With the sunshine comes some rain...

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The beautiful this week: our new home with all its space for play and movement and breathing and unpacking.  Our belongings are no longer busting the seams of all our furniture and every available surface.

The tough: we are skating on thin financial ice.  I'm still on partial pay.  (Nearly half of my paycheck is going to my company to pay for my benefits during my maternight leave since those don't come out of disability pay.  And my disability pay was only 66% pay, so it's been five months since I've had a full paycheck and it's getting very, very difficult to manage - and we still have a month of this partial pay to go.)  We are seriously penny pinching, and by that I mean we are squeezing pennies to see if they'll create new pennies.  No luck so far.

But then there's the big rain on this sunshiney but broke parade: my car.  Last night I stopped at a convenience store to pick up some beverages before meeting up with the hubby and Nate at my in-laws for dinner (When You're Broke Tip: say yes when your in-laws offer dinner).  Upon getting back in the car with my beverages, the car wouldn't start.  It did this a few weekends ago and has been a bit hesitant since, but we couldn't afford to get it looked at (even though the check engine light has been on for weeks, at least).

Thankfully, I recently renewed our AAA membership, so after having the hubby come pick me up and eating some dinner, I borrowed my sister-in-law's car and headed back to my car and called AAA.  No problem, they'll be out right away.

After a few minutes, I decide to get my documents ready and realize... I don't have my current insurance card.  The one in my car expired in June.  CRAP.  My insurance is current (and paid in full, actually), so I call AAA and ask what to do.  They cancel my service call and say my only option is to pay full price for the tow.

W. T. F.

So with the service call cancelled, I drive my sister-in-law's car over to my parents' house (less than a mile away), print out a temporary card from the insurance company's website, call AAA back, reschedule the tow, and head back to my car.

Thirty minutes later, a very nice tow truck driver arrives . . . AND DOESN'T EVEN CHECK MY INSURANCE INFORMATION.

O. M. F. G.  Gah.

But so he tows my car to my mechanic (after having me sit in it while he raised it up onto the tow bed because "the chains aren't the best and sometimes they slip; so if you feel them start to slip, slam on your brakes" . . . ooookie dokie).  I leave a note and my car key for the mechanic, who will look at my car sometime today and let me know what the deal is - what's wrong, the cost, the timing, and so on.

Sigh.

As I sat there waiting for the tow truck, I thought about balance.  Is it always that when things seem so good that something bad has to happen to balance it out?  Or does the bad happen because I always wait for it to happen?  I spent a lot of energy yesterday worrying about our current financial situation; it's tighter and tougher than it's been since our wedding - and I just kept thinking, "Just one financial problem could be a total disaster for us right now."  And here we are.  Probable disaster.

So I'm turning my energy around.  I will try to focus on this all turning out okay since it always has in the past.  Somehow, we always make it through.  My beautiful sister-in-law is letting me borrow her car to get to work today and tomorrow.  My dad said I can borrow his car after that.  My mom offered to buy us some groceries and my mother-in-law sent us home with a tray of chicken parmesan and some pasta fagioli.

We don't really want for what we need.  We have love and support.  We can't deposit it into the bank but it goes a long way toward filling our emotional banks.

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Home is where the heart has room

What's too much to ask?  For an apartment, that is...

home is where the heart is, I know... but I want more...
source

I want to move.  Actually, I believe we need to move.  Our current apartment is cramped.  Nate's swing takes up 3/4 of a doorway.  Every wall is crammed with furniture or books or something.  Nate doesn't even have a room to himself: his closet is crammed with some of our stuff and there's a huge shelf in his room holding the hubby's computer and our printer.

Plenty of people live in cramped quarters and manage.  But the problem I'm having is that I believe Nate's going to need room to crawl and explore and right now, that's not something we can offer him.  We can barely fit his activity mat in our living room.  Our bedroom basically has nearly no floor space.  The center of his room is a bit of open space, but we can't spend all of our time in his room.  That's really not exploration. 

So we've been looking for apartments.  We can't afford to buy a house (no savings) and we can't easily afford the type of place I'd love to rent.

For example, my current favorite Craigslist post is a single family home with five bedrooms, two and a half baths, a living room and family room (play room!) and fenced backyard.  I.e. Everything we want.  But it's $2200 a month which, while a huge bargain for this area, is significantly more than we can afford.

This is when living in north Jersey sucks.  You can rent single bedroom apartments for $1500 if they're in the right town, apartments that in other states would probably be $800.  Here you have apartments with fenced-in yards that then don't allow dogs, which seems really unfair.  (I understand why people don't want to rent to people with dogs, but it sucks when you have the dogs.)

So, Dear Universe, here are my apartment must-haves:

• It has to be in the town my parents and sister live in (the town I grew up in, because it has better schools than any of the surrounding towns and I don't want to move again before Nate starts school)
• Two, preferably three, bedrooms (because we do plan on another kid some day and, again, I don't want to have to think about moving again for a while)
• Laundry on site (I'm tired of trekking our laundry to my parents' house once a week)
• Spacious rooms (see: room for Nate to crawl and eventually walk around)
• Dogs allowed
• Can't be more than $400-$500/mth higher than what we pay now
• Residential street (don't want to have to worry about Nate or the dogs running out the door onto a busy street)

Then, past the must-haves, are the wishlist items:

• A fourth bedroom or spare room so that we can have an office and still have another bedroom for another child
• Off-street parking: we are sick and tired of dealing with our neighbors parking in front of our home (when they have driveways and we don't!) and worrying about alternate side parking
• A basement or attic for storage (we have a lot of stuff to store)
• First floor (so I don't have to worry about Nate or the dogs bothering a downstairs neighbor)
• One and a half or two bathrooms (I dream of not having to wait for the bathroom if it's occupied)
• Fenced-in yard

This is why when you're my age, you're supposed to have saved a lot of money and have really great credit so you can buy a home.  But that's not what I or the hubby have done, and so here we are, scooting around a baby swing to get from the living room to the hallway and checking Craigslist and the local multiple listing service daily for any great rental deals.  We can stay in this apartment as long as we like, so it's not like we have to rush and settle on an apartment that's only almost good enough, but I just hope there is an apartment out there that truly is good enough and I'm not just holding out for something that doesn't exist.

The Mommy Brain: they don't explain

As my pregnancy progressed, I got progressively more forgetful.  I was told and read that this is because the baby is taking all of your energy and/or you're so preoccupied with the baby that everything else seems less important.  (For what it's worth, I think it's both.)  What I was also continually told, though, was that it got worse once the baby was born.

Now, I took this to mean that my memory would get worse - that I would get more forgetful.  But, no, this is not what they mean by mommy brain.  No one actually tells you what the truth behind mommy brain is.  But I'm a good friend like that so I'm going to share.

Mommy brain is the complete inability to focus on anything 100%.  I feel as though never again will I be able to focus on something without Nate being somewhere on my mind.  If he's near me, I have one eye and one ear on him at all times (unfortunately for my conversation partners).  If for some reason he's not near me (I went out and left him home with the hubby), my mind is half on him the entire time I'm out and I probably have my phone in my hand just in case the hubby texts or calls with a question or emergency.

I am no longer ever fully in the moment except, of course, when I'm entirely focused on Nate, like when I'm holding him and we're "talking" (I talk to him and he coos and oohs and ahhs back - he's quite the conversationalist!).  In those moments, I'm 100% in the moment with Nate.  But beyond that, he's always got half of me.

We were attached and so I truly feel like he's a part of me that has been separated from my being.  A year ago, I would have thought that statement was utterly ridiculous and completely over-emotional.  Now?  I think it every day.  Every time I change his diaper and look at his belly button and tell him that's where he and mommy were connected, tears come to my eyes. 

(I really need to cut this out because 1 - I don't want his subconscious baby memories of me to be me always crying and 2 - if I keep telling him this, he's going to ask sooner than later where babies come from, which I won't be ready to discuss for another, oh, gazillion years.  Well, okay, maybe a little less than a gazillion.)

Two weeks from today I'm attending the BlogHer '10 conference.  (Yes, lil ol' me with my tiny little blog is going to BlogHer.  What can I say - it's 10 miles from my house and I was able to pay the student rate to go.  How could I not resist?  And then I won a guest ticket so Danielle of Delightfully Sweet could also go!)

The first day of the conference, there's a BlogHer Newbie Breakfast at 8am, which means getting on a bus to NYC by at least 7am.  Then there are sessions all day long, books and swag to investigate, and the Keynote, which ends at 6pm.  Then there's a reception, which may be interesting.  But basically, I'm going to be away from Nate for over 12 hours.

I haven't done that yet.  In fact, I haven't been away for more than three hours, I believe (three hours I spent running errands and grocery shopping).  And the hubby is working from 10:30am to 9pm that day, so my best friend, favorite photog, and Nate's soon-to-be godmother, Kate, will be babysitting for Nate.  I have zero worries about leaving Nate in Kate's more than capable hands.  In fact, it's Kate who taught me everything I ever learned about babysitting, so Nate probably owes quite a lot of his care to the things Kate helped me learn 15+ years ago.

Kate's not the issue.  My mommy brain is.  I want to LOVE BlogHer.  I want to have the BEST time.  I need the break.  I want to be completely in the moment.  But I know I won't be able to, so now I have to figure out how to live in the balance, how to live in two minds at once.

photo by Kate

I've been struggling lately with reconciling my new life with my old life.  It's hard to handle not being able to do certain things (like a spur of the moment bookstore run - or a spur of the moment anything, for that matter).  It's hard to know you'll probably never sleep in again for years.  It's hard to want a break SO badly but then spend the entire break worrying something is going wrong with the little one you want the break from.  I feel like a broken puzzle.

But parents have been managing this for as long as time has marched on, so I know I'll get the hang of it somehow, some day.  Back when I was 16, my driving instructor took me on the highway during my first driving lesson.  It was scary, but not unlike ripping a bandage off quickly.  Once it's done, it's done.

So the BlogHer conference is my highway, my bandage.  And I'm going to grit my teeth, smile, and just go for it.

A first outing for the record books

A week ago today I decided that it was time for Nate and I to make our first team excursion.  I'd driven him to my parents' house before, but that doesn't count since 1 - they live a mile away and 2 - my parents are there when I get there, duh.  It's extremely low risk.

But last Wednesday we were running low on formula.  We recently switched Nate from a brand name to the Babies R Us generic (our pediatrician said this was okay and it's great because we're saving tons of money - nearly 50%) so I wanted to go specifically to Babies R Us.  And of all the places to go with him, that feels second best to my parents' house because if I happen to forget something or run out of formula or diapers on the road for some reason, I'm at Babies R Us! I can just buy some!

What I didn't count on, though, was rain.  Not just rain.  Showers.  Torrential downpour.

I get Nate and I in the car.  He's dry because I draped a receiving blanket over his car seat carrier.  I'm wet because how was I going to hold an umbrella plus his carrier, the diaper bag, and my purse?  But we're in the car and we're going.

It's raining hard and getting harder as we go along.  As the rain begins to beat harder and harder, so does my heart.  Did I make a huge mistake?  As my car starts stuttering and acting up, my mind starts racing: what do I do if I get stuck?  It's one thing to be stuck by myself, even in a downpour.  But with a baby?  Am I a terrible mother for even attempting this outing?  Or am I being stupid?

About halfway there, after passing through two flooded sections of the highway and more car stuttering, I start tearing up.  I should have waited or just spent more for the name brand formula at the supermarket.  I felt stupid - and considered turning around a dozen times.

But we were out, so we stayed out.  We get to Babies R Us and it's raining hard.  I secure the blanket over him again and hustle into the store.  By the time we get in, I'm pretty soaked and Nate looks completely confused.  He makes a great confused/somewhat angry face:

At brunch on Sunday... and clearly displeased about not getting any pancakes.

But we're inside.  I load up with two cans of formula, a cute pair of sneakers for Nate, and a few other odds and ends.  We get to the register and I'm thinking about what route I should take home if the highway is still flooded . . . when I realize that my wallet is not in my purse.

Crap. Crap. Crappity crap crap.

So I tell the cashier that it might be in the car, but that if I'm not back in five minutes, just re-shelve my stuff.  I cover Nate up, dash out to the car, pop his carrier into the car seat, open the passenger door, and find my wallet on the passenger seat.  I put it in my purse, close the door, open up Nate's door, get him back out, and hustle back into the store.

Now, it was raining this whole time and I still had no umbrella so now I was really soaked.  It looked like I took a shower with my clothes on.  I couldn't even wipe my face dry because my shirt was soaked.

So I dripped my way back to the register and paid for my stuff.  Making small talk I say, "Wow, it's really coming down out there."  You know, as if my wet dog appearance didn't give that away.

But you know what the cashier says to me?  "Yes, but we need it."

We need it?  WE NEED IT?!  Well, okay, sure - we do, but... I'm soaking wet here, lady, with a very confused and semi-angry two month old strapped into his car seat like a fighter pilot, so I'm really not feeling any sympathy for the dry grass right now.  I just want to get home, get changed, and dry off.

Which is what I did.  I took an alternate road home (a toll road, but who cares - at least it wasn't flooded), brought Nate inside (who, thankfully, was sleeping), changed into sweats, and plopped onto the sofa with a snack.  Happy that was over and that we made it home alive and with what we headed out for, I swore to stay in for the night.

And then a text comes in from the hubby: Want to go over to my brother's house tonight?

Sure.  No problem.  *sigh*

Chucking lemonade

You all know how the saying goes: when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Right.  Blah blah blahhdy blah.  Okay, ordinarily I see the wisdom in this philosophy.  But my problem with the cliche today is the verb: hands.  My problem with this is that life doesn't usually hand you lemons.  No, usually life is chucking them straight at you.  And sometimes, those lemons have already been used to make someone else's lemonade so there isn't even anything you can do with them.

Am I confusing you yet?  I tend to extend my metaphors a bit.  The point is I could have made a fortune making lemonade this week - but I can't really talk about what lemons were exactly thrown at us.  So as I stood wondering what I could write, I thought, "I know - lemonade."

So I might be pissed off at some people.  And I might be bothered about some situations.  But there are big things I am hugely grateful for and what a better time to acknowledge them than now.

1. My family and closest friends are all healthy - physically, mentally, spiritually.  My grandmother is still ill, but she's had improvements and is an incredible trooper... and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful that I have those genes.

2. I have a job.  I don't know of anyone who loves their job all the time (although there must be someone who does) so naturally I don't love mine all the time, but all things considered, I think I love it quite a bit compared to 1 - other jobs I've had and 2 - jobs other people have.  And my job is secure; I don't have to worry about being laid off or forced to take unpaid time off or a pay cut.  I am incredibly grateful for that.

3. Nate, by all appearances, is healthy.  This Monday is his sonogram to check his hip (they noticed a click in it the day we left the hospital) but the pediatrician no longer feels it and expects the ultrasound to be uneventful.  I have faith that she's right.

4. I did a lot (A LOT) of reading about how the first two years of having a child are the hardest on a marriage.  In addition, the first two years of marriage are always noted as the hardest.  Yet here the hubby and I are, in the midst of both of those, with not an argument in sight and feeling more in love with each other than ever.  (Well, I am.  I can't speak for him, though I suspect he'd say he's always loved me this much.)  Through all the lemons being thrown at us, our marriage is our oasis, our homebase, our safe place - and that is completely invaluable.

As I stood in the kitchen earlier, composing parts of this email in my head, I got a phone call letting me know that one of the lemon situations was resolved.  Sure, it's quite unlikely that standing around and thinking about the things in life you should be most thankful for actually solves problems... but I can't help but think it does.  It resets your mind and maybe, just maybe, it sends out some positive energy into the universe, which then sends it back to you in the form of some sugar for your lemonade.