Binkytowne

A.R.T.S.A

I think I'm going to found the Anal-Retentive Toddler Society of America.

Have you ever seen a 20 month-old child so afraid of getting his hands dirty that he eats his celebratory mama birthday cupcake with a spoon?

  I didn't think so.

A.R.T.S.A

I think I'm going to found the Anal-Retentive Toddler Society of America.

Have you ever seen a 20 month-old child so afraid of getting his hands dirty that he eats his celebratory mama birthday cupcake with a spoon?

  I didn't think so.

Sweet Dreams

What do you dream about? Not in the where-do-you-picture-yourself-in-five-years kind of dream, but the kind you have right before you wake up when you are not really asleep but not yet awake either.

I dream a lot. I can always remember having dreams but with the addition of a little extra serotonin in my bloodstream something goes into high gear when I fall asleep. I dream often and in vivid detail. I have long extensive dreams that feel like I'm watching a television show and I have mini dreams when I fall asleep for a second on the couch watching boring television shows and snap out of it minutes later, having just experienced a cappucino with Tony Soprano or shopping with Heidi Klum or lunch with the clerk I always avoid at Target who seems like he's drunk all the time.

I have a friend who refuses to break up with someone. He will wait and purposefully make things so unbearable that the girl (usually a psycho girl who is smoking hot) will dump him first so he doesn't have to do it. Even after that, he refuses to let go. He will meet to talk, have the inevitable after breakup sex just to see if reconciliation seems like a good idea a week (or three weeks)later and they will stay 'friends' until he shows up somewhere with a new girl and the old one sees him and it all goes to hell.

I've never been able to do this. I've stayed with people far too long thinking I wanted to break up with them but then there would always come one day when I made up my mind and did it. Like the day I peered into a boyfriends closet looking for something I had lost and found at least 50 empty scotch bottles. True story. He was a raging alcoholic and I had no idea because he was a, ahem, closet drinker and a good liar, but that's a story for another day. I broke up with him over the phone, using one in my room while my roommate was cleaning in the living room. She unintentionally bumped the record button on the answering machine and got the whole thing on tape. I was horrified and erased it immediately. That's how much I couldn't stand to have anything to do with someone after the break up occurred. (But I can't help thinking if I had saved it and listened to it now how interesting that would be.)

I would not be 'friends' with an ex. I would not hook up after hours and pretend we hadn't just broken up, I would avoid places I knew he would be. I would not call him and drag out the process of I think you left your notebook from that one time you were working on a paper over here that's been here for six months so I think you should come and get it. I've tried to tell my friend, hanging on and being friends is not healthy. You break up with someone because you don't want to be with them anymore so STOP BEING WITH THEM. It makes perfect sense to me.          

One of my dreams lately was of an old boyfriend. He and I met when we were 18 and stayed together for five years, which was an eternity in those days. Those were tumultuous years and we lived together for one of them and lived across the country from each other for some of the others. He was a good guy but a free spirit and an artist, not at all ambitious and very needy. At 23 I saw clearly what I had tried to ignore: If we stayed together I would wind up taking care of him. The burden of creating and maintaining a life would fall squarely on me while he changed directions, (I want to live in New Orleans and do improvisational pieces, no, I want to move to Florida and live in the everglades on my friends un-cultivated plot of land using only a generator for power and hot water) every time he was struck by whimsy.

So I broke up with him. It was hard and I was sad. I essentially broke up with all my friends too since we shared so many and he got to keep them because I wanted there to be distance. It was the right thing to do and I made many more meaningful friendships and my life opened up before me one hundred fold once I had released myself from the burden that the relationship had created. 

I know why I dreamt about him. A good friend saw a good friend of his recently and with it being a heavily reflective birthday I'm sure he popped up from my subconcious. The dream was not hot and heavy, it was the opposite. It was the two of us talking. Not about anything monumental or about Us with a capital U. It was in the realm of dreams where we were hanging out and feeling good being together without waking up and feeling unfaithful or wanting it to be so in real life. It was the 23 year old me and the 23 year old him for a moment, not the 35 (shit- I'm 36) year old me reaching back in time searching for something lost.

Do you think that in the dream world we can catch up with people we used to know once in a while - without all the stuff that goes along with break ups and the moving on and the hurt feelings in the physical world. Like a long distance phone call in another realm of the universe. That there is such a thing, I don't know what to call it, that is created when two people have a connection that lives on in the brain after it leaves the heart?

Ponder that. What do you think?

Sweet Dreams

What do you dream about? Not in the where-do-you-picture-yourself-in-five-years kind of dream, but the kind you have right before you wake up when you are not really asleep but not yet awake either.

I dream a lot. I can always remember having dreams but with the addition of a little extra serotonin in my bloodstream something goes into high gear when I fall asleep. I dream often and in vivid detail. I have long extensive dreams that feel like I'm watching a television show and I have mini dreams when I fall asleep for a second on the couch watching boring television shows and snap out of it minutes later, having just experienced a cappucino with Tony Soprano or shopping with Heidi Klum or lunch with the clerk I always avoid at Target who seems like he's drunk all the time.

I have a friend who refuses to break up with someone. He will wait and purposefully make things so unbearable that the girl (usually a psycho girl who is smoking hot) will dump him first so he doesn't have to do it. Even after that, he refuses to let go. He will meet to talk, have the inevitable after breakup sex just to see if reconciliation seems like a good idea a week (or three weeks)later and they will stay 'friends' until he shows up somewhere with a new girl and the old one sees him and it all goes to hell.

I've never been able to do this. I've stayed with people far too long thinking I wanted to break up with them but then there would always come one day when I made up my mind and did it. Like the day I peered into a boyfriends closet looking for something I had lost and found at least 50 empty scotch bottles. True story. He was a raging alcoholic and I had no idea because he was a, ahem, closet drinker and a good liar, but that's a story for another day. I broke up with him over the phone, using one in my room while my roommate was cleaning in the living room. She unintentionally bumped the record button on the answering machine and got the whole thing on tape. I was horrified and erased it immediately. That's how much I couldn't stand to have anything to do with someone after the break up occurred. (But I can't help thinking if I had saved it and listened to it now how interesting that would be.)

I would not be 'friends' with an ex. I would not hook up after hours and pretend we hadn't just broken up, I would avoid places I knew he would be. I would not call him and drag out the process of I think you left your notebook from that one time you were working on a paper over here that's been here for six months so I think you should come and get it. I've tried to tell my friend, hanging on and being friends is not healthy. You break up with someone because you don't want to be with them anymore so STOP BEING WITH THEM. It makes perfect sense to me.          

One of my dreams lately was of an old boyfriend. He and I met when we were 18 and stayed together for five years, which was an eternity in those days. Those were tumultuous years and we lived together for one of them and lived across the country from each other for some of the others. He was a good guy but a free spirit and an artist, not at all ambitious and very needy. At 23 I saw clearly what I had tried to ignore: If we stayed together I would wind up taking care of him. The burden of creating and maintaining a life would fall squarely on me while he changed directions, (I want to live in New Orleans and do improvisational pieces, no, I want to move to Florida and live in the everglades on my friends un-cultivated plot of land using only a generator for power and hot water) every time he was struck by whimsy.

So I broke up with him. It was hard and I was sad. I essentially broke up with all my friends too since we shared so many and he got to keep them because I wanted there to be distance. It was the right thing to do and I made many more meaningful friendships and my life opened up before me one hundred fold once I had released myself from the burden that the relationship had created. 

I know why I dreamt about him. A good friend saw a good friend of his recently and with it being a heavily reflective birthday I'm sure he popped up from my subconcious. The dream was not hot and heavy, it was the opposite. It was the two of us talking. Not about anything monumental or about Us with a capital U. It was in the realm of dreams where we were hanging out and feeling good being together without waking up and feeling unfaithful or wanting it to be so in real life. It was the 23 year old me and the 23 year old him for a moment, not the 35 (shit- I'm 36) year old me reaching back in time searching for something lost.

Do you think that in the dream world we can catch up with people we used to know once in a while - without all the stuff that goes along with break ups and the moving on and the hurt feelings in the physical world. Like a long distance phone call in another realm of the universe. That there is such a thing, I don't know what to call it, that is created when two people have a connection that lives on in the brain after it leaves the heart?

Ponder that. What do you think?

Not over the hill but getting close

Yesterday I turned 36. I'm not happy about it. Turning 35 wasn't so bad but there is something about thirty + six that is unsettling. You tell most any 36 year old woman that age is just a number and odds are good she'll laugh in your face.

My birthday consisted of dog walking, grocery shopping, lunch fixing, vacuuming, laundry folding and much hurried orchestrating to get everyone clean dressed and to my mothers house for a birthday dinner by 4 (we arrived at 5:30). When you are the conductor of your own family, life does not revolve around you as it did in birthdays gone by. There are no elaborate parties. No asking 'what do you want to do today?' because no matter what you want to do, chances are what you will really do will very much resemble what you do every other day in your monotonous groundhog day life.

Among the gifts received: a goose egg from my brother, as in, nothing, because he didn't show (nice), a digital battery operated timer (romantic), a pumpkin painted gold with gold glitter on it (what?) and the well intended compliment from my mother "You don't look that heavy". (Made after mentioning to her that I need a new dress for an upcoming wedding because the ones I had pre-baby just don't fit the same. Being a mother herself, I thought she might understand. Apparently to her that means I've gotten fat.)

Do you think anyone would have given me a gold painted pumpkin if I were 24? Even 28? No. I don't think so. Gold painted pumpkins are gifts for middle aged women. Especially for middle aged women who must spend a good deal of time decorating their big suburban front yards because I was told I should  'Shine my spotlight on it'. Riggghhht. My spotlight. Which I don't have -and even if I did have- would not be focused on the freakish pumpkin who looks like it had a tossle with Goldmember.

My body feels 36. I've been running all summer and haven't dropped a single pound. My skin is kind of saggy and not as bright and shiny as it used to be.  I can't stay up past 9:30 unless I have a nap. The rest of me, call it spirit, soul, whatever, doesn't feel that old. My brain keeps rejecting the idea as if to say, no, you aren't really 36, that CANT BE. Yet, it is.

With the realization that I am 36 comes the observation that my mother is now 58- she's almost 60. I never imagined my mother being 60, mostly because she looks 44 (I swear she and C&C's mom must be twins separated at birth) but also because I'm realizing that she is a grandmother and my grandmother is gone and well, you know what that means and I don't like to think about that.

A kind co-worker gave me a good stroke today when he honestly guessed that I just turned 30. He then un-knowingly gave me a jab in the ribs by telling me there are three women newly pregnant in our department. Nothing brings on the should-I-have-another-baby RIGHT NOW-crazy-thoughts like a birthday, much less your thirty sixth, when you can see 40 in the distance with her hand on her hip tapping her foot, impatiently waiting for you to get there.

I don't want to be bullied into this decision and yes, women have healthy babies at 40 every day. It's not about that, what's gnawing at me is the kind of reflection that only comes at birthday/benchmark occasions that are not always productive or particularly kind to yourself. Such as wishing my life had been different and I hadn't been such a fuck up so I could have had kids in my 20's and been able to spend more time with them then if I have them at 38 because I'm not going to be here forever. It's feeling overwhelmed with finding a balance between being a mom and being the woman who was fun last week when she actually got to spend two uninterrupted days with her husband alone instead of being the crab who walks around in dirty frumpy clothes focusing her energy on all the tasks that need to be done and complaining about being tired all the time.

I loved being twenty-something, hell, twenty-anything. That's not to say I didn't have a good deal of angst about my future but it was a different kind of emotion. It was more about feeling like I didn't know what was in store for me. Fast forwarding ten to fifteen years I do know what comes next and I can't help wondering if this is it? Have I reached my pinnacle? Will I never be that skinny, that passionate, that fun again? I know what life will be like with a child or two, a steady job, a husband and responsibilities. Granted, an amazing child or two, a really good steady job that I like, a husband that I love and responsibilities that come with being lucky enough to have all of that. I really mean that. I'm very lucky and absolutely grateful but I think it's safe to say that there won't be too many surprises in my forties. I'm just saying I think law school is out of the question for me now.

I can't believe I've gotten to chapter 3.6. Really, where did those years go?

(Please. Resist the urge to play Jim Croce's Time in a bottle over and over in your head..)

Not over the hill but getting close

Yesterday I turned 36. I'm not happy about it. Turning 35 wasn't so bad but there is something about thirty + six that is unsettling. You tell most any 36 year old woman that age is just a number and odds are good she'll laugh in your face.

My birthday consisted of dog walking, grocery shopping, lunch fixing, vacuuming, laundry folding and much hurried orchestrating to get everyone clean dressed and to my mothers house for a birthday dinner by 4 (we arrived at 5:30). When you are the conductor of your own family, life does not revolve around you as it did in birthdays gone by. There are no elaborate parties. No asking 'what do you want to do today?' because no matter what you want to do, chances are what you will really do will very much resemble what you do every other day in your monotonous groundhog day life.

Among the gifts received: a goose egg from my brother, as in, nothing, because he didn't show (nice), a digital battery operated timer (romantic), a pumpkin painted gold with gold glitter on it (what?) and the well intended compliment from my mother "You don't look that heavy". (Made after mentioning to her that I need a new dress for an upcoming wedding because the ones I had pre-baby just don't fit the same. Being a mother herself, I thought she might understand. Apparently to her that means I've gotten fat.)

Do you think anyone would have given me a gold painted pumpkin if I were 24? Even 28? No. I don't think so. Gold painted pumpkins are gifts for middle aged women. Especially for middle aged women who must spend a good deal of time decorating their big suburban front yards because I was told I should  'Shine my spotlight on it'. Riggghhht. My spotlight. Which I don't have -and even if I did have- would not be focused on the freakish pumpkin who looks like it had a tossle with Goldmember.

My body feels 36. I've been running all summer and haven't dropped a single pound. My skin is kind of saggy and not as bright and shiny as it used to be.  I can't stay up past 9:30 unless I have a nap. The rest of me, call it spirit, soul, whatever, doesn't feel that old. My brain keeps rejecting the idea as if to say, no, you aren't really 36, that CANT BE. Yet, it is.

With the realization that I am 36 comes the observation that my mother is now 58- she's almost 60. I never imagined my mother being 60, mostly because she looks 44 (I swear she and C&C's mom must be twins separated at birth) but also because I'm realizing that she is a grandmother and my grandmother is gone and well, you know what that means and I don't like to think about that.

A kind co-worker gave me a good stroke today when he honestly guessed that I just turned 30. He then un-knowingly gave me a jab in the ribs by telling me there are three women newly pregnant in our department. Nothing brings on the should-I-have-another-baby RIGHT NOW-crazy-thoughts like a birthday, much less your thirty sixth, when you can see 40 in the distance with her hand on her hip tapping her foot, impatiently waiting for you to get there.

I don't want to be bullied into this decision and yes, women have healthy babies at 40 every day. It's not about that, what's gnawing at me is the kind of reflection that only comes at birthday/benchmark occasions that are not always productive or particularly kind to yourself. Such as wishing my life had been different and I hadn't been such a fuck up so I could have had kids in my 20's and been able to spend more time with them then if I have them at 38 because I'm not going to be here forever. It's feeling overwhelmed with finding a balance between being a mom and being the woman who was fun last week when she actually got to spend two uninterrupted days with her husband alone instead of being the crab who walks around in dirty frumpy clothes focusing her energy on all the tasks that need to be done and complaining about being tired all the time.

I loved being twenty-something, hell, twenty-anything. That's not to say I didn't have a good deal of angst about my future but it was a different kind of emotion. It was more about feeling like I didn't know what was in store for me. Fast forwarding ten to fifteen years I do know what comes next and I can't help wondering if this is it? Have I reached my pinnacle? Will I never be that skinny, that passionate, that fun again? I know what life will be like with a child or two, a steady job, a husband and responsibilities. Granted, an amazing child or two, a really good steady job that I like, a husband that I love and responsibilities that come with being lucky enough to have all of that. I really mean that. I'm very lucky and absolutely grateful but I think it's safe to say that there won't be too many surprises in my forties. I'm just saying I think law school is out of the question for me now.

I can't believe I've gotten to chapter 3.6. Really, where did those years go?

(Please. Resist the urge to play Jim Croce's Time in a bottle over and over in your head..)

Out to lunch

  I'm packing. (pajamas, you bet I'll be packing pjs. No nighties here. This is about sleep and as much of it as I can get.) I was thinking of packing tylenol PM but I don't want to be so tierd that I can't enjoy feeling not stressed for a milisecond.

  I won't be taking my computer (gah) since last I checked it wasn't a good idea to take those into the bathtub and even if you could it's probably not easy to type when your fingers get all pruney.

Here's some spa-tacular links. Enjoy.

http://singlemominthecity.blogspot.com/

http://www.amanda.veryzen.com/

http://blogs.iberkshires.com/BreedEmAndWeep/

PS- A parting thought: I'm feeling like I'm putting off an oh- read about me and my fabulous hair appointments and spa getaways-thing this week. Not true. Coincidence and because I bragged about how much I looooove going to get my hair done it's turned out brown (like poop brown)and totally layered. Not at all what I wanted. Good thing it grows back so I can get it just the way I like it and then totally miscommunicate what I want to my hairstylist and wind up back here again.

Out to lunch

  I'm packing. (pajamas, you bet I'll be packing pjs. No nighties here. This is about sleep and as much of it as I can get.) I was thinking of packing tylenol PM but I don't want to be so tierd that I can't enjoy feeling not stressed for a milisecond.

  I won't be taking my computer (gah) since last I checked it wasn't a good idea to take those into the bathtub and even if you could it's probably not easy to type when your fingers get all pruney.

Here's some spa-tacular links. Enjoy.

http://singlemominthecity.blogspot.com/

http://www.amanda.veryzen.com/

http://blogs.iberkshires.com/BreedEmAndWeep/

PS- A parting thought: I'm feeling like I'm putting off an oh- read about me and my fabulous hair appointments and spa getaways-thing this week. Not true. Coincidence and because I bragged about how much I looooove going to get my hair done it's turned out brown (like poop brown)and totally layered. Not at all what I wanted. Good thing it grows back so I can get it just the way I like it and then totally miscommunicate what I want to my hairstylist and wind up back here again.

S0UR milk and other problems

I was rushing around today and needed something for lunch. Seeing as how it was late and nobody wants to eat the cafeteria soup thats been sitting out since 11AM with all the good stuff picked over and pilfered by 1:45PM I opted for an emergency standby= Gravel cereal (grape nuts) with chocolate milk and a banana (don't knock it till you try it. It's delish). I grabbed a chocolate milk from the cooler and a banana that looked like it was green before it got to the case and then became half-frozen. This will be important to the story, stay with me.

I slice up my banana, dump out my gravel, pour my milk and dig in. Ewwww. Something doesn't taste right. Can cereal go bad? No, that's silly. It must be the banana. It was half frozen after all. Took another bite, avoiding the banana. No, it's not the banana. Took a whiff of the chocolate milk carton. BINGO. Fuck.

Wednesday I'm leaving for my annual husband and wife getaway. It's two days alone at a spa a couple of hours from here where there is beautiful fall foliage, we will visit the spot we got married, we will drink at a teeny vineyard that produces amazing bottles (considering where we are). We will eat out all the time and we will indulge in bath soaking in a tub that's big enough for 4 (Yep. Just got my period? Check.) Sounds nice doesn't it? Only my Nervous-Nelly tendencies are creeping up on me and are now poised for a coup complete with some slow moving tanks and a marching parade.

The in-laws live close by so we will drop the little man there while we are gone. It eases my anxiety a little to know we are only 45 minutes away from him if he needs us, but not much. I haven't left him alone since this time last year and at 10 months old, he didn't have the capability of understanding that when I walk out the door I am leaving and I think it will be too cold in his grandparents house (it always is) and he won't be able to tell them and when he wants to talk about the 30 blueberries he ate today and how he ate them all they will have no idea what he is talking about. When he wakes in the morning and calls for me will he miss me? I mean really miss me, miss crawling on my back or my touch on his head when I put him down for a nap?  The kind of missing someone that makes your heart hurt?

Leaving is an important exercise in parenting. Mom and pop need to re-connect and his grandparents need to have the opportunity to spoil him and spend enough real time with him to create memories. He needs to be around people other than us, to know a world exists outside of our little pod and he must know that it's OK to be his own person, separate from us, and that we will all find our way back together. That's what families do. I want him to know this, I just wish there was a way to show him this without my actually leaving.

His grandparent's are well qualified to watch him but they don't live near by and he changes so much in between visits. I worry that they will be able to bridge the gap and understand where he is now as opposed to six weeks ago and even then, I realize I shouldn't worry. As long as he's fed, warm (please god) and played with he will be fine. He will be better than fine, he will grow from the experience and that's my job- to provide access to loving grandparents and new things to see. Right? (That's right isn't it?)

If this were the only thing I was worried about I'd be close to working through it but this has reached such a frenzy that it is upping my sensitivities to other triggers. Last year I ate spicy Indian food the night before we left for this trip and it didn't sit well with me. I spent most of my time in the car completely green, trying not to heave. I've just had sour milk. Can you see what's going through my head right now? I'm sure you'd rather not. Saturday we went to the zoo and I found myself thinking (and gasping) what are we thinking?! We have to go away this week. He could catch anything here! Then I talked myself out of it. He could catch anything anywhere. It's fine. I still counted in my head how many toddlers I could spot licking the fence grates and scanned the crowd watching for noses pressed up against the glass so we could stand four feet away. I didn't want to. I can't help it yet I realize I can't be that mom. The mom that keeps her kid sheltered in his house so he doesn't meet any new germs. Germs are a part of life. They give you character.

Today my best friend's son has the croup. Instead of being more concerned for her son I went into hyper-drive: That means the croup is going around and the little man still has one more day of day-care before we leave and I was going to go to the grocery store after work but now maybe we should go straight home so he can't pick it up anywhere and OH MY GOD! STOP! IT!

Obviously I don't want him to be sick, and of course I don't want to be sick either. (I did Google 'drinking sour milk' to find that I could have ingested one of hundreds of bacteria which could easily lead to severe vomiting and diarrhea. Why did I Google recklessly? I can't help it.) We only do this getaway once a year and it costs enough to be sad if we have to cancel or bug out early and most of all I want a couple of days alone with my husband, just the two of us.

So I ask myself what a therapist would ask me: What is the worst thing that can happen here? Someone gets sick. The getaway is less than perfect. We leave early or stay and not feel well. We might be disappointed but we'll get through it and forget about it in a couple of days if not sooner. No lasting recourse, nothing worth this much worrying.

Life is never predictable or simple with a child. I should know this by now. I do know this, only twenty months later, I am still struggling to accept it. I'm going and he's going and everything will be fine.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

S0UR milk and other problems

I was rushing around today and needed something for lunch. Seeing as how it was late and nobody wants to eat the cafeteria soup thats been sitting out since 11AM with all the good stuff picked over and pilfered by 1:45PM I opted for an emergency standby= Gravel cereal (grape nuts) with chocolate milk and a banana (don't knock it till you try it. It's delish). I grabbed a chocolate milk from the cooler and a banana that looked like it was green before it got to the case and then became half-frozen. This will be important to the story, stay with me.

I slice up my banana, dump out my gravel, pour my milk and dig in. Ewwww. Something doesn't taste right. Can cereal go bad? No, that's silly. It must be the banana. It was half frozen after all. Took another bite, avoiding the banana. No, it's not the banana. Took a whiff of the chocolate milk carton. BINGO. Fuck.

Wednesday I'm leaving for my annual husband and wife getaway. It's two days alone at a spa a couple of hours from here where there is beautiful fall foliage, we will visit the spot we got married, we will drink at a teeny vineyard that produces amazing bottles (considering where we are). We will eat out all the time and we will indulge in bath soaking in a tub that's big enough for 4 (Yep. Just got my period? Check.) Sounds nice doesn't it? Only my Nervous-Nelly tendencies are creeping up on me and are now poised for a coup complete with some slow moving tanks and a marching parade.

The in-laws live close by so we will drop the little man there while we are gone. It eases my anxiety a little to know we are only 45 minutes away from him if he needs us, but not much. I haven't left him alone since this time last year and at 10 months old, he didn't have the capability of understanding that when I walk out the door I am leaving and I think it will be too cold in his grandparents house (it always is) and he won't be able to tell them and when he wants to talk about the 30 blueberries he ate today and how he ate them all they will have no idea what he is talking about. When he wakes in the morning and calls for me will he miss me? I mean really miss me, miss crawling on my back or my touch on his head when I put him down for a nap?  The kind of missing someone that makes your heart hurt?

Leaving is an important exercise in parenting. Mom and pop need to re-connect and his grandparents need to have the opportunity to spoil him and spend enough real time with him to create memories. He needs to be around people other than us, to know a world exists outside of our little pod and he must know that it's OK to be his own person, separate from us, and that we will all find our way back together. That's what families do. I want him to know this, I just wish there was a way to show him this without my actually leaving.

His grandparent's are well qualified to watch him but they don't live near by and he changes so much in between visits. I worry that they will be able to bridge the gap and understand where he is now as opposed to six weeks ago and even then, I realize I shouldn't worry. As long as he's fed, warm (please god) and played with he will be fine. He will be better than fine, he will grow from the experience and that's my job- to provide access to loving grandparents and new things to see. Right? (That's right isn't it?)

If this were the only thing I was worried about I'd be close to working through it but this has reached such a frenzy that it is upping my sensitivities to other triggers. Last year I ate spicy Indian food the night before we left for this trip and it didn't sit well with me. I spent most of my time in the car completely green, trying not to heave. I've just had sour milk. Can you see what's going through my head right now? I'm sure you'd rather not. Saturday we went to the zoo and I found myself thinking (and gasping) what are we thinking?! We have to go away this week. He could catch anything here! Then I talked myself out of it. He could catch anything anywhere. It's fine. I still counted in my head how many toddlers I could spot licking the fence grates and scanned the crowd watching for noses pressed up against the glass so we could stand four feet away. I didn't want to. I can't help it yet I realize I can't be that mom. The mom that keeps her kid sheltered in his house so he doesn't meet any new germs. Germs are a part of life. They give you character.

Today my best friend's son has the croup. Instead of being more concerned for her son I went into hyper-drive: That means the croup is going around and the little man still has one more day of day-care before we leave and I was going to go to the grocery store after work but now maybe we should go straight home so he can't pick it up anywhere and OH MY GOD! STOP! IT!

Obviously I don't want him to be sick, and of course I don't want to be sick either. (I did Google 'drinking sour milk' to find that I could have ingested one of hundreds of bacteria which could easily lead to severe vomiting and diarrhea. Why did I Google recklessly? I can't help it.) We only do this getaway once a year and it costs enough to be sad if we have to cancel or bug out early and most of all I want a couple of days alone with my husband, just the two of us.

So I ask myself what a therapist would ask me: What is the worst thing that can happen here? Someone gets sick. The getaway is less than perfect. We leave early or stay and not feel well. We might be disappointed but we'll get through it and forget about it in a couple of days if not sooner. No lasting recourse, nothing worth this much worrying.

Life is never predictable or simple with a child. I should know this by now. I do know this, only twenty months later, I am still struggling to accept it. I'm going and he's going and everything will be fine.

Lather, rinse, repeat.