Changes

I realized this weekend that I need to raise the seat on Caetlin's bicycle. And that she doesn't need the stepstool to brush her teeth anymore.

She was a really good girl today at school, so I let her stay up a few extra minutes and watch a little bit of "Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey!" which she proclaims is "hilarious." She sounds just like me when she says it. So there we were, me folding laundry, her watching TV, and I started asking her about her day at school. It's been chilly and rainy and I asked what they did for recess when it rained. She said, "You mean for PE? We went with Coach Jackson to the gym because none of the other coaches were there yet."

This is my public-school big kid. She's not my baby anymore except in my mind, when I remember how tiny she used to be when she would sleep on my chest. She's not my toddler anymore except in my mind, when I remember her learning to talk and asking to be read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" for the eleventy-millionth time. She's not my preschooler anymore except in my mind, when I remember her more or less teaching herself how to read and write and learning how to be real friends with other kids. She's the kid she's going to be for a long time, and I know that she's going to keep growing and changing and becoming ever bigger, and while I can't wait to see how she turns out, my heart almost can't take the thought of her not being exactly how she is. It's not that I want to hold her back. It's more that I regret the haze that falls over my memories, the clarity of every detail about her that I think I will retain forever that creeps away when I'm not paying attention. I remember her as a baby because I see the pictures; I remember her as a toddler because I can read my old blog posts. I remember her as a preschooler because that was just last year, but how she was then is already blurring and shifting in my memory, into the kid she is now.

So after we talked about her day and the extra reading instruction that she has in the library once a week, and after we talked about how they learned about the color purple and the fact that the daily temperature chart had been in the blue, we just hung out, her watching her movie and me folding clothes. We hung out the way I do with grownups with whom I'm comfortable, together but not talking. She's big enough to be my hangout friend.

And then she broke the spell when I told her it was time for bed and she pleaded for more time. She tried to argue that it wasn't actually late at all, and became again my 5-year-old who doesn't like to go to bed. After we brushed teeth and went potty ("But Mommy, I don't have to go potty. Oh, I guess I actually did."), when I tucked her in, she asked me to sing to her. She has always liked me to sing to her; when she was a baby I'd sing the songs from the TV shows she watched, or pop songs that I liked, or really whatever was in my head. She loved Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am" and it was her lullaby for a long time- I'd sing it to her every night.

She asked for Katy Perry's "Friday Night" (which, !!!) and I told her I didn't know the words (even though I totally do, and I feel a little embarrassed admitting that), and she asked for suggestions. So I turned out the light and in the deep dusky darkness sang Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" to her, which was Phoebe's lullaby for a long time. She told me her favorite part was the part about the comet sparkling in her eyes, and I had to admit it was my favorite part too.

"Mommy, I wish I were a comet."

"I don't, baby. Then you wouldn't be my big girl."

"But I'd spray diamonds! That would be awesome."

"I know, but you wouldn't be my big girl. I'm not a comet, so if you were, you wouldn't be my Caetlin."

"But comets have mommies."

"Maybe so, but it wouldn't be me."

"Mommy, if there were a bigger comet than me, and then a bigger comet than that, and then a teeny tiny comet, it would be a comet family!"

"Maybe so, sweet girl. Time for sleep. I love you. Sweet dreams."

"Mommy, maybe I'll be a girl who turns into a comet just to spray diamonds and sparkle, and then be a girl again."

"You sparkle for me just like you are, sweetheart. Night night."

"Night, Mommy. I love you."

"I love you too, sugarplum."

Things are always changing. I guess that's all we can count on out of life, that it changes and changes. She's growing up, I'm getting older, autumn approaches, literally and figuratively. I don't mean to be all Fleetwood Mac doing "Landslide" on you here, but sometimes it strikes straight to the heart of me that I'm failing to remember every single second of my children's brilliant lives. I get so caught up in the day to day, managing clothing and signed behavior sheets and healthy snacks and being Room Mom and making sure she doesn't watch too much TV and brushes her teeth and learns to be polite and good-hearted. I fail sometimes to just notice who she is. She's my beautiful comet, flying away from me every second of every day. At least I get to watch her sparkle as she goes.

Overcoming

I sang my first solo at church tonight with the choir. It went okay; I was generally on beat and on pitch, though there were a couple croaky notes and the musicality left a lot to be desired. There is definitely room for improvement, but it wasn't a disaster. Not as good as I hoped but better than I feared, so I suppose that's something.

I sang it for Caetlin, though she wasn't even there. Not because she particularly likes my singing (I suspect she does, but she's in a controlling phase right now and always orders me to stop singing unless she has specifically requested something). Not because it was a song I thought she might like, especially.

A recent Facebook status update of mine went like this: "Patricia is always sad and disappointed to see the things I like least about myself reflected in my children." My least favorite characteristic of mine, the part of myself that I most actively dislike and am dismayed by more or less on a daily basis, is my fear of not being perfect. I'm not talking about OCD-style perfectionism, but more like I'm afraid to screw up. I don't want to look stupid. It's maybe my biggest fear, and it is pathological. I don't want to appear lacking in any way, whether to friends, family or complete strangers.

Let me give you an example from when I was a kid. I started playing the trumpet when I was 12, in 6th grade. I had remembered my sister practicing her flute in her room when I was younger and she was in high school; I had this fantasy that I would do the same with my trumpet. Not long after I began learning, I was practicing one evening and hit a bum note, and my dad said something from the other room about me "hitting a raw one" or something equally innocuous about my wrong note. For the first time, it dawned on me- my family could hear me! In the small home in which I grew up, it would have been impossible not to, but for whatever reason, it had never crossed my mind to think they could. And they could hear me make mistakes!

I almost never practiced at home after that. For a long time I blamed my dad, for commenting about my screw-up, or for making me self-conscious. But the real problem was not his comment; it was me. My home was where the people who loved me best lived; if anyone was going to tolerate bum notes, it would be them. This went deeper than one offhand teasing comment by my dad.

If I could have ever found a place where no one could hear me, I would have practiced. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the back 40, and I couldn't get comfortable practicing even in the middle of the woods that surrounded my little neighborhood. Because someone might hear me make a mistake. I wish I could have gotten over it. It weakened me as a musician, this failure to practice at home. I look back now and realize that I squandered some real talent. I would never have been a professional; I never wanted to be. But I performed at a truly high level, particularly for a high school student, on the basis only of whatever class time and after school rehearsals I might have had. My band program was of high quality, so that meant probably 8 or 9 hours a week, but still. Nothing on weekends unless there was a performance. Nothing over the summer.

It haunts me. I could have been so much better even than I was. My senior year I lost my first chair (yes, I was first freaking chair and I never practiced) to a kid who wanted it so bad. He was so good, and he clearly put a lot of time into his music. Then I lost second chair to another kid, and then I lost third chair because I didn't care at all. I didn't practice my scales for the challenges, see, so it almost wasn't even worth showing up to them. In one case I didn't.

The main criticism of me was always, play out. More volume. I was afraid to let anyone hear me. I was afraid to fail, to sound anything less than perfect.

A more recent example is that I am afraid to live in country where I don't speak the language. I'm afraid to sound dumb. Not just by not knowing the vocabulary, but even by getting the accent wrong. I realize how ridiculous this is by seeing my own behavior with a non-native English speaker- do I laugh when they struggle for a word or don't get the grammar quite right? Nope, of course not. But the fear is petrifying. And I hate it in myself.

You can imagine how dismayed I was when I realized I was seeing some of the same things in Caetlin. She may not have that fear to the same degree I do, but I see it in her. She won't try to do things I know she can, preferring to say, "I can't do it." She won't guess at questions- if she doesn't absolutely know the answer, she'll say, "I don't know." Even when she does know, and I know she knows. She just doesn't want to be wrong, I think.

This makes me so incredibly sad. Of everything that is who I am, I wish I could have not passed that part on to her. I hope I didn't pass it on to Phoebe, and I pray I will not pass it to any future children I may be blessed with. Because if Caetlin is anything like me, she will live parts of her life in paralyzing fear. She will miss out on opportunities to have fun, to improve herself, and to experience wonderful things because of this trait, this issue, this shackle that weighs me down.

I can't let that happen to her, not if I can help it. I realized recently that I have the chance to try to combat it now, while she's young, and that I must do everything I can to counteract this in her. So I try to push her, gently, to try new things, or to answer questions of which she is unsure. I hope her teachers at school do the same. I try to make home a welcoming environment, making it explicit that she can screw up without fear of failure or judgment. She's too young to get all this, of course, but I hope it will sink in over repeated interactions.

But one other thing I must do is model for her the behavior I want to encourage. And that means facing my fears and doing things that scare the shit out of me. And making myself do them even when my whole being is screaming to stop, I'm going to look like a fool, everyone will laugh at me or worse they will just smile and say nice things to my face and then behind my back will talk about how terrible I was (something I'm working to convince myself my choir-mates aren't doing even as I type this...).

So, tonight I sang mediocrely in front of my church congregation. I could have asked the women to sing my part, or asked someone else to take the solo. The pianist could have sung it beautifully on no preparation whatsoever, and knowing that I have those kinds of alternatives makes it easy for me to consider running away again. But I did it. I did it for my daughter. In doing it for her, I ended up doing it for myself far more than I could have ever imagined. My choir-mates (whom I respect so tremendously and I'd hate for them to think I'm not a good musician, oh, God, they all think I suck now) all said nice things because they knew how ridiculously nervous I was. I pooh-poohed them a little, because it really objectively wasn't that awesome, but a part of me didn't want to soft pedal the praise at all, because it is such a HUGE deal that I did it at all. My choir-mates don't know me well enough to know that, so it would have come out wrong.

But I did it. Croaky, trembling, shaking almost uncontrollably. I sang into a microphone in front of a few hundred people, and if I looked stupid, or sounded terrible, well, that matters less than that I did it at all. I did it for Caetlin. Maybe, in trying to be a good role model for her, I can make the tiniest of starts on fixing the thing I like least about myself. Maybe we can help each other that way.

Love Song at One Year

She burst into our lives precipitously, without waiting for the doctor. I guess I should have known then that she waits for no one. Her determination and fearlessness amaze and terrify me daily.

She has, from the moment of her entry into the world, been her own person. She does things in her own time, whether fast or slow. I don't remember her as an infant much, though I know she didn't crawl until almost 6 months. Somehow in my memory she is always the active force of nature that she has become. I look at pictures of her early days and I don't remember her being that small or that helpless.

She has my features, or so I'm told. Why can't I see myself in her like other people can? I want to see myself in her personality too, not just in her physical features. I admire her persistence, her insistence on getting what she wants. I wish I could be more like that.

This might make her sound difficult, but she's not. She's a sunny, happy girl. She gets this look on her face when she's interested in something that delights my heart; she looks with naked curiosity at whatever catches her eye, and a certainty that she will investigate. Baby isn't the right word for her, anymore, even though she's not quite walking (unassisted) yet. She's a bright light, the sunshine of my day.

March 6, 2009, 7:10 p.m. I can't believe it's been a whole year. It's gone so fast! Happy birthday, my dearest Phoebe.

Gah!

So, I blogged at the end of January, completely intending to resume writing a couple of times a week. And it just...didn't happen. For some reason, blogging is not something I feel compelled to make time for. Part of the problem surely is that time for blogging is relatively limited, once you subtract work, sleep, boot camp, eating, church obligations, and hanging out with the family. But the other issue is that I haven't felt moved to write. It feels almost like a muscle that has atrophied; as my body has gotten stronger, so my writing muscles have weakened.

So, this time, no promises, but I hope to resume posting a couple times a week again. Starting with today, of course, and not just this mea culpa.

So...Pumping

To the staggering news that Phoebe is almost an entire year old, I also add that I continue to nurse her. I am so proud of that! I struggled with Caetlin, for a variety of reasons, and I was hopeful of it being easier this time.

Caetlin essentially stopped nursing from me when I went back to work when she was 12 weeks old; I pumped for another three months or so, but I nearly made myself crazy in the process. I couldn't seem to make enough milk pumping, no matter how often I pumped, no matter what I ate or drank, no matter what I tried. I at some points was pumping something crazy like 8 times a day. During a work day. In a place where I had to leave my office to go to a different office to pump (because I had a glass door that didn't lock or even latch). Can we say completely unproductive, of either work or milk?

And I agonized over stopping. I really thought I was a bad mom for considering it, for hating pumping so much, for falling short of my goal of 12 months. Even though I was only making maybe 40% of her daily nutritional needs of milk (the rest was formula), I felt like I would be depriving her of something significant by stopping, something she needed that only I could provide. I'm sure there was more than a little insecurity there over having gone back to work, over not feeling like I was around her enough to truly parent her. And too- I think most new moms (maybe new dads too, though I can only speak for the female half) go crazy for awhile. Like, certifiable. Worrying over the smallest things that mean, in the grand scheme of things, absolutely nothing. There is a sense of perspective that comes with time, that perfectly well-adjusted adults might have in every other aspect of their lives, that goes out the window when faced with one's first child. And I think that perspective only comes back gradually. I am sure that I still don't have the sense of proportion that I need regarding Caetlin, but I'm better about it than I used to be. And I'm miles more relaxed with Phoebe.

When Caetlin was 6 months old, she had her first seizure. I randomly had her in daycare that day, instead of with her nanny, and happened to actually be there when it happened. It was the most frightening thing I've ever seen- this tiny baby convulsing, with blue lips and staring eyes. She turned out to have pneumonia and a penchant for seizures when she has a fever. For weeks, I had been pissing and moaning in my journal about pumping and breastfeeding and how can I be a good mom if I stop and how is this impacting my work and I want to do right by the baby and on and on and oh my God STOP THE NAVEL GAZING. The seizure and the hours in the ER gave me a good healthy dose of that perspective I had been missing, and I quit pumping that very day.

So, with all that background, I will say that I was determined to try a little more intelligently with Phoebe. I would give it a good shot, spend a little time getting established at the beginning, and if it didn't work, it didn't work. Luckily, it did work, and here we are, nearly a year later.

And I am SO OVER pumping.

I nurse Phoebe first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed every evening. Otherwise, I pump, because she's so distractable and I prefer not to have her leaving my boobs hanging out in public when she decides to crawl away from me mid-feed. I pump on the weekends, for this reason, not just during the week when I'm at work. I'm down to pumping twice a day, which is a recent development, down from three times a day. And I'm so over it. So, so tired of the pump parts and making sure they are washed when I need them. Of lugging the bag around. It's not heavy, but then again, it kind of is, weighing me down with more than just its mass. I'm sick of the lost productivity, how it seems like every time I really start to focus on something at work, I realize it's time to pump. And while I love all the time I spend with my beloved internet, some days I really do need to get work done. I'm tired of the bottles, the fretting over supply, the physical challenge of getting half naked twice a day, in my office during the week and where ever I happen to be during the weekend (yes, I have pumped in the car, and no, I'm pretty sure no one noticed).

Most of all, I'm ready to have my body back. Once Phoebe turns a year and can have cow's milk, I'll keep nursing her in the mornings and evenings as long as we both can and want to, but the pumping will stop immediately, as well as the feeling that I don't quite have ownership of my breasts. They've been hers for almost a year, will have been hers for over a year at that point, and while that's a sacrifice I'm thrilled to have made for her, it's one I'm ready to let go.

I've been bitching about it to my girlfriends for a couple weeks, mostly to let off steam, and one of my friends is incredulous that I even bother to stick with it when it annoys me so much. The main thing about it now is that I set a goal. It makes zero sense to me to stop when I am five weeks short of the goal I set myself. I'm pretty sure- not 100%, but pretty sure- that I don't care about the whole good-mommy bad-mommy thing this time. I've made it far enough that I know I've done right by Phoebe, and I'd like to hope that if it hadn't gone so smoothly, I would have seen that not nursing her wouldn't have been not doing right by her in any case. But it would just kill me to have set a 12 month goal for myself and to quit with 5 weeks to go. I know myself well enough. I will regret it, no matter how much of a pain in the ass I find it right now.

Plus, my inner miser can't bear to have to buy a can or two of formula. That stuff is expensive! We've saved thousands of dollars feeding Phoebe over what we spent on formula for Caetlin.

So, here I am. 35 more days. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I remain so over it, as noted. The day I leave the house without the pump is the first day of my freedom. But, for the next 5 weeks, if you need me and can't find me, I'm probably the one behind a closed office door doing unspeakably weird things to my boobs (and not enjoying it, heh. I can't speak for what my colleagues might be doing). It's only 5 more weeks after all.

Unblocked

Uh, hi. Soooo...how are you? Glad to hear it. Me? I'm good, I guess. What? Oh, yeah, I'm really sorry about that. I meant to call, and then I thought you might be busy, and then I got really busy. And then I lost your number. But I meant to call! Really!

Okay, so it's been awhile. I'm not sure why. For whatever reason, I just didn't feel moved to write. And it turns out that writing is kind of like exercise- the more you do it, the more you want to do it, and the easier it is. Part of the lethargy is a result of spending so much time on Facebook, with its immediacy. Part of it is just life rolling on.

I think the main thing was that the last 5 months (eep!) have really been a trough for my family. 2009 was Annus Horribilis anyway, and this fall was really the low point. Bruce's severance ran out from the firm and while he started to have interviews, they never seemed to pan out. Caetlin started preschool in October, and as a result all of her behavioral issues seemed magnified. When the teacher meets you at the door in the morning talking about how Caetlin has a problem with listening, you feel like about the worst parent ever. You can tell yourself that she's the youngest person in the class, and that the teacher seems to have a stick up her nether regions, but when it's time for those little chats, all you hear from the teacher is, "You suck as a parent." I went back to work after maternity leave and had a hard time adjusting- the idea that going to work was somehow permanent seemed like an unbelievably heavy burden. Added to that was the fact that I had no work at all, many days billing nothing or 0.25 hours or on a good day 1.0. That's not a situation that makes one feel comfortable and secure. With Bruce being unemployed and me feeling uncertain and both of us dealing with major changes in our roles in the family, we went through a rough time together. It's just been a hard few months.

But then it all started to change. The beginning was when Bruce accepted an offer to teach at a local law school. He's going to be a law professor next year! I can't tell you how proud of him and excited for him I am. He was never happy in his profession, openly admitting that he did it for the money and security; this offers him a chance to really change gears. I think he's going to be a great teacher, and I envy the flexibility, the ability to do the research that he'll be able to do, the chance to study for a living, essentially, that the job brings with it. It's quite a step down financially, but it is higher pay than I expected, and we certainly will not starve, especially since my job seems a bit more secure at this point.

However, in the "When it rains, it pours" category, Bruce has also applied for and been accepted into the Foreign Service. While he still has to pass his medical and security clearances, and has to wait until they call him for a post, which would probably be at the end of this year at the earliest, it's a huge success to have made it this far into the process. If and when they call him, he and we will have a decision to make. Should he stay with his teaching career or embark on a completely new and different career as a diplomat?

The other comforting news is that we're planning to put our house in Charlotte on the market next month, at a price to make it move quickly. We are both ready to rid ourselves of the albatross that is that house. While it's been rented until this month, and that has defrayed the carrying costs, the time when the tenant was going to move out loomed large over us. Rather than trying to rent it again, we're ready to just sell it and move on, unencumbered. When it's sold, it won't matter what Bruce's salary at the law school is; we'll do fine on just my income, and his is just gravy- or more accurately, savings.

My job seems pretty secure at this point, at least as long as the firm remains committed to a real estate department here. We had an associate leave to go in-house at the end of the year, and that takes our numbers down to critical levels. We only have 3 associates to 2 partners; two big deals staff us up completely. So unless they plan to eliminate my department (and they have repeatedly indicated that they actually want to GROW my department), I think my job is safe for now. That's comforting, though of course I don't take that for granted. Stranger things can and have happened, and the upper workings of the firm are as mysterious to me as particle physics.

I've taken my health in hand and joined a boot camp at the beginning of December. You can see the program here. It's pretty intense and I'm pretty out of shape, but after two months, I can see real improvements, in my wind, my strength, and my body. I've lost inches off my waist, my tummy is starting to flatten back out, and most entertaining of all, I've got guns! I saw almost immediate definition in my biceps and shoulders. It's hilarious and encouraging. Most of all, it's something I feel like I can stick with. And, inspired by my rapid improvements, I had a few moments of temporary insanity a few weeks ago and signed up for a triathlon in late June. 600M swim, 14.2 mile bike, 5K run. Seriously crazy, but a fabulous and motivating goal to have. I've always wanted to be a triathlete (as opposed to doing a triathlon), but, alas, the only way to be a triathlete is to do the work. I'm at a place now where doing the work doesn't seem so incredibly impossible.

The other thing is that I joined a choir at church, here. I have always loved to sing, but have never had any training and the last time I sang with a group was 4th grade chorus (5th grade, as I recall, was the year they split us into advanced and not-advanced chorus, and when I didn't make the advanced chorus, I dropped out). Anyway, it's a wonderful group of seriously talented people, and I'm being a complete poser by joining them every week. So far they haven't caught on that I don't belong with them, so I'll keep going as long as they'll let me. I have so much fun being with a performing group again, and being a musician again (though in my case, I use that term somewhat more loosely than as it pertains to everyone else) is so uplifting for me. I missed making music (I was a band nerd for many years in high school but mostly put it down after that- I wanted to define myself as something else, and that has been a big regret of mine, that I didn't somehow continue to play even if I didn't throw myself into it completely), and to make music with a different instrument, my voice, brings so much joy to my life. I've also started singing lessons too, to learn some technique, so one day maybe I'll be worthy of my choir-mates.

The girls are great, growing as ever. Phoebe is nearly a year old- she turns a year in 5 weeks. How is that possible? She's showing no signs of being interested in walking, but knowing her personality, I have no doubt that as soon as she decides to walk, she'll be doing it within a few days. She is the most determined baby I have ever seen. When she wants something, she will stop at nothing to get it. Where Caetlin was and is easygoing and pliable, Phoebe is decidedly carving her own path. Because my own passivity, reflected in Caetlin, is something that I really dislike about myself (and by extension, about my daughter, I'm sorry to say), I'm delighted to see Phoebe's drive and determination. It makes her a challenge to care for, though, as she will inevitably beeline straight for the most choking hazard/nasty thing/dangerous thing in any room and immediately put it in her mouth. And she's fast! She's hard to keep up with as a crawler. She's got one word, cat. She says other things that we think might be words, but it's so hard to tell right now. I really look forward to her talking more, though.

Caetlin is also doing really well. We had kind of a rough start to 3- it was like the minute she turned 3, she went from being my sweet girl to this cranky, whiny, testing child that I didn't know- and really didn't like very much. I understood that it is totally developmentally normal, but holy cow was it a challenge! She seems to have mostly come through to the other side by now, though. And while we still have our tough days and tough afternoons and tough moments, she seems to have emerged as a fun and funny kid who is eager to please. She started preschool, as I mentioned, and that seems to be going much better lately too. She's deep into a princess/ballerina phase, and is the most girly-girl ever. I bought her one of these more or less on a whim, and we can barely pry her out of it. We've ended up buying her 3 of them, because she's going to wear it out soon and we better have replacements before Old Navy stops carrying them.

So, that's basically what's happened since Caetlin's birthday. It's only been five months, but somehow it feels like it went by in an eyeblink, and also that it was a long time ago. It's hard to remember when being back at work felt strange, when it was hot outside, before the rains came, before the snow and ice came, before the holidays were behind us. Before Halloween was distant on the horizon and everything was all "Back to School." So much has happened in 5 months and yet things have been strangely static. I feel like things have been moving in slow motion, and suddenly they have started back at normal speed lately.

There have been other things too, of course, but these were the highlights. I'll try to fill in more details in the future, of things like Christmas, and Caetlin giving up her pacifier, and the issues I have with Caetlin's preschool director, and the amusing things Phoebe does every day, and the Sunday School class I teach. I also am committed to posting again regularly. Like music, this has been missing from my life for too long. I miss sharing my thoughts and stories here, complaining and commenting and basically dumping my head onto the screen. It's the cheapest therapy around, and I miss sharing some of the details of my life with my friends and family, in more depth than I can accomplish through Facebook status updates. Basically, I'm unblocked, and ready to roll through 2010.

Roundup

Here are just a few things that have been on my mind lately:

1. I figured out the way to clean my closet. It turns out it is more or less like anything else; you have to do it one thing at a time. It took me an hour and a half and there is still a small pile of stuff I don't know what to do with, but my clothes are folded and organized and I can see my entire wardrobe again.

2. Phoebe is, I think, growing again. She's been sleeping more than usual lately. I've also noticed that her feet are flat against the bottom of her Exersaucer, and when we put her in it for the first time a month ago, her toes were just brushing the bottom.

3. Though things are starting to pick up a tiny bit at work, I am incredibly bored most of the time and have been for awhile. It leaves me in the soul-crushing position of hating every second I am there and wanting to quit on the one hand, and being terrified that they will fire me on the other.

4. I am tired all the time. I am tired when I wake up in the morning, and tired when I go to sleep at night, and tired every minute in between. I feel like I shouldn't be this tired; after all, I barely do anything besides sit on my butt and surf the internet and play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook all day. Occasionally I'll make or receive a phone call. Not exactly expending large amounts of energy.

5. Caetlin is so adorable when she plays costumes (dress-up) with the variety of dresses and costumes we have for her. She puts her fairy wings on and "flies" around the house. Thank you, "Alice the Fairy." ("I have wings so I can fly! I can't fly very high yet, but I can fly really fast!")

6. I finally dragged my father-in-law onto Facebook, so he can see all the pictures of the girls that I post there.

7. I often wish I were 21 and in college again. I wish I hadn't sped through my college years. I was petrified of not finishing. Neither of my folks finished college, though they both made several stabs at it over my lifetime (and prior to my lifetime). Somehow I absorbed that to put off or even slow down school was to fail to finish at all; this despite my sister's model, who by the time I went to college had completed two undergraduate degrees. The same reasoning led me to law school immediately after college, when I could have probably used some time working in between. I really wish I hadn't completed college in essentially three years. I wish I had taken more time. Even though I am only 32, I begin to understand the cynical phrase, "Youth is wasted on the young."

I could go on like this all night, but see point 4 above.