Every Little Wonder

As soon as Cris walked in the door after work, I threw my arms around him, buried my face in neck, and said “Can I leave, please?” The desperation must have been pretty obvious in my voice because he shooed me out the door and told me not to come home before 10. So now I’m at Starbucks, alone. Never mind the two large, loud groups at surrounding tables. Never mind the near panic attack I had when the barista wouldn’t stop asking me questions (What do I want? What size? Sweetened? OMG I DON’T KNOW PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME MAKE ANY DECISIONS JUST GIVE ME SOMETHING AND LET ME SIT IN PEACE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD). And certainly never mind the laundry and mess and various chores that await me at home. And really, really for serious never mind the fact that there’s about a 90% chance that Ezra won’t be able to go sleep without me. Never mind it all because I feel utterly spent and I have no chance anymore to just sit. To be still with myself and let thoughts swirl around in my brain until they begin to fall in place and make sense. No chance to recharge and regroup. I get occasional moments, sure—a half-hour here, a couple hours there—where someone will take the baby off my hands for a while, but that time mostly gets spent furiously catching up on work I’ve been putting off. Or laundry or grocery shopping or cleaning up Ezra’s toys for the millionth time in a day so my parents don’t get mad at me. I feel like a jumpy, punchy bag of guts and unresolved strings of thoughts. It’s messy. I don’t like it.
Seven Six weeks to go until the house is supposed to be done. It will be awesome. The house itself, of course, but even more than that, I’m looking forward to getting my home back. My sweet, quiet, cozy safe place with my little family and my kitties and awesome king size bed. I’m going to run around and jump on couches just because I can. I’m going to let Ezra play with his toys on the table without getting yelled at.I’m going to snuggle up with Cris and read a book while he plays video games after the baby has gone to bed. I’m going to lock myself in one of the empty rooms and spread out on the floor in my underwear and sleep for twelve hours straight.
It’s going to be out of control.

Yes! Finally, finally, Cris was offered a job here. Starting June 1st, our family is no long split between two cities. This is fantastic.

The last morning Cris was here and woke up for his commute to the Bay Area—at a time that is scientifically known as ‘the buttcrack of dawn’—Ezra woke up and had a complete meltdown when he realized his dad was leaving. I don’t think any of us could have taken it much longer.

I have no idea how we’re all going to fit in this house without driving each other completely mad. It’s a small house and there are already too many people in it and now Cris will be here full time. And I don’t even know when our new home is supposed to be completed, so I can’t cope with the crazy crowdedness by counting down the days and holding my breath. Also? My desktop computer suddenly decided it wouldn’t turn on one morning and I may have lost all my photos from the past forever. Also also? Ezra has suddenly learned what this whole ‘separation anxiety’ thing is all about and he freaks out if he’s not within finger-grabbing distance of me at all times. Also also also? My insomnia has reached epic heights. Awake all night and exhausted all day.

How did I go from YAY HAPPY to OH BOO HOO ME in five seconds? I don’t know. But all I’m saying is, if I don’t end up in some homicide-suicide scenario on the local news by the end of the next month, I will be verrry proud of myself.

1. The House:

They’ve finally started building it. (!!!) We walked around all excited, and then realized that our backyard is small. Like, it’s silly how small it is. I think I’ve had larger balconies in old apartments. We knew it was going to be tiny because the lots are small, but…dude. It’s okay though—we’ll make the most of the space we have and keep it cozy and cute. I didn’t want to buy a lawnmower anyway.

2. Nap Time:
is going splendidly. Yes, I know, I’ve totally jinxed it now, but I can’t help it. I’ve finally got Ezra on a one-nap-a-day-right-after-lunch schedule and he falls asleep in a minute or two. I’m not spending two or three hours every day trying to force him down. This is epic. I’m an idiot for even mentioning it.

3. Bed Time:
Entirely different story. Ezra hates bedtime and wants nothing to do with it. Period. The end. Now let’s go play with trains.

4. Boo Hoo:
Cris is still working/living in SF and I feel like a sad single mom. There have been so! many! interviews, and there are a few positions they are just dangling in front of our faces, torturing us with while they take their sweet, sweet time making final decisions. So we wait and fret and make sad faces at each other over the phone and try not to think about how much we are spending on gas for the weekly/semiweekly trips between San Francisco and Sacramento.

5. WAHM:
It’s hard to be productive while working at home with a very, shall we say energetic toddler. But I spent the last two days in the office and managed to be almost equally unproductive, so this is more of a me thing than a baby thing. Specifically, a me-with-ADHD thing. I should maybe do something about that. After looking at this shiny thing over there.

6. Food:
I’m over it. I’m tired of thinking about it, planning it, cooking it, fighting to get the kiddo to eat it. My parents eating habits are so different from my own, Ezra doesn’t like anything that isn’t cheese or yogurt or crackers, and I have no real space for storing and cooking meals here, and no breaks from the baby to prepare a nice meal even if I had the energy. I want the human equivalent of cat food. I want to go grab a 90lb bag of human chow at Costco and dump in the kitchen and just be done with food for the month. Taco-flavored human chow.

7. Future Plans:
Within the next year, I want to a) lose 60 lbs b) have another baby c) get married. There is no graceful way to make all these things happen concurrently, so…I will probably spend the next year lounging around, listening to Mumford & Sons, and growing increasingly agitated. Hey, at least it’s a plan!

Since moving back in with my parents, the cats have had to live in the garage. (My mom is allergic.) (And also she hates cats.) I think they’re going a little crazy from being locked in the same space with much less interaction than they’re used to. I’m just glad they aren’t related because it would be getting very Flowers in the Attic up in there.

Early early in the morning the other day, I was woken up by a sudden loud pounding and scratching at the window over the bed where I was sleeping with the baby. It was like 5 am and I was like half mostly asleep, so I kinda had a heart attack stumbled to cover the baby and me under the blanket to protect us from what I assumed were the zombies or monsters or gangsters who were trying to break in and steal my brains or cute new shoes or whatever.

But the sounds eventually stopped and gave way to meowing. Loud, long, plaintive meowing. Mmmeeeeeooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

So I gathered my courage enough to peek out of the blinds. And there’s Ollie sitting on the patio, staring up at me, crying. I rushed out to the backyard and scooped him up and brought him back to the garage. He must’ve escaped sometime when the garage door was open the night before, and spent the night roaming the neighborhood before deciding he’d had enough of freedom and wanted to come home.

It was only after I snuggled back in bed that I realized I hadn’t seen Miette when I put Ollie back in the garage. But I brushed it off because she always hides these days and she’s too much of a scaredy cat to escape. And also it was 5 am and I wanted to sleep for the ten minutes or so I had until the baby woke up demanding to be entertained.

But by the end of the day, I still hadn’t seen her on any of my visits to the garage. Not entirely uncommon, but when I opened a can of tuna and she didn’t come running out to devour it, I knew she was gone too.

Ollie, I wasn’t too worried about. But Miette? She panicks and pees herself whenever there’s a loud noise. She takes about ten minutes to prepare and practice for the jump up to our foot-high coffee table, and even then she sometimes misses. She sometimes runs headfirst into a wall or falls over while just sitting there. Miette is adorable and sweet, but she barely qualifies as a cat, really. I couldn’t imagine her even surviving a day in the wilds of suburbia.

I left the house—in the cold, in the dark, in bare feet, with a really nasty cough—and wandered up and down the street calling for her with no luck. I called Cris to let him know the sad news and he proceeded to comfort me by pointing out that I haven’t been paying enough attention to her and it was all my fault and I shouldn’t be allowed to have pets if I can’t even take care of them. Or something like that. It was a fun conversation. It may or may not have ended with me hanging up on him and ignoring his “Sorry I didn’t really mean it that way” texts. Whatever, butthead.

But, long story short (too late!), I found her the next morning, hiding deep in the bushes behind the house, letting out the teensiest meow ever after she heard me calling for her for ten minutes. So my cats are still alive and well, and I’m not the worst cat mommy in existence.

The cute part of all this is that I think Ollie got himself a girlfriend on his wild night out. Another neighborhood kitty likes to set outside by the garage door now. They meow back and forth all night. When I let Ollie out to see the kitty, they ran up to each other and nuzzled each other a little bit and sniffed each other’s butts and then ran down the street in what I can only assume was rapturous joy at being together again. Since I’ve never heard of two stranger cats meeting without a major hissy fit, I’m pretty sure this is true love.

Miette might be heartbroken.
.

Living back at home as an adult—with a baby, no less—is weird. I still feel like I’m going to get in trouble for staying up past my bedtime, or like I need to ask permission if I want to go to the grocery store. And thank goodness I have a baby and can’t leave in the evenings, otherwise I’d be all stressed about making it home by curfew.

I’m trying hard to remember that I’m all growed up now, but it makes me a bit nostalgic for being in high school. Yeah, I know. That’s a ridiculous thing say. High school was fucking awful. Completely, entirely, the worst. The only moments I enjoyed in high school are moments I’m actually remembering from movies. Like the time Heath Ledger sang “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to me in front of the whole school when I was practicing soccer. That was totally embarrassing, you guys.

For Ezra, being here is a total nonstop party—people are always around to talk to him or play with him or take him out or buy him Yet Another Car Toy. Most of the day, he runs around like a crazy little monkey, laughing and babbling and pretty much being the cutest thing in the world ever. I’m so happy I get to see him all time, even if the constant BABY TANTRUM FREAK OUTS!!! are getting a little old. But I swear, if it weren’t for Cris and my parents, the poor kid would probably never leave the house. I’m such a homebody. A lazy homebody. Just switching from my snowboarding monkey Christmas pajama pants (don’t judge!) to my black yoga pants so that I can be seen in public is, like, a huge ordeal. Hardly worth it unless Chipotle is involved.

But I’m working on it. I’m getting better. Maybe. There’s still a part of me that feels like this is summer vacation and school doesn’t start for a couple months. At least I haven’t started watching daytime tv, right?

Next week, I tell myself, I’m going to start taking this seriously and get to work.

But then, that’s what I told myself last week too.

Did you miss me? What was supposed a couple hours of downtime to make my blog all pretty and new turned into nearly a month as we packed (mostly), moved (kinda), and got settled in (sorta).

We decided we were going to move to Sacramento to buy a house, the lease on our apartment in Alameda was up, I got the official okay from my job to work from home full-time, Cris had what seemed to be pretty good job lead here, so. All our stuff got packed into storage and we moved in the guest room at my parents’ house while we look for a place of our own. Except then Cris’s job didn’t end up transferring him to Sac yet so he’s still in Alameda, spending most nights at his mom’s, while I live with the baby at my mom’s.

What?

Yeah, exactly. Good grief. We’re still waiting for Cris to get a position here and who knows how long that’s going to be now. This wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. I miss him and the baby misses him and he misses us and we’re all a big grumpy pile of OMGWTFBBQ :( :( :(.

We’ve been with my parents’ for a couple weeks now and it’s finally starting to feel less like a family vacation and more like This is Real Life Now…and it’s all going well enough but I still I find myself wondering what exactly I’ve got myself into here. Working from home is awesome, of course, but the ‘work’ part isn’t totally…working. Ezra is a handful. A fantastic, adorable, happy handful, but a handful nonetheless. I still have to find a way to get that balance between ‘baby time’ and ‘work time’ and ‘me time’…because right now? We’re getting dangerously close to that ‘mommy is going crazy and has been wearing the same stained pajamas for the past week’ time.

Cris needs a close job, I need some kind of nanny/babysitter/daycare thing, and we all need our own sweet little home. Until then, we’re just gonna keep on keeping on.

So it goes.