My parents are coming to visit this weekend.  Their Mother's Day present to me is a night out with my beloved...and a morning sleep-in as only grandparents can provide it. I'm so excited!  A date!  A late-night date!  One where we can drink copious amounts of alcohol, content in the knowledge that if the little angel needs a ride to the Emergency Room in the wee hours, my parents can do it! 

Because, of course, this is always my fear (besides the aforementioned hangover fear) - that we will have one too many, then return to find the babysitter giving the little angel CPR. We will have to call an ambulance because we are hopelessly intoxicated (in my nightmares, I don't know how I assume we got home if we were so drunk - but it's a nightmare, so it doesn't have to make sense).  The ambulance driver will lecture us the whole way to the hospital about what bad parents we are, then the nurse will call Child Protective Services when we arrive, and we will never see the little angel again. All because it was 2-for-1 night at The Brooksider.

Do you see how bad my imagination is?

Anyway, I'm really excited about the date.  Just us.  Where to go? What to do?  What did we used to do besides eat?  Should we listen to a band? Go to comedy?  Park?  The possibilities are endless!  True, we will probably end up going to dinner and hanging out at the dive within walking distance, but for now, Saturday night is a little date fetus just waiting to surprise us with its appearance.

Today I finally brought myself to read what really happened to Precious Doe, the little girl found decapitated in Kansas City a few years ago.

So this is it:  Her stepfather kicked her in the head so hard she was "unresponsive" for two days.  She allegedly died, after which her mother and stepfather cut her head off and left her somewhere - or maybe they buried her - at that point I was on the verge of running to the little angel's room, ripping her from her crib and hugging her through my tears.

I have become one of those mothers that can't read or watch the news. I always thought my own mother was a big wuss when she said she couldn't watch sad things.  I am still struck by the scene in Angela's Ashes when they wake up to find one of the babies had died in his sleep in bed with the family.  I couldn't sleep for two weeks after seeing that movie, and it was not even particularly brutal.

I can't fathom wanting to hurt your child.  I can't even stand to watch the little angel get her vaccinations - which I know are good for her, despite all the autism fears.  I know those little shots are protecting her from all the diseases that seem so innocuous and not a big deal until your own little angel wakes up spotted and wailing.

It's easy as a new parent to either 1) disinfect everything that comes within ten feet of your child or 2) reassure yourself that nothing bad, really bad, could ever possibly happen.  The truth is that it's a big, cruel world out there. The chances are very, very good that nothing truly bad will happen to you. But, then there's the reality of mortality.  It happens to everyone.   As a mama, though, I can't allow myself to think of anything bad happening to the little angel. I have prepared myself mentally for the death of my family members, even my husband and friends.  But I can't allow myself to open the mental door on the room that is disease or death for the little angel.

How is it, then, that a mother could "dispose" of her child - a child that had been brutally abused - in such a horrible and nonchalant way?  What possibly could have been going through her head?  How is it that you have to be a civic leader to adopt a greyhound but any old human can procreate?  And how is it that the majority of people are truly good - I do believe that - despite all the shit that goes on in the world?

The little angel's new shoes arrived today.  I spent a ridiculous sum on Stride Rites again. Here is my reasoning:

• She can't walk yet.
• I remember when I couldn't waterski, and I had to try it without the cool gloves, a vest that really fit right and weird, wooden skis that did not properly adjust.  I ended up on my face a lot more than was probably necessary.
• Starting out without the right equipment sets you up to fail in life.

Yes, there is a bit of the "I want for her what I could not have" in my theory. However, once she's walking confidently, it's back to Payless we go.

Anyway, they just arrived over lunch. I opened up the box, staring at their little white-and-pink perfection, the smell of leather, the little flowers.  The velcro.  I thought about her little pink feet squishing into the shoes, really taking that first step - probably in these shoes - maybe even learning to run.  Then I started thinking about all the other shoes she will have. Maybe soccer shoes. Maybe ballet slippers or even toe shoes.  Her first heels (post age 12, thank you).  Her prom shoes.  Her slinky sandals and Birkenstocks when she goes to college.  Her wedding shoes.  All in a long line, starting with these little pink-and-white sandals.

Kind of made me pause.

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, or something like that, at the Emerald City.  We had to do things like dress our children all in one color (for a photo, although I'm sure part of it was just to see if we would do it), bring in one flower per teacher, etc. Tonight I have to help clean up from some sort of happy hour buffet they put on (with or without martinis?) for the teachers, which in my world are really more daycare workers.

I think this is a great idea, except for the insane Room Mother Coalition.  They hang all these sign-up sheets on the doors asking us to drop by at 3 p.m. on Thursday to do this or that. Now really, Room Mothers, oh you of the stay-at-home-mom variety whose children are in the Emerald City's private school and who control All That Goes On at the Emerald City - if we could drop in at 3, wouldn't we NOT USE DAYCARE?  I think sometimes they forget that little nugget.  Sorry, but it annoyed me.

After I expressed my extreme confusion about the activities of the week, the director informed me that Waddler B has no room mother, and therefore the kindergarten room mother is overseeing us. Would I like to be a room mother?  I think I might have actually turned red.

Here is my dilemma. I know I am a mother.  I know, intellectually, that I am an adult. But just as I blanched when I saw my name listed as "Mrs. A." on one of my student's papers, I can't fathom becoming a room mother. It smacks of suburbia and people who wear running shoes with pantyhose. I realize I am being ridiculous, but I'm not ready for smashed freedom fries in the carseat and sensible haircuts.  I'm not ready to be a room mother!  I'm still trying to realize I'm a real mother! CALGON...

Although, tangent, making the kids all dress in one color reminded me of a guy I knew in college. He made everyone refer to him as "The Cat." I don't know why. There was no frame of reference. I dated him for a while, and even with me, he insisted on referring to himself as The Cat. He'd get entire rooms full of people he didn't know calling him that. And to this day,  I think he just did it to see if they would.  And they did. Just like how the little angel went to school on Monday wearing all pink.

Hmph.

Today I had lunch with a friend at a trendy Mexican restaurant with a patio in the Plaza.  I was sitting on the patio, thinking how pleasant fountains are, especially on sunny days, when I was accosted by a spurious young waiter.  I can't imagine he was for real - he can't have been serious.  I think he actually skipped up to the table.

I ordered some extra-hot salsa.  Tra la!  He skipped away.

My lunch date arrived, and we ordered lunch.  After the food arrived, he stopped by the table, leaned down and placed one hand by my napkin. 

"Are we still friends?" he asked.

I turned back to the conversation at hand, his comment unregistered for a moment, floating in the temp file of my brain.  Then it slid into place. Did he really ask if we were still friends?  Were we friends in the first place?  Would we not have been friends if my salsa were not hot enough?  Or would I slam my hand on the table, bellow "absolutely not!" and flee the patio, crying that my life had ended along with our newfound friendship?

His behavior began to make more sense when he returned with the bill, which my friend had paid.  He asked if she worked for the Star.  She said yes, then he quickly mentioned his skills as a photographer.  It starts to make more sense, yes?  Since we're all friends here.

Speaking of photography, allow me to brag on the little angel for just one moment.  Our baby photographer has chosen Somebody Little to be on the new baby photo brochure.  The little angel's first modeling assignment!  Post-photo, sure, but what's next?  Special applesauce in the dressing room?   A bowl filled with just red and green Goldfish? I certainly hope it does not go to her extremely cute head.  Of course, we don't have to tell her. She never opens her mail.

I was listening to NPR on the way to teach my class last week, and I heard an extended interview with a researcher who had dedicated his entire life to studying cotton.  I guess he was working on some new superhybrid of cotton that propogated itself easily for use in Third World nations. 

They were saying how an 83-year-old farmer in West Virginia can take on 40 people in an African nation handily due to the superior cotton technology in the U.S. Between fertilizers, hybrids and farm equipment, they just can't compete. This researcher dedicated his life to trying to find cotton that would help the little guy out.

As they were interviewing him, the reporter pointed out that he must dearly love cotton.  "No," he said.  "Actually, I could do without the cotton.  I just want to leave my mark."

A week later, I am still thinking about how profound that statement is.  I have never loved working just for the pure work.  I don't care for advertising, taxes, landscaping or software development in the way I assume surgeons care for the cut.  I don't go to sleep at night dreaming of the next big button I can think up for some user interface.  I actually really want to be a writer, which I suppose is why I subject you all to my meanderings every other day or so.  But until someone calls me up with a bonafide writing job in this non-publishing city, I guess I'll have to stick to cotton. Hopefully I'll at least leave a mark.

I've been at my new company for a little over a month now.  One of the interesting aspects of this job is my newfound participation in globalization.

I grew up in small-town Iowa, where globalization was about the farthest thing imaginable from our lives.  The world news on television was about thirty seconds long, and always involved shooting or bombing in some desert-covered country.

One of the reasons I was attracted to New Company is that over half of the company is in India.  This is not off-shoring like Old Company did - in a way, the business and executive side is sort of off-shored, since the majority of the workers are abroad.  I like to explain it that way, anyway, because I've noticed a few jaws drop at the concept.  There is sort of a negative connotation to offshoring in general, it seems.

So every morning, or at least it has been that way for the past two weeks, I haul my sleepy self over to my laptop around 7:30, and, as the little angel blissfully babbles to Baby Einstein, I chat with a graphic designer and/or developer in India.  It is around 6 p.m. there at that time.  They seem to stay at work much later than we do in the U.S., or maybe it's just them in particular.  I have chatted as late as 11:45 a.m. here and found them still pleasant at that hour.  That sort of blows my mind - I would be really grumpy if some Indian person was trying to talk to me about software development at 10 p.m. 

One of the funniest things about chatting with the graphic designer is that he uses all that hip-to-the-schiznit sort of IM shorthand that I don't know. It makes me feel very unhip that someone who already knows three languages to my one is jazzing up English to the point where I can't read it anymore.  How uncool are we in America that we only know one language?  Why WHY don't we insist kids learn two from preschool?  Maybe I will force another language upon the little angel.  K. (the graphic designer) says his life necessitates the knowledge of multiple languages, because they are all used regularly.  I think that's our problem - we don't do anything we don't  have to do, and we don't have to know anything other than English in the U.S.  Interesting.

For now, I feel gr8 that I am at least becoming rteously modern. UR turn!

My mother sent me an article this morning on the atrocities of diet soda.  Of course, that's totally hitting below the belt, since diet soda is really the only vice that is socially acceptable these days, and consequently one of the only vices in which one can indulge during the business day.

It got me to thinking about food, though. Last night, for instance, exhausted from a stressful day, I found myself at the kitchen pantry at 6:30 p.m., precisely the time the little angel usually eats, wondering what the hell to feed her.  I didn't want to give her another one of those Gerber nuke-a-meals - even though they have much less salt than other nuke-a-meals, they are still processed - so I try to only give them to her once a week (I know her father, my beloved, gives them to her any time he finds himself alone at mealtime).  I had some leftover steamed broccoli and cauliflower, about which I was feeling pretty good.  She loves cheese.  I thought maybe she needed some meat, though - she hardly ever eats it.  So -yes, folks - I gave her a few bites of tuna.  As I was spooning it up, my sister called.

"You know, tuna contains high levels of mercury."

"I know, I wasn't supposed to eat that much when I was pregnant. I'm only giving her two bites," I replied, feeling the guilty ire rising.

"You're the mom," she said.

Exactly.  Precisely the problem. I'm the one who's supposed to be making these healthy choices and setting a good example for the little angel, who would subsist on an all-Cheerio diet if allowed.  I'm also the one who brings home the bacon, then worries about how much fat and nitrates are in it to the point at which the family starves.

I know, you are probably thinking I am crazy.  Kids have been eating crap for years. But have you looked at kids lately?  They are fat.  They are unhealthy.  They don't like to run around and play. Well, some do. I just want my little angel to turn into one of the ones that likes the outdoors and thinks string cheese is yummy. In the meantime, there's now Food Guilt to add to Working-Mama Guilt.  My friend A. said it best when she said there's no time like baby-food time.  You just grab three jars and dinner is served!

Now that we have decided to keep This Old House, at least for a while, we have become obsessed with fixing all the things that didn't bother us in the least when we thought they would become someone else's problem. 

Today we have a tree trimmer coming to cut the limbs in the backyard through which our main power supply is running. The power line has been hanging precipitously since the ice storm of 2001.  Though it may seem incredibly irresponsible that we have let this much time pass withouth fixing it, understand that I have actually been calling the power company every six months for the past four years. They just never explained until this last time that THEY would not cut the limbs, but that WE had to do things like that. Then they FINALLY explained how to go about coordinating such a task.

I grew up in small-town Iowa, where one either a) owned a chainsaw or b) had a relative with not only a chainsaw, but probably a cherrypicker as well. The sheer effort and knowledge of the Yellow Pages one needs in a city to accomplish the task of limb removal blew my mind.  Oh, and you have to coordinate the entire thing with the power company, keeper of all things unscheduled and difficult. 

We finally got it worked out, I think, and there should be a guy named Tim arriving at 9 a.m., just as I am leaving for Bowels of Corporate Telecom, to fix the problem. He swears he will make the power company stay so that I do not have to coerce them to return and turn back on my power after he is finished with his work.  We shall see how that turns out.

Next, we need to have significant electrical rewiring done to make all the outlets in the house work, as well as adding fancy features like outdoor outlets.  Apparently there was little need for Christmas lights when This Old House was built before WWII.  This requires shutting down all the power in the house for at least eight hours the first day and sporadically for the next two days.  After much research, I landed three locations where I could do my work (my beloved seemed to space off for a while that I now work from home and kind of need things like power).  He came to his senses when he realized that the power being out not only inconvenienced me but also meant the refrigerator would be shut down.  I begged him to wait until after my big deadline to banish me to Barnes & Noble for a day.  He is now thinking a generator, which we have intended to buy ever since the first ice storm, might be a better solution.  Who knows - men and power have never ceased to amaze me as a bad combination.

The third project will be terracing this weird weed patch we have growing in the front. After many arguments over who would actually do this work, we are tentatively investigating hiring a handyman to help us out. The handyman seems a better use of the money inevitably spent on a babysitter so that I can help my beloved.  The little angel is not YET up to hard manual labor.

Ah, spring - the season in which you realize everything you own is slightly sub-par.