6.18.23: father's day 2023
At the risk of sounding like a heinous, pretentious prick, I've started running again...and I'd forgotten how much I love it. I mean, the first five minutes are hell on wheels: You're plodding, the balls of your feet hurt, your music sucks, you're still thinking about all of the other more productive things you could be doing.
But then the runner's high hits, right? Somewhere between four and thirteen minutes after I get my sorry ass out the door, I feel this little frisson of something nice -- see also: pretentious prick -- like goosebumps, or like I've been dunked cool water, or -- well, this isn't correct, but you know that feeling you get that makes someone (your Midwestern uncle) say that someone's walked over your grave? That feeling.
And then I proceed to have 203453902 great ideas, all of which I've forgotten by the time I get home, but it's got to be good for my brain, right? I hope. Anyway, right now I'm creating a playlist for my daughter. iTunes is making it really difficult to do so -- weird, right? I thought ease was like Apple's entire thing, guess not -- that being today's run's Amazing Idea.
Lucy's next to me right now, reading out loud from ... what looks like a part of a chair that she's taken apart? ("Ah nuh nuh ah deed a nuh eh ah duh...naneen eh duh, dahdeeet?") She's got her na-na's and her da-da's and her ma-ma's down pat, but we're pretty sure she has no earthly idea what any of those words mean. Ted does say she chants mamamamamamaamamama a lot when I'm not in the room, so, there's that. Ted's on his run, which is excellent. He's two weeks out from breaking his arm, so the fact that he's able to exercise a little bit makes him a much happier guy.
But we're not totally back to normal yet. We were planning on heading up to COSI -- a museum up in Columbus? Apparently they're doing something fun with ancient Egypt, which is always nice -- tomorrow, but Ted still has relatively random aches and pains, and it's two hours away, and Lucy's teething, and the WORST thing would be to get there and find out that we hated our entire lives and just needed to turn around and crawl back through Monday morning traffic, fuming. So, axing that plan, we're heading to the Zoo instead, where Lucy will invariably want to touch everything and then fall asleep after 45 minutes. I'll get to enact my Fancy Morning Daydream of getting a Very Expensive Coffee and Walking Around Aimlessly in a Gorgeous Place with Nothing to Do; Ted will get to say hello to the painted dogs and Fiona the hippo. We'll get an expensive mug, come home, and take a family nap. 'Twill be lovely.
It's my first solid, real, actual-factual, approved PTO day in ... a minute? Since 2019? It's 2023; four years? I'll have to resist from checking my email every 45 seconds. WHATWILLIDO?
(Lucy is now cackling, grinning at me just over the side of the pack-n-play after climbing up to the top; now, she's blowing raspberries; now, she's crying. It's been seven seconds. Hold up, she just realized she can seem e through the mesh and is playing peek-a-boo as I grin at her while looking at her and not the keyboard while I type ....
[PEEKS BACK AT SCREEN]
I guess, hats off to autocorrect. Here's a pic:
The thing that looks like a toilet seat in the front is a disembodied part of a chair I got Lucy when she was maybe 3 months old that was definitely for a 9 month old and, now Lucy's 9 months old, she really only likes for parts.
[TWO HOURS LATER]
I just fed Lucy her first raspberry (I think). I think it's her first raspberry, that is. I'm clear on what happened. Because, voila, SCENE:
- Rebecca asks Ted if she should get chocolate to go with the raspberries.
- Ted looks at Rebecca as if she is insane. Rebecca goes to get chocolate.
- Rebecca gets distracted en route to the fridge by a very cute baby.
- Rebecca looks at her watch. It's 8:29. She thinks about how cyuuuute and cudddlllyyyyyyy it would be to hold Lucy for four minutes before putting her to bed.
- Rebecca comes back to couch with Lucy in tow; notably, not with chocolate. Ted kindly lets this slide.
- Rebecca decides, for some ungodly reason, that right now -- when bedtime is imminent, when Lucy is in a clean onesie, when we're tired and trying to watch The Grand Tour, and chocolate is nowhere in sight -- that now is a good time for Lucy's First raspberry.
- She grabs a ripe raspberry and places it, gently, into Lucy's chubby little first.
- The raspberry immediately disintegrates into, like, fifty little raspberry seedlets. Lucy is mystified. Ted is bemused. Rebecca is thinking about how cute all of this is.
- All fifty little seedlets land on the couch and Lucy and Rebecca, immediately causing worst-nightmare stains. Lucy picks up one lil chonk of raspberry, stares at it, starts smacking her lips, moves it closer to her mouth, Ted and I are watching, like, this is our cultured daughter Learning Food Things and Eating Raspberries, and then Lucy ever so carefully takes the lil raspberry seedlet and deposits it behind the couch cushion beside her.
- And repeat. I think maybe two little seedlets made it into her actual mouth?