Glibbertysmidgeon

I’ve got chocolate syrup on my ice cream and I’m wearing my comfy sweats. It’s debate night! I’m blogging live, while I watch the debate, which I pre-recorded earlier tonight.

First impressions:

Barack Obama is yummy.
Kris says, “young people will connect with him”. I say, “I’d like to connect with him!” He’s handsome, his voice is like butterscotch, and he has poise. Did I mention he has a nice voice?

Okay, the serious stuff. I’ve always had a soft spot for The Maverick, I thought he was earnestly trying to do some good in the days before he rolled over and started pushing the Bush agenda. My impression of him now:

Not Honest: He’s using the same tactics as his evil predecessors, he repeats himself constantly. Bend the question into an excuse to repeat the talking points. Or one of his dusty old war stories. His language is vague and he constantly inserts trite little comfort words.
Boring: I have a hard time sticking with him.
Condescending: One phrase he keeps repeating: “I don’t think Senator Obama understands…” He is smirking in a way that reminds me of George W Bush in the Kerry debates. It’s reptilian, and it’s revolting.
Clumsy speaker: On what we learned from this Iraq war… “you can’t have a failed policy that causes you to almost lose a war.” well… duh. He mispronounced Ahmadinejad, he misspoke about the Palestinian government. He stutteres. He doesn’t address Obama directly, no matter how hard the facilitator tries to make him do it. He seems threatened.

Impressions on Obama:

Thoughtful: He’s raised several issues- healthcare crisis and it’s impact on the average people. The need to get off foreign oil, the need to make our colleges affordable so our people can compete in science and math, on our country’s need to rebuild critical infrastructure to support future growth in the economy.. he is not just trotting out catch-phrases.
Poised: Obama is very clear and cool, he communicates his ideas very clearly without the huff and bluster that we’ve been watching from these Republicans for the last 8 years.
Too Polite: I want to see him kick some butt. Twice already he’s had McCain against the ropes and he didn’t go for the throat. (He briefly mentioned McCain’s “fundamentals of the economy are sound” gaffe, but seemed a bit uncomfortable embarassing the old guy. He didn’t press the point home.) C’mon man, we need this. I need this. I’d give anything for the opportunity to pin one of these guys down and slap the lips off him. You have to do this for us. Take one for the people on Main street.

At the end of the debate, Obama strode across the stage to shake McCain’s hand and I heard him say, “Good job, John.” McCain took his hand, but didn’t quite meet his eye. For me, this was the whole debate. McCain seemed cowed. He seemed to be striking out with the sort of panicked desperation of the geeky kid about to get a wedgie in the locker room.

Barack, my friend. Why didn’t you give him that wedgie?

I’ve started watching old episodes of Sex and the City during Scarlett’s naps. At first I was just looking for something short and light to entertain me while I eat, but I quickly got hooked. It’s not the characters, which are almost caricatures. It’s not the plot, which is basically the same thing every week. It’s not the dialogue or the music. It’s Manhattan.

The subtext of the show is a love affair with the city, and like the ex-girlfriend who still phones in the night, I’m not over it. I enjoy tormenting myself with nostalgia, dreaming about how great things used to be. As I watch Carrie stroll down the cobbled sidewalk in Tribecca on the arm of some faceless date, I think to myself, “she would not walk on the cobbles in those heels! They should have put the man on that side.” Oh, Manhattan, I know you like she’ll never know you.

Ah, the night life. The freedom to say to your companion, “See you later, I’ll get a cab.” and ditch them on any street corner… The shopping. The food. The stinking, crowded subways. Chinatown. I see now that I never appreciated you as I should have when we were together.

It’s all so familiar, but, as with many old loves, the distance makes it so much more exciting. I imagine how it would welcome me back into it’s noisy embrace. I could go tomorrow.

Then the baby kicks and I look down at my straining maternity blouse, stained with Scarlett’s breakfast. I remember that I left that old love because, for now, we’re not right for each other. I am too tired for night life, too poor for shopping, and too overwhelmed by parenthood to keep up with the blistering pace of life there.

Still. It comforts me. When I’m ready, I’ll be back.

I haven’t had a haircut since April- unless you count the bang trim I gave myself in my aunt’s bathroom in Oregon last month. To say it was a hack job would be an understatement; I used nosehair trimmers. This is only one example of how desperate I’ve become.

Since moving to Seattle I feel like I have been in a steep decline- devolving into that poor, ignorant, grilled-cheese-flipping housedress-wearing mother of my nightmares. My fear of becoming this woman was the reason I very nearly skipped parenthood altogether. Partly, it’s this staying-at-home business. Spending all my time in the company of a 2-year-old means I hear too much Dora the Explorer, and very little NPR. It means I don’t have time for shoe shopping or haircuts, and many of my conversations involve monster boogers or stinkadoo poopies. Part of the problem is the move itself. The house we’ve rented is much larger than our Brooklyn apartment, but much dirtier, and there are lots of things falling off, molding, or infested with spiders. Almost four months in the house, we’re pretty much unpacked, but there is still a pile of set-up work to be done- getting the nursery ready for the new addition, wiring the computer, sorting the files the movers dumped. My life feels far from civilized.

Oh, and there’s that whole pregnancy thing. There’s nothing like wearing hand-me-down maternity clothes and floundering around like a paraplegic harp seal to make a woman feel unattractive.

On Friday I dropped my iPhone into Scarlett’s kiddie pool. Such a dull and predictable end to this, the last vestige of my New York cool.

Drifting off to sleep last night, it occurred to me that we could move back to New York if we wanted to. Kris has more than one former coworker eager to hire him, and I think I could have my old job back if I left soon. I even think we could hire our beloved nanny back with a little advance notice. These thoughts comforted me, but I realized almost as soon as I thought them that I wouldn’t really want to do that.

It’s easy to forget how desperate those last months in New York were. Although we love the city, and were surrounded by friends, we were lonely. We were exhausted, and we felt lost. We both longed for the comfort of our families. As new parents, many of the pleasures of the city were out of our reach. Try pushing a stroller down the crowded sidewalks of SoHo, or getting up at 7:00 with your rowdy toddler after staying out until 3:00 eating at Veselka after a movie or a night of dancing. Nothing turns a would-be hipster into a pumpkin quicker than parenthood.

Though we both miss so much about life in New York, we were missing most of it while we still lived there.

I had thought that moving back to the family would give us unlimited babysitting and freedom of movement I was missing in New York. I should have realized that nothing comes for free- we must give free babysitting in order to recieve. I’ve become so large and slow that the babysitting is near impossible. That works out fine, though, because they don’t let pregnant women on the water slides, and I can’t sit through a movie without a potty break, so I don’t really know what I’d do with free time anyway. Maybe I’d catch up on the news or read a book…

In the end, we were boring lonely parents in New York, and we’re boring parents- maybe a little less lonely- here in Seattle.

I am trying to accept that there’s no way around the difficulties of parenthood. Wherever we go, these kids will be there, ruining our lives. All we can do is muddle through, and dream of sending them off to school, to sleep over with friends, and eventually to college.

Either that, or put them into baskets and leave them on some poor sucker’s doorstep.