Addressing my fetus fears

I finally found someone who feels the same way I do about having kids... only she's actually pregnant right now. It's a new blog I discovered by Teresa Strasser called "Exploiting My Baby Because It's Exploiting Me". Here's a key phrase from her blog that pretty much sums up my daily internal battle about the possibility of motherhood (she says it as she's observing children and mom's in a park)...
"I survey the scene for a second, and wonder if this is home, or the future, or an oasis of simple pleasures I don’t yet understand or some kind of grape juice-stained, soul-crushing daily drudgery that I will never, ever embrace or even hack."
That's it. That's what I wonder every time I see my friends and their babies. Every time I think about the possibility of cuddling a little creature that I love more than myself, just after I've wiped all the poop out of their crevices and cried along with the child since I only had 3 hours of sleep the night before. It's always the question. And it's one that Teresa doesn't figure out the answer to, she just decides to use the final 4 months of her pregnancy to think about it. So I guess I'll wait along with her.

As she talks about Angelina Jolie, she voices my fears of losing my identity and sacrificing all the things I care about when I become a mom....
"With one tat (a tattoo with her kids' birthplace coordinates), Angie made motherhood less Ziploc baggies of animal crackers, slow-moving minivans and stain-resistant slacks and more … badass. When I think “mom,” I don’t want to think haggard, beleaguered “mom bloggers” telling Oprah about their crappy, sit-com sex lives and zany diaper mishaps, I want to think of women being exactly who they were before kids, only better. Is that just magical thinking and totally unrealistic without movie star money? I don’t know. Real world moms probably want to punch Angelina and Julia in the face sometimes."

She also asks the really important questions that I'm ALREADY thinking about (even though my belly is still fetus-less)... " everyone knows empty calories take away the empty feelings, or the uncertain feelings or make the thoughts stop skipping like a broken record in my brain: how much is childcare? Is my vagina going to rip when this kid comes out? How exactly do stitches in the vagina feel? Where are we putting the crib? Are we supposed to take some sort of parenting class? How much does that c-section thing scar? What is a layette and do I need one? My stomach itches. My stomach itches. My stomach itches. And that’s where a giant sandwich stops the record skipping with the mollifying power of pesto."

I like Teresa's blog because it is beyond real, super vulnerable, and it addresses so many of the things that I think most people are too afraid to let themselves think about... or at the very least things that people are too ashamed to talk about! Umm... not to mention she's freaking hilarious! I'm really excited to keep following her journey to see if she actually finds out the answers to all these mind blowing questions. That way I know if I can breathe a sigh of relief... or if I'm just going to have to keep holding it until my face turns blue or a baby pops out of me (whichever comes first).

Because you've always wanted to know what I do when no one's looking

So what do you do when you get your first night alone in months, but you blew your monthly spending money weeks ago, and you've been working so hard for so long that you've actually forgotten how to have fun? Well... you experiment. At least that's what I did.

My night started out with me watching the Princess Diaries 2 on TV while getting a little work done and binging out on sugar (yes, I did say The Princess Diaries 2 and no, I'm not 12). While working I stumbled across some photos of one of the coolest girls I've ever seen so I decided I needed to go spend my Target gift card so I could be cool too! It's like Target planted her there, right in the middle of the wedding I was processing, just for suckers like me!

So I jetted off to Target (BEFORE finishing The Princess Diaries 2... which saved my dignity at least a little bit) while blaring Pat Benetar and singing along at the top of my lungs (as well as refusing to look over at the guy in the car next to me who was laughing at me). Scottie does put up with some girly music, but apparently "Love is Battlefield" is where he draws the line so I was taking full advantage of my night of freedom.

I left Target empty handed and suffering a pity party because I couldn't afford to buy enough cool stuff to actually reach the level of anonymous cool girl who was my new idol (I'm sure the pity party was probably semi related to sugar remorse as well). So I drove around with Pat for company while I tried to cook up a plan to help me get the money required for coolness. Yeah, I never came up with one.

(I'm going to skip the part of my night where I came home to find the police and ambulance here for a domestic violence call on my downstairs neighbors who's kids I watched until it was over... I'll probably talk about that later but really I'm writing this blog to try to forget it for now.)

Back to the fun stuff...

So it's 12:30am and Scottie's still not home and I'm milking it for all it's worth. Sorry Scottie, I'm just really really enjoying a night alone (which means I must have really needed it because I'm only like 2.5% introverted and the rest of me is boisterous and loud and needs people around at all times)!

So now it's time to paint my nails black while sipping Kahlua, and wasting time on Facebook. After that I'll either watch another nauseatingly feminine movie or go for the sappy love songs that require me to use my hairbrush as a microphone and my table as a stage. "Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world, she took the midnight train going anywhere"....

The Good Life

Ahh... life is good right now. I've just had the greatest past couple of weeks! Scottie and I came out of our overworked hibernation and spent tons of time with all of our long lost friends, not to mention we got our house sparkling clean for all our guests and that feels fantastic! We've really begun to see results from our hard work at marketing for our company and that has been unbelievably encouraging. Plus I'm done with my part time reception job at Phoenix Seminary, so I've been given the gift of time and I'm taking full advantage of it. I feel like my life is finally really put together and in a really good place.

You know how in college you feel like you're in this constant holding tank. Or maybe for some it's when you're single or for others it's when you're waiting to have kids and start a family. I don't know, it just feels like for most of my life I've been waiting for it to start... and now it finally feels like it has. Here I am... going to bed when I want and waking up when I feel like it (every day now), eating when I'm hungry not just when it's my lunch break, hanging out with my husband all day, watching awesome movies while I work and sit in my beautiful office that I love. Not to mention getting to go on vacation when it's called for, not just when I have vacation time and actually having the energy to hang out with friends rather than feel like I'm dragging my half asleep body around and trying to have fun while holding my eyelids open.


We're almost out of debt... both our company and personally (except for Scottie's student loan which we don't count because that will take years), we have a company that feels like it's really gaining momentum, we have an apartment that we love and that we don't pay to live in, and we may need to get new cars soon as ours begin to fall apart but they are good for now and even when we get new ones we'll do so without gaining a car payment. It feels nice to be in a position where I feel like we're taking two steps forward and then staying there... rather than being shoved back two steps immediately. I know things can change and I know things aren't perfect. But for now I'm very excited and I think life is good.