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The Belated Birth Announcements
I finally mailed out Baby Bug’s birth announcements…. only ten weeks late.
Sigh.
I had such good intentions, addressing all my pretty pink envelopes weeks before she was born. A lot of good it did me. Toby and I couldn’t agree on the design of the announcement for the longest time and finally I just went ahead and had them printed without his approval because it was just plain getting embarrassing.
Many of my friend’s had babies around the same time and all their birth announcements decorate my refrigerator mocking me. I should have just done one of those automated photo cards… it would have been so much easier. It’s just that I’m a graphic artist! I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t not design something. That’s what I do for a living. So I finally banged it out and now it’s in the mail. Done. Phew!
It’s silly that there’s this unwritten rule that birth announcements need to be timely. I mean, I understand they need to “announce” the event and waiting a year doesn’t really help a baby’s introduction into the world. But still, why do you get a whole year to send thank you notes after you get married? I had tons of free time after I got married. If I was an over achiever, I could have gotten all my thank you notes done on the plane ride to my honeymoon! Hah! Gone are those days. I don’t even know the meaning of free time now. I know it’s been said a zillion times but it really is true that when you are a mom, it’s a major accomplishment to get a shower every day.
I’m lucky. Baby Bug takes a nap every morning just long enough for me to take the quickest shower on earth. I’ve taken a shower every single day since she was born (I think, there may have been one day I skipped when I was out in Hemet where it’s okay to stink). I have to! Ever since she was born I’ve been the stickiest, smelliest, most disgustingist I’ve ever been. That morning shower keeps me sane. I look forward to it.
So anyway, the announcements are out. (Yay!) If you’re family or a close friend on my short mailing list, you can expect it in your mailbox in the next few days. If you don’t get one, email me because I have this dreaded feeling I left some people out. Please forgive me! I’m an addle brained mom now. Plus, I ran out of envelopes. But I’ll get some more, one of these days.
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Most Fabulous Laundry Day
I am a survivor. Every time I get down because this motherhood thing seems too difficult, I tell myself: “I am a survivor. I can do this. I can conquer this.” For some reason this helps me. Instead of tearing my hair out and feeling like a miserable failure, I keep on keeping on. And then before I know it, I’ve moved from one obstacle to the next and I am a supermom after all! I can do it all. I just have to be tough.
Today we conquered the unfamiliar laundromat. The one that was way across town and totally inconvenient. It turns out this new laundromat rocks! It’s ten million times better than my old laundromat!
It’s twice the size and everything was clean! What a concept! There were washers and dryers lined up for miles and nobody was using them! I was the only person in there besides this little old lady who owned the place. She hobbled over and introduced herself even. Here I was worried that it might be in a shady neighborhood and it turns out to be so much more charming than my laundromat in snobville. What a relief.
If they hadn’t closed my old-faithful-across-the-street laundromat, I never would have found this groovy place. It’s in this shopping center that got stuck in the seventies and I love it! After I loaded up my washers, Baby Bug and I took a walking tour of the neighborhood. We spied an old barbershop, a real life private investigator’s office, a fish and chips dive, a strange but hip hair salon, the oldest IHOP ever, a really cool shop that I bought myself some new Mary-Kate-and-Ashley bug-eye sunglasses in and a really neat bakery that sold cookies and cupcakes. I bought myself a lemon bar and felt very proud of myself for having fun while doing laundry.
Who knows, I might start looking forward to laundry day now.
