This were to be new made when thou art old - Morning Edition

Ways my morning routine has changed since I had a baby:

1. The frantic search for where Nugget put my blackberry --this morning it was in the sink.

2. Trying to figure out whether the wet spot on the shirt I just put on is water from leaning on the bathroom counter or pee from Nugget climbing on me while I put on my socks.

3. Deciding I don't care.

To Be or Not to Be

Yesterday (as in 33 minutes ago) was my birthday. I billed 13.35 hours.

toil and trouble

I often write here about being a non-traditional family, and I tend to think of my husband as a stay-at-home dad because he is in fact at home all day. But he does actually "work" (ok, look. I know stay-at-home moms get their panties in a bunch about how raising kids and running a household is a hell of a lot of work. I know. But what am I supposed to call it? How do you distinguish one from the other so that we can have a conversation about it? But the interesting point here is why it is that our vocabulary is inadequate. I guess it's because the word work traditionally did distinguish men's business from women's domestic sphere, but at the same time it also served as the opposite of play -- so when women set out to reshape attitudes about the domestic sphere, the word "work" had to be co-opted.). So right now, for example, we are experiencing the special difficulties of a two breadwinner family. He's got a draft brief due Sunday morning, and I have to be in the office all weekend doing pretrial prep. If we didn't have my parents nearby and eager to spend time with their precocious and insanely adorable grandson, god knows what we'd do. Even so, it's going to be a rough weekend. Not to mention how much it sucks to lose my weekend time with said precocious and insanely adorable one.

Dogeared

Justice Ginsberg in the NY Times magazine this week:
"I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes. Including the time some reporter said something like, it took me a long time to get up from the bench. They worried, was I frail? To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath."

(What is dogeared?)

Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh

And here are some of the things I thought would change (and maybe should have changed) but didn't (also to be continued):

1. I still drive like a lunatic in a fit of rage.

2. I still can't get up in the morning to save my life.

3. I still have colonies of dustbunnies in every corner of my house ... which Nugget will try to eat if you don't watch him ...

This were to be new made when thou art old

When you're pregnant for the first time, every single person you encounter tells you at least once, "everything is going to change!" It gets annoying, but it's certainly true. Here are some of the less obvious ways my life has changed (to be continued):

1. I drink the office coffee. Just can't justify the $2 - 6 a day anymore.

2. "Cruising" now describes a baby walking while holding on to furniture.

3. Sadly, I no longer miss my dog when I don't see her for a few days.

(Backtrack: The Newest New Year)

Dogeared

From Sherman Alexie's Flight:

1. "Art and Justice fight on opposite sides of the war but they sound exactly like each other. How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?"

2. "Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has arthritis. And maybe that's why the world sucks. Maybe God's hands and fingers don't work as well as they used to."

(What is dogeared?)

no time for a shakespeare reference today

One more thought about this spouses-who-work-outside-the-home-have-more-stress thing. I think a big part of it for me is the fact that I'm performing on a larger stage at work. My failures and successes, big and small, are seen by many more people, people who don't know me very well, people who don't care about me, people the world considers Very Important, etc. I do wonder whether that's something that translates to other people in my position, because I do have particular sensitivity to that sort of thing--what people think of me. But you don't have to be self-obsessed to care that Corner Office Partner X and Federal Judge Y and Opposing Counsel Z think you're an idiot, right? I suspect not.

Baby's crying.