We're going to Portland, Oregon in a few hours for my cousin B's wedding. The little angel is sleeping in her bouncy seat, snuffling like a bear. I'm anxious. I had nightmares last night of six hours of a screaming little angel tearing at her ears and looking at me with those eyes that say, "Mama, make it go away! MAKE IT GO AWAY!" and me helplessly aspirating her with that stupid blue balloon thing that couldn't suck a booger if it had a vacuum attached to it.

Many other mothers of smaller children than the little angel have already taken their babies on planes. One to Boston, one to San Diego, one to Las Vegas. They smile and coo, "Don't worry. She'll sleep. Just have her eat on ascent and descent." That's the problem...because we're cheap and had a free ticket on Southwest, we went that route before realizing we have three ascents and three descents on the way out and two of each on the way back. I can't feed her every twenty minutes, can I? Is sucking a pacifier the same as sucking a bottle for ear control? I have no idea. We will terrorize flight attendants and weary air travelors from one end of this great country to the other, I fear. Maybe I should just dress her in a Metallica t-shirt now and tell everyone it's a phase she's going through. She's gone vegan and won't turn down her stereo, and SHE SCREAMS. People will look at me with those disdainful "naughty mother" eyes and whisper to each other about parents who shouldn't attempt to fly with small children. I will bury my head in In Touch magazine and read about celebrity mothers with private jets to chariot their fruit-named babies across the pond. I will think positive thoughts and sing Itsy Bitsy Spider. If it gets really bad, I will change her diaper publically and forget to bring a plastic baggy. I will endear flight attendants to our plight and they will stand heroically in a line in front of us, just like the cone-breasted androids in Austin Powers movies. It will be fine.

It will be fine.

It will be fine.

Today I hosted a Very Important New Product Meeting at a local Mexican restaurant. After hurrying through a long agenda with way too many people, we all settled down to eat. One corner of the table to my left somehow got on the topic of Guy Code. Guy Code (caveat: this apparently only applies to heterosexual men) apparently contains the following tenets:

* Two guys at a public event with stadium seating must always leave one seat open between them. Even on airplanes.

* Guys should never select the urinal immediately adjacent to another guy in a public restroom, unless at a sporting event when "the line is moving along smoothly." Egads. There was also some mention of "trough urinals," but I don't even want to think about that.

* Guys over the age of 30 should try to bring along a female friend to family events to protect their reputation with Great Aunt Edna.

The more I thought about Guy Code, the sillier it seemed. The main point seems to be ensuring that NOBODY THINKS YOU'RE GAY. However, most heterosexual men I know project, well, heterosexuality. And even if they didn't, who the hell cares? Isn't this the new millenium?

Girl Code is pretty much the opposite. Heterosexual women that I know pretty much sit on top of each other if the car's too crowded and use the bathroom as the Gastrointestinally Correct Conference Room. It is, in fact, poor form to not greet and even chat with another acquaintance while washing one's hands in the ladies' between meetings.

This could have something to do with the fact women's restrooms have doors. Let me ponder that. No, because at the YMCA women walk around all the time, often CARRYING A TOWEL, in the nude. Me, if I have a towel and am buck naked in public, I will generally wrap it around me. But not everyone shares this value, according to my latest observations. So I really don't know why men need a seat between and a complete stranger of a female will hand me a tampon without asking questions. Anyone?

Yesterday I felt evil sitting in church. We went to bed around midnight after a lovely evening of DVD-watching and homemade pizza eating, but then we woke with a shock (and a headache, for me) to the little angel making noise at 6 a.m. Some people survive well with fewer than seven hours of sleep. For me, eight is a really great number. Nine is even better. The hardest part about the whole parenthood thing for me (besides the torture of leaving the little angel at Oz) has been the sleep deprivation.

For some reason, yesterday was so hard. By the time we got home from church, I was insane with fatigue. I dragged myself up to the sheetless bed (oh, and we also do about ten loads of laundry a week, too, since the little angel has a geyseresque digestive system) and passed out cold for about an hour. When I woke up, though, the sun was shining and the birdies were singing and all was right again.

We decided to go take a walk and get me some biking gloves (bicycling, not Harley). After that, we decided to get some ice cream down the street. My beloved never takes walks with me, though I constantly beg, so this was a rare treat. As we meandered down the trail, chatting with passersby and admiring Tudors, I felt so distinctly Free to Be, You and Me. This pastoral scene was exactly how I had always hoped parenthood would be, minus the Labrador. My beloved, the little angel snoozing contentedly in her stroller, a 75 degree summer's day and waffle cones. Ah, coo. It was truly disgusting how cute we were. Really.

A few weeks ago, I talked about my visit to C.'s shower in Chicago. While I was there, I met C.'s neighbor, Potpie. It's not his real name, but that's what we decided to call him after C.'s husband found him face-down in one at one in the morning the night I arrived.

We were all sitting around in the driveway on Saturday night, drinking wine and eating pizza, when Potpie said he was raised Mormon. Not knowing too much about Mormonism myself, I questioned him about the tenets of his religion. He said he didn't really follow too much of it anymore, but he liked parts of it. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So do you really get your own planet when you die?
Potpie: That would be a really bad generalization for my beliefs.
Me: That's what the ex-Mormon counselor at my Lutheran bible camp said.
Potpie: Well, I like parts of Mormonism, and there are parts I found hard to follow.

We all kind of agreed with that. Silence followed, broken occassionally by the sound of someone slurping pizza sauce.

Potpie: I think it would be easier if religion was like Panera. You pick two.
Me: Two what?
Potpie: Two commandments.

So then we thought. What are the commandments? Don't: Lie. Cheat. Steal. Kill. Covet cows. Covet wives. Worship Idols. Do: Keep Sabbath holy. Golden Rule. Respect Parents. That's the ten, right?

S: Don't kill. I can keep that one.

Silence followed, broken occassionally by the sound of someone belching up pizza. We thought and we thought. Not one of the ten of us could think of a commandment we regularly keep. Really, in our heart of hearts keep. Because who hasn't worshipped the almighty dollar or coveted their neighbor's cow at least once in their lives?

We continued to drink late into the night - what else could we do? Realizing you're human can take a lot out of you.

I have always been just a bit Type A. Okay, not just a bit. My mother tells me I used to wake up in the middle of the night, as a child, to clean my room. I was valedictorian. I actually studied during set hours in college. This is me, it has always been me, until now. Enter little angel.

When I was growing up, I was appalled (once I was old enough to realize) that my mother would habitually walk around the house in the mornings in her underwear. Egads, I would think, put on some clothes, woman! Now I realize, she probably heard me calling M-O-M-M-Y (yes, I thought it was clever to spell her title while yelling) and didn't have time to actually don her garments before responding to my every need. I also thought there were too many piles stacked around our house. This, too, is now more understandable to me.

My husband was lamenting last night about our lawn. Lawn? You mean the prairie grasslands surrounding our house? You mean you're not supposed to see your lawn waving in the wind like a native Kansas wheat field? I interrupted him to point out that the spiders are holding their own democratic convention on the screen porch and that we haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks. My friends have stopped calling the authorities to find me, but unfortunately they have also stopped trying to find me due to my inability to return phone calls, and I think my boss would like to physically tie me to the desk chair to get me to complete a project.

What happened to the fit, organized, DIY queen of my pre-mommy days? Where is the woman who thought intimacy was more important than ten little minutes of absolute silence? Will she ever come back to rescue me from the dripping bottles and mind-blowing poopy diapers? The funny truth is, though, I've realized a messy house and bird-shit-covered car haven't really impacted my life so much as I thought they would. My husband is happier, I think, because he thought I was kind of a freak anyway. The little angel doesn't seem to notice much of anything these days, but that might change once she grasps the concept of object permanence. Or maybe she'll inherit her daddy's ability to overlook a sink full of dirty dishes and the smell of unchanged cat litter as long as there's baseball on television. Let's hope for that.

Not much time to write today, because I have back-to-back meetings in different buildings with no driving time built in. Much like a doctor, I then get hopelessly behind schedule. Unlike a doctor, I do not have white-coated assistants to pacify those waiting or a large wall to hide behind. People tend to just hang over the edge of my cube and ask me how I like putting my little angel in daycare as I frantically try to catch my breath from the 105-degree Parking Lot Sprint. I'll tell you, folks. I like putting her in Oz and coming to this beige hellhole every day about as much as I enjoyed getting stitches after childbirth. Thank goodness for some of the other kids in the sandbox - if it weren't for a few cool folks to help me laugh at the others, I would've gone screaming into the abyss a week ago.

Oops, what do you know - another meeting.

It's hot here in Kansas City. Not just warm, humid, muggy or sticky, but HOT. Hairdryer-hot. Warm- washcloth-on-your-face hot. Difficult-to-breath hot. Despite this heat, my friends and I attempted to go biking on Monday. We are training for the MS-150 bike ride in Missouri. We decided to take some trails to avoid the crazy-from-the-heat drivers - who wants to be a statistic?

Anyway, my friend S. has never worn a helmet, despite our warnings and reminders. She also does not own bike shorts or, actually, a bike. Nonetheless, she wants to join us on the MS-150. I loaned her my hybrid bike and a pair of shorts for our Monday adventure. Immediately after donning the shorts, she stared incredulously at the mirror. "I feel like Debbie from Singles," she said. "Do people really wear these things?"

So off we went on the trail. S., who has recently become a workout goddess, had forgotten we were biking that night and had already run five miles in the morning. We became hopeless lost on the trail system, having foolishly believed it went in a circle. After a frustrating half-hour, we realized we were around 15 miles away from where we wanted to be.

Frantically biking back, we heard a scream. L. and I turned around just in time to see S.'s head bouncing erratically through the woods, complete with I'm-an-idiot-but-still-scared sound effects. Apparently S., getting tired after her Ironman workout for the day, had missed a turn and barrelled straight into the woods alongside the path. She fell with a thump and her head disappeared. I think I may have actually wet myself laughing.

It's hot here in Kansas City. Not just warm, humid, muggy or sticky, but HOT. Hairdryer-hot. Warm- washcloth-on-your-face hot. Difficult-to-breath hot. Despite this heat, my friends and I attempted to go biking on Monday. We are training for the MS-150 bike ride in Missouri. We decided to take some trails to avoid the crazy-from-the-heat drivers - who wants to be a statistic?

Anyway, my friend S. has never worn a helmet, despite our warnings and reminders. She also does not own bike shorts or, actually, a bike. Nonetheless, she wants to join us on the MS-150. I loaned her my hybrid bike and a pair of shorts for our Monday adventure. Immediately after donning the shorts, she stared incredulously at the mirror. "I feel like Debbie from Singles," she said. "Do people really wear these things?"

So off we went on the trail. S., who has recently become a workout goddess, had forgotten we were biking that night and had already run five miles in the morning. We became hopeless lost on the trail system, having foolishly believed it went in a circle. After a frustrating half-hour, we realized we were around 15 miles away from where we wanted to be.

Frantically biking back, we heard a scream. L. and I turned around just in time to see S.'s head bouncing erratically through the woods, complete with I'm-an-idiot-but-still-scared sound effects. Apparently S., getting tired after her Ironman workout for the day, had missed a turn and barrelled straight into the woods alongside the path. She fell with a thump and her head disappeared. I think I may have actually wet myself laughing.

We have an urban assault vehicle. It's a 4x4 Ford Explorer - gray, with lovely leather seats, a sun roof and a CD player. It's six years old, and we bought it at a Saturn dealership, where they gave us the same payments on the Explorer as we'd had previously on his Ford Escort. It seemed like a miracle at the time, and in some ways, when you think about the difference between an Escort and an Explorer, it was.

However, now we are addicted to our cavernous space. A friend recently pointed out that her sister has two children under the age of six and gets around just fine in her Camry. My friend C., whose darling son is only a few weeks older than my little angel, flies around town easily in her PT Cruiser. In fact, most people I know with kids have normal cars or the occasional minivan (not that there's anything wrong with those, but it's just not an option for moi - we had one growing up and it reminds me of my mother). I pondered my friend's statement about the Camry and wondered why the hell I do need so much space? Then I remembered our last trip to great-grandma's 95th birthday in Minnesota, when we inherited four full-size tubs of hand-me-downs, which all eventually will have to be returned on roadies. Or when my mother purchased one of those exersaucer things at a garage sale and gave it to us in Iowa, forcing us to stuff it in our already-full vehicle for the drive home. Or how every time we go on an overnight roadtrip, we take our suitcase, clothes, burp rags, bibs, diapers, formula, a pack-n-play and sometimes (if the little angel has been prone to fussiness) the vibrating bouncer seat along with us in addition to the stroller and Banana Chaise with Canopy that already live in the truck permanently.

What is wrong with us? Why can't we survive with less baby crap? Why do we need this huge, gas-guzzling vehicle? I'll tell you why - because we have one. Once you go truck, it's very hard to go back. I drive my little '94 Geo Prizm to work every day, and the carseat fits just fine in the back of that, but when I go for an overnight visit, I want my space, dammit. I want to be able to decide to pick up a calf or a family of five en route to my final destination. I love it when my mother asks me if I have room for something she wants to pawn off on me (she kept all of my childhood toys) and I say SURE, of COURSE we have room! Yeah! We have an ENORMOUS VEHICLE!!!

So, yes, I am a little defensive about my SUV-driving habits. I realize I'm contaminating the planet just as much as all those Lincoln Towncar and Ford 150 drivers. I rationalize it by adding together the gas mileage of the Explorer and the Geo and dividing by two - see, two Honda Accords. That's what we really have, if you look at it that way. I own my love for my monster. When it snows and I can charge through three icebergs to rescue the little angel from Oz, I will chuckle contentedly as I pass all those Mini-Coops stuck in the slush. ha ha ha ha I am an urban nightmare.