Kellybean

My mind wanders. It wanders a lot. Given my somewhat lengthy, but beautiful, commute, (yes, a commute can be beautiful), my mind wanders a lot on my way home.

And 9 times out of 10, my mind wanders to Lucie.

Even though I have 2 kids running amok – well, one is dancing and prancing around like a prima ballerina or showing off her impressive yoga skills and the other is crawling, bear walking, and pulling himself up to standing like no tomorrow, while dealing with 4 teeth coming in – the house still feels empty. Something, someone is missing.

It’s amazing how the absence of one family member leaves this huge void.

When the doorbell rings, I still anticipate the barking that accompanied it.

When Peanut is blowing bubbles outside, I wait for Lucie to come up running, trying to eat as many bubbles as she could.

When I’m chopping up chicken, shredding pork, or braising beef, and a piece drops to the floor, there’s no one there to clean up after me.

I miss walking the neighborhood (though I don’t really need a dog for that) and guaranteed walks in the parks on the weekends.

To date, Peanut is taking it all very well. Every now and then she’ll tell me that she misses Lucie. And I can finally respond back to her without crying.

Peanut, the other day, found a Lucie hair weaved into her car seat. She showed it to me and, instead of flicking it away as she usually would, she tucked it away safely into the cup holder of her seat.

Let the tears commence.

As of cinco de mayo, Kellybean is back to work…and my head is about to explode!

Change is oft-avoided word at my place of business, but holy guacamole have things changed! Honestly, it’s like starting a new job.

But I must say, starting mid-week was probably one of the better ideas I’ve had lately. An even better idea would’ve been to start on seis de mayo instead. But what can you do?

As a family, I think we’re adjusting well, a few kinks to work out (ahem, Ringo – sleeping through the night until about 7a would be absolutely FABULOUS!), but it’s going well and I’m not too tired…yet.

The other night, I’ve realized that watching tv at night during the week will be a luxury. Actually, it’s something that I need better restraint with. As much as I should be going to sleep at 10p, I thought better and folded the laundry (which really needed to be done, and to date, has not been put away yet) and watch the Tivo’d SNL with Betty White & Jay-Z (side note: this ep was by far the best SNL ep I’ve seen in a loooong time).

It also doesn’t help that instead of trying to go to sleep at 10p, I start reading. And I’m up reading until about 11p, sometimes 12m. Keeping to my new year’s resolution to read all the books on my nightstand before buying/acquiring new ones, I finished Bad Mother, still working on The History of French and am breezing through Twilight. Yes, you read correctly, Twilight.

But back to the life of a working mamacita…I know, or have known that organization is key. So, I try to remember to do a lot of prep the night before. With all the excitement of Mama’s Day, I was just in a clusterf@$* state Monday, feeling like I was having an anxiety attack…all day!

The Husband and I are sharing the drop-off/pick-up duties now, but it’s Peanut who decides who is dropping off and who is picking up. And it’s usually not what works best for us and if it doesn’t go her way, all heck breaks loose. (Note: we don’t accommodate her all the time like this…as you probably know you need to choose your battles wisely.)

Anyhow, the past few days, I feel like pack mule coming into work:

I’ve got the laptop bag – kind of a necessity for work, though the actual laptop runs like crap.

The breast pump bag – given. Ringo is already at a disadvantage because I went back to work earlier this time around…so I’m trying to nurse as long as possible.

My lunch bag – I’ve been real good about bringing my lunch – it’s amazing how much money I spend on lunches during the work week! – and I can stash the lunch bag in the laptop bag.

The gym bag – if you follow my tweets, I’ve been using the C25K application to get my butt running again and ridding myself of the pregnancy poundage.

The purse – this is one bag I can kind of get by without, but end up taking it anyway. Emptying the wallet, sunglass case and other accoutrements into the laptop bag weighs down the laptop bag because it’s already stuffed with my lunch bag and (what seems like) a 20 pound laptop.

That’s just the baggage! I’ve got my water bottle, too and (some mornings) my reusable coffee mug.

I’ll let you know when the back problems start.

And…I’ve only been back to work less than a week. Are we kidding?!

As I was dropping off the mail at the post office, a woman conveniently double parked next to my car and blocked me in my spot.

She rolled down her window and asked me to put her mail in the mailbox. Seeing her disabled placard and the general clusterfuck of a mess that was in her car, I obliged.

She handed me a small pile of envelopes. I noticed she was having issues with one of the letters, telling me that she needed to get that last letter mailed today or else…

As I was politely hurrying telling her that I needed to go because my baby was in the car, she was licking and sealing the envelope of that last letter.

She handed me the letter. Her efforts to seal the envelope had failed. I handed the envelope back to her to re-seal it. She licked then envelope again and handed it to me. Fail, again.

Me: “Excuse me, but you might need some tape to close this envelope.”

Woman: “Oh. Can you seal it for me?”

Really?! First, does it look like I have scotch tape on me right now? Second, I surely hope you didn’t expect me to lick the envelope, let alone touch it after you practically licked the entire back of the envelope?!

And with that, I politely excused myself and left.

this place doesn't seem so bad...

Sometime in the recent past, I came across this piece on SFGate.

In a city that seems to make families, especially those with kids, want to move, be it for affordable housing, quality schools, space(!), more affordable living, leaving SF is hard thing to even think about for a 2nd generation native like myself. Even moving down south to where I went to college was difficult for me to consider. But now, as a mommy of two, I’m starting to reconsider staying in the city by the Bay.

I thought the timing of the article was quite coincidental since S & I have been contemplating moving out of SF…even contemplating moving out of state, even out of the country. Even in conversation with friends, moving out of the bay area was a topic that seemed to come up. Family seemed to be the main reason for leaving, but quality of schools and generally, a better quality of life was the motivating factor to even consider leaving the Bay Area.

Now, S & I had always talked about moving to France one day. It wasn’t until we met the family we bought our car from that we started to contemplate moving out of the Bay Area…again. (The family was packing up their home in Oakland and moving to New Zealand!)

As it is a known fact (of course, it is!), that all native San Franciscans/NorCal-ers move north, heading north to Oregon seems to be trend among some of our friends. This place in Oregon in particular. So don’t be surprised if I blog, sometime in the future, about a family vacation to Oregon.

Nice, but it might be too cold for this CA girl

Of course, this couldn’t come at a more difficult time, with the economy in it’s current clusterf*** state. Thankfully, Peanut & Ringo are young enough that a move wouldn’t traumatize them too much.

Who knows what the future will bring and where we’ll end up? I’m just thinking out loud…for now.

images borrowed from the internets