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I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get a chance to make a proper entry yesterday since I had some funny stories to tell. But the whole neck thing was making computer use a little difficult. Also, between my two-year-old son and 49-year-old mother, someone is constantly at my heels yipping about something. Right now, however, my son is napping (for the first time in about a week and a half) and my mom is distracting herself with something in the kitchen. The boyfriend, who I think I've seen all of five minutes since Sunday evening, is at work. I'm going to try to squeeze in an entry before my mom comes up here and tries to make me do something arbitrary since she hates to see me relaxed.\
Sunday afternoon, we went out to my grandparents' house to visit with some of our cousins. Thomasina and Eric, who are my second cousins, have six kids. All boys. Ages 1-10. Yeah. Great parents, great children but I look at them sometimes and think, “What the FUCK?” They have a set of twins, Jared and Cullen, who are 9. Cullen is very inquisitive and when I say “inquisitive” I mean “nosy”. He really likes to ask questions that, at his age, are pretty cute, but if were anyone over the age of, say, 13, it would be very, very rude. A few summers ago, we were all basking in the lake at Conneaut. I had recently announced to my extended family that I had a bun in the oven. Cullen, at that point already entirely steeped in Catholic education, was confused, since he knew that the boyfriend and I were not married. He looked at me and asked, “How can you have a baby if you're not married?” I blushed and told him to ask his parents. He and his twin brother were also constantly amazed at how someone of my advanced age would still be in school. Granted, I started college late and it took me an extra year due to my royal fuck-up in College Algebra and that whole baby thing and, at times, it did seem as though I had been in college for decades, but still…\
Every time I saw Cullen, he would ask me, “Are you still in school?” Now that I've finally graduated college he has focused all of his energy on my marriage, or lack thereof. I'm guessing that he just really wants to be in a wedding or an excuse to wear a tuxedo and dance to ABBA at a reception while all of the grownups are acting stupid. His only immediate hope for a wedding is me. It's amazing that, of all the traditional people in my family, the most marriage pressure I'm getting is from my 9-year-old cousin. Anyway, within five minutes of walking in the door, Cullen looked at me and said, “Did you and the boyfriend get married yet?” apparently terrified that we would go and get married on the sly and use some other little boy for ringbearer or whatever short boys do in weddings. I told him no, but that he would be the first to know.* The boyfriend told him “by the time you're 18,” (ooh! looks like we have a date! ;-p) and that seemed to quell his fears.\
Later on in the afternoon, as the baby and I were playing, Cullen looked at me with his eyebrows furrowed and asked, “Did you breastfeed the baby?” I was a little stunned, but stammered, “Um, yes.” He nodded and said that that was “good.” I was happy to have his approval…I guess.\
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Yesterday, not too much was accomplished, and the neck pain had me in a pretty foul mood for most of the day. I did manage to drag myself down to CMU to fill out my citizenship form and W-4 (ugh). I did receive a visit from
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Today I had a few errands to run, namely exchanging some bras that my mother gave me for Christmas. She underestimated my cuppage and overestimated by bandwidth(?). In any case, my tits looks very nice now. The cashier tried to convince me to buy the accompanying “panties” which were of the itsy-bitsy thong variety. I don't think I did a good job of hiding my horror. Nothing against you thong-enthusiasts, but I just don't get it. Grocery shopping was also needed. After the lingerie exchange, I dashed into Bruegger's to grab some lunch for me, my mom and the baby. I got some of that Oregon Chai stuff, which was tasty while it was warm but by the time we got to Giant Eagle it had cooled off considerably and was no longer drinkable in my opinion. However, Giant Eagle doesn't seem to provide garbage cans for its customers, so I walked through that entire store with a cup of cold chai.\
At the beginning of our shopping excursion, I had dropped off my prescription for baby repellant. While my mom headed for the checkout aisle, I sauntered over to the pharmacy with the baby, thinking he needed to stretch his legs after being trapped in the shopping cart's basket for at least an hour. When we got to the pharmacy we were greeted with a line that rivalled the bread lines of yesteryear. I was shocked, but filed into place next to a cosmetics display. As we waited, the baby became restless. An elderly woman in front of us tried to talk to him but he got shy and requested that I pick him up. Still holding the cold chai, I set it down on the cosmetics display for a second so that I could scoop him up. Wouldn't you know that a rather portly elderly man tried to squeeze past to get into the drug line and knocked the chai off of the display. He, being a gentleman, exclaimed, “What in the hell was that?” I was embarrassed and didn't admit to the beverage being mine, but did grab the cup and put it back on the display. There was, however, a few small puddles of chai on the floor, and I did not know what to do about them. I didn't have any tissues or anything on me and if I left to go alert the staff to the spill I'd lose my place in line. So I just turned around and continued waiting. Then, of course, droves of elderly people with very brittle-looking hips and feeble tickers started heading for the drug line and I watched them walk past the spill and managed to avoid it. I was sure one of them was going to fall but they didn't.\
That disaster averted and baby repellant in hand, we left. I wanted to stop in a bookstore but I figured that the baby had had enough. Hopefully, the boyfriend will be able to take me to run some errands this week before I START MY NEW JOB ON MONDAY! EEEKKK!\
I'm starting to get kind of nervous now and I'm already missing the baby a little bit. The other night I had a nightmare that I was at my first day and my boss said, “Of course, you will be responsible for the laundry of the entire English Department.” *shudder*\
I'm going to go see what I can rustle up for dinner.\
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*Funnily enough, I was 9 when his parents were married and was dying to be a flower girl. When Thomasina actually called me with the formal offer, I was speechless.
