This SAHM (that's stay-at-home-Mom, for all you guys who don't frequent parenting message boards, which I suspect is all of you) gig is hard! I really do feel sorry for the people who come to visit me, being already predisposed to verbosity, I become a veritable word explosion! I actually apologized to my friend Eilis when she visited on Friday, as the look of sheer horror and surprise on her face made it necessary. I do not understand how people did this sort of thing before the Internet. Real people are hard to find on a work week, because they are working. You can try to get with other Moms, but with small babies that proves daunting and difficult, and once you get together you just manage babies the whole time and lose whole chunks of conversation anyway. Then it's a choice every time, do I want to leave the house and risk the chance of a major meltdown later (x2), or will not leaving the house result in a Mommy meltdown that can only be solved with tears and wine? I am a social person, bouts of hermit crabbiness aside, I love people. I love to gossip and gab, to whisper and quietly judge, to laugh and gasp in shock. I love my society. Thank you, Harvard drop-out for creating Facebook. Whatever questionable effect it is having on the way we relate to each other aside, it has saved my brain daily since I started the best job I have ever had. Even though my beautiful children satisfy so many of my daily needs- laughter, awe, challenging my problem solving skills, and sweet kisses and baby soft hands touching my face- they do not provide the intelligent discourse I crave. Talking back to NPR doesn't count as they, I understand now, can't hear me. So everyday I choose, if no one has signed up to come visit with us ( mental note: must bake more to coerce people to journey out, it seems like the promise of baby's smiles would be enough, alas it is not), to either have a easy day with well-rested, calm babies; or to lay eyes on an adult within the 13 hours Randall works.
Well, choosing isn't that hard happy babies win every time.
