I was just upstairs a little bit ago reading the little angel books, trying to give her time to want the rest of her bottle. We read a few we'd gotten from friends with her name in them, then we read The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree was one of my favorite books when I was a little girl, but I thought the tree was pretty stupid, I admit. I mean, she just gave that ridiculous little boy everything he wanted! Even in the end when she was nothing but a stump!

Today, though, as I got to the end part, I finally got the subtext that escaped me as a child. With the little angel belching liquid sleep right down her adorable Baby Gap overalls, I started bawling. I wanted my mommy. I finally got it. The book is about respect. The little boy doesn't really respect the tree for most of his life. He loves the tree, and he's happy the tree will give him unconditional love even when he takes everything she has, but he doesn't really respect the tree until the end. In the end, he realizes he has taken everything from her, and he realizes all she needs is his time and attention. And he gives it to her. Shel may have intended something else - as a writer, I realize most people interpret stories as they want to, hell's bells with what the writer intended - but that is what I now take away from this book. As children, we don't really respect our parents until we get older. With awareness comes respect, and you really can't have one without the other.

A lot of people have asked me what the most important thing is for keeping the marriage alive with a writhing mouth-child taking up most of your time. I think respect is probably the short answer. It's so easy to get tired (and you have not experienced "tired," I now understand, until you have had interrupted sleep for more than six weeks running) and snap at your beloved. It's easy to blame him for the stitches, the pain of labor, the excruciating pain of nursing, all of the things he didn't have to do to bring this little thing into the world. It's easy to hate him when he stops for gas on the way home when you have been playing Primary Caregiver for the last 14 hours. And it's even easier to hate him for not making enough money to let you stay home with your little angel instead of going back to the cruel, faceless working world. But if you truly respect each other, you realize he is just as tired as you are, and just as confused, and he realizes you are not joking when he sees your tender chest area blister and bleed as you bumble through breastfeeding.

I wonder how many other children's books I never really understood? I guess I'll find out soon.

My husband informed me a week ago that we have a mouse. An icky, poo-dropping vermin has invaded the little angel's pristine environment. Okay, there were already a few hairballs. And some dust. But otherwise, very pristine.

My husband stalked the mouse for days, first by insisting we get rid of the candy jar and sealing the cat food, then by installing peanut-butter-infused traps wherever we found little turd evidence of the rodent. "Here, mousie, mousie," my husband would trill lightly. "Come on out and fight like a man."

Then it seemed to go away. Until last Friday, when my friend J. and her baby were here. J. had her son, also J., on the floor changing his little diaper. I was watching, fascinated by the precautions one must take when one has an always-armed little BOY, when I saw movement in my peripheral vision. Out from under the armoire crawled a fat, gray mousie!

"Get the baby off the floor!" I screamed with the authority of a firefighter, a middle-school principal, Donald Rumsfeld on a good day. I scooped up the little angel and threw her, bouncy seat and all, on the dining room table and ran to the kitchen for a proper mousie-entrapping device. I couldn't find a hand grenade, so I grabbed a colander instead.

"Sybil, get the mouse!" cried J., dangling her baby and dancing back and forth along the top of the couch. My 15-year-old cat, Sybil, took one look at the mouse and ran for the hills. She is useless. I didn't even care if she KILLED the mouse, I just wanted her to scare it away by acting all badass and cat-like, but oh, no, she is a first-class freeloader. More on that at a later date. Bad kitty.

I threw the colandar on top of the mouse, who was apparently either too stunned or too drugged from slurping D-con in the basement to move.

"What if he can move the colander?" said J., still on the couch.

"Good thinking," I replied, and added a pinecone-stuffed vase to the top of the colander.

"What if he can breathe through all those holes?" said J., still on the couch.

"Right-o," I said, retrieving a plastic bowl fit for suffocating mousies from the kitchen, and inserting it between the colander and the vase. At this moment, my friend C. arrived with her baby, N. A veritable vermin extravanganza was playing out for all of my new-mommy friends, and I was helpless to rid our baby playground from rodents. What a good friend I am!

So I did what any normal, strong, independent woman would do. I called my husband and shrieked, "Get in the car right now and come home and kill this mouse!"

And of course, he did. My hero.

I am a control freak with no control. Sounds kind of like the opening line to a Sting song, doesn't it? Prior to having the little angel, I often succeeded in holding onto control over my life. I've had at least two jobs since 2000 and during that time managed to attend graduate school a few nights a week, get through the whole program, write my thesis and emerge on the other side. I planned my wedding on my terms (poor Ma). I had my own company. Everything was going along swimmingly.

Now, there are several things I can't control. I can't control how fast she grows, for instance. The little family is set to fly from KC to Portland, Oregon at the end of July for my cousin B's wedding. I am now concerned the little angel will have outgrown the carseat that is supposed to last until she is one by then. I had anticipated checking this carseat through on the plane, then using it in my parents' rental car, easy, peasy. Now I have been broadsided by the sneaking suspicion that at almost three months she is probably almost 16 pounds. What if she hits 20 next month? How am I going to check through a carseat the size of Montana and fit it in a compact rental?

My emotions, as we have already discussed, I can't control, especially when Barry Manilow is involved. (I will never listen to "Melissa" again, or at least not until the little angel is married.) I can't control her moods, either. I can't seem to make my cat stop projectile vomiting on the new rug whenever she feels attention-deprived. I can't control my husband's addiction to major league baseball, even though the Royals have started selling off players like they were so many nonworking lamps at a Friday-morning tag sale.

The result? My control-freak side is mourning the loss of perceived world domination. The side of me that always secretly suspected I did not have it, indeed, in the bag is jumping on the bed. There is a certain peacefulness in being dust in the wind and knowing it. I don't feel nearly so responsible for all the bad stuff that happens, but I'm still just as happy about the good stuff. Funny how that works.

I don't have much new to say today. Nothing funny happened. I did notice a few things I think are worth observing, however:

* Local disaster Union Station reportedly loses $100,000 every week. Now, I suppose Paris Hilton also loses $100,000 a week, but at least she has her own series. Come on, people. You don't even have to make money - just stop losing it!

* It never ceases to amaze me that the tagline "zoom, zoom, zoom" can actually sell cars. Kind of makes you feel a little Neanderthal, doesn't it?

* Dappled sunlight is probably one of the most beautiful sights in the world. That and the reflections from moving water. Really gorgeous, and I almost never notice either one.

That's all for today.

Yesterday I admitted I had interviewed a cleaning person. I don't know why this is such a painful admission for me - many, many of the smart, well-adjusted career women I know have cleaning services and don't feel one bit bad about it. In fact, most of the full-time working mommies I know have some sort of convenience service, be it cleaning, meal prep or what have you. However, I felt more than sheepish letting the purple-pants-wearing blond woman into my house yesterday to survey the goods.

As I led her through This Old House, with its cracked plaster and unscraped windows, I imagined what might be going through her head: "THESE people need a cleaning service? They need to slap some wood fill on that hole in the Overstock.com paperboard night stand, that's what they need to do. Or perhaps trim the huge snags in the apartment-grade carpet. It looks like a CAT has been playing with them. And speaking of cats, I wonder exactly what made that stain on the rug?"

I guess I always thought of people who had help with cleaning as being a) rich b) famous or c) executives. I fit into none of the above categories, so what was I doing trying to determine if the money was really worth not spending three hours a week disinfecting the little angel's environment? Perhaps there was also an eensy-weensy piece of me in dismay that I know in advance I will not be able to balance a full-time corporate job, a little angel, a three-year-old marriage and my dreams of getting at least one more short story published in a magazine with glue in the binding before I die with cleaning my ratty old house every week. Of course I always pictured myself being able to do all those things, but that was before I realized I have to spend at least fifteen minutes of every day watching the little angel's eyelashes grow and an hour of every day playing the game "Why Are You Crying?"

So I think I'm going to go downstairs and call Purple Pants back and tell her to start coming every other Tuesday. The little angel was born on a Tuesday, so it seems like an appropriate day.

Obesity is the last acceptable American prejudice. I know I have harped on weight issues in the past, and I don't want to become one of those women who always talks about food, but I am on a soapbox today about this subject.

We just had a cleaning person swing by This Old House to give us an estimate. Yes, I am returning to my office job (as we also already discussed - no Barry today and I WILL NOT CRY) soon, and I made a deal with my beloved that if I would bring home the bacon, someone else would be scraping the grease. Anyway, I digress. This woman came by, saw the little angel sleeping peacefully in her bouncy seat (and looking charming in her pastel overalls) and inquired as to her age. As soon as the words "eleven weeks" escaped my lips, a look of utter shock washed over her already pallid features. "She's HUGE!" said the evil one.

Now, a week ago, I had a friend from graduate school come by to visit the little angel so that my beloved and I could celebrate our three-year anniversary. J. and I have known each other since I got engaged, and she is familiar with my sensitivity to weight comments. Still, she told me upon our return that she had actually had to call her mother while babysitting to tell her how big my baby is.

Stop the madness.

Okay, so she's a big baby. Okay, so she weighs probably around 15 pounds at 11 weeks and has already doubled her birth weight. Okay, so she has a stomach the size, shape and color of a regulation volleyball. She is MY little angel and she is ADORABLE. What am I supposed to do? Not feed her? She eats the same as every other spider-monkey, ten-pound three-month-old - she just has superior food storage skills! She was breastfed for seven weeks! She eats less Liquid Sleep than some of her cohorts! SHE'S JUST A BABY, PEOPLE!

But then, I looked around today at the grocery store and realized that almost every magazine contained at least subject line about weight loss. There were more magazines dedicated to food and weight loss than any other subject. It's still okay to make fat jokes on national television. Poor Kirstie Alley hasn't had a break since the early '90s. Look how they tortured poor Oprah after "The Color Purple." Don't even get me started on Extreme Makeovers.

If the little angel is already a bit tubby and people are already this rude, what must she endure if she's an overweight middle-schooler? What happens if she hits puberty early and has hips in fourth grade? (I was, and did.) How will I raise her to have healthy self-esteem in a world where it's unpalatable to make a comment about school prayers but perfectly fine to torture the fat kid or the Iraqi, whoever happens to be handy at the time?

I realize all new parents have a bit of panic when they realize how DAMN MUCH there is in big, bad reality to filter out. Those fuzzy bunnies and Golden Books can't be strapped into the little angel's peripheral vision past the age of four. And even if I could protect her from all the freaks out there, how would she learn about the beauty of free speech?

I realize I must just do my best to set a good example and give her a solid foundation, then watch her experiment with atheism and extreme politics in college before settling down to turn out just like me. It's going to be a wild ride, though. Hopefully I'll be able to restrain myself from punching the next person who takes one look at her ample midsection, sucks in a deep breath and cries melodramatically: "What a chunk!"

The little angel has discovered her hands. They are tasty, apparently, because at this moment she is digging in with the gusto of a couch potato on SuperBowl Sunday. She kind of sounds like someone eating buffalo wings. I used to know a kid in elementary school who made slurping noises like that no matter what he ate. And my parents used to make these horrible smacking noises when they kissed each other that still haunt my sleep. I don't like to admit how disturbed I am by the mental comparisions I make when I hear the little angel feasting on her chubby little fingers. Am I weird?

Another outcome of all this finger slurping is that the fingers become sticky, thus attracting lint, string, fuzz and (que horor) CAT HAIR. Every morning, evening and bath time I pry the little angel's balled fists apart to find the daily treasure stuck in the cracks between her fingers. The very same fingers, I might remind you, that she keeps sticking in her mouth.

I read that you are supposed to actually boil the water to make Liquid Sleep. You are supposed to boil a gallon or so, then pour it into measured containers to use throughout the day to ensure a sterile food supply for your baby. This takes so little effort, of course. I love to whip up a nice Dutch Oven of boiled, already treated city tap water each morning as I make my toast. And it's so worth it to have a sterile food supply when your child is licking the germs she pulled off the wool rug five minutes after finishing her bottle!

So I ask the sterilizers of the world...why? Can we really protect our children from every germ in the world's food supply? And should we? Aren't they going to get milk that's been sitting out for three hours from the lunch ladies when they hit kindergarten? And won't they be using it to wash down the dirt they ate at recess? I remember eating fake dirt out of my mother's plastic plant when I was about three. (Okay, I don't remember, but I remember hearing about it.) I'm not saying we have to let them chug Draino. Lock up all of your leftover Darvocet from the first few floaty days after childbirth. But I think constantly boiling water may be a bit of overkill, and I resent the implication I should be doing so.

We all remember Beetlejuice, right? For some reason, I particularly remember the line about how suicide victims are made to be civil servants in the afterlife, because being a civil servant is such a special and unique treat in hell.

Today I think I saw the first level for those still living. My honey and I are the proud owners of a 1994 Geo Prizm (yes, they still exist), a 1998 Ford Explorer, and a 1974, 12-foot AMF Puffer sailboat (a gift from a family friend) and a 2003 trailer to pull that sailboat around. Yesterday, I went to AAA (did you know that if you are a AAA member, you can by-pass the peanut line at the DMV to get your tags and driver's license? Yes, you can!) to pay property tax and get tags for the Explorer, the boat trailer and the boat. Of course, the only "bill of sale" I had for the boat was an undated Post-It saying we'd pinched the boat for $10 and the price of hauling it away, but I was in a deep state of melancholy yesterday and thus out of my right mind. After waiting 45 minutes with an impatient little angel, the nice man at AAA told me I had to register the boat and the truck with the county or some such rot. Our conversation went like this:

Him: "You have to register the boat and the truck with the Jackson County tax roll before I can help you."
Me: "Where do I go for that?"
Him: "Somewhere downtown."
Me: "What do I need to take?"
Him: "I don't know."
Me: "Who can I call? Do you know the name of the department?"
Him: "I don't know."
Me: "Thanks for your help."
Him: "Next."

So today I went downtown to deal with it. The woman assigned to help me told me the state of Missouri doesn't have "sailboat" in it's categories. This was our conversation:

Her: "Is it a bass boat?"
Me: "No. It's an AMF Puffer. It's a sailboat."
Her: "Does it have a motor?"
Me: "No, it's a sailboat."
Her: "So Rachelle, are you riding with us to Ameristar or not? Do you have a VIN number?"
Me: "No, I just have the Post-It. I think VIN numbers are post-1974."
Her: "What? No, Rachelle, we are not coming back here once we go to the buffet. I don't know if you can register this boat today or not. I don't have sailboat."
Me in my head: Listen, you chipped-nailpolish, crooked-lipliner civil servant from the inferno, get your head out of your ass and help me before the little angel spits up all over this godfosaken hellhole!
Me for real: "Can you just check for "sailboat" again?

So after an hour and a half, I returned to AAA, where the little angel did in fact spew her venom all over the waiting room floor. I got the same clerk, who did not see the humor in the situation. This was our conversation:

Him: "Well, the fine for waiting this long to register your trailor went up from $100 to $200 last year, so your total bill is $350."
Me: "What do you know?"
Little Angel: "HA!"

God bless the frickin' DMV.

I'm in a rather melancholy mood today, perhaps due to the incessant partly cloudiness, perhaps due to myriad problems in my friends' personal lives, perhaps because I'm listening to Barry Manilow. Regardless, it's there, unable to be lifted even by a viewing of Along Came Polly last night. Usually Ben Stiller will do the trick.

I should really turn off Barry.

So I was looking at the calendar yesterday and realizing the little angel is 10 weeks old. Which means I have to go back to the D.C. (dreaded cubicle) in two weeks. I like my job just fine. It's not writing magazine articles, but after trying to make a go of that for three years, I'm tired of the fight anyway. I like the people with whom I work. The commute is short and lunch spots abundant. But there is no little angel there.

I always thought I would be rushing back to the office with relief, eager for adult interaction and the small sense of power and rightness one gets from a successful meeting or met deadline. I told people I would be a better mama if I could just get away from the baby for a little while each day. I'd make up for being gone by using all that money to pay people to clean my house and wash my car so I could spend "quality time" with my children. But who the hell am I, anyway? I tried to have my tubes tied at 18, certain I would never, ever want children to tie me down. I was completely and totally unprepared for the force of children. I feel like I have been hit by an emotional tidal wave that picked me up from nice, orderly and efficient life and plunked me down on Gilligan's Island, surrounded by dirty diapers, messy shacks and a lovable bunch of idiots I now do not want to abandon for the trappings of civilization.

I know I'll once again adapt. I've seen friends and family go through this transition, too. Six months from now I'll probably be relieved I fought through the sadness and returned to work. I know we need the money. I also know, deep down, that I need the ego boost that comes from paid work. I just wish I could escape this nagging feeling that I'm missing the point here. I've missed the point for years of my life at a time, only to discover later what was going on at the time. I now realize we have control over very little in life, and pretty much any road is an acceptable one if it is navigated carefully and with respect for the other weirdos on the island. So I guess in two weeks I'll have to get back in the boat. It's just unbelievable to realize that now that help has arrived, I wish I could hide from it.