Worn

I think I am almost to reenter real life. It’s been building, this feeling of being worn out, of missing me time, of missing Misterpie and I, of being jealous of him and his coworkers. I noticed I was missing commuting. God, I love commuting. No one can ask anything of you, no one wants to talk at you, you can’t be doing something productive instead, you are forced – FORCED! – to just sit there with your coffee and read. Bliss, I tell you. I miss commuting.

I noticed I was feeling prickly about a coworker of Misterpie’s, not something I normally feel, and realized I was jealous that they get to spend time together as regular people, adults who share ideas, collaborate, hang out, just talk. Real people, not the mere appliances of child care that we are at home right now. When he arrives home, it is straight into the dinner-bath-bedtime cha-cha, and then I take care of a few things and go off to bed to sneak in an extra shred of sleep before I have to wake in the middle of the night to spend more time as I have spent my day, holding a baby. I miss being us, with time for talking, playing a game, discussing things beyond whether the baby is double-diapered for night. Maybe even, some day, having time enough to enjoy an intimate evening rather than fumbling quickly through the rare moment alone snatched while The Bun naps briefly and we’ve sent Pumpkinpie upstairs for the treat of afternoon Treehouse viewing. I know we’ll get back there – we did after Pumpkinpie – but I miss it, and it’s wearing thin, this shift work approach to marriage and parenting.

I miss real sleep. I mean the glorious feeling of waking up rested, or at least mostly, that comes from sleeping for hours, all in a row, unbroken. I have consciously not complained much about this, for a few reasons. As far as the blog goes, not only have far better posts died on the vine before I could find time to write them, but I also don’t want to bore the pants off of you all by indulging in what would surely be post after post about it. I mean, a mother? Tired? Groundbreaking stuff! As if you all don’t know about that. And more to the point to me, The Bun is so much better a sleeper than Pumpkinpie was that I just feel like I really can’t complain much, knowing how much worse it could be (really, her blog name should probably have been something more like Coffee Cake). I have never, with the Bun, reached that state of sleep deprivation where you feel brittle, everything both dreamlike and hyperreal, sunlight at once blinding you to the back of your skull and not even penetrating the bubble you are encapsulated in, the state I existed in for months when Pumpkinpie was wee. So yes, I feel lucky, but it does still remain that I am tired, and getting tired of being tired.

I miss a time and place to stretch my brain, exercise my passion for my work, a time not tucked in tiny stolen increments when I nip a little off of my sleep time, try to balance a keyboard on my lap and type one-handed as I pump, or ignore a mounting pile of dishes to read a few pages or tap out a few lines before The Bun awakes from his napping. I miss a dedicated block of time where my job is my only job, where I am not feeling sneaky for taking the time and rushed in anticipation of cries that herald more baby-holding.

In short (ha! Too late, kittenpie…), I am getting a bit burnt out. I am really looking forward to this summer, when we will all be off together for perhaps the first and last time, a time when I will not be the one on duty all the time, but I also think that when that much-anticipated summer has to end, I will be ready to go back to real life along with my husband and daughter. For this week, though? At least I have a haircut on Saturday to look forward to.

You Know You Have a Baby When...

Someone pees on you on the same spot that is decorated with their puke on you are neither offended nor staging an intervention.

Sleep in small increments is somehow accepted with a philosophical outlook despite its ongoing nature.

Screaming at 1:30 does not have your neighbours calling 911 to report a domestic.

Being bitten, pinched, walloped, and head-butted does not lead to filing assault charges.

Your usual strong antipathy to feet does not apply.

Being razzed at is seen as a sign of progress, not an insult.

You are curiously not grossed out by handling someone else's poo, even coining cute phrases like "poonami" to cover the truly massive explosions.

Your blogging drops off to when you have time, not when you have ideas.

Too Much/Too Little

Today my friend came to visit. I love when my friend comes to visit. I love my friend, and we live too far apart, live lives too busy, to see each other as often as we used to years ago, so I was excited to have her coming, looking forward to catching up. She had written things on her blog this past month, too, that I was interested in asking her about, things about her that I hadn't fully realized - I who had known her since we were 13 years old. so you can imagine how I wanted to spend some time together talking.

And then the moment they walked in the door, Pumpkinpie flicked into full-on crazy mode. Albert corralled both girls in the back for about half an hour while I took Alberta on a quick tour of our latest reno work, bu tby the time we got back downstairs, Albertine had decided she wanted to be with her mom - she is, after all, only about a year and a half old. Pumpkinpie followed, which would have been fine if she could have happily played with Albertine or simply been in the room with us. Instead, she jumped around, rolling, climbing, hopping, waving her arms, and generally making herself unmissable, while she yapped and jabbered and shouted, talking nonstop at Alberta, Albertine, myself, anyone who would listen. At some points, she was being so obnoxious as to insert herself between Alberta and her daughter or Alberta and myself so as to be heard and keep the spotlight.

I grew increasingly irritated over the course of the afternoon, asking her to calm down, trying to check her rising volume, trying to explain why I wanted her to jus stop for a time so I could talk with Alberta. Nothing doing. she was wound like a top, and unstoppable. By late afternoon, I was so frustrated with her that every twitch was making my tension flare, and i had to shut down for a few minutes while I fed the Bun, tears pricking at my eyes as I realized that soon it would be time for the dinner-bath-goodbye dance to begin, and I had hardly managed to exchange a handful of sentences in which we spoke to each other, not to or around children. It sucks to grow old and responsible, I thought, morosely.

I tried not to let myself be too angry with Pumpkinpie, knowing that she was excited, too, so when she came down to request a tuck-in and found me upset, I explained why without blaming, without telling her that she had ruined the day, for she hadn't really. I still saw my friend, and Pumpkinpie was just being an amplified version of herself, expanding and vibrating in her excitement like an agitated electron. Still, I felt like a had lost a rare opportunity, like I had tried and tried to grasp what I was looking forward to, only to have it swatted away by my flailing daughter.

Perhaps I would not have found myself clenching angry fists, biting quivering lips while hot tears leaked slowly out of welling eyes, though, if it were not that I am frustrated in so many ways right now. In so many parts of my life, I am feeling that there is tooo much or too little. It's never just right, the curse of not being the baby bear any more, but a fully fledged grownup with a baby bear or two of my own now.

For months, I was going along on mat leave, doing okay. Just treading water, keeping up with my ever-growing baby boy, happy in our little routine. But I have just enough room now to want to do a bit more, an that little bit of wiggle room is just enough to turn domestic bliss into domestic blister. When I was home with Pumpkinpie, she kept me hopping until late into my leave, so I didn't really reach this point, and we had not started to cycle of renovating, moving stuff around, and so on that makes my house a hovel right now, so there was less staring me in the face each day that i wanted to cross off my list.

Right now, though? My house is driving me fucking bonkers. I hate it. I hate the untouched boxes, the half-unpacked ones, the way we move them from room to room was we start new projects but never seem to get them unpacked. I hate that every corner is piled with some stack of books or craft stuff, toys or stuff from work to be sorted through, clothes that need packing away, ironing, or special laundering. I hate that everywhere I look, I see potential for our house to be what I would want, if only I had some time on my hands instead of 22 lbs of cuteness. too much stuff, too little time to declutter and purge it, much less clean it.

I miss having hobbies that interest and fulfill me, making for real "me" time. Blogging has suffered (as you may have noticed), with posts appearing only occasionally or when I need so badly to spout (oh, hello!) that I carve the time out of my sleeping hours to get some things off my chest. I haven't touched a piece of glass for nearly two years now. I can't do it while pregnant (nasty, nasty chemicals are involved), and now I can't do it because I have neither time nor a proper space for it. I miss these things. I miss making something. I miss forming something of beauty, something that interests me or speaks to me, using my hands and brain to bring something to life from inside of me. I have eleventy hundred posts in draft status, each composed of a sentence fragment of something I wanted to write about and never found the time to spin into a real post. It frustrates me intensely that the must-do trumps it, that my need for some sleep trumps it (at least most nights- I am giving some up right now becaus ethis need is outweighing it), that there is too much other stuff to do, too little time to do these things that are important to me.

I just have enough room to want a little more room. the difference between being swaddle dand being seatbelted. Being swaddled is so tight, you can give up control and find it comfortable. Being seatbelted, you feel that maybe if you could just wiggle enough, twist in just the right way, you might get yourself a bit freer... i want some time. Time to take a shower more often, to moisturize my scaly limbs, to pedicure my feet before nice shoe season comes and I have to take them out of their protective sock casings. Time to read a book, work on a window, write a post. time to unpack a box, clean the tub, shop for a pillow for the rocking chair. There's just too much to do, too little time, and my patience for it has worn through for now.

So my waylaid wishes for a catchup, a little time with my friend, a little something for myself? Would have been disappointing any other day, but today, it was just too much. At least it made me take some time back to blog it out, though, and maybe I can look forward to the summer, when she, Albert, Misterpie, and I are all off. surely we should be able to manage something then, no?

And now, rant over, I am heading for bed to sleep off the last of my grump and head back into the trenches of the week. I hope you all had a nice few days off and some form of celebration that spoke to you, be it Easter or Passover. (Oh, and as an aside - I got it together enough to even have eggs and bunnies and such and to even hide some! Who's awesome? Oh, I am. Whoot!)