Fat-Bottomed Girls
Aaaand, we’re back from vacation, and y’all, it was surprisingly lovely. Really. With Adam freed from the shackles of full-time employment, he was able to help so much that despite my primary baby-wrangling responsibilities, I was able to relax during her downtime. I took long showers! I stared into space! I read my first post- baby-yet-non-baby-related BOOK*! Yes, fine, it was only ONE, whereas on pre-kid vacations I read approximately twenty, but whatever. It was seriously great, is what I’m saying.
*By the way, the book I read was The Girls, a choice I later regretted, as I threw it into my bag as an afterthought, thinking I’d NEVER have time to read. It was … well, it was middle-aged women’s fiction, is what it was. I’m shocked it hasn’t been an Oprah selection. I mean, it was good, it was well written, it was fine, but it was just one of THOSE books, you know what I’m saying? Like The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, it was TRYING to be what it was. This is possibly why I love Elizabeth Berg so much — her stories are beautifully written and though they are sometimes implausible, they are usually written about simple people and simple events. Not, you know, conjoined twins. Gah.
Anyway. Onto daily dashes, because literally nothing on my mind is remotely contiguous or related!
– The people of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, are among the most downtrodden-looking I have ever seen. Seriously, people of Carbondale? Are you beaten with sticks nightly? Is that a hairshirt you’re wearing? Do you have a celice belt underneath your pants? Yes, I REALIZE your local economy isn’t doing well, and uh, hasn’t been since the 1970s (hello, Billy Joel’s Allentown), but I left your Weis market feeling downright DEPRESSED. All of your eyes were DEAD. DEAD. Oh, Lackawanna County. You have left some people BEHIND, yo. Maybe you should reinvent yourself? Is the anthracite museum REALLY that big of a draw?
– My family’s ski-slash-lake house is easily my favorite place in the world, and I wish I could bring you all there with me. Yes, yes, it’s in Deliverance-like land (near the gleaming four-street metropolis of Forest City, PA), but oh, it’s so beautiful. Seriously, there’s nothing like falling asleep to the sound of bullfrogs and crickets. And I mean that sincerely. I can’t wait for my kid(s) to be old enough that I can take them swimming in the lake and raspberry picking on the old railroad tracks-turned-hiking trails. Even if there is no goddamn cable or WiFi. (Seriously, Dad? WHYYYYY?)
– Despite having grown up going to this house for virtually my entire life, I was downright PETRIFIED sleeping there at night this trip. To maximize sleep for everyone, and because Sam sleeps with me, Adam and I took advantage of the empty four-bedroom house and slept in separate rooms which, while seemingly unromantic, was sort of, uh, blissful. No one woke anyone up snoring, and I could spread my ass OUT next to Sam.
This is all lovely, except that I was in the room that stays cool best by having the windows open — it’s where the crib is — and y’all, I had NIGHTMARES that True Blood’s Maryann and her bacteria-laden porcine (bovine?) claws and ram-like head were going to scale the walls and COME IN AND SCRATCH ME and then RIP OUT MY HEART. I’m not kidding. I had to talk myself off of the ledge every night, and made Adam check on me during the night to make sure I wasn’t disemboweled and leaving my child motherless. I am utterly sincere about this.
– My kid slept like a champion for almost the entire vacation, which contributed greatly to the whole relaxation thing. Long stretches at night! MULTIPLE-HOUR naps, typically early to late in the morning, which gave me the ILLUSION of sleeping in, and allowed me to let my HUSBAND sleep in with zero bitterness! And then, Wednesday night, it all went to shit, with a slight rebound on Thursday, only to go to such shit again on Friday night that I started angrily Tweeting (yes, TWEETING, for some reason) my husband that he claims to be an insomniac, but WHO’S NOT UP AT 3 A.M. NOW, SUCKAH?
I maintain that it’s the worst to be lulled into complacency, only to be slammed out of nowhere with a shitty, shitty night. It’s easier when it’s your constantly sleep deprived, in a way. But to be under the illusion that rest is YOURS FOR THE TAKING, then have the rug yanked out from under you is cruelty indeed.
Also, teething, you suck.
– Pennsylvania’s food is a delight not to be missed. It is possible I feel this way because I grew up there and it is the food of my childhood, but I’m not clear how one could argue against deep-fried perogies, the judicious application of cabbage to meals that don’t necessarily NEED cabbage, although really, no one should argue with a halupki, hoagies to die for and, though true Philadelphians would argue, you can get a decent cheesesteak almost anywhere.
– Relatedly, we do not own a full-length mirror at our current home. Oddly, over the last five years or so, we’ve had them built in somewhere in our place of residence, rendering the need to own a standalone non-existent. Ergo, the first time, I shit you not, that I caught my current postpartum body in all its glory was in the reflection of the entrance to Boscov’s at the Steamtown Mall in Scranton. While on vacation. (It was raining, and we were bored.) It was … enlightening. I made a halfhearted attempt to go back on Weight Watchers a few weeks ago, but let me tell you, the size of my ass — no seriously, the SIZE of my ASS — has me going back tomorrow in earnest. Oh gluttony, I hardly knew ye. Except that I did, all too closely. Haluski (not to be confused with a halupki) for everyone!
I have many more thoughts on this, which are not all hand-wringy and “Oh I am so FAT,” but about how little I actually give a rip about these things except when it greatly inconveniences me — i.e., I would like to wear the entire closet of clothes without having to buy new ones, and also how MIXED my feelings are on the topic because I have a daughter.
But alas, I am all done and then some, and have to get my tired, sorry ass to bed, where my daughter will hopefully sleep like she did last week. The good nights, that is. THE GOOD NIGHTS. Hear me, Sam? SLEEP LIKE YOU DID ON THE GOOD NIGHTS.
Happy Monday!
*Queen
24 comments July 26th, 2009