ever-fixed mark

We have a babysitter who watches Minor in her home three days a week while Aitch goes to preschool, and Aitch the other two days while Minor stays home with Husband and me. Due to some unforeseen complications, she has been unable to sit for the whole month of December, so Aitch’s school agreed to take him five days a week and Minor three days until the New Year, when we’ll revert back to the old schedule. Thus, for three days a week Aitch and Minor are going to the same place, which makes our morning routine a bit easier.

Or it should, anyway.

On two occasions the week before Christmas, Husband wheeled both boys to school in the double stroller, then came home and worked his usual day. At the end of the day, he left to pick up the boys again, only to find that the stroller was missing.

Yes, the stroller that cost more than my first car–which admittedly was not that expensive, but still, how do you lose a stroller?

Luckily, the stroller was recovered both times–once from the school playground, and once from the outside of the White Hen. (Six hours! In front of the convenience store!)

Tomorrow I’m going to tie it to his wrist. Sweet.

Minor has another ear infection—or rather, he has the new-’n'-improved version of the one he’s had since Thanksgiving—and on Monday morning I awoke to find my right eye encased in a flaky crust similar to that pouring out of his left ear. Dr. Google tells me that the bacterium that causes ear infections can also cause conjunctivitis. Pink, my favorite color!

So I’ve been walking around for two days with one red, swollen eye that’s weeping independently of the other. It’s as though the left side of my brain is really depressed, perhaps because it failed the math section of its SATs, whereas the right side is bright and chipper because there’s a double period of Art today. Or something like that.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I have to wear my glasses. I’m not opposed to glasses in principle; I like the Lisa Loeb/Tina Fey look, personally. But my prescription is so high that my lenses make my eyes look freakishly small. It’s far more Mr. Magoo than Ms. Fey.

Since I got contact lenses at age twelve I’ve rarely worn my glasses in public. In fact, in the last ten years I can count the occasions on one hand, made memorable by the fact that each time someone I’ve known fairly well has failed to recognize me. The last time (Halloween 1998; Husband and I went as Catholic school children, complete with nerdy specs), my friend’s new girlfriend introduced herself to me. “Hey, Suzie, it’s me; you just sent me the RSVP for my wedding.” You know the movie cliche of the girl who removes her glasses, and she’s so hot that nobody recognizes her? I’m her hideous opposite number.

So, as I’ve mentioned before, Baby Jay looks nothing like Husband or I. We both have dark brown hair, brown eyes, and dark complexions, whereas Baby Jay has really fair skin, red hair, and light-brown eyes (that have these weird circles under them, which is something I’ve been meaning to Ask Moxie about).

Anyway, his appearance certainly attracts a lot of attention in our provincial little town, and at least twice a day I have someone stopping me to ask, “Is he adopted? Did you use donor eggs? Where did he come from?” (The girls at the vegetable market are the worse for this–it’s like they have nothing to do all day but chat up the customers.) I try to take a deep breath before I answer, because although Baby Jay is too young to understand now, soon he’ll be able to sense the tone in my voice, and I don’t want to get upset and give him the idea that his background is something to be ashamed or angry about. So sometimes I say, “Why do you ask?” and try to turn the conversation back to them. If I’m in a hurry I might say, “That’s Jay’s history to share when he’s old enough.”

Today, though, I was at the vegetable market–where else?–and this trashy-looking teenager at the turnip stand starts gushing, “Look at that hair! You don’t see that too often around here! Is he yours? Where was he born?” and you have to understand, I had just spent half the morning standing in line at the orange sellers where no fewer than five people had made incredibly rude remarks about Baby Jay, and although her question doesn’t sound particularly bad now that I’m blogging about it, it just set me over.the.edge.

So I snapped, “He’s the Son of God and he was born in a manger, okay? Is that enough information for you or do you want to see my episiotomy scar?”

So she got all huffy and said, “I just asked,” and then I felt kind of bad, but maybe next time she’ll think twice about getting all up in a stranger’s business. I just hope she doesn’t start gossiping with the other checkout girls, because God knows what they’ll say.

So then we went home and I made Jay a grilled cheese sandwich, which is THE ONLY thing he’ll eat nowadays. What’s up with that?

The geekosphere has discovered these cute little memes, and Husband tagged me to come up with five things you don’t know about me. (This chain started here.) Now, I’ve been blogging my ass off for over a year; I’m not sure there’s much I haven’t revealed. But here goes:

1. In high school I was a feature twirler in the marching band. Sequined outfit, high-heeled boots, flaming batons, the whole nine yards. Not only that, but baton twirling was my talent in the Junior Miss pageant.
2. In high school I fell in love with a boy who had a steady girlfriend, and I dated him behind her back. Eventually we both stopped seeing the guy, she and I became friends, and we were the maids of honor at each other’s weddings.
3. During my senior year in college I spent several months interviewing with the CIA for a position as an operative, but I didn’t get it because I failed the polygraph. Twice.
4. I have really, really poor eyesight: 20/1100, which means that what I see at 20 feet looks like what a normally-sighted person sees at 1100 feet. I can only see clearly for about 4 inches without my contacts. But my close vision has also deteriorated lately, so now I have to wear reading glasses over the contacts.
5. My favorite novel of all time is not by one of the nineteenth-century writers I adore, but The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. I just found out that Ford was as old when he published it as I will be on my next birthday.

I am far too intimidated to tag someone else. It feels like sending one of the cool kids a carnation on Carnation Day. So if you read this blog and have a blog of your own, consider yourself tagged.

I swear that the little fairies who live in my iPod are attuned to the season, because lately whenever I set that thing to “Shuffle” I get Christmas carols in heavy rotation.

What about you? Does your iPod play favorites? Or do you abide by the adage, “Don’t anthropomorphize computers; they hate that”?

Minor is almost eleven months old and still cannot crawl. I should say, he refuses to crawl. Whenever he finds himself on his stomach, he whines incessantly until placed upright. At first I thought he might have some kind of medical condition that made the prone position uncomfortable, but we’ve ruled out reflux and the doctors can’t think of anything else that would affect him that way. He learned to sit quite early, at five months on the dot, and it seems like he’s just loath to regress to a position closer to the floor when he’s already gained the dizzying heights of the half-lotus.

They say that crawling is in fact NOT a necessary developmental milestone; it’s an optional pit stop on the road to walking. It does seem that Minor will be one of those kids who walks without first learning to crawl. Husband and I sometimes amuse ourselves by imagining complications that might ensue as a result of Minor’s never mastering this skill:

“Soldier! Get your ass down! Can’t you see the bullets whizzing overhead? Drop and inch yourself over to that foxhole!”

“But Sarge! I . . . I . . . I don’t know how to crawl!”

But a boy’s got to get from Point A to Point B, and so Minor has devised two alternate methods of locomotion. I present to you “the scoot”:

Since scooting is slow, Minor sometimes prefers to ride. Look at my little future NASCAR driver take the corners in the World’s!Ugliest!Kitchen!:

In a few years he’ll be tearing up the track, but at least the announcers will never have occasion to say, “He’s crawling from the wreckage.”

A few months ago, someone from my mothers’ club posted a message on the bulletin board about a local teenager who was about to give birth to a baby:  did any of us have any used baby gear we would be willing to donate to her?  I was moved by this, because my recent parenting experience has given me new-found respect and admiration for single parents, young parents, parents who are not independently wealthy—pretty much any people who aren’t tackling parenthood with the resources of a Trump.  So I e-mailed back saying that all my baby gear was currently in use, but I’d be happy to buy something off the girl’s baby registry, if the poster was willing to share that information. The woman wrote back with the girl’s name —we’ll call her Susan Jones—and asked me to keep it confidential. 

The girl was registered at Babies “R” Us, like 90% of the mothers on the planet.  I hate Babies “R” Us on principle, and it’s not only because of the stupid backwards “R.”  It’s also because of the objective pronoun used incorrectly after the linking verb.  It ought to be Babies “R” We!  Or even Babies “R” Wee, for maximum cutesiness!  But I swallowed my distaste, as I always do (this being the most convenient place to buy baby stuff on-line).  I logged in to their web site and searched the baby registry for Susan Jones’s name.  I found it and chose something suitable, which was automatically shipped directly to the mother-to-be at the stored address. 

Weeks later, on Black Friday, I was moved by the crowd-stampeding, shopper-shooting holiday spirit to start my Christmas shopping . . . online. I logged on to Babies “R” Us and spent an hour picking out toys for Minor. A week or two later I got an e-mail address with the subject line, “Order #1234567 has shipped.”  This morning, I realized that I had still not received the package and went searching for the e-mail to see if I could get enough information to track it.

This time, I opened up the e-mail and gasped when I saw, “Order #1234567 has shipped to Susan Jones, 123 Main Street….”

I sent Minor’s Christmas presents to the teenager!

How could this have happened?  When you check out from Babies “R” Us they usually ask you to confirm the shipping address.  I would have needed to go of my way to ship the gifts to a gift registry recipient. Right?

Not according to Babies “R” Us. “When you ship something to a new address,” the customer service rep told me, “the software automatically updates the default address to the most recent one.”

“Why on earth would you assume that I would want my address updated to the place where I sent a one-time gift?”

He didn’t know.

So. . . I can’t very well call up a young mother who was supposed to be the anonymous recipient of donations and demand the return of nine out of ten packages that I sent her.  Luckily, Minor is fairly close in age to her baby, and the toys are reasonably appropriate, or will be in a few months. Also, luckily, the dollar amount was pretty low, as I try to buy the kids simple analog toys, which tend to be cheaper.

It’s the setback that’s killing me.  I’ve done next to nothing for Christmas, but as the days have ticked by I’ve taken comfort in saying to myself, “At least I’ve got all of Minor’s shopping done.”  Now I don’t even have that. My level of preparation is actually negative; I have to REDO shopping. 

On the other hand. . . he hasn’t really been THAT good this year.

I’m back in Chicago, this time for a whole week.  It’s cold here.  Ye gods, is it cold.  It’s colder than Jim Webb in a tête - à - tête with George Bush. On an ice floe.

I was sitting in a meeting this afternoon when I felt my eyeballs drifting out of synch with one another.  My thoughts wandered into the realm of hallucinations. My head felt fuzzy.  I was coherent enough to think, “Good Lord, I’m having a stroke” before I realized what was happening: I was falling asleep.  It’s been so long since I’ve experienced that eyes-open-sleeping-at-work that I forgot what it felt like.  I think my sudden immersion in Winter triggered a massive hibernation reflex.  Normally, one would have all fall to get used to dropping temperatures and diminished sunlight, but I’ve been languishing in 60 degrees + since July.  (June, if I recall, was frigid.)