Cute: Thursday, Septmeber 30, 11:30 am – 11:45 am
A little annoying, but still kinda cute: 11:45-11:47
Really fucking annoying: 11:47 – I enter a nursing home

My husband is in love with this truck. He soooo so so wants to buy it. I think if it weren’t an automatic V8 he’d consider leaving me to marry the truck. It reminds him of his childhood in a warm, fuzzy, trucky kind of way.

I’d love to buy it for him, but we can’t afford it right now. So I called the owner to ask if he would consider a barter for me doing some creative work – graphic deisgn or web design, etc. He’s going to talk it over with his wife. Gosh, I hope he didn’t misunderstand what I meant by “creative services”.

On a side note, I wonder if it hurts the truck’s feelings that they have a shiny new yellow Humvee parked in the driveway behind it?

I bought him a recorder. Not a tape recorder – that would have been genius compared to this – no, I bought him one of those cheap plastic flute-looking things they give to fourth graders because the parents of fourth graders obviously don’t have enough stress in their lives. Or enough high-pitched squeaking and wailing. Or enough of little kids running around with a big stick. Oh! She bought him a recorder. Wow. That was stupid.

Wait, I can explain!

See, back when I was pregnant I wrote all kinds of important, helpful notes to my future self. I wrote about not over-worrying and not over-indulging and stuff like that. The thinking was that even though I was pregnant and hormonal enough to think that Seventh Heaven was a really terrific and moving show – terrific and moving enough that I arranged my entire second trimester around needing to be home at 1pm every day – I was still objective enough to foresee the terrible pitfalls of parenthood.

But my past self didn’t warn my current self against buying recorders. Why? Why didn’t you warn me, past self?

The answer is of course that my past self never imagined that I’d be idiotic enough to have to be told not to buy a 19-month-old a recorder. My past self left out hundreds of tidbits that she thought went without saying. She never told me not to show the baby the dog door. She never mentioned that once a child has tasted reece’s peeces and decided that they are beans, you can never go back to feeding him regular beans. And she never said anything about recorders.

So yes, yes I DO have a headache. If you’re laughing at me, A) you can shove it and B) you obviously don’t have kids yet. Ohhh so many things are so obvious to you now. But you aren’t factoring in the cuteness. There is no way my past self could have imagined the cuteness of her kid hugging a piece of plastic and pointing to it gleefully and exclaiming: “Have! This! Oboe!”

That’s right, he thinks I bought him a dang oboe. And the first person who tells him any different gets to spend an hour locked in a closet with my kid playing the recorder.

Kevin got a job that starts on Monday. Yayyy Kevin. I’m still adjusting to the sad realization that he’s not going to be here as much. I’ve been so spoiled having him home for the first year and a half of Nicolaus’ life. It’s truly a rare experience to have two parents working from home, taking off time every day to eat grapes or draw on the sidewalk with chalk or work on the garden or go fishing. I wonder if Nicoalus will even remember this time. It seems unlikely. But I hope he’ll always have a warm, happy feeling and a unique closeness to his dad that comes from our adventures over the last year.

The cool thing is that Kevin’s job pays enough to cover all of our expenses. Maybe even with some left over, so on his income alone, if we’re careful we can hopefully pay down some debts and start saving a little. That means that my freelancing income is about to be extra money. What a wild thought. The word extra sounds so crazy and indulgent.

What this means is that I now have the freedom to be a little pickier when it comes to who I work for and what kind of work I do. If the work doesn’t sound fun, or if the client has bad breath or whatever I can politely pass them along to someone else and not have to worry about the impact on our budget. It also means that I can try making money in more creative ways… like painting violins or photographing old trucks or whatever. Wow. WOW. Weird.

I’m also planning to focus more energy on marketing Kevin’s work – which is going really well by the way. Three different magazines want to feature him in the next six months, including one national home and garden magazine, and one very well-to-do local publication.

And of course young Nicolaus and I are going to work on all kinds of projects on our own. We’re going to have many great adventures, him and I, all within the safe driving radius that does not include the highway because I suck and I’m scared to drive on the highway with the baby in the car. We’ll work on that though. Together we will conquer mama’s neurotic irrational fears! We will unite in the face of boredom! We will make our way to the zoo! I mean, you know, maybe. Hmm… I wonder if there’s a bus from here to there?

So. A strange, new chapter begins at the House of Ard.

One where Tiffany does dishes. O_O

What can I say? It’s exactly what it looks like. He worked on it for over an hour, and if you asked him hey Nicolaus, whatcha doin’? he wouldn’t even look up to tell you, very seriously: “Ixin’ bicycle.”

Note the untouched basket of toys in the background in the second picture.