Every Little Wonder

I know I’m super lucky to be able to escape the cubicle and make good money and spend time with my crazy adorable baby toddler. But since moving to Sacramento (and in with my parents) and starting to work from home full-time, I have…accomplished absolutely nothing. I think I figured that working from home would give me even more delicious time to waste away online, but my google reader situation is out of control (oh, three months behind or so), I go weeks without remembering what a twitter is, and I don’t even know where to start blogging again.

Spending less time online would be great if I were at least doing something productive or fun or…anything. Anything at all. The sad truth is that working from home has made my crazy ADD magpie-esque level of time-management skills really, really obvious. I feel a bit like I’m drowning all the time despite the fact that I am doing absolutely nothing.

Sure, it’s hard to get things done living out of a small room in my parent’s house with all my belongings packed away in storage. And yeah, it’s obviously hard to be productive with a toddler—and not just any toddler but one who spends 90% of the day bouncing off the walls like he’s just snorted a few lines of coke in the bathroom while I wasn’t looking. (‘drank a bottle of coke’ would probably have been a more appropriate analogy, I know, but we’re two hours past time and he won’t sit still for longer than two seconds and oh my goodness, child, why won’t you just lay down already ). But excuses aside, my to-do list is multiplying daily and I’m not even attempting to pretend to make a dent in it.

I know I need a babysitter/nanny/mother’s helper/whatever, but that’s not really going to help until I get some ADD meds that actually work. Paying someone to watch my kid so I can squirrel away hours looking at pinterest and watching whatever Vin Diesel movie is available OnDemand is probably not the smartest use of my money.

My request to work from home two days a week was approved.

Internet, let us all breathe a collective sigh of relief. I know you were worried about me.

Wednesdays and Fridays are now officially the days I work from home, i.e., the days I lounge around in jammies with a cute baby and a laptop and a much chirpier personality from not getting up at 6am and not being stuck in traffic for four hours. I.E. NOT SUCKY DAYS.

The best part of working from home:

Notice: lack of shoes! awesome baby! sunshine!

And—less than two minutes later—the worst part of working from home:

I think I am going to have to buy Ezra a laptop for his birthday.* I see no other possible solution to this.

*Speaking of his birthday: OH HOLY WTF?! ONE YEAR? WHAT? This cannot possibly be right! Somebody hold me.

I have all these posts I’ve been writing in my head about cute things like father’s day or Ezra’s first tooth, but… not gonna happen. Because, seriously, internet? I am in quite a funk lately.

So, let’s see. C started his new job that’s all of one block away from our home. Lovely for him. And for us, since it means no more getting home at 8pm or later, just in time to put the baby to bed. That’s no fun. I kinda like my baby and I kinda like spending time with him, strangely. But previously, we commuted. C would drop me off at my job downtown, and then drop the baby off at his mom’s house and then drive a few minutes to his job. Minus his stupidly long work hours, it worked perfectly for us. Now that he’s working in the east bay, I need to drive myself, drop the baby off all the way on the other side of SF, and then come back downtown to my job. And since there’s no longer 3 people in the car, I have to pay the $4 (soon-to-be $6) toll and wait in the soooo slowwww non-carpool lanes (it took me forty-five minutes just to cross the toll plaza), and then I have to pay for parking at work. Which is $30 per day. Of course.

It took me 90 minutes to get to get to work this morning (and I live exactly 14 miles away (OMG)), and it cost $34.00. Did you know that spending $34 a day will equal approximately ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS in one month? True story. This is just AWESOME.

And then there’s the fact that Ezra—my adorable sweet baby, the light of life—is sick. He is feverish and sad and miserable and clingy and I just feel completely awful for him. I just want to snuggle him forever and make him feel better. The past couple nights, he’s been waking up every couple of hours and screaming inconsolably. The only way I could get him to calm down last night was by taking him to the kitchen at 2am and distracting him with some avocado and a little glass of water and a clip from Yo Gabba Gabba on my iphone (bad mommy!). He cried the whole way in the car this morning, and when I took him out finally to take him to his grandma, he was covered in snot and tears and it was the saddest. thing. ever. And he cried so hard when I left.

Heart? Broken.

And add onto this the fact that Ezra’s constant nighttime screaming has done nothing to stop Cris from getting a full night’s sleep? And waking up in the morning to chirpily say “so, did the baby sleep well last night?”? And that yesterday’s promises to take care of the baby last night and make me coffee this morning so I wouldn’t CRASH AND DIE on my way to work were TOTAL LIES? Yeah. I’m going to a very shrill, bitter place. It’s not pretty. And while I’d normally add some disclaimer here about what a wonderful father/boyfriend/fiance/whatever Cris is, I spent the better part of last night fantasizing about violently shoving his stupid snoring buttface off the bed, so I’m just not feeling it this time.

See? Not pretty.

Bleary-eyed resignation and a constant internal chant of ‘this too shall pass’ are all that’s getting me through the day right now.

Okay, that and Starbucks.

(p.s. i have spent the last, oh, FOUR HOURS trying to upload a picture of Ezra to add to this post and IT IS NOT WORKING. Today can go die. )

There’s a new manager at my job, which means we spent an hour of the day in a meeting room, going around the table as every one introduced themselves. When it was my turn, I found myself saying “I’ve been with [company] for six years”… and then everything froze for a second. Because…holy shit. SIX YEARS?! How did that happen? How did six years happen just like that? I never wanted a career at this place. They were just first company to hire me after I moved back from France and when I accepted the job, my thought process literally did not go any deeper than “Yay, I can get a new cell phone!” And now it’s six years later and I’ve got a Real Job and my own Real Beige Cubicle. I spend hours in meetings and I develop programs and I produce beautiful reports and I make a good salary and I have great benefits and a flexible schedule and…I am miserable.

I really don’t want to end up in some Dooce situation where I’m fired for talking about my job online, so I’ll just leave it at that. Miserable.
OMG.
SO MUCH.
It kinda hurts to admit that, but really, this just isn’t The Way It’s Supposed To Be. The Way It’s Supposed To Be is never going to happen, I know that. It involves long afternoons on the patio with lemonade and good music, cozy dinner parties with good friends, bbqs and beaches and lazy days, a charming old house by the sea and a big backyard with a trampoline and a couple dogs and an ancient tree with a tire swing. Naps on hammocks, full bookshelves, an overflowing garden. A gaggle of ridiculous, happy kids. Stolen kisses. Bedtime stories and homemade cakes and impromptu dance parties and craft projects and cartwheels and vacations and hugs and uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Noticeably absent from this list? Jobs that keeps Cris and I away from home for 10+ hours a day.

Or any job, actually. So unless I have some unknown relative die and leave me millions, I realize this is just my silly, happy pipe dream. But even so, I feel like leaving this job would get me One Step Closer. And I think that’s a step I’m finally ready take.

I have so much to do, but, woe!, I seem to have come down with a cold. Which I caught from my baby. Sick baby + sick mama = NO FUN. The past few nights, Ezra has decided to remind us that he’s not feeling too great by waking up every couple hours and SCREAMING SO LOUD OMG SO LOUD. The only thing that seems to console him is to sit him on my lap and gently rock him for hours as he stares off into the distance, all pitiful and morose and snot-filled. Sleep? What is this ‘sleep’ you speak of?

I had scheduled Monday and Tuesday off of work so that I could enjoy some time with Cris and Ezra during Cris’s last week of family leave, but spending the whole time on the couch or in bed whining about miserable I felt and worrying about the baby was not exactly what I had in mind.

And now, I’m back at work with a ton of stuff to do and an inability to concentrate on anything for more than two seconds because MY NOSE! MY HEAD! MY THROAT! OMG MISERY! HEY LOOK TWITTER! Plus, my annual review is tomorrow morning. AWESOME.

Having a baby and a full-time job is taxing enough for me (really, how do so many people do this? I am so weak!), but add a (relatively mild) cold to the mix, and I’m just done. I need a margarita and a bottle of nyquil, stat.

Ezra has been such a wonderfully happy ball of cuteness lately that I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t have babies sooner and when I can have 20 more. He smiles and coos and babbles and giggles and sticks out his tongue and blows raspberries all over the place. He loves people. He loves the funny sounds they make. He loves poking and grabbing and smooshing their faces. He loves being the center of attention. He gets upset when we stop looking at him and yells out to remind us that he’s still there, still being cute. He loves tummytime and bathtime and storytime. He hates naptime. He loves Dance Party time with dada, and he’s already learned mama has no idea how to dance. He’s mesmerized by his feet, the kitties, anything that lights up. He twists his whole body around to stare at the tv whenever it’s on, even though mama says no tv, not even The Daily Show. When he’s sleepy and you put your hand close to rub his head, he grabs on to your entire arm and pulls it across his tiny body and buries his face in your palm and only then will he close his eyes. I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty in love with this little guy.

Cris has been taking the last half of his paid family leave to spend some quality time with the baby and I’m so jealous. I was a little worried that I would come from work every day to a happy baby and a sparkling clean apartment and a delicious homemade meal on the stove, but my worries were completely unfounded. As nice as it would be to have that for these three weeks, I’m more grateful that Cris is just as cheerfully unproductive as I was on my maternity leave. At least he now understands how hard it is to get anything with the baby around, even though he does nothing but smile and eat and poop and cry.

I was able to work from yesterday and sit on the couch in my jammies with my laptop in front of me and Cris and the baby next to me. This is approximately 100000000000 times better than being in a cubicle. Hopefully I can find a way to make this an everyday thing sometime before Ezra’s 18th birthday. I’m already getting so sad about all the moments I’m missing with him.

Tomorrow. ARRRGG. Tomorrow I return to work after four blissful (baby-birthing! sleep-deprived! poop-filled! major-surgery-recovering!) months off. Tomorrow, Real Life starts again and I have to get back in the business of not wearing jammies all day, having conversations with people who don’t respond in adorable coos and bashful smiles, and using the computer for something besides surfing the net endlessly with a baby attached to my boob.

I’m so happy that I’ve been able to take this time off, but 24 hours x 3 months of BABY!BABY!BABY! is just a bit exhausting… the color and consistency of a certain someone’s poop is my favorite topic of conversation and my idea of a Really Exciting Day is one in which I maybe get dressed and perhaps take a short walk to Starbucks, so… yeah, that’s a probably a sign that I could use a little more normal adult interaction in my life right now. So I guess I can admit that part of me is a little relieved to be going back to work.

But the other part of me? Totally heartbroken. I mean, God. Look at this kid—

He is so delicious! The thought of not being around to witness and delight in every single second of his laughter-filled, chubby-thighed existence fills me with an entirely brand-new kind of despair.

We’ll get through it. Things will fine, I know. But, man, this is gonna suck for a little while.

Today was supposed to be my first day back at work, but… no. The thought of going back to work right now leaves me all anxious and vommity-feeling so I panicked at the last minute and emailed my boss to ask for an additional two weeks off. I know it’s not going to get any easier in two weeks, but I’ll take every extra second of time with this that I can manage—