Idle Hands, Gratitude

     As you loyal readers know, until Temple was about three and a half months old, I was nursing and barely left the house.  Isolation can make you go batty; ask anyone who has been in the hole in a maximum security prison.*  After my August dental emergency, which finally broke my spirit, I resolved to leave the house everyday and stay busy, as a means of warding off the terrors.  To that end, I now frequent Target and Whole Foods, I go to the baby gym on Tuesdays, Mom's coffee at Starbucks on Fridays, and I enrolled in a continuing education class on Spinoza at St. John's College.  Temple and I finally got into a routine.  We get up around 8am, leave the house for errands at 10am, get back by 2pm, Temple naps from 2:30pm until 4:30pm, then we go for a walk and hang out with the daddy.  During Temple's nap, instead of staring into the abyss and letting the terrors inhabit my feeble brain, I would do my Spinoza reading.  I stopped noticing the dust elephants in the corners, and the cobwebs on the ceiling.  I focused on the reading, and by the time the T-monster awoke, I was refreshed, body, mind, and soul.  

     Well, the class is over.  Actually, it isn't over, I'm just not going anymore, because I am working on Wednesday nights now, so I missed the last two classes (more on the new job below).  I really enjoyed the class, and I was disappointed to miss the last two, but the restaurant wanted me to work, and I chose to make myself available to my new employers rather than finish out an enrichment class.  I think I made the right call, but now I find myself with two idle hours in the afternoons, which, I have learned, is not good for me.  Today, I found myself with a racing heart staring at the collecting dust behind the television.  "The floor is dusty," will lead to "our house is a mess," will be followed by, "I can't clean properly," will beget, "I'm a horrible pig who can't do anything right and doesn't deserve to live," and that's a bad place to be, so I need to find a new nap-time project.  One idea is to blog, but that doesn't accomplish the goal of getting out of my head.  It might actually make it worse.  I may start reading Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" from cover to cover.  When I read about cooking, I tend to go on a spending spree at Whole Foods, but I believe this is a small price to pay for keeping the terrors away.  Plus, I consider the reading job training.

     Here's a picture of Temple with her owlie.

     So, I have a new job.  I am an assistant chef, part time, at a restaurant in Annapolis.  It is actually in Heritage Harbor, a retirement community, and it's private, so I can't invite you, my half dozen readers, to come try, but trust me that it is a very nice establishment.  We serve lots of fish and meats, and everything is from scratch.  The owners are also growing a catering company, and I hope to become an integral part of the business.  I'm actually preparing food for money, and I couldn't be happier.  I'm fulfilling a dream I've had for many years, and I am grateful as all get out.  No sarcasm here, no witty remarks, just happy.  

*New guilty pleasure: Saturday night marathons of Lockup: Raw on MSNBC.  Thank you, hungry-in-the-middle-of-the-night-Temple, for introducing me to this prison documentary show.  

Lady Lazarus

I had resigned myself to being a lapsed blog, like the ones I keep going back to in the hope of being entertained, but months and months go by, and no news (I'm talking to you, Stef).  But, out of loyalty to my ones of followers, I will attempt to make more regular postings.  

Since my last post, the fam went on our first road trip, all the way down to Lou'siana, via Memphis.  It was awesome, but I don't feel like recapping the whole trip, so trust me.

Temple has kept growing, which is a positive trend.  When we got Clementine, I expected her to grow to the size of Flags.  I wanted to have two big boned pugs warming the bed during the winter to keep our electric bills down.  Then she got to about twelve pounds, maybe a foot long, and halted.  Then she broke her stupid neck and cost us a fortune, and now she is a crabby, cynical runt who walks funny.  We still love her, but she's a dissapointment.  So, I'm glad Temple is growing.  Her head could stand to slow it down, though.  He head circumference is literally off the charts.  It is so big* we had to have a sonogram to make sure it wasn't, in fact, a melon.  It's not, it's a regular huge head, but the doctor told us to keep the dogs away so they don't get sucked into its gravitational pull.      

Also, everyone thinks she's a boy.  Sometimes it's because I dress her like a boy.  Like, yesterday, she was wearing a blue onesie, snail pants, and a brown and orange zipper cardigan.  I would have worn that outfit, but if I saw a baby of otherwise undiscernable gender wearing blue, I would also assume it was a boy.  Yesterday, we just went with it.  An old crone in the grocery remarked, "what a big healthy boy," and I said, "thank you.  He has a huge penis, too."  But, today, I dressed Temple in a purple and white striped dress that had a pink butterfly on it, and the man who served me my sausage said, "what a big boy, he's going to be a football player."  Yeah, a transvestite football player.  He'll surely be a leader on that team.  

Anyway, I need to shove more food in my face before Temple awakes from her nap.  More to come...

*Remember "yo mamma" jokes from the nineties?  "Yo mamma so fat, when she went to the movies, she sat next to everyone."  I should start "my baby" jokes.  "My baby head so big, we love her unconditionally."  Hilarious.