Nanny-ness

The good folks at Babble have taken on the nanny discussion over the last couple of weeks (er, excuse me, the childcaregiver discussion, or the babysitter discussion, according to the article here), and as someone who has had a nanny (childcaregiver? babysitter? I'm going to stick with nanny, and I'll tell you why in a minute) since Caetlin was three months old and I went back to work, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Or at the very least, interesting and of vital personal relevance to me.

First, the terminology issue. Notwithstanding the article, I do and will continue to call my nanny a nanny. I don't think she minds, as she's not West Indian and doesn't have the "vagina" association with the word "nanny." I personally don't mind caregiver, as I think that's more apropos of what she does for us, but it's a little cumbersome and stuffy. The thing about nanny versus babysitter, though...one of the comments to the article states: "Meh. I worked as a "nanny" during the summers when I was in university, and while the term didn't offend me, per se, I realized that people's fondness for using it generally rose in direct proportion to how pretentious they were. Unless the person providing your childcare has (1) an English accent, (2) a carpetbag, and (3) an umbrella that lets him/her fly away with the West Wind, it's BABYSITTING, people." I have a real issue with that characterization, first because I'm pretty sure I'm not especially pretentious about it (that commenter also wrote "in university" which makes me think they are English, so maybe it's pretentious in England to say "nanny"). But more importantly, in my mind, a nanny is permanent, while a sitter just minds the children for a few hours, maybe so parents can have a date night or whatever. Nanny connotes something so much more permanent and professional to me, and my nanny has certainly earned my respect enough to call her by a title that suggests her professionalism to me. I have to note that it would be different if she ever asked me not to call her nanny; I definitely don't care enough to impose my connotations on her if she has different ones. But for now, nanny is a mark of respect from me.

One other thing about that article that I immediately wondered- had any of the nannies mentioned ever asked their employers not to call them nanny? I didn't get that sense from reading the article, only a sense of being overwhelmingly wronged on a daily basis by the parents for whom they worked. I can't speak for every nanny employer, but I know I want to foster an environment of respect and happiness in my home, and my nanny is included in that in a big way. If I have ever offended my nanny, it was completely unintentional, and if my nanny thought I was being unfair with her, she should feel comfortable enough to speak up. The article had a sense that the caregivers were long aggrieved, and I would like to hope that no nanny who ever works with me would feel this way.

Second, and somewhat relatedly, we get this discussion board from Babycenter about whether a woman who employs a nanny who brings her one year old daughter to work should have to feed both the nanny and the daughter. Overwhelmingly, the responses are some variation of, "What are you, cheap? Feed the people already!"

Now, here's the thing. It never occurred to me to feed my nanny. I guess I think of it as her job, and no job I've ever had provided or paid for my lunch for me. Even the crappy jobs paying way less than what I pay my nanny (because some of the comments run along the lines of, "Unless she's compensated accordingly, you should feed her."). If someone makes this point on the board, other people jump in with, "But it's not just a job! She's taking care of the most precious part of your life! Do what you must to make her happy!" Which I agree with to a point- you should try to keep one's nanny happy if you appreciate them and think they do a great job with your child. But whether she is worth keeping happy is a very different issue, to my mind, than whether she is entitled to lunches as a matter of employment. There was also the issue that the nanny in the question was bringing her one year old daughter to work with her. I certainly wouldn't think that the employer would mind feeding the child, but no one seemed to recognize that the employer had already done quite a lot by allowing the nanny to bring the baby.

Let me say that I would not hesitate to feed my nanny, if she requested it. It's one of those, "To keep her happy" things, though. As I said, I've never had a job that paid for or provided food, even fast food jobs. I just am not positive that it should be a recognized perk. Is that me? And it disturbed me how many posters on the board seemed to think the parents were completely out of line for even questioning it.

I have to say, the nanny-employer relationship is one on which I've given a lot of thought, and I probably will write about it again soon. This was a great book for getting me thinking about it in the first place. It always makes me nervous that I'm doing or saying something wrong, but I generally just trust that my genuine respect for her will win the day, along with my hope that she will say something to me if I do or say something that upsets or offends her. I also hope she will ascribe good motives to me, will give me the benefit of the doubt. I trust her implicitly; I mean, I let her take my daughter where ever she wants to go, I let her have full run of my house- she has access to everything that is dear to me. I wouldn't do that if I didn't have the utmost respect for her. I hope she knows that.

PS

I need to add that the act of writing that last post and publishing it has made me feel ever so much better. I may even speak sometime the rest of the evening. It's at least under consideration.

So, Thank You for Your Patronage (such as it may be, family members and friends).

Also, UPDATE: Looks like Bruce may finish his pressing work this evening, and be able to stay with Caetlin in the morning.

Life in My House

Here's how life in my house went tonight as I got home from work (late).

First, upon arriving home, I received an email that made me have to retract an email with some numbers in it that I sent to the other lawyers in the deal because the numbers are not final. For like the third time today. I wanted to ask my client, "Hey, can you NOT make me look like a yahoo?" It doesn't help that it's about a tax issue. I DO NOT KNOW TAX. I should add that to the FAQ. I'm throwing around words like "basis" and "gain" like I know how to use them, but really I'm remembering them from my Federal Income Tax class. Which I took 7 years ago. Basically, Not My Problem. I'm not even competent to make it my problem.

Then, my nanny reminded me that she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, which she had told me about earlier in the week. Earlier in the week I had been so slow, I thought it would be no problem for me to stay home with Caetlin. Things have changed, and now I have work to do tomorrow morning. It can be done at home, but how much work do you really think I'll manage while she's awake?

We have a brainstorm- we'll ask our semi-regular teenage babysitter to help out! She doesn't have anything going on! The call is made; she has to check with her parents. The parents, probably predictably, say no. To babysitting at 9 a.m. Probably because she will have to drive in rush hour. She is 20 years old and a college graduate. (I know I said teenager, but she's only nearly a teenager, I guess. Also, it's how her parents treat her. As you can see.)

Crap. In the middle of this, we're playing with Caetlin in the den that holds most of her toys. Chester, being the jealous dog that he is, wants to get between Bruce and the baby. I'm your baby! he says with every wag of his tail. When Bruce won't let him, he promptly vomits his entire dinner in the middle of the floor. I've never been kissed off so clearly by a non-human in my life. Bruce played with Caetlin in the other room, while I had clean up duty (it was my turn to clean the nasty from Chester, since Bruce cleaned up last night's pee. Yeah, you know you want to come visit).

After cleaning the vomit (most of which Chester had helpfully eaten by that point), Bruce runs Caetlin's bath and I get her undressed. She's poopy. And also pissed that there is a bath that she is not in. She's wiggly, I get poop all over her and myself. She also won't kiss me when I'm holding her. Into the bath we go.

We bathe, she's fine. We take her out, she's fine. We start getting her into her sleeper, she's losing her shit. The toys, they are not good enough. We parents, are not good enough. Life, it isn't good enough. I hand her the blue bath toy, and that stops her wiggling long enough to get her into her pajamas.

I hand her over to daddy, and finally she gives me the kiss I want...after daddy and I have to kiss each other and then she thinks she's missing out on fun. Daddy, thankfully, puts her to bed.

He comes out a short while later, and I have decided on my order from the really good local Chinese place. I want lemon chicken with extra veggies that come with it- I assume broccoli or something. It doesn't come with veggies at all. I assume sauteed chicken; it's actually fried.

I shut up for the evening.

Clearly, being a walking, talking interactive member of my household is not a productive life strategy for me this evening, and I will communicate only via a complicated system of eye blinks. Except that might dry out my contacts.

Crap.

Zzzzz

I only walked 20 minutes this morning. Boo. Usually when I make myself get up and get going, I get into it, but not today. It was humid, so I was pouring sweat even though I wasn't working so hard, and I was just dragging. I had a bad night last night. Caetlin woke me up screaming an hour and a half after I went to sleep; I have no idea what was wrong but I would guess it's either teething or a nightmare. My money would be on the nightmare, since she doesn't seem like her teeth are bothering her during the day, but no one can really know for sure. I got her calmed down, meaning no longer crying, and I should have gotten her a bottle to help her really settle down, but I was almost asleep on my feet. I knew she would cry when I left, but I went back to bed anyway. She cried for like three minutes and then fell back asleep. I still felt/feel like a bad mommy.

Bruce was also working late so he wasn't home for any of this, and then he woke me up when he came home. So bad night, no energy this morning. Oh well. 20 minutes is better than none, right? Right.

I miss home

We went back to Charlotte this weekend to have Caetlin's pictures made to commemorate her first birthday. We took my in-laws with us (they left this morning) and they got to be in a few of the pictures, which was nice. While we were there, we managed to see friends of ours with a three-month old daughter who is so incredibly cute- she has really bright eyes and is a busy baby already. Bruce also hung out with a buddy of his who is having a hard time, and I hung out with a girlfriend of mine who is having a hard time. We also drove by our old house (going to be sold next week- everyone hold your breath, say a prayer, knock on wood, keep your fingers crossed, and generally all-around wish us luck!) and determined that the lawn really did need to be mowed one last time, and drove by the "new" house, which looks as wonderful as I remember it.

I miss Charlotte. It felt like an old shoe to be there this weekend- comfortable. And- I hate to say it, and everyone here will kind of want to smack me- I miss my old job. I spent the weekend working on a bad assignment (fortunately not too time consuming) for a jerk boss (not resident in Atlanta), and I specifically said to Bruce, "I didn't come [to Atlanta] to do this crappy work for these awful people." I'm dissatisfied at work- the opportunities in my new job just haven't been exactly what I hoped, at least not yet, 4 months in. I still hold out hope that it can become what I hoped it would be when I interviewed. But I miss the excitement of my old job, the wonderful and interesting work I was given to do, the pace of it. I've spent the last two weeks essentially surfing the internet at work, since I have so little else to do. I'm BORED. And the work I'm getting is crappy boring diligence. I haven't been actively staffed on a deal where I might get to handle some of the documents in two months. Where I was in Charlotte, I was running my own deals. I miss it. It had its downsides, definitely- some of the people were not, shall we say, the nicest, and the pace was brutal, but some of the people are the most wonderful people I've ever met. It's a stupid grass-is-always-greener thing. There, I lived in extremes- extremely busy, but extremely interesting work, and with people who were either extremely fantastic or extremely awful. Here, I've settled for a steady pace and people who, so far, are very nice and...bland. I got a flat line instead of a rollercoaster, and I have to say, I should have been careful what I wished for.

But more than anything else, I'm lonely. The people, as noted, are bland, and I haven't made any real friends or even felt like I could click with anyone. I miss my friends in Charlotte so freaking bad. Driving by the "new" house, I remembered what a sense of community there was in the neighborhood, and saw my next door neighbors hanging out on their porch and I missed them so much. They were such good neighbors- willing to help and always up for a chat and interested in Caetlin. I had a budding friendship with my across-the-street neighbor that had to go away when we moved. I miss talking to my mom friends on a regular basis about raising toddlers. I miss seeing movies and going to dinners with other couples. I miss having couple friends a lot- we have at least 3 sets of great couple friends in Charlotte, and a couple more sets with whom we could be better friends with a little effort. I have so many wonderful friends there, and here I am so alone. I have Bruce. I have my sister, if I'm willing to drive 30 miles to her neck of the woods, which I frequently am, but it's too far to be really convenient.

Anyway, I'm lonely, and I want to go back to Charlotte to better work, more friends, and more of a life. I realize that the bigger city isn't worth it for me, when I was part of such a strong community back home. Charlotte became home for me so much more than I ever realized. But we're here, and we have to give it a go, and so I shall! I don't mean to be so down with this post. It was just...it was a nice weekend, is all.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them ole trucks;
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys;
They'll never stay home and they're always alone,
Even with someone they love.

I LOVED this song when I was a kid.

So, Monday, we saw Willie Nelson. He played with Merle Haggard and Ray Price (though Ray, who has to be nearing eighty...wait, I'll check...wow, 81, didn't sing much). He sang all the old good ones: Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain, Whiskey River, On the Road Again, Always On My Mind. Also, Good Hearted Woman, Crazy (which I had not realized he had done- I've always been partial to the Patsy Cline version) and Georgia, which- love ya Willie but- didn't even come close to the Ray Charles version for me. It was a good show, is what I'm saying. It was at Chastain Amphitheater, and we had some great seats. It was hot, which kind of sucked, the crowd was ready to party but not too rowdy, and there was all kinds of people watching to be done.

Notable moments:
- Merle Haggard at one point in his set said to the crowd, "I'd like to take a minute of your time to introduce the Strangers (his band)." He then proceeded to walk around to the 8 or so band members and you could see them shaking hands, smiling, etc. Having just been introduced, apparently. He walked back up to the mike and started a new song without another word.
- When Willie came on, it was apparently the signal to smoke up, because a large cloud of that distinctive smelling smoke wafted over us almost immediately.
- When the guy in front of us played air guitar, as he did during several Merle Haggard songs (he was a fan), he looked for all the world from the rear as if he were, uh, pleasuring himself (he's a really, really BIG fan, apparently). This caused Bruce and me no end of amusement.
- Bruce called his boss during the climax (tee hee) of You Were Always On My Mind and let it play into his boss's voicemail.
- On the somewhat long walk back to the car, I was nearly in pain for needing to empty my bladder (beer, plus water) but rejected a Port-A-Potty with a too-loud "No f*cking way." I also withstood Bruce's advice to just go in the deep shadows of the trees and shrubs of the houses we were walking past. It was tempting, though.

Anyway, that was the night. Bruce's mom was unable to make it as she wasn't feeling well, which was a bummer. But otherwise we had a lovely time. Yay, Willie!

One Year Checkup

So, we did the 12 month appointment on Monday. Here are the stats:

22 pounds, 12 ounces (she's HUGE!)
31.5 inches long (even HUGER!)
18 inches around the head (for the BRAINS!)

The doctor watched her scrambling from one piece of furniture to the next in the exam room and agreed with me that she just wasn't convinced in her heart that she could walk, but that physically, she has all the tools. She just needs to realize the benefits of walking. But she's always done things in her own time. She was also pronounced "beautiful" and developmentally perfect.

She also had her shots. So sad! Her big blue eyes get all wet and her face gets all red, and she does those hitching sobs that kill me. But she recovered as soon as we went back into the front where all the other kids are. Yesterday she was slightly warm and definitely cranky- I think her legs were hurting her. But so far no sign of really high fever or other reaction, and I'm hoping she'll be more like herself today. (For each of the last two rounds of shots, she had a previously undetected underlying infection- pneumonia at 6 months, a urinary tract infection at 9 months- that precipitated a spike in fever and resulting febrile seizure. Yeah, THAT was a party. But so far, nothing this time. Woo-hoo!)

By the way, I am securely on the definitely yes vaccinate my child bandwagon. I think the autism "link" is pure horse hockey. And I think vaccines do so much more good than harm- do we really want to return to the "summer killer" days of polio? You can see one perspective on the debate, from someone who had not vaccinated her kids and is now coming around to thinking them necessary, here. The comments are interesting- you get a wide range of perspectives, though most commenters fall into the "yes to vaccines" camp. It was not anything I would have ever thought would be a question before I had children, and I remain amazed that there is even a debate about it even now.

So that was Caetie's year checkup- all systems go for a perfect baby!

Also Monday- we saw Willie Nelson in concert. I'll write more about that later- I'm late for work. Hadn't intended to be all thoughtful and shit with that Civil War-Japanese history post, and I used up all my time there.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Caetlin!!


Here are a couple more pictures from her birthday:





This is from her actual birthday, the 17th, the day she turned a whole year old.











And here she is "enjoying" her cake during her big birthday bash.

She's a funny one. We're going to have to work on the whole "enjoyment of chocolate cake" thing.

Food for Thought

So, on my walk that I mentioned in the last post, I've been listening to a series of history lectures from the Spring 2006 semester at Berkeley on American history post-Civil War. (Do we have to establish my dorkdom yet again? Yes, apparently we do.) I started listening to the first one this morning, and the professor was discussing the end of slavery and the defeat of the Confederacy at the hands of those slaves, to some degree.

I thought back to a conversation I was having with Bruce last night over dinner. Bruce's parents graciously sat with Caetlin (who was down for the night) and we went out for pizza by ourselves, and somehow we began discussing the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan and the effects that they and World War II in general had on Japanese society. As most of the readers know, Bruce took an Asian Studies degree in college and spent 5 years living in Japan before law school, so he's way better informed on this than I am. He made a comment that the Japanese nation was absolutely broken by its defeat in World War II. Imagine- your entire national frame of reference is built on things like your racial superiority (I know Japanese isn't a race, but that's the concept- it went beyond a feeling of simple national supremacy. Deep down, even still, the Japanese people are convinced they are different because they are Japanese), your martial history of invincibility, your emperor being a god sent from heaven to lead your people in battle. All of that, gone within a few years. And they were defeated so thoroughly that that national spirit was crushed.

It allowed the Japanese people to remake themselves into a more capitalistic and less warlike society, very much the Japan we know now. I'm not arguing that this is good or bad, mind you; this is not that debate. But it is foolish not to acknowledge that it IS. Anyway, I commented that, living in a nation founded upon ephemeral ideas, I can't imagine any outside force crushing my national identity like that. I would imagine that for me to feel like the principles on which this country was founded- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, government for, of and by the people, etc.- were a lie and a sham, something would have to happen from within the country. Maybe the voting into law of a true police state, or something like that. My point was that it would likely be much more difficult for the American spirit, the American national identity, such as it is, to be extinguished like that, and most likely that extinguishment would come from within.

(Stay with me, I'm getting there.)

So, I was thinking of this conversation when I was listening to this lecture, and it seems to me that the Confederacy had its spirit broken in the manner of the Japanese. It was defeated so thoroughly, and the principles of slave owning upon which it was founded were wiped out so completely, that it lost its coherence as a nation. Obviously, individuals continued to believe, which was true, I'm sure, in post-war Japan. But as a confederacy, as a coherent nation, it was broken. Now, you can argue that the Confederacy was founded on principles of state sovereignty, and I am sure that the higher minded thinkers really believed that. But slaveowning was the underpinning of that need for state sovereignty. Also, the defeat was military and economic, as it is in all wars, not just idealistic. The South ran out of food, and materiel, and people. So did Japan. But I'm talking about surrender, not just of the will to fight, but of the very ideals that motivated one to fight in the first place.

Let me say again, since I'm not sure I'm being that coherent (it is early, after all), that many, many people in the south still held those ideals for a long time after the war. But they no longer motivated people to band together and attempt to found a nation. The basis for the Confederacy's identity was gone as a uniting theme.

Does this happen for all unsuccessful revolutions? Would the ideas on which the United States was founded have simply disappeared if the American rebels had lost to England? Would they have just blown away, kept alive by groups here and there who would talk about the things that had motivated them to fight that, in the end, had had so little power? I like to think that the ideals I named above- freedom, democracy, etc.- would have been strong enough to prevail, even if the first go-round had been lost. But who can say?

Anyway, that was what I was thinking about on my walk this morning. Forgive me if it is poorly conceived or unpersuasive, but it does feel nice not to have it rattling around in my head anymore!

It's Hot. DAMN Hot.

To get the full effect of that title, you have to say it the way they say it down here: "Daayum hot." I just went for a walk at 5:30 a.m., and the little temperature thingy on my front door said 76 degrees. At 5:30! What's worse, it's only like 73 or so in my house, since our air conditioner is completely failing to keep up. If we could have the outside temperature be no more than about 95 or 96, we would be good, but above that, we just suffer. And the poor air conditioner runs and runs and runs. I don't think it's been off in a week and a half. I'm really scared to see our power bill for August.

Movies: Superbad and Stardust

So, one thing Bruce and I love to do is go to the movies. (Short digression here, and just about everyone who reads this at this point will have heard this before, but, do I need to remind you people? It's my blog, which means I can write about whatever I want. WHATEVER I WANT! Ahem. Anyway, when Bruce and I were newly dating, we spent a significant period of time dating long-distance. So for awhile, we made it a point to agree on a movie each week and go see it on a specific weekend day, me in Austin, Texas and Bruce in Los Angeles, and then we would call each other and talk about it. It was almost like seeing the same movie! Cue the sound effects: AWWWW! It all came crashing down when he moved to a different country for a year.)

Anyway, we get to see too few movies now that we have a baby, but when we get a babysitter, we almost always we go to the movies. In this case, Bruce's parents are in town, so we hit them up for an afternoon's worth of taking care of the kid and went to see 2 movies: Superbad and Stardust. (I know, I know. With a post title like this, you were expecting Bourne Ultimatum and The Simpsons Movie. Too bad.) Yes, we will frequently see more than one movie at a time if we can; our max has been 4 in what amounted to an entire day of movie watching, but that was too many. I came out of the theater with my head pounding. But 2 is easily doable. We don't waste that (free!) babysitting!

Superbad: Hilarious. There was, I concede, a joke involving menstruation that had my husband rolling in the aisles, while I was just kind of waiting for it to be over, but otherwise, hysterically funny. Michael Cera is just wonderful as Evan. The movie has some nice moments, too, particularly near the end, about friendships between boys and how they grow and change. It's ridiculously vulgar and may offend those with any sensitivities at all, but it is one funny movie. I have to make fun of this passage in the linked NYTimes review, though:

Long and lanky, Mr. Cera moves like one of those teenagers whose body hasn’t yet fully caught up to his newly reached height. With his wide-open face and smile, he looks absolutely amazed by what he can see from a higher elevation (the world!). But of course he looks surprised: he’s the top half of the exclamation point to the spherical Mr. Hill’s rolling big dot.

Is this not some of the worst imagery and writing you have ever seen? I generally enjoy Manohla Dargis's reviews, but her editor should have stopped this one paragraph shorter than he or she did. Sheesh!

Stardust: Wonderful. Beautifully shot; makes me want to go back to Scotland THIS MINUTE and go live on a loch or something. It's also a lovely story that moves along quickly. The acting is superb; Robert de Niro steals the movie, for my money.The ending is pure AWWWW. It's a movie that we both couldn't wait to watch with our daughter (we estimated about 10 to be an appropriate age for her to see it, as there is some rather graphically suggested violence). I find the comparisons I have been seeing to The Princess Bride to be apt, in the sense that it is a fairy tale with action and humor and romance. Terribly hard to market (indeed,the Stardust trailers are awful), but so worth seeing. I should note that the link is to the NYTimes movie review; I enjoyed it rather more than the reviewer and thought it was quite a bit better put together.

So, that was our afternoon. We got home to a newly-one-year-old Caetlin who had refused her lunch for her grandparents, and it took both me and Bruce to feed her dinner. (I fed her, Bruce entertained her.) She had serious Buddha belly when she was done snarfing down everything that she ended up eating, and then had 5 ounces of formula less than an hour later. She went down hard for bed -after freaking out when I walked by the bathroom carrying her to get her undressed for the bath, and she heard the bathwater running and wanted to be IN the bath already. High tragedy ensued. Is it so wrong that I find my daughter's tantrums, especially when she is tired and likely to be set off by something silly and small, so entertaining?

Great day: little bit of parenting, little bit of couple time, couple of excellent movies.

UPDATE: I'm not sure why it's squooshing the lines together after the block quote above. I've been through the HTML, and there doesn't appear to be any reason that I can see (with my mostly intuitive grasp of what I'm looking at, which is to say, incredibly uninformed) why it's doing that. If it bothers you like it bothers me, sorry. If anyone knows how to fix it, please leave it in the comments or email me. Cripes.

Happy Birthday!

So, my baby is actually a whole year old! Friday was her actual birthday, and to add to the drama, she took her first steps! I think her body can walk, but her brain isn't convinced. At one point, she was so focused on getting herself over to something that had attracted her attention that she just forgot that she couldn't walk and...did. Tottered four or five steps over to the coffee table. Hasn't done it since, but it will be soon.

Today was her celebration. We had a cookout at my sister's house; my dad and stepmom came down; my nephew came up from where he is in his last semester of college. Caetlin had a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting; it was quite tasty, I have to say. She wasn't terribly thrilled with the whole thing. She was tired and overstimulated, and she really didn't like the way the frosting and cake stuck to her hands. I think she might have liked it better if we had fed it to her with a spoon. But we sang happy birthday, and she got a few new clothes and a few new toys, and a good time was had by all.

Happy Birthday, baby! Mommy and Daddy love you so much!

Pictures to follow shortly, probably tomorrow.



UPDATE: Got one of the good ones:


More later as I manuever pictures and computers.

About Me. All about me. Me, me, me!

I love having a blog. I can release my inner three year old, who can talk about herself as much as she wants!

Seriously, a little about me, an FAQ, if you will (even though no one has ever asked any questions, but these are the ones I'm sure will become "frequently asked" when I start getting NYTimes level readership):

Q. Why is the blog called what it is?
A. I'm actually pretty good at math, at arithmetic and algebra and general useful math, anyway. You put me in front of calculus, though, and that shit may as well be Soviet for all I know. But, there are actually 2 reasons I chose the name: 1. It's the rallying cry of many lawyers everywhere, and 2. it sort of sums up my approach to life of general cluelessness. Also, 3. I thought it was catchy.

Q. Where are you from?
A. I grew up in a small town in south Georgia *cough*hellhole*cough*. (Sorry, people who still live in this place: nothin' but love for ya, you know? Names will not be revealed to protect the innocent.) I moved away as fast as I could, have lived a bunch of places, and somehow, inexplicably now have ended up back in Georgia.

Q. What kind of law do you practice?
A. Real estate finance. That means I CANNOT answer your legal questions on the following topics: criminal law, wills & estates, guardianship, car accident liability, family law, residential landlord-tenant law, and health care law, notwithstanding that I did go to law school. They didn't teach me any of that mess. You want to know how to mortgage a piece of commercial property, I'm your girl.

Q. Where did you meet Bruce? What does he do for a living?
A. In law school, and he practices a more arcane type of financial law than I do, so don't ask. He can't help you with those things either.

Q. Is your baby cute?
A. Of course! See for yourself:


Okay, I might have made that last one up. But she is cute.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Here they come.

There they are.

Don't look at them!

Only my sister and my dad will get that joke. It's an old one made by these guys, whom my parents listened to when I was a kid. Who knew they were still performing?? And yes, I'm a dork and a half, but they were- are- funny!

So, here I am to try that blogging thing, the whole "put your entire life on the internet for everyone to gawk at thing." On this blog, things you may find include (but are not limited to) the following (you see what I did there- that's the geeky lawyer in me coming out, despite my best efforts to keep her down):

-Stories about my wonderful husband Bruce and my beautiful daughter Caetlin, who turns an entire year old in about 10 hours. Happy birthday, baby!
- Stories about my family. I have an older sister and a twin brother. My parents are divorced; my dad is remarried, My mom is batshit crazy (a clinical term), but more about that later;
- Stories about my job at a large law firm (but only innocuous stories, because I like said job);
- Stories about our psycho animals (three cats and a dog);
- Stories about my and our friends, including those we left in Charlotte, North Carolina when we moved here a couple months ago, those we're s-l-o-w-l-y making here, and others scattered across the country;
- Stories about our experiences with Hot-lanta; and
- General self-indulgent navel gazing, lint picking, etc. (Let's be real- this last more or less encompasses it all, right?)

Did I mention I have a baby? I think she's going to be the star of this show, because I'm one of those ridiculously boring parents who thinks their kid is perfect, and beautiful, and wonderful, blah blah barf-cakes. But really...







Isn't she?? Isn't she??







She's going to hate me for this in about 10 years, I think.

Anyway, here we go, about 5 years past the time to be jumping on the "blogging bandwagon" as we nerds would say- my blog back then, way back when I started reading them and thinking, "Hey! I could do that!" was going to be called something like Ten Thousand Monkeys with Ten Thousand Typewriters, which I still think is pretty cool, but is excessively nerdy. But, I'm excessively nerdy, which may become quite clear and obvious soon, if not already.

Really, though, it's aaallll about the kid. Isn't it always? I just want a reason to post pictures of her, so the world can oooh and aaah over how cute she is.

UPDATE: Okay, it is seriously embarrassing to have to correct my very first post, but the link above now refers to the correct act for the lame joke with which I opened this blog. I had originally linked to these guys. My bad. My comment about who knew they were still performing holds true for both of them, I guess.