I've been going to a lot of business meetings at Starbucks over the past six months.  My new company doesn't have a physical office in town, so I work from home. This means local business meetings not taking place at Large Corporate Telecom are usually located at Starbucks.

Today I was a little early.  I looked around at the Starbucks People.  You know who they are.  One impossibly hot young man sporting Abercrombie and studying some huge book.  Too old to be a straight-from-high-school college student.  Maybe a massage therapy student?  Maybe I just entertain too many fantasies.  A couple of young women in hipper-than-thou business wear talking on cell phones and looking EXACTLY like stock art - so much it sort of frightened me.  But then, something about Starbucks has always frightened me.

Even the tea is sort of hipper than thou.  I haven't been a coffee drinker since I was a heavy smoker - why are those two so linked? - so I've sort of taken to drinking tea in coffee places.  Starbucks carries a million and one kinds of tea, but even they know they can't charge more than $1.30 for the smallest size, which is huge.  So I got the smallest size and went over to sit on the big purple couch and ponder tea, how much I miss the local coffee place in Midtown where I used to go when I was camera-ready hip (or so I thought), the place that hosted people wearing Sunkist t-shirts that were actually held back from their original issue date and not screen printed to be sold at Kitson's for $134 a pop.  The coffee place where I went to write, or to trade lost-love stories with my new friends (everyone was a new friend back then, when I moved to a city where I knew no one), left very little room for cream. 

The place, I guess you could say, left very little room for cream.

Not like Starbucks. 

Today we took the little angel to a pumpkin patch in Liberty, Missouri.  It was a world away, and a trip down memory lane.

She did love the goats.  So much that she ran over some other little children, leaving me to apologize to the mother of a one-year-old still bearing the little angel's hoof marks as she raced toward the nearest kid.  Goat kid, that is.  "More, more!" she cried. 

We rode a hayrack pulled by an ancient tractor of the variety my grandfather had - the kind with a yellow sun visor, not a high-tech air-conditioning and stereo system - out to the pumpkin patch.  As I attempted to carry her through the vine-strewn field, the little angel's new independence reared its red head.  "Down, Mama, down!" she cried, running in the air like George Jetson.  I put her down.  Over the pumpkins she flew, determined to find nirvana amidst exploded vegetables and many, many bugs.

When we got our painfully small pumpkin home (she picked out one she could actually lift, much to the amusement of one older lady - "That's a large pumpkin you walked all this way for," she said, taking a drag off an illegal cigarette, ignoring the many "No smoking ANYWHERE" signs), the little angel set to plopping the glow-in-the-dark pumpkin stickers anywhere she could find them. 

When I later took her into the windowless half-bath to show her how they glowed, she ripped off a leering, Cheshire smile and pasted it to my face, then laughed.  "More, Mama, more!"  ha ha ha ha ha

She's becoming a little person.  OOH, went the wind and OUT went the lights.

And one little baby rolled out of sight.

The little angel is now 18 months old.  Her speech is starting to gel a little more every day, and it's terrifying and exhilerating to realize she is actually trying to talk to us now amidst all that babble.  But her jokes are horrible.

Take this morning, for instance...

(Looking into the bathtub after I got out of the shower)  "Mama, bubbles, balarehlkadsdhkaleaekj Melmo, bubbles."  (Tosses plastic Elmo into the tub, since he clearly needs a bath).  "Yeah!"

Looking at a photo of my sister, me and my cousins.  "Mama...Nay...Mama?  Nyo. NYO!  Nyo Mama."  (Looks at me quizzically until I tell who the other people are.)

Emptying the dishwasher.  "Eeysadjmadlkjj dada....Melmo, poon, Melmo, ha ha ha ha ha."  (Throws Elmo into the spoon rack of the dishwasher.  This is apparently high comedy.)

Considering she's never shown the slightest interest in the plastic Elmo before, I find it interesting he's been chosen as not only the guest star but the lead actor in today's comedy sketches.  Seriously, he lip-synched the last time he was on the show.

Here is a list of things I wish people would stop asking me:

• So, when are you going to have another baby?
• Have you heard about the bird flu and how we're all going to die?
• When are you going to make the little angel a big sister?
• Did you realize that W will be in office for another three years?
• Did you hear the teachers in Waddler B have started their turf wars again?
• When are you going to get pregnant again?

Here is a list of things I wish people would start asking me:

• Would you like a free massage?
• How can I help you get some more sleep into your life?
• Did you know a kindly real-estate developer has bought every ugly, appreciation-robbing house in your neighborhood and is going to refurbish them all by next year?
• You're HOW old?  You're kidding!
• Can we take an hour just to talk about your thoughts on world peace?

Hello?  Internet?  I'm just NOT READY.  I haven't refound myself yet.

The autumnal winds whipped the little angel's hair as she rode her jogging stroller with glee.  "Duck!" she cried, as we rounded the bend by Loose Park pond, designed by someone famous, whose name I can't remember, but who also designed some other nameless but famous pond in New York City.

As we approached the playground, I realized I had committed a fatal error by letting it come into her eyesight.  The ancients believed in something called "eye beams," which were supposedly like (insert Austin Powers voice) lasers, and emitted directly from the eyeballs themselves in a straight line.  You can find them referenced in several poems that I had to study in graduate school. I can't remember the names of the uninformed poets.

The little angel gestured frantically for the slides.  "No," I said.  "We'll play next time around, I promise.  Well, if it doesn't rain."  I felt a little guilty for promising anything, as the skies looked rather forbidding.

The little angel tried to crawl out of the jogging stroller while it was in motion.  "Keep arms, fingers and all other appendages inside the stroller," I called, puffing away.  "Playground next time!"

"Nyo!" she cried.  "Nyo, nyo!"  She held her arms out dramatically to the slides, who wept quietly at her passing.

For an entire mile circuit, she wiggled and whined.  "Nyo!" she wailed to the winds.  "Nyo!"

"Next come the ducks!" I puffed, as fellow joggers looked at me as though I were sticking the little angel with pins for withholding slides.  I could see into their brains.  What a horrible mother!  She obviously always puts her own exercise needs before the slide needs of the child!  The child with no hat on such a windy day!  Stuff it, passersby.

"After the ducks come the slides!" I puffed, as I passed several soccer moms chasing their ten-year-olds away from the ducks. 

"NYO!" cried the little angel.

Finally, we reached the slides again.  I came in for a landing and unstrapped the little angel.  She waddled over to the yellow slide, threw her arms around it, embracing it.  She kissed the plastic and smiled widely at me.  "Yeah!" she cried.

Indeed.

I wonder what she would do if I attempted Pilates in front of her?

I taught my class last night.  On the way, I listened to NPR.  There was a segment from W's press conference about Harriet.  The press corps was asking all sorts of "Harriet crony" and "Harriet abortion" questions, and the annoyance in W's voice was so thick you wonder how Laura could stand to be married to someone who could sound so annoyed and so stupid at the same time without a lobotomy.  (I also read an article yesterday on electric shock therapy, and why it's still popular for people with severe depression.  I think in the case of W, there's another argument to be made for inflicting brain damage for the "right" reasons.) 

Press Corps:  "Mr. President, how can you say in all those years of knowing the nominee, you have never talked about her stance on abortion?"

W:  "Ahye...(angry sigh)...not, uh, not to my (puff) reck-e-lection.  (snort, snort)  I don't have, uh, a (snort, sigh) LITMUS TEST (yeah, that's the word Dick taught me!) for this stuff (sniff, puff)."  (So there.)

Last night my students were supposed to turn in their revisions for Essay 2.  They have to do five essays over the course of the semester, and they can revise the first four. I don't even average the two grades, I just take the best one.  It is ridiculously easy to improve a score, yet I only got five revisions out of a class of (officially, before two more get administratively withdrawn tomorrow for skipping three times in a row) 18.  Last night, these are some of the excuses I heard:

"I'm sick, and I can't get to my home computer."  Where are you sick, then, Vietnam?

"My kid is sick, and I forgot."  They keep forgetting I have a kid and still manage to show up with their papers every week, so I admit, I'm holding them to their end of the deal.

"I don't know how to write."  Well, this class should be helping, if you came once in a while.

"I don't have a litmus test for that."  You know, if you don't want to answer the question, don't think you can throw the rest of us off the scent with a fifty-cent word.

I am so tired of dumb excuses. 

So the trip was not the rip-roaring success I'd hoped it would be.  I always love seeing my girls, but the agony of a sleepless child and husband rival the joy in comparing baby stories with people who used to covet your boyfriend.  Friday night went something like this:

8 p.m. Attempt to put little angel down. There is much milk and much rocking.  The little angel looks around two-year-old K's room, where we are sleeping.  She takes in the louvered doors, the scary shadows outside the window, the sounds from the street right outside that are so much louder than the ones in her room, protected as it is with a window unit for white noise and cool air.  She sees the pack-n-play, which is not NEARLY as comfy as her crib, and oh, so much closer to the scary hardwood floor.  She sees that Kitty and Tad are the only animals that have come with her.  She is not having any of it.

8:15 p.m.  I head back in.  I hear my other friends A. and M. show up. They ask where I am, and my friend K. tells them I am still with the little angel.  "Don't they ever just let her cry?" I hear A. ask.

8:45 p.m.  I decide to let them have it. I let the little angel howl at the top of her lungs for a good twenty minutes to squelch any more commentary before I go in, despite the fact I do feel for her, all alone in a strange room.  I haul her out and rock her until she falls asleep. It's travel time, and she's getting to the point where she knows the difference between things she can do when we travel and things she can do at home.

11:30 p.m.  After much pizza and wine, I decide to head to bed.  The boys have decided to build a fire in the outdoor fireplace, because that's what you do when you're drunk around midnight and know your child will be getting up in six or so hours.  I decide it's my beloved's own funeral and go to bed.  Unfortunately, here's where the hardwood floors and louvered doors come in - I can hear EVERYTHING.  I can't sleep. Plus, I have a head cold, and I'm on an Aero bed with only one pillow, unable to get any leverage to allow the phlegm to drain anywhere but into my compacted sinuses.  I hear the little angel shift. She's not used to people in her room.

12 a.m. - 2 a.m. The little angel shifts and pops straight up in her pack-n-play every twenty minutes or so.  I beg her to lie back down, but she will not unless I lay her down myself.  The Aero loses more air with each trip to the pack-n-play.  I hear cars going by, their riders cackling with alcohol-induced glee.  I am jealous. I would rather be anywhere but in this room. I think it can't possibly be worse.

3:30 a.m. Just as I go to sleep, my beloved walks in, smelling of burnt milk cartons.  The little angel immediately starts crying. A. starts cleaning the kitchen, slamming things around the counters and emptying cans into the garbage. I might kill him.

4 a.m. A. finally finishes his cleaning.  The little angel is finally sleeping. I begin counting backwards from 600 by threes as my beloved snores next to me. I put the pillow over my head and hope that maybe I will suffocate and end it all.

6:15 a.m.  The little angel is ready for the day.  I whimper softly, holding my throbbing head.

The next day didn't go much better. We took the darlings to the tailgate, hung out with friends and came back, thinking it was time for that nice noonish nap.  But oh, no.  At one point, both A. and K. fell asleep, leaving me to play with little K. and the little angel for an hour and a half while at the point of utter breakdown. When K. woke up (she hadn't realized little K. had escaped, since  that day was the first day she ever learned to open a door by herself), I began weeping with frustration and exhaustion.  Finally, at 3 p.m., the little angel finally passed out. I did, too.  We were supposed to go out with the girls that night, but K. and I only made it out for about two hours, and the boys didn't make it out at all. I passed out at 9:30 p.m., feeling sicker than sick.  So much for the big party weekend, eh?

On the five-hour return trip, my beloved and I discussed the sanity of all this car travel with a soon-to-be-eighteen-month-old.  We were supposed to go to Arkansas this weekend to see my BIL and SIL and nephew.  Then we were supposed to go back to Iowa City on Oct. 22 to see many family members, including MIL and FIL.  I think we're going to nix both trips.  This one hurt me so bad I couldn't even work yesterday. I spent most of the day in bed, trying to muster up the will to live.

It's ironic, though.  Your childless friends will think you're just boring if you never go anywhere because you have a kid, but there is a certain existential truth in realizing that if you visit, you're really in it alone.

A few days ago, in a sleep-deprived haze, I almost broke out giggling in a Serious Business Meeting at Starbucks because the man pacing behind the head of my kind boss looked v. v. much like a stressed-out Martin Sheen.  He was sitting next to Carefully Tousled Blond Man.  I'm certain they were from California, plotting how to get business in Large Corporate Telecom, which loomed brickly from across the street.

"Yes, Mr. President, I think we have some trouble in New Orleans.  And they might need cell phones with TV screens."  hee hee hee hee hee hee

Ever since then, I have had trouble pulling it together, despite ten hours of sleep on Wednesday night and eight hours last night.  After thinking deeply for weeks about all the problems of our country, hearing about numerous people's diseases, miscarriages and depression and working, working working, I've reached the HEE HEE limit.  The point of hilarity at which time one must simply try to get through the day so she can collapse in a pile of giggles at the end when the little angel pretends to be the cat.  The cat who has thyroid problems.  Look skinny, angel.  GOOD.  hee hee!  See?  This is a huge problem.

Fortunately, there's nothing like ANOTHER reunion to take the edge of hilarity and plunge it into the abyss.  So today we're off at noon to Iowa City to see a bunch of women I used to be girls with, girls who shared a large bathroom with many, many stalls, some used for shatting and some used for bulimia, depending on who was in there.  Showers with hard, plastic curtains and little shelves for our many, many drug-store styling products, kept in little baskets that grew mold despite their plasticity.  Girls who stole each other's boyfriends and stood up at each other's weddings, despite the rest of the campus's belief that we all bought our friends.  Well, that may be true, but considering I'm hauling an 18-month-old ten hours round-trip to go see these bitches ten years later, I'd say that's a fuck of a good return on investment.

hee hee hee

See you Monday. 

Tomorrow, the little angel is supposed to wear blue and white in honor of Warrior Spirit Day.  Apparently the private school where the Emerald City is located has a mascot of Warrior.

It is a Lutheran school.  With a mascot of Warrior.

Lutherans.

Fighting.

Lutherans.

Starting shit with others.

I am confused.