anything goes, anymore.

Actual conversation held via telephone with an actual library patron:

Me: Hello, *Library Patron, I'm returning your call regarding some fines you wished to discuss.

LP: Yes! Thank you for getting back to me. I heard you were just on maternity leave. Is today your first day back?

Me: Oh, yes...

LP: That's hard. It's hard, isn't it? Is this is your first? Or your second? Or third?

Me: Uh, my first...

LP: I have FIVE.

Me: Wow...

LP: Yes. That's why I'm talking to you on the phone. I was going to wait for you, I was waiting at the library for you to get back from lunch, but my son pooped his pants. You understand.

Me: Oh...okay. So, I'm looking at your record...

LP: Yes, I returned some items late. It's totally my fault, but I wanted to see if you could reduce some fines for me. Are you breastfeeding?

Me: (confused) Erm, yes.

LP: Do you need a double pump? I mean, you NEED one. Do you have one?

Me: (derailed) Uh... (unable to think on feet) I have one...

LP: Oh good. I know I returned that movie really late. I'm just hoping that you can do something for me. Are you doing your Kegels?

Me: ...........!?!?!??!!??!?!

LP: Because you really need to keep up with them. It's so important. (ernestly) I wish I had been more diligent about them. (intimately) You know what I mean.




*name has been changed to protect the over-sharer.

whistling whilst I work

Yesterday was my first day back at work. I think, more than the knowledge that I would have to go back, I am traumatized that three months has blown by. Being home with the baby has been the most incredible, frustrating, delightful, thrilling, joyful, worrisome, exciting, fulfilling thing I have ever been lucky enough to do. I have never known love like this. It feels dangerous, like I'm teetering on the precipice of sanity. Like I'm an overfilled balloon. My heart is so full that my skin feels stretched and raw; explosion is not only possible, but imminent. It's all I can do not to crush him under the weight of all this FEELING.

Because, let's face it: this kid is perfection. If there's one thing I've learned over the past three months, it's that my husband and I are, like, REALLY good at making babies. We should get some sort of prize, because our progeny is an absolute dreamboat. A real "doll-baby," as the septuagenarian diner at the Waffle House was wont to tell us, each of the approximately seven-billion times that we had to get up and bounce past her to get our little dictator prince to quit squalling and allow us (and our fellow restaurant patrons) to eat our freaking pancakes in some modicum of peace. The reality is, dining disruption notwithstanding, I want to spend all my time with him. He is both adorable and hilarious, a winning combination in my book. He is also changing exponentially every day, sometimes right before our very eyes. It's amazing to watch him slowly make sense of the world, almost as amazing as watching him cram both of his hammy little fists into his mouth.

That's the thing about going back to work, and it's the reason that this three months seems like it's flown by even though it seems like a million years ago that I was pregnant. Every time I get used to him and think that I've figured out this whole parenting thing, he changes. He is a completely different baby than the one I came home with. It is both wonderful and terrible. A week ago he couldn't tell his mobile from a hole in the ground. Today, it's his best friend.

I'm going to miss things. Hell, I miss things when I'm home. But now he is spending his day gracing others with that beatifically infectious grin of his. I worry that I will come home and he will have forgotten me. That he'll look at me with that same bored skepticism with which my cats regard my homecoming. "Oh. It's you. Old Foody McFeedbags. Let's dispense with the niceties. You know what we want." That all the stories I read him, all the songs I made up, all the VOMIT, dear GOD the VOMIT I've born for him will be forgotten in the novelty of the new stay-at-home pal.

It is what it is. See, there's another side to this epic tale of woe. This morning I woke up, took a shower, and put on some clothes that in no way resemble jammies. I went to a meeting. I had some actual adult conversations. I have some really nice co-workers, and it turns out that I missed them. One of them asked me for some statistics, and he allowed me a few minutes to get them without screaming in my face, wetting himself, or throwing up down my back.

So there's that.