I arrived to my midterm flushed, blood shot and shaking. I can get as mad as I want to but when someone else is mad at my kid, well. It hurts, man.

This is going to take some research and maybe a therapist or something to get to the bottom of because Kiddo is painfully, sickeningly sweet and mild tempered at home. She listens and does what she’s told. The problem lies in us having to repeat ourselves over and over and over and over because her attention span is approximately three and three quarter seconds. (TEXTBOOK ADD, my kid.) But refusing to do something? Deliberate, stone cold defiance? I haven’t met that kid.

Daily progress reports are coming home now. When it was missing last Friday she insisted that the reports aren’t sent home on Fridays. For some absolutely ridiculous reason, we believed her. Come Monday afternoon, the Friday report is in her folder with a note or two about “refusing to listen to directions” and “did not turn in homework.” But Friday leads to Saturday and Sunday and do you even know how much bike riding there is to be done on those days? She’s crafty and I know she didn’t bring that paper home for a reason.

School kid and home kid are two different sets of practices and behaviors.

I asked Josh when he thinks one is going to catch up to the other. I think that’s when we’ll be in for it.

In four months, she’ll be nine. In seven years, I’ll be locked away in a padded room. Will you come visit? Bring mojitos?

-CJ

Pencil shavings and stickers being good things. Simple. Requiring little to no parent/teacher conferencing that begins with the teacher sighing heavily at you.

A week or so ago, Josh encouraged Kiddo to take her bike down the cul-de-sac and make conversation with some kids around her age that had been playing. It was an un-Kiddo-like thing to do. She is independent, maybe a little awkward and not comfortable in social settings. She would certainly not be the type to initiate conversation with a group of a strange kids, I thought.

And yet all week she has been with this little clique of local boys and girls keeping her outside, pedaling around the block, streamers flying. There’s a quota for hours spent outside and scabs earned on knees and elbows before one can act all grown up and ask for a Facebook account or a cell phone. I’m glad she racking up those hours. I might be more excited than she is that she finds herself with all these new friends instead of clinging closely to only one, as she’s done previously. And they’re all so damn sweet. I don’t say this of many kids. More often I speak fondly of wanting to elbow drop on other peoples’ kids.

On the first day of school Kiddo made a friend that showed her the ropes of the morning daycare place and the short ride to the school and where to go and when, etc. A little elementary tour guide. I asked her to tell me about her.

“She has yellow hair and she wears pink everyday.”
“But you’ve never seen her before today.”
“I know.”

Good point.

-CJ

new supplies and new shoes and a new style to rock at the new daycare and the new school

I can’t get over this picture. It halts me in the middle of whatever I’m doing at work as the background on my desktop.

-CJ

Soon enough I missed the west coast and redacted my statement on never flying ever, ever, ever again. And I was running low on diapers. I was dropped at the airport in Orlando, armed with slightly more plane travel knowledge than I’d had the week before, which doesn’t count for much. The stand-by flight that was to get me to LAX in one shot was booked solid, BUT OF COURSE. My only option was to wait three hours, hit a flight to Newark, transfer planes and head straight to Los Angeles. It was like someone tried to sum up a massive trigonometry formula in a short sentence. DOES NOT COMPUTE. So I was like, that is hilarious, please step aside ‘cause I’m going home now.

This is so much like my early college experience. How do so many people DO this? How do they know what to do and where to go and when to do it and how to do it and in what order. I have nearly thrown my hands up and given up trying on so many occasions. And then I pop a Zoloft and skedaddle to class.

Turns out they were serious and I was stuck. One might have thought the apocalypse had shown its first signs of dawning if they were to hear the voicemail on my parents’ answering machine (‘member those?). It was all sniffles and choked sobs. I was being held against my will and would never, ever break free from the evils of air travel. Woe was me and no one else. No one had ever experienced such horror in all their days. Why did I ever leave the state? Ad nauseam.

After a month or so of waiting in the terminal, I boarded for beautiful Newark, New Jersey. I was warned that I’d need to rush to my next flight as it was departing very shortly after it landed and I stabbed the informant with my eye daggers and also a nail file. It was a short flight north and it involved a small, wet sandwich. The flight attendants were of the nicest variety, stocking me up on a little extra juice for Kiddo and letting me bring the carseat on board with me to sit in empty space next to me. The nightmare began again when we touched down in Newark and I was ready to sprint to the next gate with no direction. Maybe the panic on my face was so physically apparent and maybe the person I asked did not trust this wild-eyed child with a smaller child on her hip. She used a radio to call for a gentleman driving a little golf cart to pick me up and rush me to where I needed to be. When he arrived I loaded my backpack onto the seat of his cart and he drove away. I don’t know if he thought it was the weight of my body or if he just hated me but he drove away. With my backpack. And y’all… I sat down on the floor in the airport and I cried.

It isn’t my proudest moment. But it’s up there.

The same lady that had called for backup found the calamity shaped heap with the stunning blue-eyed baby and quickly called the gentleman again. She called him with a vengeance. And he came back, sheepish, and drove Kiddo and I with every last one of our possessions over to the next gate at a whopping 11 miles an hour.

The flight to LA was quiet, dark and calm. It was deep breathing and relief. It was all almost over.

And then Kiddo pooped. And the thing about her having this one last rank diaper of the trip was that the unexpected three hour delay before New Jersey had utilized the last of our travel supply of diapers.

An aside: I do not enjoy corn. Only within the last year have I taken to liking it on the cob. My kid loves her some corn but I didn’t know that yet because it was just not in our kitchen. While in Florida my aunt fed Kiddo some corn. A lot, apparently. And this is how I learned, and I am very serious here, that the whole corn-in-your-shit thing was not a big joke.

At this point I’d changed 450,000 dirty diapers though never in the not-so-generous space of an airplane changing table. Imagine my surprise when I opened that diaper FULL of corn. The initial shock of it was almost enough to LOL in the confines of that rank little bathroom. She couldn’t continue sitting in this mess but I had absolutely no options. So I changed her into some fresh, footed pajamas, went back to our seats and wrapped her up in the tiny square of an airline blanket in hopes that it would not be used to absorb anything but if it was? Don’t bother me to care. Had we run out of diapers at any other point in the trip, I simply couldn’t have handled it. The running theme here is that I couldn’t handle much of anything. But we were going home now and I’d be damned if there was any stress left in me.

We descended into LA and I was so relieved that I nearly burst into tears. I hobbled around with our belongings through the airport until I reached Josh’s arms. Fucking home.

And then Kiddo, perched on my hip, peed right through those pajamas and all down my side.

I didn’t travel again until the summer of 2008 and a few times since then. It’s the easiest thing in the world. I am without the melodrama and I used up all my freak-outs during that initial trip. Unexpected layovers and last minute changes are met with a smile. I love to fly. Kiddo continues to be the easiest child in the entire world to take anywhere.

The thing was, and there were some things, I had never flown before. And I had fourteen month old. That I was going to take with me. And I was eighteen without a friggin’ clue about anything.

WOO!

This is much like now though the difference is that now I know I don’t have a clue. No one told me when I was eighteen, “Uh, hey friend? Those little anecdotes about life in this society that one acquires through time and experience? YAIN’T GOT ANY.”

Kiddo looked about like this at the time. Do you just die? I die.

My mom’s best friend worked for an airline at the time so I purchased an inexpensive flight through her. There were going to be a couple hiccups but with prior knowledge and planning they would be no thang. The flight to Orlando would layover in Houston but I could stay on the plane and wait for everyone to re-board. (This was incorrect.) The flight home was a stand-by flight but it wasn’t even half way full so it would be a non-issue. (This was incorrect.)

My dad and my boyfriend delivered Kiddo and I (and my duffel bag, backpack, carseat and diaper bag) to the LAX labyrinth. It was a teensy tiny LOT overwhelming. I had kind of forgotten that I tended to get hysterical and anxious when I had to part with Josh (doth thee have some issues, Calamity?) and I became an inconsolable mess. Once inside, Josh was allowed to help me carry my baggage (as he’s done for almost a decade now, ho ho ho) until the security point where I took over and managed to maneuver one thousandy pounds plus a living, moving (adorable, chubby) being through the metal detectors and the like. Again: first time. I didn’t know I had to take my jacket and shoes off and was impatiently told to step aside and do so. In the process, I set Kiddo down and she promptly began crawling away from me. I was already exhausted, heart racing, hot and wanted someone to hold my hand. But I remained calm and collected NOT AT ALL.

Unlike most aspects of this trip, I had experienced a metal detector/baggage scanner situation once before. My mom and I went to court when I was but a wee unpregnant teen for a traffic ticket I’d received. We were sent back to the car three times. Giant novelty safety pins (why?), disposable cameras and Swiss army knives? Not allowed in court.

My belongings went onto the belt and the kid and I went through the archway o’ safety. My favorite black jacket never came off that conveyer belt, may it rest in peace. Onward to the boarding area, a kind gentleman chased me down to return the trail of items that were spilling out of my back pocket including cash and lipstick. Why, thank you, may I wipe mine and my toddler’s snot trails on your sleeve?

By the grace of something holy, we made it on that goddamn plane. But I could not stop crying. Despite my efforts at discretion, my seatmate asked if I would be alright and offered comforting platitudes. There would be nothing to worry about, she promised. She did this all the time. But being thousands of feet in the air was not a concern for me. It was being lost and confused and lonely and full to the brim with regret for trying to be a big girl and thinking I could just go across the country with my baby.

In Houston, we touched down and I was asked to exit the plane. I asked if I could just wait in my seat but there would be none of that. I stayed as close to the gate as I could, knowing that if I even looked away for a second it would disappear and I would be trapped in Texas forever and ever.

The plane nor the path to it disappeared on me. I took my seat with the angelic one-year-old and we set out for Orlando.

My cousin found me quickly in the airport when we landed. We waited for my checked baggage and it seemed that (one of) my worst nightmares had, of course, come true. I knew that I couldn’t trust my luggage all out of sight and tucked away under the plane. The carseat did not make it. It was hanging out in Houston, not being sat in by any adorable diapered butts.

We risked the drive to Cocoa Beach with Kiddo in my lap. When we arrived I swore off travel forever.

To be continued with: New Jersey, corn & pee!

It’s all for the better. To get caught up and to get ahead. We were rocking the hand-me-down chic with pride for a while but it’s high time we bought ourselves some furnishings we love and are proud of. I was mentally and emotionally finished with 2B and wished it a good riddance on the last drive out of the alley. Though on that drive, I did tell Kiddo, “I’m kind of sad.” She offered with a heavy sigh, “I’m sad I don’t have any food.”

Some pretty kickass anecdotes to living at home again are hanging with the fam and enjoying my mom and dad’s cooking. They’re a damn fine bunch of people and I’m pretty thrilled to be related to them. I’ve missed my hometown so much. There’s already been a hefty poker tournament in the backyard, many a lap swam in their pool, a jog around the quarter mile track up the street and a hike at a local park. (I am not above squealing over a cotton-tailed bunny or seven, turns out.) All of my DVDs are packed and my TV requires a variety of boxes and/or cables to work. I don’t have the patience for that so I borrow a lot of their movies and read more than I used to, which is a huge perk in itself. Face down in a good read is when I’m most at peace, mostly because everything and everyone around me seizes to exist. I could get behind this whole no television lifestyle, though I do miss all my Showtime stories.

Last week, I made the final payment on a loan that has been hanging over my head for five or six years. There is so much relief in that statement. It’s gone. Over with. DONE-ZO. This calls for a celebration, yes?

-CJ

Friday was nice, when my boss allowed us all to duck out early. I was super selfish and came home for my workout before I picked up my kid from school. I know, to hell with me. I actually doubled that workout in anticipation of All The Beer. We had some vague plan shapes that frothed over into nothing when Josh went out to finish the dragon tattoo on his arm. I hung out at home with kid, did some shopping, did some cleaning. A young gentleman got in line behind me at the grocery store with a case of beer. I told him to cut in front and he asked if I was sure. “Come on, you’re obviously going somewhere fun and I’m *sweeping gesture over the cart of lunch foods and dinner ingredients* going home.”

The thing about being home sort of alone on a Friday night is how fucking awesome it’s become. I am thrilled for those wide open weekends with few to no commitments so I be loungey and cleaney and do everything I want according to my watch.

My watch is set like that of most other Pacific time zone dwellers, so I guess I do things according to theirs too but you know.

At one point my mom called and asked what we were doing. I told her Kiddo and I were fresh off a “penis and vagina conversation*,” to which she asked what one had to do with the other. “Um… a lot?”
“Really? Penises and pajamas?”
Choke laughs, snorts and tears followed. I told her what I’d actually said, baffled that she hadn’t put it together on her own, and told Kiddo, “Grammy thought we were talking about penises and pajamas. Haha, go wipe your pajama!”
“No, YOU wipe your pajama, Mom!”

Totally had to be there. Mom got it right when she said, “Yours is the only eight-year-old that would laugh at that.”

*It’s high time she had an educated conversation about those, IMO.

Halfway through a cheap bottle of red and several Chelsea Lately episodes down, Josh came home, showered off the Bactine smell and showed me his new, raw goods. He has had the outline of a “paper cut” style dragon in need of shading on his forearm, which I fawned over and accidentally touched a few dozen times.

Then I touched his bathrobe, over his chest, and he flinched. He opened the robe to reveal a freshly shaved patch of chest with my name BLAZED across in large, fancy letters.

“Oh, you’re not fucking around, huh?”
“Nope.”

This is translated roughly to: “Oh, you’re very serious about us, huh?”
“I am.”

There’s some history here: In October of 2002, eight months after we’d met, he came home to his pregnant, sleeping girlfriend to reveal a small, printed “Jill” on his chest, with a small x dotting the ‘i.’ A few months after Kiddo was born, I took on a scripty little “Josh” on my right hip. Over the years, his little chest piece faded and faded. I asked him to get it touched up but it never happened. Queue epic breakup of 2007, after which I spent thirteen hours (in three sessions) under a needle to get a huge, colorful dragon down my ribcage to my hip, covering his name completely. HA, I scoffed. And then last summer, we got back together. He still had my name, despite having dated others in our down time. If I mentioned touching it up, he gave me that look that says, “Bitch, please. You erased me.”

A (super-cropped) glimpse of the top portion of my cover-up:

Needless to say I did not expect this huge, bold proclamation in place of his tiny, faded one. I’m still shocked when I see him shirtless. It makes me giddy.

Saturday was the day for All The Beer. My neighbor rolled his BBQ downstairs to our common courtyard/front lawnish type area and grilled up some burgers, brats and dogs. We had a number of folding chairs out under an awning filled with friendly faces. Perched next to me was my blue ice chest filled with frosty Coronas, which I sipped on for a solid seven or eight hours, in between dipping chips and smoking cigars. On every rare occasion we get this group together, we say, “Why don’t we do this more often?!” There’s no right answer. It was a really good night that even included some new faces, though I’ve forgotten the names attached to them.

At (my) of the night (11ish) (some others didn’t head home until dawn) came a text message from my friend Oscar, inviting me to a one o’clock Dodger game the next day, which I happily agreed to. Once I was jersey’d and ready that next morning, I found out we were on the FIELD. The tickets retail around $120 each and could have sold for over $200, surely. They were incredible seats, which we toasted to over and over. They were a last minute gift from a rep at our work who I will seek out and hug. I drunk-Tweet’d from said incredible seats.

There are so few things better than perfect weather at your favorite team’s stadium, cold beers and good company. When my plastic cup emptied, I spied a new one in the next cup holder. “A fresh one?!” I asked Oscar. And he said, which will stick forever, “The beer fairy came.”

The girl I’d overheard turned out to be this hilarious, super baked young girl that we laughed with as well as at for about seven innings after we’d shook hands and declared ourselves friends. That’s one of my favorite things anymore; those single serving friends you meet when you let your guard down and stop thinking the world believes you to be a freak.

And today: Kiddo went off to swim with a girlfriend and Josh and I were blessed with a sudden three hour window for an afternoon date. We loaded up on gummy type candies and hit the movie theater for Hangover 2. If you find the first one to be epically hilarious, and you should, this one is worth seeing. It’s not up to the same caliber as the first, though not much is. It is very, very funny though.

Now I’m slow-cooking some chicken and looking forward to some serious ice cream eating in bed with my freshly inked and wonderfully sexy lovah.

-CJ

After brunch, I dropped my kid sister off with her boyfriend to do mother’s day with the ladies in his family. It was so grown up of her. I don’t think I was in those kind of relationships in high school, where you gave a crap about the other person’s relatives. Relationships at that time were for passionate make-outs and not much else. But as we know, my almost sixteen-year-old sister is light years above me when it comes to maturity.

Over at my parents’ house, champagne was opened and kiwi strawberry juice was added and poker was played. I was the recipient of multiple bright sunflowers from my mom and from my sister-in-law and an orange daisy from my brother’s friend, which kind of melted my heart in a way that almost made me squeeze him with enough fervor to pop his eyes out.

When kid and I got home that night, Josh was scurrying around, room to room, closing doors behind him. I couldn’t figure out what he was up to but I was champagne-tired and ready to whip off my bra and put on my loosest fitting pajamas. Just as my eyes got heavy, I felt his weight on the mattress. Softly, quietly, he gave me and kiss and said all the things that I wanted to hear while presenting me with a silver gift bag and a construction paper card with a pink daisy on the front. Looking at it now on my corkboard at work, I’m thinking he used the cover of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence as a guide. It looks a lot like the book cover/my arm tattoo, and oh my God, I love it so much harder right now.

Okay I asked him and he didn’t use the book. Still. Well done, sir.

As masculine as he is, which, despite his sexy purple shirts, is a lot… Josh can clothes shop for a woman better than anyone else. I would fully trust him to start my wardrobe over from scratch, to dress me for any occasion, to pick anything from undergarments to hair flowers for me. In the gift bag were two tops that I was immediately in love with and a pair of dark denim capris. He bought all the right sizes, nailed my style and kept comfort in mind. Monetary gifts can be few and far between when they’re this good. They can be kept until the end of the night on Mother’s Day when they’re this good.

To all of you raising a little one, helping someone else raise theirs, taking care of kiddos on the side or for work, or step-momming… happy (late) Mother’s day. You are (probably) really wonderful.

-CJ

In the second before reacting, I wanted to widen my eyes, gasp incredulously and see her expression when she believed, for a moment, all of the horrible things kids say will happen when you swallow your gum. How it stays in your system for seven years. How you have to go to the hospital to have it removed. Then I remembered how I had relinquished all of my evil eight years ago when Kiddo was born.

“It’s totally fine.”

“Oh. It is?”

“Totally.”

Utter relief. And then, “Can I have a piece of cheese?”

I can only wish my fears were quashed so quickly.

-CJ

Please feel free to send me some living, breathing greenery to keep me company.

There’s a Thai place nearby. I’m slacking on my quest to try new foods so I think I’ll head there for lunch soon. What’s a picky girl to order from a Thai menu?

The other day when I picked up Kiddo from school, there were some screaming kids on a nearby playground, around her age (or size at least), and one yelled, “I’LL SMACK THE KOREAN OUT OF YOU.” No shit.

I had to have a quiet chat with the super amazing after-school supervisor gal about Kiddo. I was afraid we were in a bully situation and mine was not the victim. There’s a younger girl in the same after-school program that has told Kiddo once in front of me and once in front of Josh that she hopes Kiddo will be “nicer tomorrow.” Which totally freaked me out to the point that I couldn’t even take my kid’s word that she wasn’t being mean. Super amazing after-school supervisor gal assured me that the other child complaining about everyone and everything and I should definitely not worry about my kid being mean to anyone. Exhale. But when it came to speaking her mind, apparently Kiddo’s got the gold medal. The gal told me how she’s so straight forward that some of the other kids have trouble even trying to react to her.

I’m good with her telling someone deadpan that she doesn’t want to play with them, as long as she’s not shoving them while she does it.

Alright, turning off the mom and turning on the SEX DRUGS AND ROLL ‘N ROLL.

A bunch of my actual family members went out to Vegas two weekends back for my Floridian cousin’s wedding. She and her new spouse decided to forego the fancypants wedding and put that kinda dough toward a reverse vasectomy so they could make BEBES*.

*I KEEP DREAMING I’M HAVING THEM. At least once a week, I’m taking care of a newborn and the memories of almost a decade ago come flooding back.

Upon arrival at the Orleans, Josh and I freshened up and hit the casino with various members of my family. Within an hour, I was pocketing this:

& yelling at various strangers, “I JUST WON FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” This was a huge boost for us, being that we had only booked one night with our meager earnings and would be booking the second night once we arrived. We were able to have a good time, guilt free, and leave our bank account untouched.

The wedding was short and sweet, Vegas style. My sister-in-law took one jillionty pictures on her awesome, gigante new camera:

wedding prep

I took some grainy cell shots, as usual:

It was so, so fun. I am reminded that my extended family is so, so cool and I can’t wait until we all get together again.

-CJ