and getting Kate in bed then sitting on the couch with Mark to, yes, eat dinner in front of the TV (sorry, Mom)–I just get silly happy and have to do little dances and lunge at Mark with cheek kisses. Hooray! We have a sweet-ass little baby sleeping in that room! I have this plate of ravioli, here for the eatin’! I have my husband to sit with and not even maybe talk so much but just lounge head to toe on the couch under an afghan. What on God’s green earth could be better? I ask you.

I really really really don’t want anything bad to come up. I just feel like stuff was bad for a while. Or everything good was paired with something bad. I got engaged. My mother got cancer. My mother died. I got married. I got pregnant. My weird eye problem came back. But then the eye got better. And Kate arrived on the scene.

And here we are being happy even though, with the exception of Kate’s glorious existence, nothing really big is happening in our lives. (As much as we’re enjoying watching Lost on DVD, I don’t think it’s something we’ll look back on years from now and be nostalgic about.) But sometimes I can’t help feeling like this is too good for me to deserve. Or maybe just that my the-good-with-the-bad spate was the way my life was always going to be from here on out. But I’m hoping that I’ve broken that pattern.

Please don’t let the other shoe fall. Please let me roll with this too-good-to-last feeling for a while longer. I really am relishing it and appreciating it, if that counts for anything. And if it does have to be interrupted by something, hopefully it’ll just be that there is office politics at Sunset after all.

Damned Indecision

Of course, just when my nanny frustration level reaches a peak of what I think is no return, something happens to make me decide to re-embrace Shelly. I know it’s a far-flung comparison, but I totally get how people in abusive relationships convince themselves to stick around. One day is bad, and the next day the person shows all their wonderful attributes. It almost makes me question myself. Was she really that bitchy?

So with the main issue being the have-to-be-home-down-to-the-minute, the day after our last “episode” in which I’d mistaken an early-home day for a late-home day, I hit a shitload of traffic going home. And traffic itself doesn’t even get to me any more. Who cares about sitting in traffic. It’s me envisioning the hell I’ll pay when I walk in the door late. And even cringing at the thought of calling to confess that a second night in a row I’m going to be late.

I mean, it is my lateness. So maybe I’m truly at fault… though she was pretty nasty that night. Oh God, see? I go round and round.

So I’m all scared and I call to say I’m in traffic and I’ll be late. She asks how late, and I want to say, “How the hell do I know?” but I just say, “It’s hard to say. Hopefully not too late.”

Then I steel myself to what is going to happen when I walk in the door. It’s like getting in trouble when you are a teenager and you decide that you can hear anything. All you need to do is stand there and listen to your mother rant on at you about whatever it is that you did, and you think that you can take it, you just have to stand there and listen and then it will be over. It’s just words, right?

So I summon my teen-like powers of negative energy rebuffing, and unlock the door to walk into a picture of domestic bliss. Kate is in her high chair, gurgling happily at Shelly and eating dinner. Shelly greets me with a smile and says she started giving Katie (as she always calls her) some dinner. She gives me a run-down of their day, and tells me more about the cold she fears Kate is catching. (She’d called during the day to tell me about it too.) She suggests I take her to a doctor.

Then the next day, which she has off, she calls in the afternoon to check on how Kate is doing and what the doctor had to say.

Oy! This makes it hard to stay annoyed with her. Am I crazy? Or worse, am I just lazy and don’t want to put the effort into finding someone else? Someone who is maybe better on the getting-home-late front, but doesn’t love Kate as much, or cook her healthy food, or take a geunine interest in teaching her things.

We’ve talked about finding another family with a baby Kate’s age or slightly older who might want to do share-care part-time. So, some of the time Kate would have a playmate, and some time she’d have solo nanny time.

Tonight when I got home, Shelly–all happy and friendly and cute with Kate and nice to me–reminded me I should post a listing to find another family. And I’ve been dragging my heels since I don’t know whether she’s a long-term solution for us. Why bring another family into the situation? And how can I write an ad, conceivably extolling Shelly’s virtues to someone else seeking a nanny, when I have my own issues with her?

If I were a friend with this problem the advice I would give would be to at least, at first, talk to the nanny. Express all the concerns I’ve had with her and explain that it’s been frustrating. See if there is a way to improve the situation. But somehow when I get home from work every night I just want to be with Kate, and don’t want to get into it.

If she could only be consistently annoying–and not totally great when she’s not being annoying–it’d be so much easier.

Maybe I just need to set a deadline for myself. By the end of the week I will talk to her about this. Ugh. I have never been one for these kinds of conversations, but feel like I’ve gotten better about them since I’ve had to give feedback to people at work over the years and learned to not shy away from it.

Okay. Resolved to do this now. Will report back with my progress.

Oh and P.S. The other thing I need to make a decision on is when to wean Kate. I seem to keep saying I want to, then get lured back in by wanting to give her what she wants, especially since I’m away from her for work and then feel guilty about denying her.

Must decide what to do, or decide to not decide on anything for a while. But will decide on that later.