Life in the Slow Lane

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the heavy responsibility of these first few, formative months. For instance: a) In this short time before my child becomes verbal, I must settle on the best way to read each of the children's books destined for endless repetition. If the dog in the story barks, what should it sound like? If there are words to a song, but no notes provided, what tune do I borrow? Because once my audience gains the ability to protest, I am stuck to one method per story and one method only. b) Unlearning bad habits. I have frequently mused that young adulthood is the time to learn all sorts of bad habits not permitted while under your parents' roof that then must be unlearned before your children are old enough to mimic. Fortunately, I didn't pick up smoking, chewing, or going with girls who do, but I've begun to use horrendous amounts of cluttering... It's like I um... sort of put in words that are kind of unnecessary. And it is, you know, really sloppy ...

S.O.S. and I might need more sleep. As we were parking our car at the post office the other day, a man carrying a huge diaper box crossed in front of us. I'm not proud of this fact, but I started thinking how I could distract the man long enough to put my address in the "to" spot. Or maybe after he left the box to be mailed I could sneak behind the counter and change the address. I hadn't really come up with a good way to make sure the box was mailed to me, but it turns out S.O.S. was brainstorming on his own. "Ok," he said, "I'll take him out with the car and you grab the box." The thing is... if we had been getting more sleep, we probably would have realized just how unlikely it was that the box was still full of diapers.

I have now been a parent for twelve weeks. This means that I am only moderately less certain of how to raise fabulously well-adjusted and attractively well-behaved children as I was thirteen weeks ago. I have also now been a working mother for five weeks. I work from home three days a week and am in the office the other two. I will let you in on a few secrets: with 473 square feet of living space for two adults, a baby, a home office, and a mostly dead plant, everything but the plant and baby had better be multitasking. The other day S.O.S. and I had company over for dinner and as I was pulling the pasta off of our stove (doubling as counter-top), I quietly asked S.O.S. if he thought we should clear off the dining table so our guests could eat there rather than using barstools as TV tables. He whispered back that if we had wanted our guests to feel welcome and comfortable, they probably should not be witness to the conversion of diaper changing table to dining table. Oops. The bar s...

One day, in mid-pregnancy, S.O.S. and I were out for a drive and a large truck bearing the picture of a bag of Sun Chips turned onto the street in front of us. I yelled "Follow that truck!" Because right in that moment, there was nothing that sounded as delicious as eating an entire bag of Sun Chips. Now for those of you who know me, this might sound slightly out of character. S.O.S. thought so, too. "Really?!?" "No, I mean, yes. I mean, no. If we did go buy Sun Chips, then the advertising on that truck will have worked, and that would make me feel like I had given in." But three minutes later we were pulling into the Vons parking lot, at my request, to find some Sun Chips. S.O.S. drove the car around the parking lot while I ran in, went straight to the chips aisle, and found a bag of temptation itself. *CRINKLE, CRINKLE* The noise of the bag nearly made me jump. What was wrong with it? Some new-fangled packaging that was biodegradable... and extra noi...

I think I can tell you almost the precise hour when my Newbaby grew up. I knew it was coming based on a number of factors: his increased hunger, the famous "six week" spurt mentioned in all of the baby development calenders, and the inevitable truth that a Newbaby doesn't stay new for forever. His growth has actually been the topic of one of the pieces of advice most shared with me: Don't blink! The thinking, of course, is that if I blink I will completely miss him growing up because it really does happen that fast. And so it was that in the middle of the night Friday, my small baby got big. Why can I pinpoint this so accurately? When I put little T down for the night, he was happily ensconced in a diaper size "N". Three hours later when I needed to change him, the clean size "N" diaper wouldn't fit. And to think! I missed watching him grow because I was following one of the other most-frequently shared bits of advice: Sleep when baby sleep...

I am turning this blog into a food blog for just a bit to help out all of my readers who fell in love in Northeastern Brazil. That is... fell in love with tapiocas in Northeastern Brazil. For those of my readers who have not had the gastronomic pleasure of eating a hot tapioca on a crowded street corner, let me first inform you that a tapioca is not a pudding. Nor is a tapioca the pearls you find at the bottom of your boba tea. Imagine an omelet-type food only without eggs. To the uninitiated it may sound weird and not worth the effort of mustering up enough Portuguese to place your order, but you would be wrong. Please don't be offended by that. The other reason I am turning this blog into a food blog for a moment is because my husband, also known to readers as my S.O.S. (Significant Other, Sweetheart) is too excited by his culinary success to bother with sitting down to inform the world about this important breakthrough. S.O.S. has, since he first tasted tapioca goodness on th...

New babies draw people. This is an accepted fact of life. (To more accurately address this truth, we will be using the orthography newbaby, since this is the most widely employed term for this phenomenon.) Newbaby dissolves the city-stranger mentality: when it is impolite to make eye contact, creepy to greet, and unforgivable to initiate a conversation with a personal question.* In this altered reality, it is not unheard of for cashiers to squeal over newbaby, parking spot neighbors to gush through their open window before putting their car properly in park, and for condo neighbors to yell at the yappy dogs next door because "SHHHHH! You'll wake the newbaby!" I haven't yet gotten comfortable with the full range of comments and questions, but strangely enough, this is not the characteristic which unnerves me the most. Gaze at my newbaby long enough and I will confess to everything. I don't deny that the gazing is natural and understandable; I do it myself a good m...

Dear Child of Mine, You can come now. I know I've been telling you all along that you can come late, but late is now. I really appreciate your cooperation thus far. The kitchen is clean (until dinner time), the bills are paid for the next month, groceries are stocked, the trash has been taken out, the floors are clean (no thanks to your off balance mother), the pantry is organized. Doesn't that make you want to come and mess it all up? Yesterday marked a year since your dad and I bought our little house, and I am happy to report we finally unpacked the last box. And hung pictures. And put out door mats. So really, we are never going to be more ready for you as we are right now. Of course, everyone these days is asking about how we've decorated your room. "Room" is a generous term. Or maybe I should say the entire house is your room. You have more clothes than your parents do. And your father complains about how all of his "man space" has become dia...

Sound proof housing we do not have. I know one set of neighbors uses a shower curtain rather than a shower door because I can hear the rings slide back and forth before they turn on the water. With another neighbor, I know when the dog runs to the door because I can hear the tiny toe nails on the floor. Vacuuming, flushing, burping, swearing, fighting, closing cupboard doors, running the garbage disposal, plus. Do I even want to know what sounds carry from our side of the wall? Our corner of the complex doesn't put a great deal of emphasis on neighbor to neighbor bonding, perhaps because more than one neighbor has been introduced or recognized as the one who makes such-n-such noise. This is never complimentary. There is just something slightly awkward about getting to know a person after you have already determined their middle of the night bathroom routine. Or their vacuuming obsession. Or their lady-killer ways. Or their loose grasp of reality. Like I said, I don't really wa...

When the paint dries, the remodel we started nine months ago will be complete. So says me. The one chiefly responsible for accomplishing the remodel still sees things that need to be finished, but they are so minor that I choose to mark the project completed. (Pictures to follow when I find a way to hide all of my junk.) I guess I am always surprised by the interest people show in things I think to be rather inconsequential, like our remodel. But people have consistently asked about what manner of chaos still reigned. "There is a hole in our wall" to "we are hosting Thanksgiving dinner and we have no sink or kitchen counter" to "we just need to paint". And now, all ye who are still curious, we are just waiting for the paint to dry. Nine months is an auspicious time frame. If only I could guarantee that all of the other unfinished projects lying around could be completed in such a short time. Travel near and far and most everyone you meet will credit ...

Very faithful, very loyal readers of my blog may have noticed a sharp decrease in the number of posts in the last year. This results primarily from the cloud of thank you notes awaiting attention for approximately the same amount of time. Every time I felt an inclination to write on my blog, I redirected myself as the simple equation this year has needed to be "writing = thank you notes". But dear friends, my magic year given to me by all manner of manners experts comes to a close in two days, and I still have a pile (smaller, yes, but still a pile) of notes to write. And all impending deadlines of doom must be met with procrastination of the highest order: blogging. I attended a writers conference earlier this week. One of the workshops was for bloggers, and the leader shared all sorts of helpful information. The most encouraging thing, perhaps, was his retelling of the confession of one of the best bloggers of our time saying that he hadn't written a single good blog p...

Cyclone Nargis. Remember that? R___ does. He's writing from Myanmar, sharing about how the cyclone destroyed fresh water reserves and now disease is rampant. His one joy in the four pages of email is of a woman who let him know that she receives hope and comfort from hearing "sweaty Christian songs". He probably meant sweet, but then again, everything in Myanmar is sweaty. C___ just needs adult diapers so she can wheel herself around her village with no fear of shame. The chances she'll get them? With embargoes and poverty? Slim to none. And K___ over in India can't "pasteurize the thought" of people dying without a savior. I can't make sense of that, but there's a lot I can't make sense of. A nation visitors have called "hell -- on a good day" shakes violently, a marriage of 30 years flickers and dies. A grown son commits suicide. 7.0 on the Richter scale. In thousands of places, millions of lives. There are no easy answers....

In typical slowlane tradition, I will now provide resolutions for everyone else to keep. (Because frankly, the likelihood of everyone else keeping them is just as high as the likelihood of me keeping them.) 1) Go walking in the rain. 2) Discover a new use for singleton socks. 3) Learn to write legibly with your non-dominant hand (Okay, some of you can take on learning to write legibly with your dominant hand). 4) Clean your oven. 5) Encourage a child to jump. 6) Rid your possessions of one outdated piece of technology and/or the manual to operate it. 7) Conduct rigorous tests to see if you (or someone you love) is truly a princess at heart. These tests should include, but are not limited to, "The pea under the mattress" test and whether or not you can find a pair of glass slippers that fit. 8) Make your random acts of kindness less random. 9) Tell somebody you love them in six languages (not including the five love-languages). 10) Create a Facebook quiz/questionnaire popular ...