Tina’s ProcrastiNation Palace

This whole mom thing is weird. I can’t quite believe that’s what I am. Please, I’m still not over the whole pregnancy thing. Really? Human beings are born out of other human bodies? You would think by now someone would have come up with a way to make babies in a green house. Why do kangaroos get pockets but we don’t?The public aspect of pregnancy was weird. Coworkers I never said hello to would come up, let their hands rest on my belly, and ask personal questions. I hated how this profound, personal change in my life was made so explicitly obvious by the way it took over my body. On the day I went into labor, I saw Steve Buscemi. He was hiding his face, because you know, he’s famous and it must be incredibly distracting to be regularly recognized. But I was like “Dude, Steve Buscemi, I hide my face to YOU, man! I’m in freaking labor so don’t look at me!”

As for the mom thing, that’s a whole other dimension beyond my comprehension. Some friends with children say “I can’t remember a time when [insert child’s name] wasn’t here. I can’t remember life before them.” Uh, I remember my pre-Baby life all too well. For so long, I kept waiting for things to revert to “normal.”

I see when people meet me for the first time how they immediately dismiss me into the “Mom Bucket.” Literally, a light goes out from their eyes. It makes me want to grab them by the cuff of their tattered rock t-shirt and say “Look dude, I was cool! I was in a band!” (I was never in a band, but you know what I mean.) The other reaction I get is complete and utter acceptance. Now, married with a child, I fit into a recognizable demographic, and as a lifetime member of the misfits, I find this unsettling.

So this baby — he’s like an irrevocable life alteration, huh. Don’t worry. I’m not returning Baby or changing my mind. Je non regrette nien. The jokes he has inspired alone are worth having him around, as well as his giggles, Michelin Man body, stomach crunches, and dinosaur noises. If Husband and I did not have Baby, I would have carried the bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth till I died. (Sorry to sound so dramatic, but that is how I feel.)

But with any change, even one as welcome as Baby Is Magic, there is a lot to get used to. For example, it’s no longer Husband and Wife, but Husband and Wife and Baby — so our attention, affection, and devotion gets split three ways instead of two (or mostly, just one — Baby gets all). I have to make room in my thoughts, heart, apartment, relationships with other people including Husband, and time for Baby.

I think one of the hard thingsto get used to is I have lost my mind. I really miss having my mind. Because of Dad’s Mind Cancer, I have been cognizant that I am able to navigate complicated, tedious, dry contracts or map out a short story that represents my life p.o.v. and just appreciate it. No longer, dude. Now I am continually leaving things behind, losing track of receipts right in front of me. Sleep deprivation, hormonal sea changes — it all contributes to Mind Cloud. I am in the midst of a fourth revision of a novel and have no idea how I’m going to get it done when I think like that guy in Memento.

Today, I was thinking how becoming a mom is like reincarnation, or what I think reincarnation might be like. You’re in your new life, but you carry this memory residue of the past. The thing is it’s not very useful to keep holding onto the vestiges of your old life. So here it is — I am going to let it go. I am going to forget the life that was there before Baby, so I can be more fully here in Mind Cloud Land.

Here are the Mom olympics skills I’ve recently had to practice:

1) Baby nail cutting!

2) Rectal temperature taking (sorry to be so explicit)!

3) Booger extraction via bulb syringe!

4) Changing a number two diaper on my lap, in the back of a car!

Guess which is my least favorite?

Husband and I, thanks to my folks, actually get to see more movies than most new parents. Inception was weird and cool, and I enjoyed, but it’s long. I liked the mix of special effects and acting effects — there were some computer generating thing-a-ma-bobs, but the extras contributed to the creep factor by breaking conversations and staring at Leonardo DiCaprio at the same time. There’s a fight scene that’s very Matrix/Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling.” About halfway through, I looked at my watch and said “This is not worth being away from the baby.” However, that is an impossible standard to measure a film by. Whatevs. I like calling anything remotely weird as Inception. Like “That is so Inception,” “so totally Inception,” or just “Inception.” In the movie, the characters adopt totems to help root their mind in seeing the difference between reality and dream state. After the lights went up, I told Husband my totem would be the used aluminum foil he used to sneak in his veggie burger into the movie. I am so Inception.

Anyway, it’s good, it’s entertaining.

So Husband has never met a sport he didn’t like. He watches it all — the World Cup, the World series, the NBA play-offs, and that football thing that happens at the end of of the season…what’s it called? Oh yeah, the Superbowl. He even watched that winter Olympic sport where one person pushes a gigantic puck and two others scrape a path in front of it with like chimney sweep brooms. (I’m sure there’s like a one-word name for that sport, but I’m sure I never knew it.) The only sport that I’ve ever gotten sucked into is tennis, and that’s only recently. I played tennis in high school (not well. I would run for shots screaming the s-word, only stopping once I got to the other side of the court and missed. Whenever I won a game, it was the result of pure accident, an event I could never recreate at will), so I actually understand the rules — all this helped me get interested in the sports memoirOpen by Andre Agassi.

I don’t know how this book is so well written — there is no co-writer listed on the jacket. If it’s the case that Agassi is both gifted at tennis and writing, I have only one thing to say: SCREW YOU ANDRE AGASSI! NO FAIR. Yeah, got no good sportsmanship. It’s not just that the book has a winning voice in its prose; the author also chose just the right anecdotes to convey certain periods of Agassi’s life. Who has that kind of perspective on their own story? It’s totally dishy — he talks about his dates with Brooke Shields and walking out on her Friends taping because she licked Joey Tribiani’s hands, he talks about how boring and cheap Pete Sampras is in real life, and he reveals his insane dad who gave him speed at age 9 so that he’d win his kid matches. What the what. He also talks about how embarrassed he was about going bald and wore a hair piece, and he lost one final match because he kept worry about whether his sweat would make his hair piece fly off. (Jees, can you imagine playing with that kind of distraction? Ay caramba.) But what I’m most impressed with his how he captures his ambiguous feelings about his calling — he repeatedly says “I love tennis. I hate tennis. I can’t stop playing tennis,” which pretty much sums up how I feel about…a kabillion things.

I ate the whole thing up. What’s funny is how inspirational these books can be. When I read about how he has to get a cortisone shot in his spine in order to stand up, so he can go battle a match, it makes me go, “You know what? I can wake up at 7 a.m. and get on that rush hour subway ride!” You know what I mean.

There, I wrote an entire blog post on sports. That’s a first.

In the movie version of Open, they should have Colin Ferrell play Agassi, and like Kristy McNichol, circa 1982 play Steffi Graf. Thank you.

So having this wonderful baby (because truly, he does rule) has given me ample opportunity to examine how I deal with stress. Seems that the answer is not so well. In part, I seem to snap more easily, possibly because of sleep deprivation, hormonal sea changes, and the fact that I feel like I’m overseeing a NASA shuttle launch every freaking day. The piles of housework literally feel like piles weighing on my mind. Oh boy. So here are the techniques I’m using. Feel free to post what you do to cope and I will try it. Stress is no fun.

1) Listening to cousin Ed’s snow day mix
2) Not calling my mother (love her, but she’s actually talented at winding me up)
3) Making sure I’m breathing
4) Taking a walk
5) Letting my subpar standards go even lower, like subterranean low
6) Reading Oprah.com
7) Thinking about what Mia Michaels would do (So You Think You Can Dance judge who thanks everyone for sharing their gift.)
Saying “Ay Caramba.”
9) Sighing
10) Snacking
11) Blogging (for reals)
Thank you.

The other day, my friend Nancy asked if Baby had passed any interesting milestones lately, I didn’t have anything good to say. I mean, he burps and drools and grabs things. He looks like an earnest physical therapy patient. I told Husband my feelings of inadequacy over Baby’s achievement, and he said “Well, last week, he did write a scathing review of The Stranger.”

I couldn’t stop laughing because that joke was custom-made for me.

And today, just today, Baby did hit another milestone — apparently, he rolled over today in day care! (I’ll believe it when I see it…but I guess that would mean making room at home for an actual crib instead of just a bassinet. Um…)

I don’t know a whole lot about Roman Polanski. He made some critically acclaimed films, he suffered some tragedy (eg, his wife Sharon Tate was part of the grisly Charles Manson murders aka Helter Skelter), and he drugged and rapped a 13-year-old girl, for which he never stood trial. Right now, he is under house arrest in what looks like an amazing Swiss chateau mansion (see pic). That about sums what I know.

Just to state the obvious, I don’t approve of rape, and I don’t care if some people interpret a precocious 13-year-old as “asking for it.” That’s BS. Despite this, for some reason, when I heard Polanski is not going to get extradited, I felt relief. Is that not bizarre? The crime really does sicken me, and yet, I’m so ticked off at Polanski. Is it because I believe in a statute of limitations? Not really, I mean, I’m down with bringing in Nazis, even if they’re 90-year-old grandpas now, but for some reason, in this story, curiously, he is the character I identify with. I have no idea why. There’s something about the notion of a crime being committed an eon ago that comes back to haunt you that I relate to.

Whatever, Lebron.

I read the phrase “totes ridic” today in an online article, and assuming that I didn’t understand “ridic” due to my weak vocabulary, I looked it up in the dictionary. Sadly, “totes ridic” is a shortened and slang version of “totally ridiculous,” originated by Paris Hilton. Ay caramba.

Today, after bringing the baby to day care for his transition week. I’m set to go to the doctor. I’m bringing my dad to hold the baby, while I go get checked out. And although we’re in the middle of a fantastic city, there’s something about my today list that makes me feel like Indiana Jones chopping down a path in the jungle with a machete. It’s a 101 degrees out, the elevator to my building is out of order, and the lights in the stairwell are out, so it’s pitch black. Yeah! This makes me concerned about Dad, since he has trouble with depth perception, particularly going down, and can’t see out of one eye. We got up okay to eat lunch, but going down is another adventure. I’m about to pack a flash light, but Dad said “Don’t bother. I’m pretty blind anyway,” which made me laugh.

Day care seems awesome. The three ladies in the infant room are pretty on it. While I was there, one of them entertained FIVE BABIES AT THE SAME TIME. Skills, people. They have bubbles and family photos on the walls and floor, and all that jazz. Baby will be in good hands. It’s the rest of us who need counseling in order to let Baby go.

Um, so I don’t always have time to cut Baby’s nails and he likes to rub his head and face to settle into sleep, which makes him look like he got in a fight with a cat. Our Baby was the only one with a scratched up head in day care.