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Quality Time with My Baby

We were lying on my bed, my little guy and I.  His hair was still damp from his bath and smelling like kids' shampoo.  Strawberry scent is unisex when you're five. I am tired.  I've had a long day.  Getting up to work at 6am on a Saturday for a shift that lasts twelve hours or more is no fun.  He and Evie had been playing restaurant a little earlier.  He'd wanted chocolate but she'd "elimimated" his order for one reason or another which caused him to run into my room to be cuddled and comforted.

I asked him while he was still teary eyed if he would like a chocolate ice cream.

"Uh huh," he whispers, nodding sadly.

I traced the shape of a cone and ice cream in the air and plucked it down for him.  "Here you go, it looks yummy."

He glanced at my face for a moment and then said, "Mmmm!"   After a few playful licks I mushed the imaginary cone into his nose.

"Oh no! Mommy got it all over you!" I teased and he laughed his infectious laugh; the one that deepens his dimples and shapes his eyes like mini rainbows.

"My turn," he giggled and poked the air to trace me my own ice cream cone which he proceeded to smash all over my face and cleaned up with his little kisses.  He then drew lollipops in different flavors.  His was chocolate and mine was cherry.  For dessert, we imagined broccoli with tops as fluffy as cotton candy and suddenly we really were hungry.

A few more cuddles and kisses and he went to play dress up with Evie using their old Korean clothes while I cooked some real seafood udon for dinner.  It was quite tasty but not nearly as magical as the lollipops and ice cream.  I'll have to make a date with him at Evie's restaurant so that we can have that meal again.

Facebook Killed the Blogger

I think my absence from this site can in some ways be attributed to my Facebook account.  Over the last few years as my poor blog's been collecting dust, I've been posting almost daily statuses and pictures there.  My friends, siblings, cousins, even in-laws are able to come and see what Evie and JT are up to and it just makes it so much easier to interact.  I can post one thing and everyone in my family can see it at once.  Alas, today, Facebook is down and now I must blog my daily nothing and I'm thinking how truly lonely it is to have to interact with the people I love this way.  But I can't really go back, or at least, I don't think I can.

I've sort of grown addicted and used to the "like" button; that little thing that means absolutely nothing really.  It could be the most inane thing in all the world, but if someone pressed "like" I see it and I feel like I made a connection somehow which translated into someone moving their hand, touching their mouse (or phone or whatever) and clicking "like".   And oh god, now I sound like an attention whore....which, might be true?

Hurry and come back up Facebook!  I want to post how [honglien123] "is bored"  or [honglien123] "would tell everyone how Douglas Adams made 42 the best number in the goddamn universe when she turns 42...in 10 years or so"  or how [honglien123] "was forced to BLOG because FB was down and the post made no sense whatsoever because she is SO out of practice. OMG the horror!"

300

Somehow I am on my three hundredth blog post. Not all of them have been published on this blog mind you or completely finished for that matter. It is just that there are 300 entries when I click "edit posts". It's incredible that someone so self conscious and relatively innocuous could have had so much to say. I've been reading a few of my old posts now and then, wondering when I will get back to this blog which I've forgotten and abused for so long. I keep telling myself that tomorrow, I will write all that I've meant to write or at least have an update post so that what readers are still left out there will know what's happened. More importantly, have a post that I can look back on to remember where I was, where I am, in the here and now.
Could this be it? The post that explains in so many words where we all are today? Maybe:

JT has started kindergarten. He is five years and four months old. When I started this blog, he was my chubby 14 month old baby. Time has not just flown, it's warped to the future. Evie is now in fourth grade, she was starting kindergarten yesterday because LOOK, I wrote about it not so long ago. Tomorrow I will write that she has started college.

I am no longer in school. It was much too difficult to breath in as a law student while breathing out as a full time worker and then try to fit in motherhood and marriage in the moments when I could hold breath. I am disappointed, but law school will still be there when I and my family are ready. It may be far in the future or not there at all, but I am at peace with this. Ambition cost myself and my family too dearly. I love them too much to sacrifice this precious time because tomorrow, I will write that JT has grown up and started his own life.

I've gotten a promotion at work. I've been working some long shifts and now make more than twice my husband's salary. This is normally not an issue with us, however, the greater the disparity, the more bitterness I have that he must work just as hard for half as much or I work not as hard and make twice as much. But, I love him too much and try to hold my tongue when the children and I are waiting for him while our dinner grows cold. Because tomorrow, I'll need a hand to hold.

Metaphors

The ice in my glass of water has melted. There's nothing floating in there. What was solid is gone; dissipated into the ether. I'm trying to search for a proper metaphor to explain what's happened to my life over the last few months but I can't think of anything but the melted ice. Once it was there and then it melted away. True, it's just become a part of something bigger; but then it's lost that unique little bit that made it so different from the rest of the H2O molecule collection. I suppose that's how it always goes. You've got to lose a little to gain a lot. You've got to make yourself fit in if you want to blend in.

What am I thinking, this is a terrible metaphor for my life. I'm not blending in. How can an insecure, thirty something, mom blend in as a student anywhere? How can a literature major really ever blend into a profession full of techies? If anything I'm like fly in a bowl of soup; drowning in an explosion of familiar yet heady flavors. And that's how I'm feeling now. Drowning and losing myself in school, work, motherhood, life.

Thankfully, some flies can wade themselves out and you can make ice all over again. All it takes is effort and motivation to stay above what's bogging you down. Now where can I find a metaphor that'll help me get some of that? Even an analogy would do...

*****
I need to write less about my life right now. I think that's the problem. I sound like I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown! That's quite boring and melodramatic, don't you think?