This morning we had a groundbreaking milestone.  I realized while I was getting ready that the little angel kept bringing me my shoes and wanting me to put them on. This was impractical while I was brushing my teeth, however, when it was time for me to actually put my shoes on, they were all the way down the hall outside the bathroom.

I sat on the floor and looked at the little angel.  "I'd like to put on my shoes now," I said.  "Will you go get them for me?"

She studied me studiously for a moment, then turned around, toddled down the hall, and GOT MY SHOE!  Then she brought it to me!  Thinking it was a fluke, I put it on, then asked her to go get the other one.  AND SHE DID!  Immediately my mind went to cleaning toilets, feeding the cat and washing the car.  How soon?  HOW SOON?

Well, the insurance people called yesterday to tell me that my Geo Prizm is no more.  They are going to give me a paltry sum for my late, paid-off car, however, they will not send the check until I send them the title to the car.

Which I can't find.

I think that I sent it to the state of Missouri in order to register the car when I moved here. I don't remember ever getting it back.  I still have the title to the Ford Probe I owned prior to the Geo Prizm (yes, indeed, I have always driven cool cars).  No clue where that Prizm title is.  So now I have to go to the DMV and apply for a "quick" duplicate title, which will arrive in 7-10 business days.  BUT, I have to be out of my rental car paid for by the insurance company in five days.  Don't you love it?  Why can't they just let you stay there until you find it?  I've been handing them money for nothing for years.  Stingy bastards.

This past weekend I went to Lake Panorama, up by Panora, Iowa.  Eight girls (dammit, we can still call ourselves "girls" as long as we want) gathered to drink beer and cheap wine, waterski as though we still mean it and gossip about ourselves until we were blue in the face.  We also made food our husbands wouldn't eat, compared toes and discussed the pros and cons of breast augmentation and reduction, depending on who was speaking at the time.

When we went to leave, my friend S. told us not to forget to stop and feed the bear.  Yes, there is a bear named Ben who lives about five miles outside Panora.  At first we were up in arms for Ben, but it turns out he was purchased by someone who discovered him at auction, clawless and needing the protection of a kind soul.  Ben has a silo, a bear run and a cave made from a tin shed.  He's a full-size cinnamon brown bear.  He's about as tall as me.  We fed him blueberries, which he licked with a huge, pink, curled up tongue.  I was afraid at first (his teeth were as long as my index finger), but my friend L. the vegan so fearlessly stuck her hand up there I would've been chicken not to follow (see what kind of peer pressure Girls' Weekend can do to you?).  Anyway, Ben was really nice. I have never seen a real bear up close before.  He was gorgeous.

Get off the streets.  Now.

Yesterday, as I was TRYING to drive to get my hair cut, I was rammed by someone who *thought* they could beat me while merging onto Ward Parkway.  They ended up, I think, bending the axle in my driver's side tire, missing my body by about a foot.

I've been known to get in some accidents in my time.  This one, however, was not my fault. Thankfully a lovely witness left his name and number and eventually returned to the scene of the crime to clear my good name.  Tickets were written in the name of insurance, and now I have to go to court on August 15 to make sure the charges stick and someone gives me some money for my late 1994 Geo Prizm, Priscilla, may she rest in peace, God bless her soul. I have the sinking feeling I will net about $800 for the loss of a good, working, paid-for car.  This is really unfair.

However, here's a lesson in Life Ain't Fair - it's also probably not fair I didn't get hurt.  Or that I didn't run up onto the lawn of the house near which I stopped - the lawn containing three toddlers and a pregnant woman.  It's also probably not fair the airbag didn't go off and break my nose, or that I didn't hit my head on the windshield or rearview mirror instead of the nice, soft visor, which just happened to be down at the point of impact.  It's probably not fair that for the first time in weeks I was driving the worthless Prizm instead of the main family Explorer, of which the loss would have hurt far more.  It's probably not fair that I'm still breathing after all the car accidents from which I have walked away.  When I think about it, I still can't believe my friend C. and I survived blowing the right rear tire on a Festiva going 80 mph on I-80 in heavy traffic.  God loves fools and children.

It's also really, really, really not fair that an acquaintance of my husband's was killed while biking in a quiet suburb of Kansas City this week.  I don't know the teenager who hit him, but DAMN PEOPLE who can't watch out for us bikers on the side of the road.  A bike is a vehicle, damnit, and it's required by law to be on the road.  I am so mad this man is dead.  I am so angry this woman would rather ram my car and endanger my child's mother than wait 30 seconds for an open spot in traffic.

I am really lucky nothing worse happened.  While I was rocking the little angel last night, it occurred to me how close she came to having no mama yesterday.  I am so thankful I can still be her mama, with all my important bits intact.

Another amen.  This is turning out to be quite the spiritual week.

I was just reading one of my favorite blogs, Amalah, and I learned her mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Normally this crazy chick is dishing out advice about hair products, then suddenly, cancer. 

That's sort of the way cancer works, though, at least in my experience.  One day you're eating popsicles and life is good, the next day, your mom is getting a biopsy.  My own mother had cancer of the soft tissue twice when I was in my somewhat formative years.  There was one particular day that is seared into my memory.  It was the day we had to put on special clothes and shoes to visit her in a vacuum-sealed room in the Intensive Care Unit.  Up until that day, I never really thought she would die.  I realized that day that my mother is mortal. 

Well, she's okay.  She's been in remission so long I can't even remember how long it was.  But as I was reading Amalah's blog, I thought about what my dad said when we talked about my mom's cancer.  He said that in order to really be initiated into the human race, you had to have at least two SEEs (Significant Emotional Experiences).  He's an engineer, and he likes the acronyms.  Anyway, people who don't have at least two earth-shattering sad periods don't really understand.  They don't really empathize when they see the photos of the starving African children.  They don't really feel that bad when a friend's aunt dies.  After you've walked in the shoes, though, your whole world stops when you read about some pregnant woman in DC who is now embarking into the world of Radiation and Chemotherapy for the very first time.  And while pregnant.  When she needs her mama the most.  How very sad and scary.  I feel for her.

Let's all say a little prayer for Amalah's mom.  If the Internet can't harness what the Lutheran church can do, well then fuck it.

Amen.

Tomorrow after work I leave for our annual Girls' Weekend at a lake in Iowa.  I have been going to this lakehouse (owned by my friend's parents) since I was around eight.  Last year was the first year I have missed a weekend there in almost ten years.  I'm so excited to go and hang out with ten of my closest girlfriends, drink cheap wine and lay in the sun all day.

So why am I feeling so guilty?

Probably because, through the luck of the draw, I have three angel-free weekends coming up in rapid succession.  Two of them are even long weekends.  It all started out innocently - I am in a girlfriend's wedding in Chicago the last weekend in July. We were planning to take the little angel and struggling with detail coordination when my parents caught wind of it and offered to take her off our hands. I was relieved not to have to make her fly two times in one month.  Meanwhile, my college roommates and I conspired for a long weekend in Florida to celebrate my friend K's taking her comps on her way to principalhood/ship.  We haven't all been together sans spouses/boyfriends/children/other friends in probably ten years, either.  The problem?  This weekend is exactly one weekend after the wedding.  I didn't even realize this until earlier this month. 

Will the little angel forget me?  Probably not.  But all the sudden I can't sleep, and I have this horrible, pit-like feeling in my stomach that this will all be horrible.  I can't justify it - it's good for the little angel to have one-on-one time with my beloved (who hardly ever gets to feed or bathe her alone, because I always do it) and my parents (who worship the ground she walks on and beg to get her away from us).  When I am there, she does tend to focus on me.  I remember the look of sadness on my father's face last weekend in Chicago when he tried to hold her and she cried out, "Mama, Mama" when I came around the corner, wriggling to get away from him.  She won't do that if I'm not there.  But what will I do?

I know what I will do. I will drink through the pain, lie in the sun if I must, go to a Cubs game, and hang out with Sister Little and Rock Star Boyfriend without the child for the first time since she was born.  All of these events are GOOD THINGS.  Plus, she won't even remember this - you don't remember stuff before you are three, right?

Oh, the guilt.  How it tortureth. 

We got the little angel this new bath toy.  One part of it attaches to the side of the tub.  You pour water in the top with the included, matching cup, and a little waterwheel turns.  We weren't sure if the little angel would be into it or not, but I was almost as fascinated by it as I was her crib-side aquarium thingie with the real water noises. 

We showed her how to do it a few times, and all of the sudden she was dumping water on the octopus (he being the axis of the waterwheel) and laughing with glee.  Now, this isn't advanced behavior for a fifteen-month-old child, but it IS something she'd never done before.  She also recently figured out how to put her puzzles together correctly.  When we first gave them to her, she would just stare at them blankly, not even sure how to pick up a piece with the knobs the size of her nose.

All of this rapid advancement is shocking to me.   It seems sort of ridiculous that she can go from not being able to walk to hydrotherapy in one month. 

Since I was tired yesterday, I didn't go nearly far enough into my experiene at Midway Airport this past weekend.

Normally, we like to torture my mother for making us go everywhere at least five hours early. I remember as a child being forced to take a book to a movie, because we would always get there at least a half-hour before the show began.  Important Lesson:  I thought this was normal.  Children think whatever their reality is applies to all children.  This is helpful until about age ten.

I was doing my typical grousing about how we were at the airport two and a half hours before my parent's flight and three and a half hours before ours when we rounded the corner from the rental-car drop-off to see a line snaking out the doors of the parking garage and about a half block beyond.  It took us about forty minutes to make it to the door and the blessed air conditioning. At that point, I was starting to get worried.

An hour later, we were still a good fifty feet from the check-in area.  The line was full of mostly international travelers, people going on vacations, and families with small children.  Who else in this post-9/11 world checks bags?  So as you can imagine, ours was the fun line. The line with the most patient sort of people. NOT.

Here are all the ways we entertained the little angel for three hours.  Bear in mind:  All you with fears about germs in public areas should stop reading now.

*  Little angel makes laps up and down the parking garage with Grandpa, trying to avoid speeding cars.

* Grandpa holds little angel and points out poor people standing in their line in the hot sun.  He reminds her she should not stand in the hot sun without sunscreen and a hat, since she sunburns on contact.

* Grandma puts little angel in the stroller and does speed laps up and down the parking garage. The little angel likes to feel the wind in her hair.

* I pretend to faint several times.

* Grandma takes little angel to push all the buttons on the parking payment ATM thingie. 

* Grandma, on a roll, lets the little angel pretend to make several calls on the public payphone.

* Little angel eats a snack.

* Beloved plays hide-and-seek with bear and little angel.

* Little angel reads all her books.

* Little angel throws the books on the ground. 

* Little angel goes up and down the line, introducing herself to other babies and asking for their vote in November.

* I take little angel over to the benches.  We pound on them for a while.

* Little angel licks the glass of the windows. That was not intentional.

* Little angel has Gerber pasta pick-ups while I hold her.  She smears them in her hair and in mine.  She throws them at passer-by.  I attempt to keep a bib on her, keep myself clean, and avoid losing all feeling in my left arm after holding her like that for a half-hour. At this point, Grandma and Grandpa have officially missed their flight.

* Little angel has a short temper tantrum on the floor and in her stroller.  We strap her in and pretend like we don't know her.

* Little angel rubs her pasta-covered hands all over the destination and arrival screens before we can clean her off.

* Little angel attempts to inhale several aloe-scented diaper wipes.  I buy this kind, even though they are more expensive, because they help take me to my parental happy place.

* Little angel walks over to another baby and offers her a pasta pick-up.

* Mother and I go to the restroom, blissfully angel-free.

* Little angel is treated to a charade show put on by my beloved.

* Little angel colors, then tries to eat the crayons.

* Little angel tries to steal Grandpa's glasses.

* Little angel throws another temper tantrum.  Just as we reach the counter and before she has to go through security, she falls asleep.  She sleeps through the only part we don't want her to sleep through, which is security and the opportunity to run around the gate area before getting on the plane.

Grandma and Grandpa rebook while we fly through security and are assured we will be on our flight.

On the plane...

* Little angel watches the "rucks" outside the window.

* Little angel puts small toys in plastic cups.

* Little angel plays with kitty toy.

* Little angel hands a banana to the nice Pampered Chef representative sitting next to me. There were 3,000 Pampered Chef representatives in the Midway airport on Saturday - something about a convention.

* Little angel tries to color again, hating, hating!

* Little angel stands on my lap, oblivious to the fact I have to go to the bathroom, and looks at the toddler behind her. She blows kisses.

* Little angel rips apart SkyMall.

* Little angel studies the procedures for a crash landing.

* We take off.  Only an hour and twenty minutes left to go.

* Little angel reads all her books.

* Little angel has another snack.  She covers me in Ritz bits to compliment my pasta pick-ups.

* Little angel crawls back and forth from my beloved to me fourteen times.

* Little angel pulls all the magazines out of the seatback, then puts them back in. Repeat ten times.

* Little angel hands Ritz bits to the Pampered Chef rep.

* Little angel peruses the new Pampered Chef catalogue.

* Little angel looks at the toddler behind us, who has his own seat and is sleeping.

* Little angel plays with the seatback tray.

* Little angel pulls my beloved's ears.

* Little angel gets down on the floor and walks back and forth fourteen times.

* Little angel reads a book again.

* Little angel demands the cups, NOW!

* Little angel plays with the fans and flight-attendant lights. No thanks, all I need is a lobotomy. 

* Little angel goes back to the snacking thing.

* Descent begins. We convince little angel that this is very exciting, and she looks outside. All she sees are clouds.  Foiled, she throws the mid-air temper tantrum. I hold her in the air so she will only kick me and not the nice Pampered Chef consultant.

* Twenty minutes later, we land.  She falls asleep the minute she's back in her stroller, before she must be lifted into the car.

It's good to be home.

We had a lovely time in Chicago.  The little angel not only modeled her tank/sarong swimwear, but she also actually got in a big pool for the very first time.  When we took her to the Shedd Aquarium on Saturday, you could almost see the synapses shooting new connections.  She learned:

• Fish come in different sizes.
• Black lights are cool.
• Food courts incorporate all sorts of examples of the human race, some of them cleaner and quieter than others.
• Tourists are the most annoying sorts of people.
• Jellyfish are God's gift to hallucinogenic drug users.

She was so good, especially considering on the way back we got caught in a three-hour line in Chicago's Midway airport. It turns out about 25 members of the TSA called in sick on Saturday in July in Chicago.  Thanks, George, for tightening airport security in such a useful fashion.  I was amazed at how polite and restrained most of the air travelers were, especially those who got to wait in their lines outside in the 90-degree heat.  We exhausted our entire toddler grab-bag in the three hour lines, along with our snack supply, so by the time we got on the blessed airplane, the little angel was a bit stressed. 

By that time, however, I had already retreated into my happy place and had mostly managed to disconnect my cogent self from my surroundings.  At the point when I was holding her straight up in the air, allowing her to flail, scream and kick me in the chest while she threw a mid-air temper tantrum, I found myself thinking how as parents we must restrict the child's independence for her own good.  Then I started thinking how parenting is sort of like being the safety harness for a trapeze artist:  We protect them until they learn to fly alone.