My beloved and I are taking an angel-less trip to Chicago this weekend.  I'm doing the guest book for my friend S.'s wedding.  The little angel will be hanging with Grandma and Grandpa up in Iowa.

As I was packing her little wheelie, I was thinking how much easier it is to pack her now than when she was a few months old.  She doesn't throw up every five seconds, so she needs fewer clothes and no daily bibs, she eats normal food (although I still packed a wide variety of angel-approved foods, just in case she went on strike), she drinks milk instead of Liquid Sleep and uses cups instead of bottles.  She does still use those silly diaper things, but I am rather glad about that, because I am not looking forward to potty training AT ALL.  She is going to pee on her car seat, I just know it.

Of course, despite the fact that I'm as excited as a twelve-year-old on the eve of sleepaway camp to go to Chicago and attend a guilt-free wedding with old friends, of course I still have that sad tightening in my chest that happens every time the little angel and I will be separated for more than twelve hours.  I start thinking about how she shows me her belly, and when she says "Mama, Mama," and holds up her fat little hands. Even the stupid scary kitty tiara shoes will probably make me cry tomorrow on the way to the airport.  I remind myself that Grandma and Grandpa would throw themselves in front of a train before they let anything bad happen to the angel, that they will be delerious with joy to get her away from us and that they have all sorts of toys she has never seen.  I remind myself it is good for her to spend time with people other than me. 

And then I laugh and cry thinking about the weekend and how much I will love it/hate it, and I remind myself that to be a mother is to be of two minds on just about any subject at all.

The little angel has developed a footwear fetish.  Not only does she have an undying love for her own shoes, she loves yours.  She hates the sight of bare feet. All people must be wearing shoes at all times.

A few days ago, we were forced to go purchase her some new ones, as her little toes were hanging over the edges of her sandals.  Of course, it's still eight million degrees outside, but almost no one has sandals in toddler sizes anymore.  We ventured to Dillard's, where we scored her a pair of sandals featuring scary kitties wearing tiaras.

Now, the dilemma:  at what point to do you realize your child is her own person with her own sense of fashion and surrender the idea that you will dress her as you want to dress her forever?  The day she picks out shoes featuring kitties wearing tiaras.  I think these sandals are a little...LOUD.  As I think most kids' things are.  However, she immediately started drooling when she saw them and would not allow any other sandals other than the kitties and her own, hopelessly-too-small shoes to touch her feet, which had grown AN ENTIRE SIZE in two months.

So, the kitties won. I hear they are a big hit in Waddler B.  I shudder to picture her tween years.

This weekend we had my friends A. and S. and their new son, N., over to dinner.  It was sort of last-minute - we were all just hanging around at home with our kids, so we decided to do it at the same house.  N. is three weeks old. 

After we cooed over his long feet and beautiful eyes, I asked A. how things had been going, if she'd been getting any sleep, etc.  She looked at me with a hangdog expression.  "I'm getting sick of everyone telling me their babies never cried," she said.

Ah, the Lying Parent Coalition strikes again.  They lied to me, too.  I remember people telling me their children didn't cry, slept through the night at three weeks, never spit up, learned to brew their own coffee before they rolled over and other various baby superfeats that I now realize of course their children DID NOT DO.  It made me feel like a bumbling rookie hopelessly outclassed by every other person ever to have given birth, with or without the help of drugs and disposable diapers.  It made me feel useless. 

Ladies, we have to stop doing this to the rookies.

I know it's fun to not be the new mother anymore, but really, this is cruel and unusual punishment.  You don't remember what it's like to not sleep for 24 hours straight?  You really, really don't remember the first time they left you alone and your baby screamed for three hours?  You have truly forgotten the pain of childbirth?

I don't believe you. If we could all repress that easily, there would be world peace.  I used to think I was a loser mother who complained more than all the other mothers, then my friend S. broke it to me:  "You're just a realist," she said.  "You don't blow sunshine up your own ass about how hard it is to be a mother."  Well, there you have it.  This is why you have friends for more than twenty years.

I'd like every mother whose babe is older than one year to place your right hand on your copy of The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy and repeat after me:

I, --------, do solemnly swear to stop lying to the new mothers.   I promise to show entries from my diary documenting the pain of sleep deprivation, the day that I almost left my baby outside for the squirrels because she wouldn't stop screaming and the time my spouse almost got a hotel because he was so mad at me about the temperature of the baby's bath.

I promise not to lie and say the sex was fabulous the first time back.  I will tell her I had to do a shot of tequila in order to forget I'd had stitches in that area just weeks before.

I promise not to tell my pregnant friends I swore off future children five minutes into hard labor.

I promise not say my child beat any milestones if hers is lagging behind. I will not mention autism the day her baby gets his first vaccination.  I will not tell her about the first day of daycare.  I will especially not tell her if she is going back to work next week.

I promise I will tell her the truth about things that will make her feel supported, and let her remain blissfully ignorant about things she does not need to know. I promise to let her learn her own lessons in her own way without telling her "the right way" to do things unless she BEGS REPEATEDLY for advice.

I promise I will not purposefully scare her just because other people scared me. 

So be it.

Okay, I just was eating my lunch and found the clip of Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch.  Oh. My. God.  Following is my interpretation of Oprah's lawyer's response, to be sung to the tune of "My Darling Clemintine."

Dear Mr. Cruise:

Thank you for appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  Your patronage is always appreciated, and your boost to our ratings frequently enables our stockholders an extra hour on the speedboat at Martha's Vineyard.

However, your recent behavior violates section 34.5 of the Oprah Winfrey Code.  People do not hug Oprah. Oprah hugs people.  I know you say you are just "a hugger," but that is sort of like saying the Pope is just "a Catholic."  You almost crushed poor Oprah. After her recent weight loss, she is frail, like Kate Moss. She cannot sustain such crushing fanaticism.

Another issue:  the leather couches.  Attached please find a bill for $6,754.32 to replace the couch on which you jumped to show your vociferous love for Katie Holmes.  Oh, I mean Kate Holmes. We forgot you changed her name already. Soon she will be Kate Cruise, and no one will know or care who she is.  No one but you. Sort of like Mimi Rogers.  Oh, but we shoot below the belt sometimes. We are lawyers. That's our job.

Tom.  TOM!  Why are you making us write you this letter?  We love you.  However, we have been forced to contact your closet psychiatrist, who said he will immediately up your dosage.  Your rep has denied the dosage, but who but a complete FUCKING CRAZY FREAK would jump on the couches and try to crush Oprah because they are marrying someone they could have fathered?  Even Hugh Hefner knows how to hold his glee that women half his age will still sleep with him.  She even knows you had braces.  We all know, Tom.  WE ALL KNOW.

Oprah is upset with us. She planned to invite you back on to talk about War of the Worlds, but now she's afraid you'll use the air time to claim she knows nothing about being black, or something equally akin to claiming to intimately understand postpartum depression when you are a BOY, Tom.  You are a boy.

Please make the check out to Harpo Productions.  The address is on the back.  Good luck with that Scientology thing.

Sincerely,

David Orrton

Attorney

Harpo Productions

This morning, as I was attempting to slap suncreen on the little angel for Sprinkler Day at the Emerald City, my beloved asked me which part of the city I wanted to live in for the next thirty years.

Mind you, this was before caffeine.

Then he sort of got upset when I was flabbergasted by the question.  He's working on some side projects that would require him to pick a location from which to headquarter.  That's all fine and good, but I'm one of those people who likes to go absorb a place a little prior to moving.  Now, we're in NO position to move right now - after the Big Wreck, we have had to purchase another Ridiculously Large Vehicle to be on deck for when our original, 1998 Ford Explorer with 101,000 miles eventually goes to the oilfield in the sky.  Said second RLV should be shored up by this weekend, when we have to return the rental car, according to State Farm, God bless their stingy souls.  So really, this was sort of an academic question, but still one which I feel should not be popped after being woken at 6 a.m. by Somebody Little.

How am I supposed to know this?  And isn't that sort of discussion one better had over a nice, candlelit dinner?  Shouldn't he have primed the pump a little if he wanted an answer in his favor?  Because really, there were only two answers according to his market research.  So those had to be mine. Even if I really don't know if I like them, or whether they have my favorite grocery store, or if the Treat-or-Treating is good. 

How do Serious Conversations get broached in YOUR family, I ask of the Internet.  Go on, Great Abyss.  Comment.

This morning we had a groundbreaking milestone.  I realized while I was getting ready that the little angel kept bringing me my shoes and wanting me to put them on. This was impractical while I was brushing my teeth, however, when it was time for me to actually put my shoes on, they were all the way down the hall outside the bathroom.

I sat on the floor and looked at the little angel.  "I'd like to put on my shoes now," I said.  "Will you go get them for me?"

She studied me studiously for a moment, then turned around, toddled down the hall, and GOT MY SHOE!  Then she brought it to me!  Thinking it was a fluke, I put it on, then asked her to go get the other one.  AND SHE DID!  Immediately my mind went to cleaning toilets, feeding the cat and washing the car.  How soon?  HOW SOON?

Well, the insurance people called yesterday to tell me that my Geo Prizm is no more.  They are going to give me a paltry sum for my late, paid-off car, however, they will not send the check until I send them the title to the car.

Which I can't find.

I think that I sent it to the state of Missouri in order to register the car when I moved here. I don't remember ever getting it back.  I still have the title to the Ford Probe I owned prior to the Geo Prizm (yes, indeed, I have always driven cool cars).  No clue where that Prizm title is.  So now I have to go to the DMV and apply for a "quick" duplicate title, which will arrive in 7-10 business days.  BUT, I have to be out of my rental car paid for by the insurance company in five days.  Don't you love it?  Why can't they just let you stay there until you find it?  I've been handing them money for nothing for years.  Stingy bastards.

This past weekend I went to Lake Panorama, up by Panora, Iowa.  Eight girls (dammit, we can still call ourselves "girls" as long as we want) gathered to drink beer and cheap wine, waterski as though we still mean it and gossip about ourselves until we were blue in the face.  We also made food our husbands wouldn't eat, compared toes and discussed the pros and cons of breast augmentation and reduction, depending on who was speaking at the time.

When we went to leave, my friend S. told us not to forget to stop and feed the bear.  Yes, there is a bear named Ben who lives about five miles outside Panora.  At first we were up in arms for Ben, but it turns out he was purchased by someone who discovered him at auction, clawless and needing the protection of a kind soul.  Ben has a silo, a bear run and a cave made from a tin shed.  He's a full-size cinnamon brown bear.  He's about as tall as me.  We fed him blueberries, which he licked with a huge, pink, curled up tongue.  I was afraid at first (his teeth were as long as my index finger), but my friend L. the vegan so fearlessly stuck her hand up there I would've been chicken not to follow (see what kind of peer pressure Girls' Weekend can do to you?).  Anyway, Ben was really nice. I have never seen a real bear up close before.  He was gorgeous.

Get off the streets.  Now.

Yesterday, as I was TRYING to drive to get my hair cut, I was rammed by someone who *thought* they could beat me while merging onto Ward Parkway.  They ended up, I think, bending the axle in my driver's side tire, missing my body by about a foot.

I've been known to get in some accidents in my time.  This one, however, was not my fault. Thankfully a lovely witness left his name and number and eventually returned to the scene of the crime to clear my good name.  Tickets were written in the name of insurance, and now I have to go to court on August 15 to make sure the charges stick and someone gives me some money for my late 1994 Geo Prizm, Priscilla, may she rest in peace, God bless her soul. I have the sinking feeling I will net about $800 for the loss of a good, working, paid-for car.  This is really unfair.

However, here's a lesson in Life Ain't Fair - it's also probably not fair I didn't get hurt.  Or that I didn't run up onto the lawn of the house near which I stopped - the lawn containing three toddlers and a pregnant woman.  It's also probably not fair the airbag didn't go off and break my nose, or that I didn't hit my head on the windshield or rearview mirror instead of the nice, soft visor, which just happened to be down at the point of impact.  It's probably not fair that for the first time in weeks I was driving the worthless Prizm instead of the main family Explorer, of which the loss would have hurt far more.  It's probably not fair that I'm still breathing after all the car accidents from which I have walked away.  When I think about it, I still can't believe my friend C. and I survived blowing the right rear tire on a Festiva going 80 mph on I-80 in heavy traffic.  God loves fools and children.

It's also really, really, really not fair that an acquaintance of my husband's was killed while biking in a quiet suburb of Kansas City this week.  I don't know the teenager who hit him, but DAMN PEOPLE who can't watch out for us bikers on the side of the road.  A bike is a vehicle, damnit, and it's required by law to be on the road.  I am so mad this man is dead.  I am so angry this woman would rather ram my car and endanger my child's mother than wait 30 seconds for an open spot in traffic.

I am really lucky nothing worse happened.  While I was rocking the little angel last night, it occurred to me how close she came to having no mama yesterday.  I am so thankful I can still be her mama, with all my important bits intact.

Another amen.  This is turning out to be quite the spiritual week.