The food-to-condiment ratio

Incidentally, when I typed the title, I first spelled it "condomint" - and then I was all, that's odd! I'm basically a 12-year old boy; how did I never realize that the word condom is in condomint?

I immediately began trying to think of clever things to say, using buns and beef and condomint...And then, uh, drat. It's condiment.

So. How do you feel about condiments? I'd never given them much thought until I felt drowned in them. Turns out, I'm fairly indifferent to most of them.

Except sometimes, when there are so many I can't cram anything else in. Then I feel some serious condiment hostility welling up.

I don't know how many condiments the average person has. But we surely have more than normal. I mean, we're not condiment hoarders. It's not like we have so many condiments that there's no room for a table and chairs. But they do occupy significant space in our fridge and cupboards.

I live with two other adults: Betty and Nick. With the exception of spices, of which she has many, my mother tends to focus on sweet things like jams, honey, syrup. She also buys mustard. Pardon us. I'm certain we have a stockpile of some Grey Poupon.

Nick, on the other hand, goes for the savories: BBQ sauce, hot sauce, dressings, Worcestershire, ketchup, pickle relish, marinades. The man has been know to put smoky Tabasco sauce on just about everything you can imagine. He also buys mustard. We have mustard a-plenty.

My mother likes Miracle Whip. Nick likes mayonnaise. Each will eat the other type in a pinch, but typically, we have to have both.

Not being a math person, I can't tell you the precise food-to-condiment ratio in our fridge. Maybe 1:3? Whatever, it's ridiculous.

Lately, however, we've all been really busy. We haven't done much shopping. And so, this weekend, when my mother, Nick, and Jordan were all gone, I decided to take advantage of the emptiest our fridge has been since we moved in.

I pulled out the shelves one by one and scrubbed them with soap and hot hot water. I dumped old food. I scoured containers.

It felt great.

I'm in the minority, I think, but I hate a full fridge. When the fridge is packed, it totally deters me from looking for anything. When it's sparsely filled, I love it.

I realize this is short-lived. They're going to get all twitchy when they realize we only have three kinds of each jam, sauce, what-have-you.

Nick is back, and Betty returns from Vermont on Friday. I know she's bringing maple syrup. Oh, and not a condiment, but rather, a staple: four pounds of cheddar. (Lucky for me, Nick has never broken up with anyone for eating too much cheese.)

Agos

I went to Tryst this morning with a friend of mine and our babies.

Random note: there were a shocking number of attractive men there today.

Anyway, as pretty much always happens when I go anywhere, India wanted to nurse. So I did. Our server gave me a dirty look, but I think she was in a bad mood or didn't particularly like us or something. Nobody else batted an eye.

And I realized that a year ago I was freshly back from Paris and heading to the doctor to see if I was still pregnant (pleasegodpleasegod...).  And I was!  And here we are!

I ordered a chaippuccino, a word that still makes me cringe whenever I say it, and which I've been ordering there since back in my single days. And I said to my friend, "You know, five years ago if you'd told me I'd be sitting here nursing my baby, I wouldn't have believed you."

Because five years ago, I hadn't yet met Nick. I was dating like a fiend, and had recently gone out with a completely critical asshole who inspired this post.

Four years ago, I wasn't yet married, but was counting down to next week.

Three years ago, I had a new baby and was completely losing my shit.

Two years ago, I was trying very hard to get pregnant. I was terrified of being too old. And I wasn't talking about it. When I finally did let it out, it was such a relief.

And here I am, a married mother of two.

Five years and a million chaipuccinos ago, I would never have believed it.

Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more! MacIndia does murder sleep!"

Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? 

Uh, no. It's an iPhone. Pretty cool, huh?

Also, if you've ever done any internet dating, is this picture not reminiscent of those in a number of men's profiles? I was always like, why, why are they taking their own picture and not smiling? It makes me think they don't have any friends. And they don't, in fact, love to laugh. No matter what their profile might say.

So anyway.

In sooth, the only difference between a zombie and me today is that I'm not out to eat anyone's brains. Well, that and I can talk and type. I don't think they can do either. Although I can't say for certain, because honestly, I avoid zombie shows. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Truly.

But if you were a zombie and you nursed your kid, would you turn your baby into a zombie, I wonder?

So my non-zombie baby, she is not happy about this sleep-training bullshit. Her cries are not, "Help me, help me!" 

Oh, no sirree, no! These cries are all, "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS? I'M AWAKE! AND I'M USED TO MUCH BETTER SERVICE THAN THIS! IN FACT, I'D LIKE TO BE ABLE TO JUST RING A BELL TO SUMMON YOU. BECAUSE WE'VE ALL SEEN DOWNTON, BITCHES! NOW GET THE HELL IN HERE!"

It pisses her off, and she is not shy with expressing her ragey rage at top volume. I must say she comes by this honestly.

With Jordan, it only took a couple nights. Not with this one. I met a friend for lunch today and she said that it had been a long, hard slog with her daughter. 

"The problem," she said, "is that she's stubborn. I think the real issue is that our girls are just like us."

Which makes me think, oh, man. I am in for it.

When I was in high school, we were at my North Dakota grandmother's for a few weeks in the summer, and I found a letter Betty had written to her mom when my brother was a baby. She said she'd thought I was a good baby, but only because I was her first. Because my brother, he was actually a good baby. He was easygoing. He slept. He was wonderful.

She had written something like: Lisa, on the other hand, never slept. Never napped. Never wanted to be put down. The minute you put her down, she opened her eyes and screamed. 

It wasn't until my brother came along that she realized how exhausting I actually was.

I read the letter out loud to her. She felt terrible about what she'd written, and being a teenager, I teased her about it mercilessly. It didn't hurt my feelings, even then. And now, now all I can do is sympathize with her.

Pretty sure we all owe our mothers big-time.

India: Month five

Dear India, my sweet, sweet girl,

Today you are five big months old. Sometimes I can't believe you've gotten so big, and sometimes when I look at pictures from even a couple months ago, I can't believe you were ever so small.

You are relentlessly smiley and happy and charming. When I nibble on your neck, which I try to do at every opportunity, you giggle. Sometimes you shriek in delight, just out of the blue. Like, wheeeee the breeze! Hello, world!

I love how you're not afraid to mix your prints. And it turns out, to my delight, that you too view animal prints as a neutral.  I also covet this shirt. I hope that I'm stylish enough that you will want to raid my closet when you're older.

Hopefully I won't have taken to wearing Mrs. Roper muumuus or something equally unfortunate. If I have, the future you needs to give me a good talking-to, okay?

Last week, at your slightly late four-month appointment, we learned you had exactly doubled your birth weight. You have these deliciously plump cheeks and chubby arms and scrumptious dimpled legs.

You've recently discovered your feet, and when I picked you up from day care the other day, you were in a new pair of socks. Because you'd gotten your socks thoroughly soaked with the chewing.

You actually quite like your stroller, but in this moment, it looked so much like prison that I had to document it. You shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die.

I love this picture of you, because it looks like you have a devil horn, which is perhaps unfair. But I'm pretty sure that you are going to have a gleefully wicked side. I'm not so much on bows on babies, but your aunt Jenny gave this to you and I couldn't resist the whole ensemble.

You are clearly delighted by your older brother, and it so clearly makes him feel good. He's proud of you. He refers to you as HIS baby. As in, "Is my baby upstairs?" "Are you going to put my baby to bed now?"

I love this age, I truly do. The smiles, the giggles, the feet, the new noises. I find it kind of exhausting, however, in that you and Jordan both NEED so much at the same time. Some nights I get you bathed and into bed and then I turn my attention to Jordan and once he's in bed I take a hot hot shower and tuck myself in, too. And we're all asleep by nine pm.

Because you, my little friend, have been a terrible sleeper. There is no reason, I have told you repeatedly, to be up four times in a night, as is your current preference.

With our pediatrician's blessing, we've started sleep training. It's going slowly and painfully, but we seem to be progressing. You fall asleep on your own fine, but when you wake up in the night YOU WANT ATTENTION! AND BOOB! NONE OF THIS BACK-PATTING BULLSHIT, YOU ASSHOLES. Is generally how it's been.

Just because I am delighted when you and your brother are both asleep, sometimes so much so that I giggle with glee and then pour myself a giant glass of wine, does not mean that I don't love you both so much more than I could ever have imagined. Because I do.

Sometimes I see you and catch my breath, I love you so immensely.

I'd just like a little more goddamn sleep.

Love love love,

Mama

Proud moments in parenting

You know how when you have a repeatedly negative situation, and you act and react the same way every time, you barely need a trigger to become irrationally enraged the next time the situation occurs?

That Vizzini, he can fuss.

I don't know how you are with parallel parking, and with helping other people park. It's not my strength.

By not my strength I mean I generally suck at it. I learned to parallel park with some ability on an episode of Car Talk. Hand to God, they helped me immensely.

Prior to that, I would just take a million guesses. People would regularly stop to help me. There were a couple instances where guys even offered to do it for me.

And yes, I let them.

So whenever Nick, love of my life, light of my days, asks me to help him parallel park, I know things are going to go straight to hell. Typically, we communicate extremely well. But not with directions. It's like we don't speak the same language. Seriously. We've had enough dreadful experiences that my stomach clenches when we pull up to a space that looks like it might be tight.

I know I've said before that he and I are quick to anger, and it is true. It takes about 1.5 seconds for him to get all ragey. Which, of course, flies all over me.

And when he is parking, and I'm directing him, I am always DOING IT WRONG. GODDAMMIT, LISA.

Seriously.

Because I am always standing in the wrong place. Or my arms are too high or too low and he can't see them. HOW IN THE WORLD WOULD HE BE ABLE TO SEE THEM FROM THERE? Or what the fuck kind of motion is that? What does that twirl of the hand even mean?

Which makes me all, I so fucking should have stabbed him in his sleep back when I had the PPD. I surely would've gotten off with temporary insanity. Especially if the judge were a woman who had given birth.

Anyway.

So when you have this kind of situation and you layer it on top of getting very little sleep because you have a wee newborn, and then you put a family of four into a car and try to park near Dupont Circle on a weekend afternoon because you have gently semi-shoved your husband into going to see your acupuncturist for his back, well, let me sum up.

After circling and circling, we saw a semi-convenient space. Nick pulled up and was all, "I'm not sure about this."

So I, knowing I should offer to  help, asked, "Would you like me to get out and help?"  While silently thinking: saynosaynosaynosayno!

My spouse, he said yes.

So I got out, and invariably had my arms too high. Or too low. I can't remember. All I know is, they were in the wrong place to be visible to him. Any imbecile would know that.

He said something I couldn't hear, being on the other side of the car and all, and behind it. Then he leaned out the window to yell, "I CAN'T SEE YOUR ARMS. PUT YOUR ARMS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM."

"I'M TRYING!!!" This statement contained as much venom as the two king cobras my brother bought from the snake-man on the corner near our house in Delhi that one time. He brought them home in a bag and put them in his bathtub because he didn't have a tank. But that's a whole nother story.

Anyway, I must've launched into a diatribe, because Nick got out and shouted, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Now, when Nick is angry, he is scary. He can get down in your face and it's like a mountain ready to avalanche all over you. I have seen him do this a couple times.

Naturally, faced with this, I responded, "NO, YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"WE'RE GOING HOME! I'M NOT GOING TO THE ACUPUNCTURIST! "

"YOU SO FUCKING ARE! AND IF YOU AREN'T, I AM. GOOD LUCK FEEDING YOUR DAUGHTER."

The vitriol, it was palpable. If it were physically possible to be angry enough to burst into flames, we both would have.

And then Nick got out of the car, walked over to me, said, "I'm sorry." And gave me a kiss.

I said, "Yeah, I'm sorry too."

And then we got everyone out of the car and walked to Dupont all fine and good.

And because we both get so angry and then so not angry so fast, this immediately left both of our minds. Weeks later, Nick got mad at Jordan, and yelled at him to stop doing something.

Jordan got upset. Nick apologized, saying, "I'm sorry. I was wrong to yell. We don't yell."

"We don't yell, Daddy."

"No, honey, we don't yell."

"And we don't say shut the fuck up, Daddy."

"Ah, no. We don't say that either."

Well, yah.