No matter what, I will always thoroughly amuse myself.

I do not have postpartum depression. I have postpartum ennui.

It’s been almost seven weeks with two little ones. Its been almost six months since I’ve worked. It’s been I don’t know how long since I’ve worn anything but yoga pants. Life is grand.

You want to know how grand? Here’s how grand:

On a day, which is every day…

7am: Get out of bed, put on yoga pants and a shirt that doesn’t obviously look like pajamas so I can go out in public. Put in breast pump.

7:15am: Get toddler ready for daycare, get baby up. Assemble bottle to feed baby while dealing with toddler. Drink coffee.

8:15am: Drop toddler off at daycare–good riddance (more on that later), come home.

8:30am – 4pm: Drink coffee, feed baby, do laundry, do dishes, watch trash tv, tidy up, deep clean random things that I come across that need it. Organize random things that I come across that need it. Prioritize said things over napping. Tell myself I’ll take a nap as soon as all of these books have been dusted and put in alphabetical order. Then, find another home project and never nap. Feed baby, feed baby, feed baby.

4:30pm-7pm: Pick up toddler, deal with Hurricane Toddler while cooking dinner and feeding cranky newborn. Usually around this time, husband gets home to help. Put toddler to bed, pour glass of wine.

7pm-8:30pm: Try to drink one glass of wine while feeding and dealing with cranky newborn. Put newborn to bed.

8:31pm: Go to bed myself in order to stand the best chance of getting one three hour stretch of sleep.

Midnight – 7am: Get up every 90 minutes to feed/soothe newborn.

Reading this back it sounds worse to me than it is. It’s manageable, but meh.

I knew having kids would be hard. In fact, I thought it would be harder. I mean, I expected to be an exhausted, strung out, sobbing, fat, mood-swingy mess. And while I am more tired, and slightly more fat. In general, I’m doing pretty okay.

Except

I miss having a hobby I could be passionate about, or having a reason to put on real clothes. I miss having friends and family close by. I miss having exciting things to look forward to.

My toddler is adorable, but he is at an age where defiance is his primary personality trait. And my newborn, who is thankfully pretty chill in general, is going through a peak fussiness period or growth spurt, or is just not going to be chill ever again, who knows. In a broad sense, I look forward to watching them change and grow up (ahem… sleep through the night), but I miss having selfish indulgent things–like buying an outfit for a fancy event, or doing a show, or even seeing a show.

Nothing about having children ever sounded appealing to me, which is why I never wanted children until I met my now husband. I think subconsciously I recognized that he is the only person I’ve ever been with that would be worthy/ up to the challenge of raising a child. Even now it’s hard to articulate why its worth it, other than despite everything I’ve written here, it most certainly is.

I just refuse to be someone that defines myself, principally, as a mom. That doesn’t mean I don’t prioritize my children, it just means that there are other facets of me that I’ve always had, that I still have that deserve attention and cultivation and nurturing, as well. I’ve seen too many women subsumed by motherhood. I am in the thick of it right now, but my career hiatus is not forever, my creative urges are just finding new outlets that suit my disjointed schedule, and I’m maximizing the smallest opportunities to be glamorous (with a jade face roller, for instance).

I honestly think that I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the postpartum emotional strain by not being a martyr, by not trying to do everything perfectly at the expense of my own preservation. I’ve always put the oxygen mask on myself first, so to speak. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the bad-ass, carefree days of my old life.

Just not enough to actually take a nap.

 

Oh Hey.

What can happen in three and a half years? Sometimes nothing. However, in looking back on my life, I’m trying to find a three year period in which nothing substantial happened, and well, it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe now that I’m legitimately, like, in my mid-30s WHICH IS STILL NOT MIDDLE AGED THANK YOU VERY MUCH, but a more  traditionally “settled” time of life for most people, I’ll live a more settled life.

However, the past three years for me, since I last updated this site, have not been that.

During this time I have:

1. Graduated from law school/started practicing law
2. Got married
3. Had a baby
4. Got knocked up again (due imminently with baby 2)
5. Moved down South
6. Stopped practicing law
7. Not blogged

In the next three years I have concrete plans to not move, not get married, not have any more children, and to settle it down with all the change.

I do plan to go back to working as an attorney again. I fucking worked hard for that shit, dammit.

But because of my current condition, which is something akin to this…

 

working full-time is not really feasible. Plus, in order to go back to a similar job, I have to take and pass the Georgia bar which I can’t do for several more months. Plus, I have to take care of a newborn. Plus, I have to take care of a toddler also who thankfully also goes to daycare some of the time. Plus, we just moved and I’m trying to get as much unpacked and put out of the way before the new baby. Plus, I am also trying to do laundry and clean and cook. Plus, my husband works a shit-ton so I’m on the hook for most of this stuff, otherwise it won’t get done until he retires in 30 years.  Plus, even though we just moved, I can barely move, so household chores, especially ones relating to boxes and unpacking them, takes a lot out of me.

But I feel guilty. I feel guilty that for the first time in my adult-post-college life, I am not working full-time. Despite being 300-months pregnant, despite not have a license to work in this state, and despite having just moved across the country for husband’s job with few connections or networking prospects, I feel shame and guilt in not pulling in an income. I am not financially independent.

I am a stay at home mom.

It’s only been a few months, but I am keeping busy by cleaning, going grocery shopping, going to Target and doing laundry, and then repeating the cycle. Except that’s a pretty awful existence, and I still like to engage myself mentally, so here I am blogging again to exercise some creativity.

I have to to remind myself that, even though I have less time for creative pursuits, I am still this person in gold-sequined pants.

Except now they are just covered up by yoga pants.

 

 

Sex and the City was clever, fashionable and easily digestible TV that I immensely enjoyed watching throughout my 20s. This is despite the fact that my life has never come close to resembling the lives of the women in the show (although, for the record, I spent most of my 20s wishing it could).

But whatever, I still felt like I could relate to it, despite my cheap footwear.

Because dating woes are universal, right?

 

 

 

I recently revisited the first season of Sex and the City and discovered that:

1. I was, finally (at age 32), the same age as the women that I had long admired.

2. My long-held admiration was misplaced and asinine

BECAUSE

3. These women are idiots.

Emotionally, anyway. No wonder no one wants to date them.

For Instance (most of the relationship drama in the first season centered on Carrie and Mr. Big so those are the examples I’m using):

• Carrie shows up at Mr. Big’s house unannounced and drunk in the middle of the night to yell at him.

• Carrie calls Mr. Big when she’s on a date with another man (in front of the other man!) to rub it in Mr. Big’s face that she’s on another date.

• Carrie finds out that Mr. Big is divorced and, then, behind his back, sets up a meeting with his ex-wife (under the auspices of a publishing pitch) so she can meet and judge her in person.

But Also:

• On Miranda’s first date with Skipper she spends the entire time chastising him and telling him how much she hates men.

• When she sees Skipper dating someone new, she calls him just to make sure she still has emotional control over him.

Note: Samantha and Charlotte’s behaviors are hard to judge on this spectrum because they represent two opposite extremes (that, probably, don’t really exist in the real world)

Anyway, this is the kind of relationship mind-gaming dramatic nonsense that seems painfully immature to me now, but I don’t remember having those thoughts about it in my 20s. And confession: I am totally guilty of showing up at one gentleman’s apartment drunk and unannounced in the middle of the night, WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE.

But at 32, ew. No.

So I guess what I’m saying is… girlfriends ::hair flip:: don’t get your dating advice from Sex and The City (get your fashion advice there). Also, if a man ever makes you feel so insecure about yourself that you want to resort to any of the above tactics, you’re in the wrong relationship.

And lastly, cheap footwear is nothing to be ashamed of, but credit card debt is.

 

 

 

 

 

Remember YM? Haha, you’re old.

Anyways, it is now time for my bi-annual blog post.

When I was about 14, I got a subscription to Seventeen magazine as a birthday present or a christmas present or a bribe I don’t remember. What I do remember, though, is fondly perusing its pages throughout my formative years…when I was fat and bad at dressing in grunge. This is to say that reading a teen fashion magazine did not make me more fashionable. In fact, it probably gave me lots and lots of insecurity that took about 10-12 years to get over but that is besides the point.

Because just recently, my mom has begun receiving monthly Seventeen magazines. She is 62. I’d be interested to hear her perspective on them, but she doesn’t read them she just gives them to me, because they are addressed to me. I am 32.

Today I read one and these are my thoughts.

1.  I have no freaking clue who the hell those people are on the cover. Apparently they are YouTube star vloggers? YouTube stars are on the covers of  magazines now? Apparently this is the “social media” issue. Ok. well, whatever.

2.  As per the cover, Zoella the YouTube star doesn’t have a perfect life. I’m sure this is very comforting to teenagers everywhere.

3. The story “I Dated a Bisexual Guy” would never, ever have existed when I was of the proper age to be reading teen magazines. In those days teen magazines pretended that LGBT issues did not exist. Brava for progressivism.

4. There is an article profiling a seventeen-year-old male singer/songwriter, the article asks what he is looking for in a girlfriend (because of course).

 

 

5.   What the hell kind of ad copy is that? First of all, I didn’t think that teenagers were the prime demographic for Sperry loafers, and second of all no one actually wears them to go boating, they wear them to the mall. Also, what the hell does that even mean? Am I missing something clever because I am not a teenager or does this ad just make no sense?

 

6. This is beginning to look like a regular fashion magazine except that the fashions that are detailed are a lot cheaper. I guess because teenagers are broke. I am also broke and am happy not to look at a $6,000 Marchesa dress as the must-have for Fall. I will get an Aeropostale flannel instead.

 

 

7. Cool! These eye makeup looks are way too loud for typical 32-year-olds….. but I am in a band, bitches! so I can (and do) wear all sorts of tacky nonsense. Including drastic purple liner and fuchsia shadow. Score!

 

Guys, it’s hard times being a full-time student. Hard-ass, broke times. As far as low life moments go, there’s this one, and this one… and then all the other ones I opted not to share on my blog.

So I had an eventful end of the year and first week of January, such that I had been dragging my feet sending my Dad and his family their Christmas gifts. It’s kind of like a joke at this point, though, as I do this every year and my dad’s birthday is in January so I always send their gifts in January at some point as part of a birthday/Christmas combo in a  “ha ha I’m such a quirky, lovable, blundering daughter, aw shucks Dad” kinda way.

Anyways, this year my dad, stepmom and half-brother are getting sweet-ass Amazon gift cards, and then on my actual suburban mall shopping trip (because I only ever make one) I picked them up a smallish Hickory Farms meat and cheese holiday display tray. My dad loves these and usually has them around at holiday time, which was what prompted the purchase.

HOWEVER, I bought it the week before Christmas, and in the last month I have become really broke, which I will continue to be, at least until the beginning of February.

Like, frighteningly poor for myself.

As a result of this,  the only thing in my fridge right now is corn tortillas and sriracha.

This is a low moment for me: but…[oh god, forgive me dad] I think I might send their Amazon gift cards as usual,  and keep the Hickory Farms tray…for myself… in lieu of grocery shopping. Even more pathetically, If I’m going to eat it,  I have to remove the festive holiday gift wrapping that I painstakingly* applied.

I mean, I like summer sausage well-enough, and there are amazing things to be done with that block of cheese. I can’t remember exactly, but there may even be some crackers and mustard in there too. In short, this will be the best meal I will have eaten in the last several days because the pasta e fagioli at Temple Law blows, and Raisin Bran Crunch is just not that satisfying.

Plus… I’m out of it.

Ok ok, sorry Dad.  But, #1 you don’t need all that saturated fat, #2 you don’t want me to starve #3  You can still be proud of me because my credit score is  good,  but that is sometimes a result of making hard decisions… like keeping your Christmas present for myself…

You know, when I first started law school I was like “aw yeah law school, I love law school, school is awesome I am enriching my life by enriching my brain and to quote the Lego Movie, everything is awesome!” And then, like three semesters in, all I can think about is how I really miss having a reasonably respectable salary. And how I still have a whole damn year and a half left of this lifestyle and cue perpetual “::sigh::.”

But for the record, law school is important for becoming a lawyer, sure, but it is also important insofar as obtaining life skills– if you choose to make it that, which I do. For instance, I am taking tax this semester. Last semester I took corporations. Now I know more than I ever did about how to best make, save, and use money to further my life goals. By the end of this semester I will know even more. BUT  None of this is helpful to me right now  because I DONT HAVE ANY OF IT.

Still, all I can hope for is that my broke is fleeting, and my knowledge is for life.

In short…sorry for eating your Christmas present, Dad.

I’ll make it up to you Christmas, 2016.

 

* I suck at gift wrapping, it was only painstaking because of the pain at stake from prospective paper cuts.