I hate cold.

Six days ago we were swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in our bathing suits under a nice, warm sun. I don’t know what the hell happened but it’s totally freezing now. Hot weather doesn’t bother me at all–100 degrees? Great! No need to wear clothes!–but anything under 70 is unacceptable and we are already 20 degrees below that and I am unbearably cold. (Sweden, here I come!)

I’m pretty mopey about it. It feels not just like the end of this summer, but the end of any kind of summer for the rest of my life (don’t make fun of my melodrama). Even in July in Sweden you might need a jacket. Normally I like fall–my birthday, scarves, the candy, corduroys–but since the weather in Sweden is, in some ways, perpetually fall, at least Georgia-style, I’m not interested in experiencing it in advance. As though I had a choice. I’m pretty, disproportionately, I suppose, upset about the turn in the weather.

But I reluctantly put up the Halloween decorations and we carved a pumpkin and ate the seeds and that was nice so I guess I’m finally giving in and accepting that summer is gone and I’ll just have to be cold forever. There’s still fun stuff to do, I guess. Like washed-up logs to jump over and dead baby sharks–with teeth!–to poke at with sticks. It’s not all bad. Sigh. Sucks though. Least it’s not snowing, like it is in Sweden already.

Other people’s children

In my ESL class I’ve got a handful of au pairs from Europe and Latin America. I have to keep myself from pestering them with questions about their jobs because when they do share tidbits about lives with their host families it is beyond interesting to me–in fact, it’s downright titillating. It’s like some real-life Nanny Diaries, complete with distant, wealthy, indulgent parents (who have vacation homes just one hour from their regular homes!) with cross-cultural highlights and domestic service worker abuse. Plus it’s absolutely surreal when we can compare notes about the weird children’s librarian in the area who does storytime (since he just transferred from the library they go to to the one we do).

Tonight they were venting about how hard it is to have to work when they’re sick. What pricked my ears is that what they were calling work–taking care of little kids–is what I do for, well, definitely not work; actually, for me, my basically full-time mothering is pretty fun, and I certainly don’t get paid. It’s neither entertainment nor occupation. It’s just my life. It’s my default. And since it’s all under my control, if I’m sick, I can let Little Girl watch her favorite video, a Swedish thing about a cow and a crow that I imagine she would be happy to watch all her waking hours, for indeed all those waking hours, if I feel like it. I make a million little decisions all on my own every day about how to raise my little girl, and it’s all up to me.

But not for the au pairs. The parents, their employers, have decided, say, the kids can only 30 minutes a day, and since these women (really they’re all in their late teens, so I’m gonna have to change that to girls) have all the responsibilities of mothering and none of the agency, for often twelve hours a day, they have to work. They can’t have a lazy sick day. They can’t take off, because then who would watch the kids? Certainly the employers are too important to miss work. And the au pairs can’t decide how to discipline the kids. They can’t decide what activities they want to take the kids to. They put the kids to bed, even if the parents are there. And then they’re supposed to shut their caregiving selves off and sit quietly until their rooms until it’s time to make breakfast.

Once upon a time I was a nanny, though I didn’t live there, and I recall acutely the trapped, impotent feeling of waiting for parents late to arrive home from work. It felt so unfair when it turned out they’d just been out shopping, like they were using my time, even if it was compensated, against my will and contrary to our agreement. There were schedules that weren’t mine to follow, norms to uphold that went against my grain (like letting the baby cry herself to sleep). I felt guilty taking the kiddos to do the errands I had to that could only happen during the day, like the DMV. Whenever I looked at my old driver’s license pic I recalled, down out of the frame, that my hands were each gripped by a smaller one.

They had fun that day, playing I Spy in line, but they weren’t my kids. Perhaps their mother would have preferred that precious day of growing up to have been spent some other way. With Little Girl it’s completely automatic, not to say unavoidable, that she goes everywhere with me, and I think it’s good for her to participate in society along with me. But then she’s mine, and I’m her social director, and I love that our lives are entirely enmeshed, and I’m there alongside her taking in her experiences and helping her to understand them. No one else would or could, no matter how long the instruction sheet, replicate that with her. Certainly no one to whom it was just work, something they only have to do, not get to do.

I’ve yet to hear a caring word about their charges from the au pairs, or something that even individualizes the kids they’re with so many hours. The events of their daily lives are so alike to mine and yet their motivation and enjoyment so different, it’s like some skewed mirror that reflects back only a faint and colorless outline of my life with Little Girl. I guess my take-home message really shouldn’t be “non-parental childcare is bad” but rather “these au pairs and/or their situations are kind of shitty.” Still, learning how those girls feel about caring for other people’s children makes me so grateful I’m the one caring for mine.

The Handyman

There’s a local guy my mom connected with a while back who has done some improvements on the beach house over the last few years, like rebuilding leaning stairs, pressure-washing the carport, doing light bathroom renovation, fixing light fixtures. While I think the quality of his work is good, he’s just incredibly slow. Knowing this, I was not totally down with the plan for him to paint the house. You see, this is pretty close to being a glass tree house. It’s set on a very large property, fronted by a lagoon and backed by a golf course, so normally this is very private and we don’t feel exposed with our glass walls. But then you put a guy on a ladder painting trims, replacing soffits, or, just as often, chatting on his cell phone, it gets a bit awkward.

And it’s not just that sometimes I don’t feel like being presentable to the public yet or that the dishes are not always done. It’s also kind of weird to be observed all the time with my little girl. The handyman, a jovial guy, has four kids of his own, and a wife who’s a nutritionist, and is happy to tell me what he approves of (encouraging kids to draw) and what he doesn’t (letting them wear their pajamas until lunch). I have an unpleasant compulsion to meet his approval in parenting.

And the thing is this house painting has been going on for six weeks. That’s just ridiculous. Knowing him, I originally asked him if he could commit to painting the house in two weeks, which seemed reasonable–it’s not too big–and he said he could do three. But, I guess because several days of the week he does no work at all, and others he only works a couple hours in between talking on his cell phone and walking out to the beach for lunch, he is, in fact, three weeks overdue and has only painted half the house. Also, he’s stolen my parking space. Gah. I don’t pay him so there’s not a lot I can do, and he hasn’t responded to our requests for him to hurry it on up, though he’s always very agreeable.

He–and his occasional assistant–are out there right now, not three meters away, their radio too loud, right outside the living room window, not painting very fast, making funny faces at Little Girl (she adores the handyman, by the way, which softens me to him). The fun part is overhearing their man-conversation. I’m sitting here wearing a nightgown and no bra. I won’t let a slow handyman ruin my bra-free haven of home, at least.

Oh right

By the way, today was supposed to have been my due date. Though if past experience is anything to go by I’d have actually had a baby weeks ago. Anyway, feel okay about it–I’d had some heightened awareness of the date for the past little while, but when today came, it wasn’t until the afternoon that I realized. Did awesome things (besides clean) like body surf in a roiling ocean and drink a nice Riesling at a good restaurant that I would have been too, let’s see, altered to do otherwise. For that matter, we wouldn’t be having this totally awesome Year of the Perpetual Beach Vacation if I had continued being pregnant. I understand that sometimes the distress from a miscarriage comes up more strongly during a subsequent pregnancy, but for now, for the life we have currently, for the limbo we are in, the miscarriage feels less like a loss than fact about my life, like so many others.

I don’t know. Titles can be such a hassle. I admire those who do away with them entirely.

I am totally fine with Obama’s peace prize–surprised but pleased. I think it’s largely symbolic, more based on who he is than what he’s done, and that’s cool with me. Obamania is a huge improvement over being embarrassed by our leader, and frankly I think he deserves it, and it sends a message I’m comfy with. Remember, I stood in line FOR EIGHT HOURS to vote for him, and did a lot of campaigning, so I feel some ownership over his success, and it’s heartening for him to have more. Plus, I figure it’ll help his re-election chances and, uh, I think he’s gonna need another four years to get through all his plans.

We’ve had a very busy week. We had a roof leak and had to get quotes on that and then get it fixed, and we have some tree problems we had to get quotes on, and we got quotes for refinishing a table that turned out to be veneer anyway and so not worth 2k they wanted to make it look not much better, and quotes on a yard service, and quotes on getting the driveway redone like my mom wants and basically what this means is I met a lot of men this week and also that I have learned a few things: a) life is expensive; b) quotes get higher the fancier your neighborhood; c) I miss women. Things I have not learned: a) what the family trust that owns the house is paying for and what we are, and b) how people come up with those quotes anyway–they vary so much.

After losing my glasses to the sea I had a new eye exam before getting another primary pair, and during the appointment, the doctor told me I was a good candidate for LASIK. I ran the numbers and if I continue to lose a pair of glasses about every three years, as has been my habit, and I live for at least another fifty years, LASIK would actually be a lifetime savings of thousands of dollars. Plus, I swim so much that glasses are this huge hassle. It’s kind of unpleasant to think about, having lasers put to one’s eyes, but they give you Valium and anyway I’ve had a c-section–my uterus has been removed, set on top of me, manhandled, and shoved back in–so a little minor hacking at my eyeball, or whatever they do, isn’t much more alarming. No one I know has had the surgery. Opinions? Also I need to figure out if it would be any cheaper in Sweden.

Okay, to set up my next anecdote, let me tell you that we’re about to go to my hometown for my mom’s birthday luncheon, and then a complicated series of maneuvers are happening involving moving car seats around and etc. and the result is my mom will be at our house, so there has been a lot of cleaning in preparation. Got it? So Little Girl happened to see me washing my diaphragm (you know, my diaphragm), and she asked what I was doing, and I told her just that, and she took the logical next step and verified, “You making it all clean for grandmother to see?” That’s right, little buddy!

New little cousins and how they grow

So my sister-in-law’s baby, S, is two months old now, and I keep getting emails about her development from her proud pappa. There’s a kind of hilarious element of competitiveness with them. Like: “S weighed 14.55 pounds and she was 24 inches tall at her 2-month visit. Exact same numbers as [other cousin A] when he was 3 months. How big was [Little Girl] at that age?” (I went ahead and emailed him her growth chart from birth to age two for his convenience.)

I’m happy she’s doing well. I imagine it’ll be fun to watch her grow, once we finally get to Sweden and meet her, and I’m sure Little Girl will enjoy it. My brother-in-law and his wife asked us to be S’s godparents, which of course is very sweet of them. I just wish I knew what that entailed in Swedish society. From what I gather it’s pretty informal, but there is her baptism coming up in November that we’ll have to miss. Too bad: I’d like to see a Croatian-style baptism done in Swedish. (S’s mom is a first-generation Swede. My other brother-in-law is Serbian. My mother-in-law is Finnish. It’s a very international family.)

For the move I divested myself of most of Little Girl’s multitude of outgrown clothes, and kept only one bin of items too precious (too cute, too imbued with memory, too fancy) to part with, for in case I ever have another girl. But then it seemed silly for them to be sitting neglected when S could use them, so I asked them if they’d like the hand-me-downs. And they said no! They only want S in the new clothes they buy or are given! Apparently they also turned down clothes from S’s cousins on her other side, who are all girls. Goofy. But then these are the people with the nine-hundred dollar pram. I knew enough of my sister-in-law’s personality to ask first and not assume they’d want the clothes. What’s kind of funny to me, on reflection, is that several of the items in that bin were themselves originally hand-me-downs.

Little Girl absolutely thrives having lots of family around. Nothing stimulates and delights her so much. It’s definitely the big plus of Sweden. At least for her. Growing up the only children of only children of only children, for me the benefits are largely theoretical at this point. Do you like a lot of family around?

Again

So I wrote this whole long post about an event from my past and reread it and thought about it for a minute. Sounded familiar. Turns out it’s a near-replica of a post I wrote in May of 2008. I guess you guys might not know the difference–I don’t think anyone is memorizing my blog or my life story–so I could just post it anyway.

Do you ever repeat yourself like that?

Troublesome

It makes sense, of course. We’ve had a hard year. Husband’s had lots of work worries; I got pregnant to mixed feelings; we realized we had to move out of our neighborhood, newly plagued by crime; I had a lengthy, expensive, painful miscarriage; we sold/gave away many of our belongings and had the rest packed away; we moved; we sold our house and lost a shitload of money; we’re in limbo until the next move; Husband is gone more than half the time for work.

So I’m not surprised that Husband and I are, let’s say, less than delighted with each other these days. We’re having a hard time getting along, being friends, liking each other. Usually my prescription for this kind of situation is more sex, but like I said, he’s gone a lot, and the master bed here in the beach house has this weird bed frame where the headboard is a shelf with all these knick knacks on it and, well, it just makes things ungodly loud. Plus I am all freaked out about getting pregnant again which is also an enthusiasm-damper.

I’m sure any couple in this situation would be testy. I hope once we’re settled in Sweden–and perhaps after his parents, with whom we’ll be living for a while, move out–we’ll get back into some normal relationship mode, that’s not only switched on the four days of the week, max, we see each other. We’ll feel like a team instead of the combatants we sometimes find ourselves these days. And it’s not all bad, now. Today we’re buddies.

It’s just that sometimes, horrifyingly, I’m content to see him leave, and I don’t miss him when he’s gone.

Eh

Ugh, this insomnia is such torture. I was only getting to sleep past four in the morning, and of course Little Girl us up at eight. So of course, not resting, I haven’t been getting better, so am still sick, for crying out loud. It pisses me off to be missing one of the last weeks of weather warm enough for swimming. Last night I drugged myself up so at least I was able to get to sleep at a reasonable time. It’s just been miserable. Being exhausted and yet not being able to sleep is just inhumane, and it was my own mind doing it to myself.

And what have I been up thinking about? There’s been all the anxiety and obsessive planning related in various ways to the move. Duh. There’s general daydreaming, pretend conversations, things I should have said, things I shouldn’t have, to go over, to rehash, to process. And I had been reading some amazing, complex novels that totally had me preoccupied: if I wasn’t reading them, I was wishing I were, and wondering what I was missing. (Check out Tana French and Stieg Larsson if you, too, wish to cease sleeping.) Now I’m off books and on drugs, and I hope one day not to be ill anymore. It’s a humble dream.

I don’t know, maybe you can tell, but I already took my NyQuil and I bet if I talked to you I’d be slurring. Buenas noches.

Of course I called him in the end

I received some important mail today. My passport came back from the Swedish embassy and in it is a VERY fancy sticker, all in Swedish. I had no idea what it said so I googled some of the bigger words and…it looks like my Swedish residency permit, a permanent one, has arrived! This is really fast, people. It’s supposed to take half a year to ten months, and it took just two.

I’m not gonna lie: I thought about, uh, not mentioning it to Husband right away. Because now it’s here, we have no major obstacles to moving.

Sure, there are the unbelievably complicated requirements for our pets to complete, rules I’ve studied for hours and still don’t quite understand, though I have determined that we need to take our pets to a special vet, three hours away, for a special microchipping, and then have special bloodwork samples sent to a special lab in Kansas, and that’s only the beginning. And Husband is having trouble finding jobs to apply to, not so much because they’re in short supply, but because all the ones in his field require lots of travel, something we’d all rather he’d avoid, having had our fill of it: it’s not good for Little Girl and it’s not good for our relationship. (And excuse me if I don’t feel like moving to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language and then having Husband traipse freely around Europe and I have to figure everything out all by myself). And we were hoping to go after the bathroom renovations were finished there, and to arrive not too long before our stuff, which will take six weeks to ship.

But basically the move could, potentially, be only a matter of weeks away. We won’t do it that soon–for one thing, I have a teaching contract through very early December to complete–but it’ll probably be earlier than I’d imagined, and during the middle of winter. As with selling the house, though I’d purposefully and mindfully set all this in motion, the reality of it is freaking me out a bit. I’m moving to Sweden, you guys! Ack!

Which isn’t to say I’m recommending it

I have a cold. It sucks. I’ve been in bed a lot. And I’ve realized that much of the time when sleeping my hand is up by my mouth. Specifically, my thumb is near my lips. I’m guessing this might be a comfort holdover from back when I sucked my thumb before my grandparents put quinine on it and got me to stop. I sucked my thumb last night to see if it still had the magical happy-making powers for me it has for Little Girl (though we’ve gotten her to do it a bit less all-consumingly often), and the experiment was distracting rather than soothing. Anyway, back to bed. I’m just happy I had the good sense to get sick on the weekend when Husband is here to keep Little Girl busy so I can stay in bed and read! When that’s the case, illness is almost like a vacation.

Premonitions

I was psychic the year I was 13. Or at least that’s what I recall. (I also have clear memories of flying around the bedroom I had when I was four during a sunset.) My dad had always made a big deal about my pubescence (that sounds creepier than it was) and probably convinced me it was a magical year. At any rate, my recollection is that I could predict the future–on the order of what flavor of ice cream someone would bring back from the store–but that I didn’t enjoy being able to do it. So I stopped.

Lately I’m having a spate of premonitions again and once more I am not liking it. Or maybe it’s just that I keep sensing unpleasant things. Like Monday we were at the beach and there were dolphins and I picked up Little Girl and carried her out into the warm water to go see them up close (I realize this story is not sounding all that tragic so far to those of you who are now experiencing sweater weather) and a humongous wave surprised me and we went under and my glasses and clip-on sunglasses were washed right off my face. This part’s not so weird–this is not the first time I’ve lost glasses or sunglasses at the beach–it’s that mere seconds before it happened, I was idly musing about my spare pair of glasses and how nice it is to have them around.

And then yesterday I was thinking about how I would react if the guy painting our house saw me changing my clothes, when I take off my shirt and bra and turn around and there he is, indeed right outside the window, even though he was supposed to be on the other side of the house.

Really, if I’m going to have psychic abilities, I wish I had the sense to act on them and change in the bathroom. Now I’m scared of every stray thought. Should I take the pets to the vet next week for their microchipping for the move? OMIGOD THEY’RE ALL ABOUT TO DIE.

I guess it’s all coincidence, or my subconscious is smarter than my conscious. Do you believe people can see the future?