I’m kind of a crappy mom

 chooch, Henrying, That I Like, Things About Henry
May 122008
 

Today, I took Chooch over my friend Jess’s. Usually I don’t have a car during the day, so whenever I go out with Chooch, Henry is with us too. But today was the day of Independence, so I loaded Chooch and all his shit in the car and after fifteen minutes of struggling with the car seat straps and retrieving all the shit I forgot in the house, we were finally ready to go.

We had to stop at CVS first to pick up some stuff for Jess. Apparently, Chooch is perfect when Henry takes him to the store. But with me, it’s always game time, so he was trying to get me to spin in circles and then wanted me to sit on the floor with him and he was pulling me in a trillion directions so I ended up having to hold him while we were in line and some old man was causing a ruckus over toilet paper and I was like, "Just pay for it, asshole, can’t you see I’m holding a eighty thousand pound toddler?"

After we left, I called Henry to tell him I appreciate him, because I can’t imagine being a single mom and having to do this shit on my own all the time. I get frazzled easily so I was nearly in tears, after struggling with the car seat again, and I think I ended the phone call by whimpering, "And I’m pretty sure his shoes aren’t on right." Pretty much the jokiest mother ever. Seriously, I’m useless. Unless it involves running around, screaming, and making up monster voices.

I even texted a heartfelt  "I<3u" to Henry again, out of desperation, and I think it had an effect on him because he bought me a new camera. Yes Henry, I’m keeping you. A proposal might be nice, too, though. Just a suggestion.

Jess just had a baby a week ago and named him Gavin. It was Chooch’s first time around a baby.  He was enrapt, confused, suspicious, annoyed, enamored all at once; his head was probably very near-explosion. Naturally, the first thing he did was go straight for the soft spot with his fist. He kept saying, "Baby!" and doing the sign for it. Then he was trying to tickle him, I think? I don’t know, but he was stabbing the baby with his finger and saying "diddle diddle" and it was weird. Usually, he puts up a good struggle when it comes time to have his diaper changed, but when he saw Jess changing Gavin’s diaper, he pulled me off the couch and said, "Uh-oh, pee" and patted his diaper. Then he layed down, willingly, on the floor, and remained calm and still while I changed him. If only it was always like that.

He started to get annoyed at the lack of attention, though. His remedy for that was standing on his head, slamming into walls, and performing a small sign language show for us. Then he would fall on purpose and say, "SOWWY!" Yes Chooch, we’re watching you. Yes Chooch, you’re amazing. I think it was his way of saying, "That baby is ok, but let’s not bring one home." Chooch, I just got my fat ass down to a size medium, so don’t worry: there are no babies in my future.

 

Three Reasons Why Today (3-19-08) Can Choke on a Dick

 Epic Fail, Reporting from Work
Mar 192008
 

1. LOST IN THE RAIN: It had been raining intermittedly all day and the sky was pretty, OK — very, overcast. But I still thought it would be Great Idea #465768 to go for a walk. I made it a few blocks before it began raining again; drizzling at first. It was in the fifties today and the rain felt kind of warm and refreshing. So I kept walking.

Another block or two and the rain started to pick up. The drizzles had turned into big fat drops that smacked off me in sort of an unkind manner. "It’ll slow down," I thought, and perservered another few blocks.

Soon, I was about a trillion miles away from home and the rain was coming down in torrents. My sweatshirt was so soaked through that the simple task of walking became more strenuous, like walking with a  toddler on your back. My jeans — drenched. The bottoms of them had been dragged through one puddle too many and made me feel like I was stepping with ankle weights. My hair slapped against my melting face in sopping ringlets. All the people passing me in their cars were probably laughing, but I couldn’t SEE them so what did I care.

At one point, I realized that I couldn’t tell where I was. I was afraid I was going to get ingested into the bowels of Brookline, not being able to see, but I just kept making lefts and eventually some of the blurred blobs I was squinting to make out began to look familiar.

2. A SERIES OF EYESIGHT AND BALANCE MALFUNCTIONS:  Before I left for work, I tripped over the baby gate on my way upstairs. I guess because in my present state of semi-blindness, I mis-gauged the height of it and the toes of my shoe clipped the top. I tried to catch myself, but ended up sprawled across the bottom three steps anyway. Hoping that Henry didn’t see, I quickly looked over to where he was sitting, but we made direct eye contact. He rolled his eyes and didn’t even inquire about my well-being. Right after that, I was walking across the living room and my right foot got caught in the hem of my left pant leg (I was wearing my dumb long people jeans) and I did a very graceful lunge, landed with arms akimbo, and promptly said, "I meant to do that." I don’t think Henry bought it.

When I got in the car to go to work, I hadn’t even pulled away from the curb before nearly crashing, because I had the car in reverse when I floored it and came nauseatingly close to kissing a telephone pole.

3. BROKEN HANDS AND REFLEXES: I didn’t realize how bad I hurt my hand during my daring baby gate hurdle until I got to work and tried to lift the coffee pot, nearly dropping it against my chest as the pain spread up my arm. I mean, I knew it was broken, but not THIS broken. I’m trying to ignore it but every so often it feels like the skin is burning. I don’t know what that means. And then sometimes it feels numb. So I moved my mouse pad over the left side of my keyboard and I’m attempting to convince my left hand that it can handle this new life change, but it doesn’t seem willing to cooperate. I’m not asking it to get a sex change, for Christ’s sake, I just want it to cradle the fucking mouse. I keep highlighting the whole screen by accident and then my left arm jolts and jerks forward like I suddenly have some sort of reflex defect now too.

Everything goes to hell when I can’t see.

EDIT!!! So I deduced that my hand was feeling numb because I had two hair elastics wrapped around my wrist too tightly. That doesn’t, however, change the fact that my hand is broken.

Also, I make no apologies for the myriad of typos I’ve been making in my current state of blindness.