Things:

1. I can’t sew for shit, guys. Noah’s Boy Scout uniform is finally (5 months late) badged up and it is slapdashed together like you’ve never seen. Fortunately, it looks as though he’s only in the whole deal for the Pinewood Derby, so as soon as that little wooden car crosses the finish line in about a month, we’re in the clear. Membership renewal will not be happening next year. It’s a good thing, because that kid is all kinds of Eagle Scout material, and I would just bring him badge shame for years to come.

2. What’s up with the weather, ATLiens? One day it’s icicle breath frigid, the next it’s 65 and pouring like the world is ending. Let’s find a happy medium, shall we? Like, how about some nice Southern 40 degree winter temps with a bit of sun thrown in for kicks? Just a suggestion. L would like to ride his scooter again sometime soon. (Slash I would like for him not to have to pay $4 a day to park next to his building.)

However, if rainy weather means Rosie gets to wear her red striped galoshes and polka dotted raincoat, well, I can’t say it’s all bad.

Oh, who am I kidding. She would wear those in the middle of a drought. No more rain. The end.

3. For some reason I feel like it’s crap to link to my blog posts over here, but the thing is I have all these other words I wrote, and they’re just laying there! For people to read! So I will continue to link. (Except for when I totally filch content off this site to put there because I have had a very busy week getting ready for a seventh birthday party and have been working my fingers to nubbins sewing TROOP 134 onto a navy blue burlap sack of a shirt. Which has happened.)

So anyway! Here I talk about the boy things I have ready for the not-girl on the way. (None.) And here I explain the “abnormality” (I use that term loosely, because it sounds scary) that was found on ultrasound day. And today I’m asking all parents of more than three kids to lie to me good and tell me how going from two to three kids is like a vacation at the beach. In other words, I would like to be kept in as much dark as possible about the insanity that lies ahead. And I thank you.

4. Also, I am still pregnant, and slowly reaching hull breach levels of midsection girth, with more than 15 weeks to go. Noah, ever so kindly a few days ago, observed, “You know mom, really, pregnant people sometimes just look fat.”

And then I ate him.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to soak my bloodied, lame, pinpricked fingers in some Epsom salts to try to restore my humours before another one of my family members meets a grievous end.

Dance clothes always. Tights optional. Accessories encouraged.

Your style is your own. Wear what you want, and wear it out loud.

It’s never not time to party.

Be the brightest light in all the rooms you enter.

Live your life filled with anticipation of the best thing coming up next.

This is some of what I learn from her every day, and what I hope she continues to teach for a lifetime.

About two or three months or so ago, I was in bed on the phone with my laptop open in front of me, when I decided to get up, or maybe I rolled over, or maybe aliens possessed my body and I levitated for a minute, I can’t really remember. But the point is: the computer slid off the comforter and crashed straight to the floor, landing solidly on the narrowest portion of the side where all the hoosie-whatsits get plugged in. Since I was on the phone, I did not say any expletives (behold my mammoth restraint!) or even gasp audibly. I continued on with the conversation as if I hadn’t just numbskulled my way into a potentially budget- and job productivity-threatening situation.

After hanging up, I gingerly retrieved the unit from its sad, sprawled state and gave it a once over, and oh, it was not good. There were blue wires coming out of the back that had not been visible before, and the top no longer met the bottom in a nicely symmetrical way, but instead made my Mac look like it had a pronounced underbite. I was pretty sure everything was toast, but lo and behold when I opened it up and powered it on, I was met with the reassuring BONNNNNNNNNG of hardware life. Jubilation! Rejoicing! Fist pumping!

So, as a result, I began toting around the sorriest looking sad excuse for a laptop you have ever seen in all your days, out to coffee shops, to work, on trips, etc. And it kept chugging along with no apparent issues or malfunctions. So smug was I, with my still-working wonky workstation! Looks don’t matter to me! It’s what’s on the inside that counts! And other malarkey.

And though it has kept a stiff upper lip, held its head high, hung in there, etc. now it’s begun shutting down, ever-so-slowly, like rot setting in to a turkey sandwich left out in the sun. The power cord is iffy at best, only charging the computer when I hold my mouth right, and sometimes not even then. Currently, my routine is to work on the computer for as long as I can while the battery is holding strong, and then when I just can’t risk it anymore, I save all my work, shut down, unplug the unit, remove the battery (using a coin that I scrounged out of the couch), hold down the power button for five seconds, put the battery back in, turn it back on, and then insert the power cord. This is a method researched extensively by L on the internet on some magic Mac quick-fix voodoo website and works about two-thirds of the time. Sometimes I do it up to four times in one hour.

Next up, we try a chanting ritual with chicken bones, arranged in the shape of a once-bitten apple.

These maintenance methods will work indefinitely, I’m pretty sure. I should teach seminars.

Sayonara, ya ol’ Six Shirt

Of course. OF COURSE. It’s like tiny gremlins see you coming and scamper over to the cake aisle to hoard away all your kid’s birthday numbers just before you round the corner from the deli. Bastards!

Prepped for the birthday breakfast.

YES.

Ninja griddling.

Great card givers think alike.

Can you even. I mean, I can’t even.

Excuse me, but there seems to be a gigantic grown boy? On my teeny little Noah’s new birthday rug?

It’s the traditional birthday pot pie! (Traditional, first ever, whatever.)

Bubble bath WITH jets, because that’s how you roll on your birthday.

Goodnight my biggest boy, my super kid, my lucky number seven.

I am headed down I-75S towards Stockbridge, Georgia with my med school classmate Paolo, on our way to visit a housebound woman who was in a serious car accident some months before. It is an exercise for our Doctor-Patient small group, and I feel a little peeved that I am expected to drive 45 minutes away for my task when most everyone else in the class has been assigned someone at the local home for the elderly, or even people in the hospital right across the street. Paolo is driving, and has Sufjan Steven in the stereo: Illinoise. He has just been to see Sufjan in concert with several of our classmates, and I find myself wishing once again that I could be free enough to be a part of that scene—going to hear live music or grabbing a beer with my lab group after a particularly grueling anatomy dissection. But there is an 18-month old boy at home who sees far too little of me as it is, and any extra time I have is rightfully his.

Paolo and I talk for the first 20 minutes or so, but as the CD plays on we both become lost in our own thoughts, slightly nervous in our brand new and spotless student doctor coats, feeling a little like poseurs. What was this lady going to say to us? What will we say to her? I am grateful to Sufjan and his calm, unhurried voice as we pull up to her modest apartment complex. We weave around the parking lot, squinting at the numbers on the buildings until her door appears and we turn off the car, squaring our white-coated shoulders for the unknown inside.

Sufjan Stevens – Chicago by TAtunes

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Noah is still tiny enough to still be rocked to sleep, and L and I have searched out music that we can listen to night after night after night and not want to gouge our eardrums out with sporks. We’ve just purchased the soundtrack from the movie Garden State, and one of the songs is by Iron and Wine. We dig it. Their album Our Endless Numbered Days soon becomes every afternoon’s nap time playlist. It is peaceful and a little melancholy, but it fills the hours well as I move back and forth with the motion of the rocker, the weight of a small warm body nestled in the crook of my arm.

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There is coffee with a generous helping of store-bought vanilla creamer in the cupholder of my Subaru Forester, and I have on tights—a piece of clothing I haven’t worn or even owned in a long time. I’ve just been hired as an assistant editor at a national magazine, and it feels so unbelievable that I have to remind myself it’s really happening to me and not someone else. I haven’t had a full-time job in five years, but now I’m driving the surface streets of Atlanta at 7:30 in the morning, slowly inching my way toward the connector, radio cranked up to blast on my honest-to-god grown up commute. Guster has just come out with their Easy Wonderful album, and I’m pretty sure every song has been written directly and explicitly for me. I turn on to the entrance ramp and start to accelerate toward my new building and desk and title complete with business cards as the song sings my life out the windows and into the traffic-filled lanes of the freeway that points me toward my future.

So take a breath and step into the light. Everything will be all right. This could all be yours someday. This could all be yours someday.

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This is what music does. It keeps our memories and holds them, until the first few notes slip them seamlessly back into our mind and we live the experiences right out again, like we’re still there. Like we never even left in the first place.