Kitty gets laid off

In the spirit of self-promotion, here's another excerpt from the book I'm planning to finish by early summer. I've made it to page 260 now (no small feat, I must say, with a high-maintenance baby girl in tow), but I'm guessing it should be somewhere in the 325- to 350-page range when all is said and done.

Also, I assume that posting excerpts means I'm supposed to skip around in the book and cherry pick the most interesting parts. Unfortunately, I'm not the best person to make that judgement call since as the author I think they're all interesting parts (big surprise!), so this excerpt immediately follows the previous one I posted last month.*

*Again, because this is still unedited, please forgive any typos, grammatical mistakes, etc. Summer 2013 is going to be one big ol' editing extravaganza on this thing.

**********

“Bye Byyyye Biiirdieee,” I sing in a hushed-tone as I swoop through Walker & Runton's front doors and into the reception area on the 15th floor, imitating Ann Margaret's blue screen dance toward the front desk.

“You're here. Finally! I thought you'd called in sick or something,” our receptionist said, beaming. Though Susan was as old as my mother, you'd never know it since her hair was always dyed a dark brown and she'd moisturized enough in her life to stave off any imminent wrinkles that come with her age bracket.

“I'd never do that you,” I mock gasp. Though I love my job, there are many people here I don't love. Susan isn't one of them.

“Is that Hermes?” I ask, motioning to the horse-bit print scarf knotted around her neck. Her hand flies up to the scarf, as though she's forgotten she's even wearing one, and nods immodestly with a sly smile.

“Of course it is,” I say cheerfully, with just a hint of sarcasm.

Susan's got a wardrobe I lust after, which is funny since I can name no other secretaries who regularly wear Chanel, Hermes, and Dior. Not that she didn't earn her wardrobe through some hardship. Her first husband, Charles, was a highly successful real estate investor who, after 11 years of marriage, came out of the closet one day to a shocked Susan who assumed her vows meant, well . . . til death do them part. Turns out it wasn't death, but rather a cute, blue-eyed mail delivery guy who finally came between them. That was decades ago, though, and Susan's since gotten herself a new man she refuses to marry (“I'm done with the whole marriage thing,” she tells me) though they've also been together now for about 12 years. Charles and Susan, much to the dismay of Susan's current boyfriend, amicably separated and are now the best of friends.

And with every friendship comes its perks. For Charles and Susan's, it's Charles' bottomless credit card, which never followed him out of the failed marriage and now acts as a way for him to deal with his guilt of abandoning her.

“Charles bought it for me,” Susan says.

“Of course he did,” I say.

“Oh I have so many of these,” she says, waving away the specialness of it, as if Hermes scarves are as common as Ziplock sandwich bags. “I told you just the other day I went into Neimans and --”

“You did tell me.”

Not that I don't want to hear the story again, but “I'm late,” I say quickly, and she abruptly stops. I've been gossiping about today for ages with her, ever since Angelica left, really.

“Go, go! We'll talk later. I want to hear all about it afterward,” Susan says, hurrying me along with a quick tilt of her head to motion me through the front hall.

“Wish me luck,” I say.

“You don't need it, you'll be fine doll,” Susan whispers, fingering the ends of her neck scarf. “Go.”

********

I tiptoe past my boss' office, hoping I won't be noticed since I'm well over 30 minutes late.

Blaine, yes I actually have a boss named Blaine, is sitting at his desk with his back to to the doorway, speaking on the phone as he watches out his window into the cluster of tall skyscrapers outside. Typical. He's probably spacing out on his call right now, like he does with every call he's on, and which he tries to cover up for by getting me or Michael to “figure out” whatever it was he was supposed to be listening to in the first place.

Suffice to say, I can't stand him. He's only about five years older than me but acts like he's been around forever. Slightly condescending in his direction and his humor, Blaine is a full-blown S.F. elitist. To him the world begins and ends in San Francisco. (Ironically enough Blaine is actually from Los Angeles, and only discovered SF when he came up for college and never subsequently left, much to the dismay of true San Franciscans.) Now he lives a lavish city life with three kids in a metropolitan loft downtown thanks to his wife, a lawyer at PriceWaterHouseCoopers, who I'm sure makes more than anything he could dream of. As if he could afford his lifestyle on his own salary. I roll my eyes as I glide past his hall window.

The door to my office (okay, maybe it's not my office but after today I'll have my own soon enough), is closed. I quickly give a warning knock and turn the handle hoping my office mate, Michael, is halfway decent. Last time I thrust the door open without checking first I came face-to-face with Michael and one of Susan's latest admin hires sprawled on his desk, thankfully still clothed. Not that I have a problem with kinky office situations, but to be completely honest I was always a little irked that womanizer Michael never once put the moves on me. Maybe it was because we shared an office; maybe he still thought I was with Nick; maybe he just didn't find hitting on me very professional. But whatever it was made me both loathe him and want him even more. Sure it'd be annoying to be continually hit on by a coworker, but it would also be a daily ego boost that I'd never, ever admit wanting to anyone except maybe my best friends Olivia and Jane.

“Kit-Kat...” Michael croons, “did you get the briefs on the Phillips account yet?” He was standing over the copy machine in the corner of our cramped workspace. A slutty man is one thing, but I still can't believe I share an office with a xerox machine.

“Miguel,” I croon back, in a lame attempt to flirt. Or at least get him to flirt with me. “I just got in, so no.”

“Look who's playing it dangerous at work,” he says.

Michael and I have a running joke that I'll someday be promoted as his boss and he won't get to chase the new secretaries that come through our departments. To 27-year-old Michael, ad agencies should have never changed from what they were in the early 60s: offices full of business suits and pencil skirts, free-flowing alcohol and illicit after-work liaisons. He's intent on trying to keep his fantasy alive.

I shut the door behind me and take the six steps over to my desk, plopping down on the chair and kicking off my deadly patent heels.

“Be thankful you never have to wear these things,” I say, holding one above my head to him from across the room.

He leans on the copy machine with his elbows and looks up, smiling absentmindedly for a second before turning his attention to the small blue screen in front of him. A pencil skirted bimbo walks in and Michael turns to putty, yet I flash a four-inch heel in his direction and he acts like he's just seen his mother. Of course this just further irritates me slash makes me want him even more.

Today Michael's got the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, showing off an impressive (and unseasonal) tan for the rainy weather we've had the past few weeks.

“You're making me feel pasty over here,” I remark.

“Oh,” he says, glancing at his forearms as though checking the time. “Cabo. Last weekend.” He smiles to himself at the thought of it. Whatever happened in Cabo definitely didn't stay in Cabo.

“Right,” I say, switching on my computer. Should have guessed.

Confession: Sometimes (and by “sometimes” I mean every few days) I Facebook stalk Michael from home before bed when there's nothing good on television and my friends are busy with their beaus. Sure I know him, but for sharing an office with him for the past year I don't really know him at all. Thanks to Facebook I've come to learn a few things about Michael, such as he has an affinity for Hooters, is a diehard baseball fan, and has a penchant for 20-something bottled blondes with abnormally white teeth and perfect boobs.

Now that he mentions it I did notice a new slew of pictures in my feed earlier this week involving Michael brandishing a beer bottle in a packed nightclub, Michael with his arms around three bikini-clad girls, and Michael taking a body shot off another faceless girl lying across a bar. Typical, classy Michael things that both disgust and fascinate me all at once.

“You ready for your big day?” he asks without looking up.

“As ready as I'll ever be.” I flash an overly toothy smile over at him and am immediately glad the copier is robbing his attention at the moment. Why I am so self-conscious around him? It's not like he's as hot as Coffee Guy, and he's my office mate for God's sake. Around anyone else I'm cool, laid-back Kitty; around Michael I turn into a bumbling, anal-retentive nerd. Olivia always chalks it up to the ever-growing sexual tension between us that I'm sure is mostly from my general direction.

I stare at the time in the corner of my desktop screen. 9:43...

“Jesus Christ, does this thing ever work properly?” Michael fumes, smacking the side of the clunky machine with his open palm.

9:44...

I drum my fingers on the desk and wiggle my shoe-free, thankful toes, wondering how I'll celebrate later. Drinks with the girls are definitely in order, but I may just have to pop in at Nordstroms on the way home and pick up that Michael Kors bag I've wanted in forever. It would go perfectly with the studio apartment I've had my eye on in a luxury tower a few blocks from here.

Michael jerks open the copy machine's paper tray. “You've already got paper!” he hisses at the small, silent blue screen on the top. My eyes wander from the clock to his cute little butt. Snap out of it, Kitty, I tell myself.

9:45...

“That's my cue,” I say, popping up from chair and smoothing out my pencil skirt while I slide my toes into their personal torture chambers.

“Break a leg,” Michael mumbles over his shoulder, stabbing the blue touch screen with his finger.

Not even a second look from him. Typical. I hate him and yet I love him.

“Will do,” I say on my way out our door.

**********

Blaine is still sitting at his desk when I walk in, except now he's facing the door, his back to the window.

“Kitty...,” he says, smiling, his voice trailing off. 

So fake. Just like him. I wonder if he goes home at night to his fake life, where he sits eating dinner with his what I imagine to be his cardboard cutout of a wife, since I seriously doubt anyone with an actual personality would date Blaine, much less marry him. They probably talk about fake things like Macy's sales and the weather forecast, and then they probably make fake, robotic love in his queen-sized bed complete with an '80s black lacquer headboard.

“Blaine...” I trail back as I take a seat across the desk from him and force a smile. 

Pulling the seat up closer to the table's edge I notice his long and slender socked feet, crossed and peering out beneath the walnut veneer desk. Today this visual especially annoys me since I can see in plain view that his right sock has a giant hole near the front, and his little nub of a hobbit toe pokes out like a fleshy worm. Gross, I want to say. Put your goddamn shoes back on.

Instead I grit my teeth like a good little worker bee – a good little worker bee about to ask for a good little raise – and wait expectantly to start.

“So I assume you know why you're here...” he trails off again. Out of the corner of my eye I see his  lonely little toe wiggling near its perch on the floor as though it's had too much caffeine for one morning.

I nod in response. “Yes, I do. What should we go over first?” Maybe I sound a bit overeager, but I want to get this moving along so I can spend the rest of the day in my office looking online at city apartments and stealing glances at Michael's derriere each time he walks past my desk.

“Well, that's a good question. I, uh, I've got your folder here...” Does he realize that he has an unattractive habit of ending every sentence with an ellipsis? He fumbles with a cerulean blue file folder on his desk but hesitates in opening it. “And I just want to say. Well, uh, I want to say that you've done a very god job this last year. A great job, really...”

Yes, get along with it you wet spot of a man.

“...And we're really happy here at Walker & Runton that we made the decision 12 months ago to hire you. You came highly recommended and we couldn't have been happier with your work...”

“Thanks,” I murmur, staring off at the windows of the Wells Fargo skyscraper just over his shoulder.

“...So I wanted to put that out there. I wanted you to, uh, know that...” Blaine says.

Right. Got you the first time.

He fingers the blue folder open and pauses on the first page in my file.

He's been especially shifty eyed every since I came in today and I wonder if he noticed that I came in so late. Or whether someone else had tipped him off. Susan never would and Michael could care less when I come in since checking baseball scores online was the only thing that really held his interest at work before lunchtime. Maybe it was Patricia in finance. I utterly loathed Patricia, a Teva-wearing Berkeley-grad who seemed to despise three things in life: high fructose corn syrup, deodorant, and girls like me. (All three of which I adore, especially the first in bags of Halloween candy corn.) She'd be just the type to narc me out to Blaine since in a lame attempt to switch departments it seems like she's been on a mission to make him her bestie. Perhaps they could pad around the office together in all their alternative-shoe glory -- she in her Jesus sandals, he in his hole-ridden socks.

“Now I've been looking over your file, and uh, it looks like you've done some good work here, especially in the last few months. The project you took on with the Tenninger account was carried out thoughtfully from the beginning all the way to the end, and the collaboration you did with the biz development department truly showed how dynamic of an employee you were when...”

My gaze drifts to the skyscraper windows behind him again and this time I can just barely make out a man in each window, suited up, the captain of his desk, probably mulling over big mergers and acquisitions or whatever it was that businessmen who worked at a place like Wells Fargo would work on. Meanwhile I was sitting here across from a guy named Blaine, strategizing how I was going to ask for a 20% raise so I could move into the city and cut my commute time down by 80%.

Blaine continues going over my achievements and I continue to let my mind float elsewhere like it always does when he speaks since most of what he says sounds like garble anyway. He's totally and utterly the male equivalent of Angelica, I begin to realize, except without the polished WASP-y refinement that made her the Witch she was. I make a mental note to tell Susan this new revelation of mine after the meeting. Susan's arch nemesis at Walker & Runton was Angelica pre-maternity leave. Their closets were on par with each other, but Angelica had Susan beat by about 20 years, a managerial position, and a hedge fund husband at home. During my time thus far at Walker, these three facts never ceased to make Susan's Chanel-stained lips recoil with bitter resentment.

“...so I just wanted you to, uh, know that,” Blaine says. My mind snaps back to his thin little lips curling around every “uh” and ellipses. “But there's something I need to tell you...” A pause.

Was he going to profess his love to me? Suddenly the tension between us grows thick; the mood in the office changes. His skin tone looks greenish, almost well, the color of my file folder. Whatever it was it didn't sound good. This was my moment.

I open my mouth to say those six little words -- “I think I deserve a raise” -- that I've been waiting to say all year. But before I can get past “I think,” Blaine cuts me off.

“We're going to have to let you go, Kitty.”

My heart drops down somewhere into my lower abdomen, dangerously close to falling out my butt and joining his now-still toe on the floor.

“What?” I gasp.

If life gives you limes, make margaritas

Over the last few years I've been told by several doctors that I have the blood pressure of Lance Armstrong.

I suppose this is a good thing since I don't currently, nor have I ever, taken steroids recreationally or otherwise. Perhaps it also means that I, too, can win the Tour de France, which would be amazing since being athletic has always been low on my list of priorities, somewhere between dusting my window blinds and putting new batteries in my dying remote.

What confuses me is that if I've got the blood pressure to theoretically win the Tour de France, then why can't I cope well whenever J messes up with household chores? You'd think I'd have the steely nerves of a two-time gold-medal winner when J forgets to clean the cat litter box (his job, not mine), take out the trash, put out the recycling or wash Ava's bottles. And regarding the latter, I get that my "job" (since I no longer hold a traditional one) is to take care of Ava, but there is an unsaid rule in our house that when we're both at home, it's all hands on deck when it comes to the baby.

But lately, I have been completely wigging out when something he's responsible for doing hasn't been done. I'm talking veins-pulsating-out-of-neck, eyes-seeing-red, practically-breathing-fire wigging out. He gets upset, which makes me more upset, we argue, and I go to bed pissed and misunderstood. And for what? Because he left a few empty water bottles on the kitchen counter before he called it a night? I really need to get a grip.

Keeping our house (or previously, our apartments) clean has never been our strong suit. We were both busy with other things, and while we didn't live in squalor, we were fine with the cluttered coffeetable, chaotic dining table, clothing on our bedroom floor and kitchen sink always half full of dirty dishes. It was just the way it was. We'd try and pick up as much as possible (i.e., once every couple weeks), but found we'd rather spend time doing other things together when we had free time, like grabbing a coffee and strolling around downtown, catching a movie, or curling up on the couch together to talk about our hopes and dreams. Also, it was disheartening when we could actually clean and two days later the place was right back to what it looked like before. Two Oscar Madisons do not a Felix Unger make.

With Ava's arrival, though, clutter suddenly seems to bother me. A lot. And as much as I want to blame J for our disorderly house, I know that I'm just as much at fault. I thought keeping an organized, clean house was hard before, but now with Ava it's like trying to keep our heads above water during a monsoon storm in Phuket.

We don't have the money to hire a housekeeper the way that my other mom friends do (mostly because we're trying to make 2013 the Year We Pay Off All Our Credit Card Debt), so it's up to us to stop being lazy and start picking up after ourselves. If not for us, then for Ava (and if not for Ava, then for our mental sanity). The problem is we're still that couple that thinks it's okay to leave a crumpled receipt here or a dirty dish there. After a few days of this, it gets out of control and we wonder how it happened.

When I'm not out running around or home writing slash playing with Ava, I've made an honest effort lately to make sure our dishes are washed, our dark hardwood floors are free of white cat hair (and white cat hair tumbleweeds) from Moneypenny, and that our laundry is kept in a somewhat manageable state and not spilling out the hamper like the Exxon Valdez oil spill spreading across our bedroom floor. While I may not be perfect about keeping organized, I feel that at least I'm trying.

So it really, really bothered me the other day when J left a dirty diaper on Ava's changing table instead of throwing it in the trash bag I'd placed just beneath the changing area. He does this often, and chalks it up to "forgetting" to throw it out. Ava had been crying all that morning, so when I walked into her nursery to get something and was greeted with the dirty pee-filled diaper wrapped up in a ball and left like a little Christmas present in plain sight on her table, I lost it. Went completely non-linear.

I was seething, and unfortunately, he was 20 minutes away in his high-rise office in San Francisco to fully feel my fury. So I whipped out my cell phone and texted with:

"THANK YOU for washing all the bottles this morning like you said you would, along with leaving a bag of dirty diapers near the front door and leaving your routine lone dirty diaper on her changing table even though the plastic bag was hanging RIGHT infront of you."

and then a followup text:

"You need to start taking care of your half of the bargain with her. I'm serious. You half-ass everything related to Ava."

I don't know what I meant by saying "I'm serious" as though making some sort of Dirty Harry-esque threat. But I sent the followup text because I truly feel like he does need to make more of a concerted effort to follow through with things. Lately it seems difficult for him to fully carry out simple tasks related to her, such as making sure all changing stuff is put away, tossing her dirty clothes in a hamper instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor, or storing away her bath stuff after we bathe her.

When he got home I'd (luckily) calmed down some, and it helped that he apologized and agrees that he needs to start pulling his weight more around the house.

"I didn't marry you to be your maid," I told him. And he agreed.

But at the same time, how angry can I really be at him since this is the way we used to be pre-baby? Both of us were and are guilty of letting things slide. I think that deep down (especially when I'm stressed out), it feels good to take it out on him by berating his lack of awareness when it comes to keeping house. But Ava doesn't change the fact that only seven months ago, this is the way we lived. How can he be expected to change so suddenly over night? I don't expect that of myself, so I shouldn't expect that of him, no matter how annoyed I am. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.

Part of the reason I say this is because I'm a proponent of picking your battles. Most things are not worth bickering about. Cleaning is one of them. I like to save bickering for important things like where should we stay the next time we go to Cabo, whether we should drive or take Bart to a baseball game, and why can't I buy that used Prada bag I saw at the consignment store even though it's still an obscene $800.

To me, bickering and nit-picking is the death knell of any relationship, and I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life arguing about why J left a dirty diaper on the changing table. In his defense, he said he honestly forgot to throw it away (a reason -- note: I didn't use the word "excuse" -- that I find annoying, but okay, I get it, people forget things so I forgive and forget). Also, we will not be changing diapers 50 years from now (unless our marriage follows the plot line of Father of the Bride 2, which I hope it does not), so does it matter in the grand scheme of things? The answer is a big, baby-urine-filled, Pamper-Size 3-covered "no." In the words of Jimmy Buffett, "If life gives you limes, make margaritas."

When I feel myself getting non-linear over some trivial thing, I just remind myself of an uptight British mom in one of my playgroups. Let's call her Eleanor Rigby.

Eleanor has made it clear to all us moms from the very beginning that she hates her husband, loathes her two children, and swears that her marriage would have failed 10-fold after her first baby if she hadn't sought marriage counseling -- for her husband, not for her. Naturally. Eleanor is a self-professed nag who likes things the way she likes them, and is the type to regularly update her Facebook wall with statuses like how she wishes she could continue reading her magazine in the car outside her house because she can't bear to go inside and face her family. I should include that Eleanor has a full-time nanny, housekeeper and has one of her two children enrolled in pre-school, which allows her ample child-free-time to lunch, go shop and work out. Even with all this padding, Eleanor finds things to nag her husband about and subsequently "hate" (her words, not mine).

This, in my view, is the worst life ever. I feel sorry for her, I feel sorry for her kids and I sure as hell feel sorry for her poor husband. I never, ever want to be like Eleanor, and I honestly think that not choosing your battles is probably what kickstarts her kind of relationship. I am by no means a glass-is-half-full type of girl, no matter how much I want to ride a unicorn off into the sunset, but I'm not an extreme pessimist (a la Eleanor) either.

Perspective is key, especially when a baby is added to the mix and you find you and your husband's roles changing as your life together changes. These changes can be beautiful, or they can leave you reading magazines in your car and loathing the moment you walk through your door and greet your life as you know it. I want to believe they are the former.

So the forgotten diaper or empty water bottle might get the quiet, occasional eyeroll from me now, but I tell myself it's not worth inciting World War III over. I'll still gently remind J that he needs to do this or that, but in the end he's not perfect, just as I am not. I guess true love is about giving each other leeway to grow, no matter how long your garbage cans sit near the curb after trash day has come and gone.

And now...an excerpt

As promised, here's an excerpt from the book I'm working on. The story follows Kitty Franklin, who markets herself to millionaires when the guy she's meant to be with is the one she hasn't thought to market herself to.

I suppose it would be considered Chick Lit since it's a comedy about a woman's choices in the search for stability and true love. I know that a few excerpts posted here does not a book make, but I just want to share what I've been working on!*

*Because this is still unedited, please forgive any typos, grammatical mistakes, overwriting or generally bad sentences, description or dialogue. Summer 2013 is going to be one big ol' editing extravaganza on this thing.

 **********

I close my umbrella and shake out the excess drops from my hair, which has already, sadly, lost most of its curl. So much for that.

“Can I help you?” an unsure girl my age asks from behind the counter. She's holding a marker poised above a paper coffee cup, waiting for my order. In the seven months I've lived in the neighborhood I've never seen anyone other than Coffee Guy working this register; he's who I've come to expect. Handsome, tan Coffee Guy with whom I have a mild flirtation with a few mornings every week when I stop in for my regular on the way to work.

“I'll have...” I drift off, glancing at the menu above me, my mind uncharacteristically blank.

“She'll have a skim latte with a shot of vanilla, no whipped cream,” says a voice emerging from the stockroom behind her. New Girl nods furiously over her shoulder at Coffee Guy, who's carrying two gallons of creamer. He flashes me a smile worthy at least a small walk-on role on Grey's Anatomy  and I melt. A little. But I'm in a hurry to get to work and have no time for our ritual flirtation today.

“And your name?” New Girl asks.

“Kitty,” I reply, digging into the depths of my Coach bag to find my Visa card. Yes, I pay for coffee with plastic, and I refuse to feel bad about it. Cash is so 1998.

“Kitty?” She scribbles something illegible on my cup. “Is that your real name?”

I smile, since I get this a lot. “No --”

“It's Katrina,” Coffee Guys says, cutting me off as he stocks the fridge beneath the counter with creamer. “Around here we call her Kitty.”

He stands up, all six feet of him. There's that smile again, just the faintest bit lopsided like it prefers the right side of his face a little more than the left. I smile back and hand my card to New Girl, feeling a touch guilty since I've been coming to the Broken Pencil for almost a year now and still don't know Coffee Guy's real name.

In my defense, it's been a busy past few months. Nick and I broke up, which I didn't see coming but in hindsight should have expected. Things had been heading south for a while. He moved out around the time I thought we'd be getting engaged since we'd been together all through college, and a three year relationship at this age feels like a lifetime. We stayed in Palo Alto after college graduation, thinking we'd eventually buy a house here, permanently get rid of our Ikea furniture and open a Pottery Barn account -- all those grown-up things that people on their way toward marriage do. But the minute we signed our lease it was obvious we weren't meant for each other. I was extroverted and social, true to the marketing degree I had earned. He was a quiet software engineer, whose kindness and good looks, in the end, weren't enough for me.

We left things on amicable terms but I still dread seeing him around Palo Alto, or worse, in the Broken Pencil every so often. I simply don't know what I'd say since everything between us had already been said when he packed up his final box. And really, how do you pretend you've had no history with a guy who's seen you cook naked in the kitchen, who's scrubbed your back in the shower, who's held you when you cried over spilling hot pink nail polish all over your new laptop? Suddenly the memories outweigh the pain in my now nearly numb toes.

There's no denying that Coffee Guy is cute. Okay, gorgeous. And all right, so maybe I've had more than one X-rated dream about him involving creamer and a few shots of vanilla syrup, but I'm entitled to saucy dreams now that I'm SBL -- Single and Barely Looking. Normally I'd be in hot pursuit, but Coffee Guy is and always will be, well . . . Coffee Guy. Worlds apart from anyone I'd ever be involved with. It was fun to fantasize but he worked at a coffee shop, for Christ's sake. It was like fantasizing about cute FedEx drivers or off-limits gardeners with bodies that belong on the covers of tacky romance novels.

“One skim vanilla latte,” Coffee Guy says, placing the paper cup on the counter in front of him. “Still pouring out there?” There it was again. That lopsided grin.

“Can't you tell by my hair?” I chirp back and pull a few tendrils forward for him to view from his barista post. “Looks like I'll be sporting the frizzed out look today,” I say.

“I hear it's all the rage right now,” he quips back without missing a beat as he wipes down the espresso machine with a hand towel.

“Oh really?” my eyebrows raise, delighted in our morning tete-a-tete though I really am in a huge hurry. But I can't resist. “Where did you read that?”

“It was somewhere in one of my copies of Vogue,” he teases, wrinkling his nose just a little. “Apparently it's the thing to do in Europe.”

If only this guy was more than just a barista.

“Well then I'm at the forefront of fashion,” I mock back and check my cell phone.

Crap. 8:36 am. Two missed calls, both from work.

“I've gotta run, late for work.”

Coffee Guy gives me a small salute as New Girl gazes at him longingly from her post by the cash register.

I grab my coffee and dash out the front door, popping open my polka-dot umbrella and booking it the four more blocks to the train station. Once I exit the Broken Pencil, any ideas about Coffee Guy quickly fade like they always do. All I can think of now are these blasted heels, Bets' bunions and my annual review today at work.

I wince in pain with each step up on the train and close my umbrella, finding a spot near a window by a handsome man in a business suit. I-banker, it looks like. Employer: Charles Schwab. Or at least it might be, since he sits highlighting numbers on a Charles Schwab letterhead. So it wasn't Goldman Sachs, but this was California, not Manhattan. Charles would have to do. Young-ish, if you count early 40s as youthful.

Charles Schwab looks up and smiles vaguely at me as I plunk into the seat across from him and toss my umbrella on the floor.

“Cute shoes,” he mumbles, before returning to his highlighting.

“Thanks,” I say, grinning.

Gay as a picnic basket. Should have guessed: his suit was too immaculate, his skin too pampered. The Bay Area rushes past the train window we sit next to. With nothing left to worry about except getting to San Francisco relatively soon, I sip my coffee and get lost in thoughts of Walker & Runton, the ad firm where I started at two years ago.

Nick had been my biggest cheerleader in my getting the job and it was every marketing major's dream, really, to be an associate copywriter at such a high-powered ad firm in one of the top markets in the nation. I wasn't sure how many people I beat out for the gig, and though it wasn't as glamorous once you saw things from the inside, I was eager for more. I loved Walker & Runton, and I was ready to move up. It had been a year since I'd gotten a raise, so last night I laid out my best give-me-a-promotion outfit in anticipation of what was coming up in mere hours. Today I was going to ask for the title of lead copywriter in the creative department. Ambitious? Yes. But I'm a firm believer in asking for things you want. Especially since what I wanted, post-breakup with Nick, was to afford to move to San Francisco and not deal with this commute I'd taken on for him and his local job.

Now that Angelica-whatever-her-name-is (more appropriately known as “The Witch” on our office floor) left on maternity leave and, thankfully, never subsequently returned since her hedge fund manager of a husband made five times whatever Angelica made, the spot has remain unfilled. Which I'm happy about not only for my career, but also because my coworkers and I could only take so much cattiness before we were ready to bind her little Chanel-glossed pout with duct tape and throw her in the office supply closet.

At the moment there's a hiring freeze on at Walker & Runton because of cuts and slashed budgets thanks to the economic deathwatch that's trumpeted across headlines and news stations daily. Since the freeze, no one has been brought in to claim Angelica's title.

And I want it. Badly.

Finding my balance

Well, the dust has finally settled on this whole baby thing. And I mean that in the best possible way. I think.

Ava's going to be seven months old this week, and I think I've finally gotten a grasp on how to be a mom. Or at least pretend to be one (because in all honesty, I look in the mirror and wonder who that 30-year-old is looking back at me. It's not me, I reason, since I'll forever feel 23). And I have to say I "think" I've gotten a grasp because I'm still not sure, seven months later, if I'm doing everything right. Perhaps there is no "right" in this parenting chapter of anyone's life. After all, what's right when your baby has poop blowouts out the backs of her diapers? Or you speak baby gibberish in public, sometimes even accidentally to other adults, or find yourself picking your baby's nose and not thinking twice about it. In the worlds of Bob Dylan, "It ain't me babe." Or is it?

I might not be doing everything right, but I've learned as I go, and I think I've edged into a rhythm with Ava that is not only manageable now, but fun. I'm not sure when the erratic chaos of being abruptly thrust into a new phase of life morphed into a gentle and manageable hum, but it happened. Kind of like going to sleep one night after weeks of stress and suffering, and waking up one morning as not only wholly embracing of that which you fought against, but actually loving it. That happened to me, and since then everything's gotten easier. Like I said, the dust has settled and now I feel like this baby thing has become an easy, steady whir. 

Of course it's not easy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but compared to how it was in the beginning, I would say Ava's become a walk in the park. Her sleeping patterns still aren't perfect, and she still has her little crying temper tantrums every time she's put down for a nap (I've decided she looks like a cartoon baby turtle when she cries), but with every hardship she throws at me, I dig deep for patience I never knew I had, and I deal with it. Through this last seven months I've learned that I actually have more patience than I ever thought I was capable of -- a fact that not only impresses me, but frightens me as well.

Now that things have died down to a whir, I find myself getting more time to write and my book is slowly and steadily coming along. I plan to have it finished by this summer, and hopefully edited and out to literary agents by the end of the year. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, so I relish in the moments I do get to work on it. J's read pieces of it and suggested I post excerpts of it on this blog, which I may just do. I have faith in it, more than the other two books I wrote, so I'm hoping readers will like it as well.

Anyway, in this process of caring for Ava, I've chosen to also care for myself. I don't want to let myself go, or lose myself in her. She may be my full-time job now, but that doesn't mean that I don't count or that I come second. I love Ava more than anything, but I love myself just as much. I'm sure some moms would shoot me cold, hard looks for saying such a blasphemous thing, but that's how I feel and I don't understand why I should feel guilty for feeling that way. After all, I existed for 30 years before she was born. I'm just as important, even if I can't wear cute little ballerina slippers the way she does.

So I do my makeup every morning, pick out our cute outfits for the day, and always try to leave the house looking polished and put together. Not only do I do this for my happiness and emotional well-being, I also do it to serve as an example to Ava. She might be too young to understand these things now, but as she grows up I want her to see that there is an importance in taking care of yourself and your appearance. I don't want to be one of those moms that is "so devoted" to their babies they use it as an excuse to schlep around in pajamas and let themselves fall apart. There are so many articles online talking about a woman's looks versus her intellect, but why do we have to choose to nurture one or the other? Why can't we nurture both? I want Ava to see that her mother can be smart and beautiful, and I want her to understand that she can be both. It's not an either/or.

Oh and the weight thing I complained about earlier? I think I've gotten a pretty good handle on it (no thanks to that hula hoop, which has sadly joined the ranks of the ankle weights, dumbbells and myriad other home gym equipment currently collecting dust in our guest room/room of good fitness intentions). Just after New Year's I began religiously counting calories -- 1,200 a day -- and the pounds started to drop away. Not an easy feat when all I want is to eat three gallons of ice cream every weekend, but lately I've started dropping down to familiar sizes and even managed to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans the other night! Though they were still a bit tight, I did get them buttoned and zipped up, so I count this as "fitting me." This small victory will surely be a high of my year. So far I've lost 10 pounds, and I have about five more left to lose. These last five are being extra stubborn and don't seem to care that I imagine I'm eating cheesecake every time I drink my sparkling water, but hopefully they'll be gone by summer.

Ava and I in Napa.

No Thanx to Spanx

J and I went to an exclusive "Private Holiday Party" at Nordstroms last weekend that really just doubled as a way to liquor up customers and get them to spend more money. After my third glass of complimentary champagne, my trigger finger began to gingerly stroke my visa card and I knew exactly where our money had to be spent. Third Floor: Lingerie.

"I need this," I said, holding up a rose-gold-colored sausage sheath from the Spanx rack as though my life depended on it. Historically, J never thought I needed Spanx, but that night, the tides changed their course. Or maybe it was just the champagne talking.

"Okay, get whatever you like," he said benevolently, standing behind me with his glass in hand. Good husband. It seemed we had an unsaid understanding that this night was obviously all about me.

Since I'm a virgin when it comes to tummy shapers, I asked the sales lady about a particularly intriguing high-waisted "tummy tamer" and she recited the spiel that I'm sure all lingerie sales associates who shill Spanx are required to memorize. And it worked . . . until she told me she was wearing a pair. All of a sudden, I felt like I was at a cocktail party talking to someone who'd just gotten a giant piece of spinach stuck in their front teeth. I continued to listen to her espouse the merits of the Spanx she was wearing while I simultaneously tried my hardest to avoid looking directly at her body. See, I wanted a pair of Spanx so I could (somewhat poorly. . .okay, very poorly) resemble Adriana Lima. This sales girl, bless her heart, was far from Adriana Lima. Instead, with her short stature and full figure, she was more Delia Fisher from My So-Called Life -- you know, that girl that clearly missed the memo on the fact that Ricky Vasquez was gay after her brief stint with Brian Krakow. Yeah, this was a dead ringer for her. Or Natalie from The Facts of Life, depending on how dated you like your pop culture.

Anyhoo, I did best not to stare since let's face it: she was probably not the best poster child for the wonders of Spanx. But she was so nice that I not only bought my overpriced tummy shaper from her ($80, which I rationalized by comparing it to the cost of liposuction), I also bought a handful of overpriced panties from the nearest table. Just because.

When I got home that night, I was all eager beaver to try on my new Spanx. I'd heard so many great things about the product online and whispered over fitting room walls. Hell, Kim Kardashian was practically a spokesperson for the brand, as evidenced by all those terrible paparazzi shots of her dress accidentally hiked up over her thigh trimmers. Spanx was like the Bugatti of body sculpting. It had to work.

Well, after about 10 minutes of stuffing myself into the rose-gold sheathing by shimmying and hopping in place, I stood infront of my mirror, unable to breath yet victorious that I'd finally gotten the thing on. ....And my reflected image back was a huge disappointment. I didn't look sucked in at all. I mean, I guess I did a little, but I didn't pay eighty dollars for a little. I paid eighty dollars because this was supposed to be the miracle cure, but my reflection chided back at me that miracles do not come true. I was under the impression that I'd lose inches wearing Spanx, but all it did was smooth out my fat rolls. Big whoop. I didn't need my fat rolls smoothed out -- I needed them to disappear completely, Civil War corset-style, like Scarlett O'Hara's post-baby body in Gone With the Wind. Instead, I looked like a vacuum-packed tube of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls.

The first thing I wanted to do was peel them off and angrily tromp back to Nordstrom's to give Delia Fisher a piece of my mind. But a lack of oxygen made it hard to prioritize such a thing. Plus it wasn't Delia's fault that I was fat. I guess I was just mad at myself. I was so stupid to think that an undergarment would really be the cure for all my body problems. I'll admit, I'm notorious for spending more time going out of my way to find "easy" solutions to problems versus efficiently attacking my problems head on with the hard legwork generally involved. Translation: I can be lazy. It was clear I was going to need more than just Spanx. I was going to have to sweat these pounds off. Starvation, I've decided, will come after Christmas, when Trader Joe's Peppermint Joe Joe's are no longer offered on store shelves.

Since I have the attention span of a flea, I was going to need an exciting and "different" workout. After trolling online for answers, I came across an article that said Jenny McCarthy whittled away her mid-section after giving birth by hula hooping. (I'm sure she also ate one edamame bean per day, but such things need not be written.) So I googled "hula hooping after pregnancy" and quickly learned there was a whole subculture online around "hooping" (that's what they call it) that I didn't even know existed. These people call themselves "hoopers" and travel the world carrying collapsible hula hoops in their carry-ons, meeting up with one another to enter tournaments, attend classes or merely hoop together in various locales all over the globe. I'm not that interested in hula hooping other than to selfishly look fabulous in a bikini by next summer, but it was fascinating to discover this digital underworld through hooping message boards and websites.

So I decided to order a fitness hula hoop, a padded and weighted variation of the kind we had as kids. If it worked for Jenny McCarthy, then it would work for me.

Unfortunately, after some intense online shopping, it turned out the lowest priced hoop was offered through Gold's Gym and only sold at . . . Wal-Mart. I like to keep my trips to Wal-Mart to a bare minimum (read: usually once every decade), but this decade I'd already visited twice. Once, for a low-price, last-minute baby swing, and twice, for some Swiffer pad refills I picked up when visiting a nearby Home Depot. The hula hoop would constitute my third Wal-Mart visit of the decade. Since I was on a budget it seemed stupid not to choose the free "store pick-up" option for my purchase, as well as receive it faster this way, since shipping times looked like they could take up to two weeks. Clearly, two more weeks sans hula hoop now seemed unacceptable to me.

Once I got the message that my hula hoop was waiting to be picked up, I fumbled excitedly for about 10 minutes with a 20-lb baby carseat in hand hopped into my car and made my way over, eying the parking lot suspiciously as I pulled into my space. This was Wal-Mart, after all.

Once inside, a particularly haggard version of Hillary Clinton pointed me toward the back of the store. Let me say this: There is nothing more depressing than padding through the sticky aisles of Wal-Mart to get to the "special order" counter near the restrooms. Maybe it's the Eau de Urine in that general vicinity, or the self-actualizing fact that I now, by definition, "shopped" at this store.

Once back there, I pressed the "cashier" button to get some help since the area, with its flickering tube lights overhead and half-opened boxes strewn on the floor behind the counter, felt as abandoned as the opening scene in a zombie film. Then I waited. And waited (while silently praying that Ava would stay asleep in her stroller). After about 15 minutes of waiting, I felt like I had hit a new low as employees entered and exited the bathroom doors near me without so much as a second glance in my direction. That's right, let's all ignore the new mom. She's too fat to bother with anyway.

To fill time I marveled at a Midwestern company's lollipop display that had been set up by the empty register. I was impressed. Each lollipop was the size of my fist on a stick the size of my pinky. You know, if you're ever concerned that your lollipop might take less than 24 consistent hours to lick down. Seeing that my sole purpose in my third (and final!) trip to Wal-Mart for this decade was to pick up a piece of fitness equipment, I thought it best to stay out of the lollipop display.

Finally, after what felt like days standing there staring at over-sized lollipops in flavors like Bacon n' Caramel, an older store clerk with a gold front tooth came out through the back doors with part of her peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich from lunch still on the front of her shirt. I handed over my printout and she headed back to find my box.

"You know there's a slight problem with your purchase . . ." she said in all seriousness, returning with my package in her hands. The blood drained my face, and I suddenly wondered if God had a master plan to keep me fat forever.

"What's that?" I asked.

"You're going to have to test it out in the store!" she said, and burst out laughing.

Phew. This lady was only making a joke directly related to my love handles. Not funny.

"Maybe next time," I responded, and laughed along nervously. Between the concerningly large lollipops to my right and the Peter Lorre lookalike now standing in line behind me and laughing along with us, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Once home it took me a few days to get around to unpacking the ol' hula hoop. Maybe part of it was that I didn't want to admit I actually needed to hula hoop because not even Spanx could cut it for me anymore. Or maybe it was the commitment to the whole fitness thing that I was hesitant to undertake. (Me and sweating? We just don't mesh well). Whatever it was, I let the hula hoop fester for a while in our third bedroom that we use for such things as forgotten office stationery and tubes of unused wrapping paper. This room also serves as a graveyard for failed fitness attempts from our pasts, like small free weights, ab rollers and collapsible pull-up bars, all collecting dust. I promised myself my hula hoop would not join its predecessors in this gallery of good intentions.

The other day I finally got around to unpacking it. Since Ava has taken to staying awake throughout the entire day now, I laid her on her playmat so she could watch her crazy mother in action, clipped my iShuffle to my shoulder sleeve, and started hooping. I was a bit rusty at first, and looked more like a geriatric trying to dance the Lambada, but after a few minutes all those memories of hula hooping as a kid flooded back, and suddenly the hoop magically stayed up. It was kind of like remembering how to ride a bicycle all over again.

Ten minutes of hooping a day is all you need to "whittle your middle" down to a taut waist size, or so it says online. While ten minutes doesn't sound like a lot, I actually broke a little sweat since the hoop weighs the size of a small free weight. I definitely did not look like Jenny McCarthy after my first session (I even lifted my shirt and stood sideways in the mirror to inspect my still-non-existent abs), but Ava seemed delighted to watch the whole thing go down, so I was glad to burn some calories while simultaneously entertain her.

Still, I wonder if this whole hula hooping thing is going to give me the body I want. I keep looking at the calendar to count down to New Year's Eve. 12 more days, then I'm jumping on the calorie counting train. I'm not sure if I'm ready for the ride.

Moms and nightclubs: A bad mix

In an effort to be more of a hip mom (whatever that is), a couple weeks ago I agreed to go to a girl's night out with a couple moms from Mom Group #2 who were chomping at the bit for an evening of girl talk and booze. Little did I know that when you meet up for dinner and cocktails with other moms, it's not considered "girls night out." Instead, it's known as "moms night out," or MNO, which sounds horribly un-hip and therefore completely negates the whole point of the night...but pressing forward.

Leading up to the MNO, the moms were all excited and a chatter about the impending event. Texts and emails flew back and forth between our library storytimes: "Where should we make reservations?" "What are you going to wear?" "What if it rains, then what will you wear as a backup?" "How late do you think we should stay out?" "What drinks do you plan to order at dinner?" If I didn't know better I would have guessed they were caged Amish women on the precipice of tasting their first few hours of freedom during Rumspringa.

During all this heightened excitement, I felt rather blah. Blah because I knew I looked like crap and standing in front of my closet trying to figure out what to wear depresses me since I have to bypass 95% of what is currently hanging and take my pick from one of the last five hangers tucked at the end. Also blah because in all actuality I missed J and didn't look forward to leaving him for a night of drinks and dinner with other people. Maybe that sounds pathetic, but I don't care. He's my person and I like enjoying everything with him. In all honesty I would have preferred that he (and all the other husbands) come along, since I just don't see him that often and I get no real joy out of pretending I'm "free" for a night of sorority-esque fun. But my true feelings were beside the point, because watch out, world -- This was Mom's Night Out; no men allowed! The other moms seemed stoked to leave their husbands and babies behind for an evening, where they would have to worry about nothing more than the cocktail sitting in front of them. (Apparently I'm the only one that can achieve this even with a baby at my side. Bad mom.)

The night before MNO, one of the moms (let's call her Belinda) casually invited herself over to my house so we could go to the restaurant together (because God forbid one of us shows up early and has to wait for the others to show up. I guess that would just be too awkward.) "I'll just have my husband drop me off at your house, if that's okay," Belinda's email read. In a perfect world I would have said "no," thereby cementing my position as a bonafide curmudgeon. But in reality, what was I supposed to say? "Um, no...my house is a pigsty and I wasn't expecting any guests till Thanksgiving, so just stick to the plan and meet me at the restaurant because I abhor cleaning, especially cleaning last-minute"? Yeah, I'm sure that would go over really well. By the next morning all the mothers in the tri-county area would hear about that one time I told a mom she wasn't allowed to come over to my house.

"Sure," I responded robotically. And for the next 12 hours or so I cleaned the hell out of my house to host Belinda for a ladies night out I didn't have my heart set on attending. After a full day of cleaning (I think I've reached Cinderella status now with my stupid mop), I squeezed into one of my killer "going out" outfits that didn't look particularly killer anymore on my post-baby body and waited, switching on Watch What Happens: Live! to kill some time. Belinda arrived part of the way through the episode, interrupting a fascinating argument between Joanna Krupa and Adriana De Moura about that one time Adriana punched Joanna in the face on national television. I tried to get Belinda to watch it with me, but she preferred to coo and play with Ava, so I reluctantly switched the TV off and followed suit.

J arrived shortly after, and once Belinda and I compared our shoe choices and I gave her the official house tour -- I didn't clean for nothing, God damn it -- I handed Ava to J, and we were off.

"I feel like I'm 23 again!" Belinda shrilled as we backed out of the driveway in my car and Too Short came on the radio. She paused, intrigued by my choice of radio station. "You listen to rap?" she asked

I know I'm about the WASP-iest person I know, but yes, I occasionally listen to rap. 

"That's awesome!" she said, and proceeded to do a seated dance in the passenger seat like Leslie Mann in the drunk driving scene of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Maybe I was just tired or in a funk, but the last thing I felt like doing was busting a move with my seatbelt on. Nonetheless I laughed and let her fly her freak flag. After all, nothing about her struck me as someone who would enjoy rap, but then again, the same could probably be said about me.

An hour later we were just finishing dinner up with another mom, Mimi, that had joined us at the restaurant. Belinda and Mimi were on their way to getting tanked off a glass or two of red wine, but I was a good with my one gin martini since I had to drive home that night. Both moms had spent the large part of the hour gushing about how happy they were to be out at a real restaurant having real drinks, though both winced at the booze in my cocktail when I forced them to take a sip of it, so I assumed they were using the term "real drinks" loosely.

According to our original plan, we were supposed to just have dinner/drinks and then head home after, which I would have been more than happy to do. Instead, two hours later I found myself sitting in the VIP area of a terribly tacky nightclub, watching Belinda and Mimi drunkenly writhe across from one another on the dance floor while I staved off the cheesiest come-ons from a couple of Bacardi reps that could have doubled as Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson from Wedding Crashers.

How did we get here? Simple. The restaurant we started off our evening at had nothing chocolate on the dessert menu. Isn't this the way all good stories start?

I'm not picky about my processed sugars, but Belienda was. Naturally, she only wanted the one thing that wasn't on the menu: a chocolate dessert. So we paid our tab and strolled down the nearly empty street (this was a Thursday night in the suburbs, after all) to another restaurant that we knew would have something to satisfy her picky palate. After we were seated, the waitress asked what we we'd like and Mimi blurted out "a bottle of champagne." Um, what? Belinda, of course, asked for the chocolate-iest dessert they had for the three of us to share.

Of course when the bottle was popped at the table, I had to have a glass or two of champagne, or "bubbly," as Belinda and Mimi repeatedly referred to it as, making me feel like I was in some bad suburban parody of a Notorious B.I.G. video. During the course of our champagne and chocolate (the latter of which I mostly ate), Belinda cornered Mimi about whether or not she listened to rap, as though it was some rite of passage into the "cool" mom's club. Or something. I, for one, had pegged soft-spoken, doe-eyed Mimi as a classical music listener, but it turned out she was actually a huge George Michael fan. This didn't seem to impress Belinda, who began ticking off names of all rappers she loved, including 50 Cent.

Now I don't know why but sitting at a table listening to scrapbook-making, Subaru-driving housewives discuss 50 Cent like he's some tenuous lifeline to another time back when they were cool was utterly hilarious to me. Not knocking it at all, (I've found myself bringing up pop culture references lately that are so outdated they're just sad) but hearing other people do it out loud over a bottle of last-minute champagne just seemed...well, desperate. And made me felt older than I already felt before leaving my house that night.

So what came next? You guessed it. Belinda and Mimi were adamant about visiting a bar around the corner that had some Internet jukebox they kept talking about. Belinda, especially, was on a mission now to play "just one" 50 Cent song on said jukebox. When we got to the bar, Belinda and Mimi made a beeline to the jukebox against the far wall while I lingered near the bar, debating whether or not I should order something since we looked like idiots walking into a nearly empty establishment just to play a 50 Cent song. But I reminded myself I still needed to drive, so a drink was out for me.

"Are you guys going to order anything?" I asked, but they were too busy choosing 50 Cent's "Candy Shop" to hear me. When the synths came on for their song they shrieked in unison and proceeded to dance as seductively as two new moms could in a nearly empty bar with no drinks in hand. "Ooookay," was all I could think since the last time I did this was probably at 23. A booth full of young 20-something guys glanced over at our spectacle and looked highly uninterested, no matter how provocatively Belinda and Mimi danced. I felt like I was a mother out with her two teenagers and felt even older than I had just minutes earlier. The way this night was going I was going to feel of retirement age by the time I reached my car.

After the 50 Cent song was over (thank GOD) and Belinda was brutally rebuffed by the bouncer who picked out the next 40 songs on the jukebox, we left the bar and started to walk back to my car. But wait. We had to pass a nightclub on our way to the parking lot and naturally the two in my party really wanted to stop there "just for a little bit." Oh, joy.

At this point it was getting late, and I'd already told J I'd be home by then, but we dipped into the nightclub to see what it was all about. The moment we walked in the strobe lights and loud music dazzled Mimi and the 21-year-old version of herself officially surfaced. She grabbed both our arms and shrieked in a pitch I didn't know she was capable of. "This is real nightclub!!!!!" she screamed over the blasting music, her eyes wide with delight. Yes, it was a real clurb. This woman really needed to get out more.

Herein was where a gaggle of Bacardi reps surrounded us, offering us drinks and VIP seating and all that stuff that comes with being PR whores. It was no surprise that Belinda and Mimi were not going to drink anything with Bacardi in it; instead, they wanted bubbly. Shocking. This was somewhat embarrassing to me since these 40-something-year-old frat boys were shilling the Boco, but to my surprise, the Bacardi guys ordered us bubbly anyway. Once the girls got their champagne fixes, their flirty sides completely fell away and they commenced to totally ignoring the guys. After Belinda and Mimi ran off to the dance floor, their tummies full of champagne, I then had to listen to the guys incessantly ask me over bass-thumping music "if my friends were lesbians" since they didn't seem interested at all.

"No," I finally yelled over the loud music, "they're just married with kids." By the looks on their faces, you'd think I'd just told them that Belinda and Mimi were trannies.

After putting up with these guys continuing to call Belinda and Mimi gay, while simultaneously hitting on me, I was so fed up. I had a super hot husband who was laying in bed waiting for me to come home, not to mention the rest of that Watch What Happens: Live! episode that was left half-watched on my DVR. And here I was drinking bad champagne in a sweaty nightclub with a group of over-the-hill Bacardi losers that wreaked of alcohol and desperation. I was officially too old for this. I just wanted to go home.

I thanked the men and stood up, grabbing our purses off the seat near me. They protested that I stay since I was "so hot" and all, but the whole situation was thisclose to turning into some sad scene from a Judd Apatow movie. You know, the kind of revelatory scene near the end of his films where the main character has a life-changing epiphany about their new place in the world as an adult. Well, I already knew my place in the adult world and it was not here at this venue pretending I was still childless and single. So I grabbed Mimi and Belinda and left.

Hopefully I will never, ever return to that nightclub, or that type of night, again. Girl's Night Out failed to make me feel young and free -- all it did was make me feel old and pathetic.

MNO fail.

Finding friends as an adult

Every day of the last three weeks has been above par for me. I've had fun, met new people, got to spend some quality time with J over each weekend and have generally been so busy every weekday that I felt my life with Ava was finally finding a balance where she and I were both satisfied. Her, with the stimulation of being on the go and around sights, sounds, colors and people; me, with building friendships, (finally) finding some time to write, and getting things done in and outside of the home.

Then yesterday happened.

If we're going black and white here, it wasn't the most terrible day of my life, but it was definitely a lighter shade of gray. For someone who's tried to paint every day white, it was a downer to say the least.

It started off fine. I woke up before Ava and got myself makeup-ed and ready, excited to meet up with some moms from a mother's group I attend once a week. A few of us planned to meet earlier than the group to have coffee and hang out. Caffeine? Prospective friends I can commiserate with about this whole baby thing? Count me in. I looked forward to getting to know these girls a little better since our meetup group was so big that it was hard to get to know anyone on an individual basis.

So Ava and I went, and it wasn't bad per se, but it wasn't that great either. Maybe I just have high expectations for forging close friendships relatively fast with people, I don't know. But sitting there at the Starbucks in Target with our pow-wow of strollers, I tried in vain to jump into the conversation whenever I could, being my perky self and asking questions with a genuine interest because I do want to get to know these women. But part of the way through I started to realize that no one was really including me in their conversations and no one was asking me any questions -- were they not interested in getting to know me? -- so I watched as they spoke with one other and suddenly I felt excluded and very alone. The last time I felt this way was during my freshman year of high school, when I was one of the last picked for phys. ed. dodgeball (the stereotype exists for a reason). Since that fateful day in Mr. Warmerdam's sixth period P.E. class, I've grown prettier, more confident and a hell of a lot more cool. Or so I thought. But then at Target yesterday that familiar feeling resurfaced.

That feeling, then, made me painfully aware that I was sitting at a Target Starbucks. I always wondered what type of person would ever spend time at a Target Starbucks, usually seen looking dejected and alone with a a coffee and personal pan pizza from the adjoining food counter, and now I knew -- that person was me. The one who doesn't really fit in to her surroundings, but still tries like mad to because having a baby is isolating enough and she just wants to find some like-minded friends, God damn it.

And maybe that's the problem. Maybe I'm trying too hard to force all of this. I so want to have best friends going through what I'm going through that the process isn't happening as organically as a Candace Bushnell novel.

I belong to two mom groups, both of which herald mommy members that couldn't be more different. Let's call these Mommy Group A and Mommy Group B.

Mommy Group A is all career-driven, first-time moms who are eager to return to the professional lives they had before baby. They love their new babies but are happy to complain about breastfeeding, the lack of adult conversation in their new lives, and how they can't wait to go back to work so that baby rearing is no longer their sole function. They unanimously hate cooking, cleaning and anything domestic that has to do with being June Cleaver 2.0. I have this in common with them, but within the group I'm the only stay-at-home mom -- a fact that makes me look like an outsider.

Mommy Group B, on the other hand, is made up of all stay-at-home moms, so of course there's not much talk in this group of "going back to work," nor is there any desire to work ever again. Mommy Group B heralds Martha Stewart-type living, and members keep recipe books, enjoy cooking and crafting, and like playing house. In this group, one mom's idea of living on the edge is wearing a lavender cardigan. I can say for certain that I'm no Martha Stewart, nor do I have any desire to be. Still, the moms in both groups are pleasant and nice, there's no competition (at least I don't feel any) between women. That usual cattiness that comes from female groups (a la Real Housewives) doesn't exist in either.

So these are my two groups and while I may have some things in common with members of both (I hate cooking and cleaning, but I am a stay-at-home mom), I don't quite fit in with either. I feel like I'm somewhere in between, which makes some days better than others.

One day I'll think that I've made headway with a mom or two and the next day I'll feel like I'm right back at square one. What gives? The worst thing of all is that I feel like I'm back in grade school trying to find my group of friends, and all the same rules of the play yard still apply. It's like that scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Toula, as a young girl, sits alone at the next table over from the popular girls. She happily opens her lunchbox and before she can take a bite of her mousaka, which she tells the popular girls it is, they shriek "Moose Caca!!!" and laugh at how weird she is. All right, so maybe my situation isn't this dire, but to a degree the exclusion I feel sometimes feels like this.

I'm sure the moms I hung out with yesterday have no idea I'm feeling any of this. I smile and nod and politely enter the conversation here and there, but on the inside I'm thinking "Why can't I just find my people?" I don't want to always be politically correct or bond over breastfeeding stories. I just want to click with a few first-time moms around my age that don't feel the need to discuss babies (or baby-related things) 24/7. Maybe this is just my attempt to feel normal again, back before I had Ava. I did have an identity and life before her, and while she's a great addition, I don't want to pretend that part of me before her never existed.

But, to find mom friends, I feel myself pretending to be someone else. I'm suppressing that perky, hyper part of me to come off as more subdued and collected. I normally have an unusual giddiness about certain things, but lately I've felt like I've tamped down my outward enthusiasm so as not to come off as overbearing and "too much."

And I hate it. It's like I've become some boring, monotonous version of myself just to try and get in good with some of these moms. It's not me and I'm sick of it. I don't want to pretend anymore that I enjoy receiving copies of Good Housekeeping and Parenting Magazine from other moms. I live with a baby; I don't need to read about what it's like. And I hate Good Housekeeping -- do I really look like the type of girl that reads Good Housekeeping?  I loathe how ugly some baby essentials are, like vibrating chairs, swings and "play mats" and I hate how these things make my house look. I abhor breastfeeding, and yes, maybe I like having a bottle of wine or two with my husband after we put Ava to bed. Shoot me.

Why should I feel like any of this is weird or irresponsible to admit just because other moms have sworn off wine and caffeine entirely because of breastfeeding? No, I don't want your copy of Good Housekeeping, but I'll take your copy of Vogue if you have one. Oh wait, you don't. Because you're busy reading about how to properly bake your own croutons while I just want to live vicariously through Kate Moss in Paris.

That's what I need to find: Non-PC moms who see the humor in all this stuff we're supposed to "love" about motherhood. Moms who are honest about everything we're all going through. I dropped the "D" word (depression) a few days ago, and my entire group got quiet and said that none of them experienced any of that after having their bundles of joy. I call bullshit. Maybe they aren't ready to be honest with themselves, let alone me, but I find it highly unlikely that in a group of five moms, only one (me) has experienced any postpartum depression.

I've found that finding new mom friends is a lot like blind dating -- so why should I treat this any differently? Not every man is a perfect fit and neither is every mom. This isn't commentary on me or the choices I've made as a woman, it's simply an issue of compatibility. At 30, if I was thrust back into the dating scene, I wouldn't waste my time with every man, trying desperately to find someone who I'd work with. So why am I doing that now with these new friend candidates? I like some more than others, so instead of trying to make it work with all of them, I'm going to spend time getting to know the good ones while keeping an eye out for new, outside prospects.

My body after baby

Confession: Today I bought a dress that totally didn't fit me. Unfortunately, it's not that it was too big (an easy fix with a cinched belt); it was too small. And I knew this, but it didn't stop me from bypassing the dressing rooms, taking said dress up to the front register and purchasing it. That's right, I bought it. All in the name of cute minimalist color-blocking and an exposed zipper down the back.

Like an idiot I was all happy to get home and try on the damn dress so I could brag to everyone I knew about how at two months postpartum, I already fit into “those” kind of dresses – the kind with cinched waists, slim shoulders and tailored butts. You know, the skinny girl kind. Of course somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew full well I wouldn't fit into the thing. I still have 14 el bees of baby weight to lose (although I hide it very, very well) and once in a while I'll look at myself naked in the mirror and swear my ass has exploded to Kim Kardashian proportions. J insists this isn't the case but husbands can't always be trusted when their wife's weight is at issue. Anyway, irrational Crystal assured me that somehow it would fit, or at least I'd force it to fit. Well let's just say that if the dress were Cinderella's glass slipper it would be less like this:

And more like this:

It was much worse than a little snug. I felt like a sausage stuffed in to size zero casing. Curtains of armpit fat spilled out the arm holes. My thighs made the fabric across them pucker in a most unappealing fashion. And the waist. . .well, it looked like I'd slipped a small rubberband over my torso to use as some makeshift belt. This time last year this dress would have looked stunning on me, in fact it probably would have been loose on and I would have pretended I didn't love all the compliments I'd get for how great I looked in it. Now I looked like Jeana Keough from Real Housewives of Orange County, albeit with no Playboy Magazine past to attest to my former hotness.

Dejected, I tore the dress off and flung it over my shoulder into the baby's empty crib (I currently use Ava's nursery as my second closet). So, aside from collecting dust on its hanger, I guess this dress could serve one of two purposes:

• It can serve as a reminder that I'm a fat cow now that I've had a baby. This can further remind me that not only has the baby sucked me dry of all energy (along with parts of my soul), she's also ruined my body in her wake. 
• It can serve as a reminder that though I may be of fat cow status now, if I work hard at losing the weight I can one day fit into some version of this dress again.

Of those two purposes I think I'm better off attempting to be a little positive, so I'm going with option number 2. Like Stella, I need to get my groove back. The dress will now join my pre-pregnancy Hudson Jeans, Banana Republic little black dress and countless other garments that don't fit me to serve as overall motivation to get myself (and my butt) back into shape.

I'm not asking to look like a Victoria's Secret Angel, but I also don't want to keep going this way and wind up padding around my house in a leopard-print muumuu like Kirstie Alley with a bag of Cheetos. I want to feel good about my body again and not automatically hold a shirt or towel up over my midsection if J happens to walk in on me while I'm changing. I never used to be that girl who was insecure about her body. Before I was Samantha Jones about my body; now I'm Bridget Jones. Maybe it's karma for sunbathing topless once in my entire life because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about (turns out not much, other than sunburned boobs).

For a girl who hates working out I don't quite know what I'm going to do aside from count calories and starve myself back to skinny-ness...but that seems a bit unreasonable at the moment since I need every last ounce of my energy to make it through these days. Plus, the last time I counted calories -- 1,100 calories per day – I always felt like I was one step away from fainting like some character in a Jane Austen novel. Definitely not conducive to raising a baby.

I plan to keep walking and maybe I'll gradually cut my calories here and there. I suppose the occasional crunch wouldn't hurt either. I've been a good little witch and cut out my brownie batter habit a few weeks ago, so there's that. The next step is cutting out most of the junk food I eat (humongous sigh). I guess I'll have to say goodbye to Taco Bell, Panda Express, Red Vines licorice and basically anything else that comes packaged in a box, bag or jar. This is the best rule of thumb for a diet since anything packaged in one of these is generally high in sodium, preservatives and, well, all that stuff that tastes good. I once heard that the most healthy way to shop the grocery store was to cruise the perimeter, which makes sense. That's where all the produce, meats, dairy and freshly baked goods are. Everything else in the store's middle is just junk (no matter how good it tastes). So if it means I can get back into that dress and back into a better frame of mind about my body,  I'll make the sacrifice and shop the perimeter more.

After all, not only are there clothes in my closet waiting to hang out with me again, the holidays are just around the corner and that means. . . holiday dress season!!! (I type those exclamation points with heartfelt sarcasm.) Normally this time of year elicits quiet squeals from me since holiday dress shopping and wearing are some of my favorite things. This year, though, I'm meeting it with equal parts skepticism and remorse. No matter how much I cut calories there's no way in a healthy hell I'd ever be able to drop 14 pounds by Christmas. It's a crap situation all around. Nevertheless, I've got three events in December already lined up that I need to at least try and look good at:

1.) A white elephant Christmas party one of my new mom friends is throwing for a group of us mothers. Obviously a cocktail dress would be too dressy for this occasion, but I still need to be the hottest mother there. Naturally.

2.) J's office holiday party. It's being held at a steakhouse in downtown SF (fancy, fancy) and is a great excuse to rock a stunning cocktail dress. Lucky me? Again, I need to be the hottest wife there. It's a gold standard I constantly strive for.

3.) My cousin's wedding. It's going to be a black-tie, evening shindig, so a TKO dress is in order. I'm thinking something in a jewel tone that doesn't highlight the thin layer of fat I now carry around on my back. Not a big deal if I'm not the hottest person at this party since half my extended family are Persian Kardashian-lookalikes that make me look super vanilla in comparison.

I miss my husband

There. I said it. I miss my husband. No, he's not away on some weeks-long business trip or stuck in Manhattan due to any apocalypse-esque hurricane. Nope, he's only about 20 miles away and for some reason that 20 miles feels like 200.

I guess I should preface this with the good news: J got a new job! Mostly thanks to me, since I'm the one that forwarded him the listing online when I saw it (and was slightly obsessed with him moving up the ladder to a higher paying, more prestigious position). Okay, I suppose it also helped that he went to an ivy league school and gained great experience at the law firm he was currently with, but I like to think that my emailing him the posting kicked off all this good news (however delusional that may be). After an initial call to come interview and another month or so of interviews later, J was offered the job, which he promptly accepted. Score!

In a nutshell this job is everything we wished for while he was in law school. Tony street address in one of the best buildings in the city's financial district. Marble lobby with gilded sculptures leering down at all who enter. An office on one of the top floors. A view of Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid from J's window. Big clients and complex legal work. More money than I ever dreamed of having at age 30. After years of uncertainty thanks to the effects of a terrible economy on the legal profession, we -- or I should say he -- had finally joined the big leagues.

For those who've followed my blog over the last few years, you'd think this is all I ever wanted. Frankly, it was. But as is the case with my rose-colored lenses, I tend to only look at "how cool" a situation can be without measuring the negatives as well. Stuck in the path of a historical hurricane? Color me jealous. Lost in the wilderness for three days? At least you lived to tell about it. You were there when Lincoln was shot? Not only would I envy you, I'd also quietly sign up for more theater ticket reminders just in case.

So of course when J got the formal job offer, I was beyond thrilled. We celebrated with cigars and a bottle of Blue Label and stayed up all night talking about how different our lives were going to be now that he had this job. What I didn't consider was that every positive difference also comes with a negative one. I was blind to the the yin and yang until he started work last Monday.

It's only been over a week and I already feel like he's had this job for ages. How could I have thought this was all I ever wanted? Stupid, stupid me. I'm lucky now if he gets home before 8pm, and even when he does it doesn't matter because he's so exhausted from waking up early that all he wants to do is eat dinner and go to bed. He loves his new job so much that he often loses track of time in the office and only notices it's late when I call him and remind him that the sun is coming up in a couple hours (okay, it hasn't gotten to that point yet, but you get the point).

Only having dinner together once in the last seven business days is not all I ever wanted. Watching Anderson Cooper 360 every evening with Ava as my conversational companion is not quite the tradeoff I'd envisioned once J had a Big Law job. Handing Ava over to J when he gets home so I can do some things for myself like, oh I don't know, take a shower, tends to quell any quality time we can spend together throughout the week. I just want my husband back, but I guess this is the tradeoff. If I really want the lifestyle I've always dreamed of, then I've got to give something up...no matter how much it sucks.

So what's more worth it: time or money? I miss our time together but I can't complain about the money, so I don't argue about his long work hours because I know he's simply providing for his family. How else will we be able to do all the things we want to do, like eventually buy a bigger home, travel the world, make real estate investments, (hopefully) retire early, etc. etc.? Does that mean my silence has been bought? Slightly disturbing when thought about this way.

Of course J knows how I feel, but at the same time we're both realistic and know that it's better to work harder younger and enjoy money later than it is to work harder older and not have the time (or mobility) to enjoy it in your geriatric years. Over waffles on Sunday, I told J that I completely understand why he has to work so hard right now. I really do. I am, after all, the person who sparked all this off by emailing him that job posting. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. And as much as I miss him, I'm inspired by his work ethic and commitment to his craft. But at the same time I know myself and I know I can't do this forever. Thankfully he understood, and visions of me in my 70s waiting for him to retire while I lounge lakeside and alone on the banks of Como quickly dissipated.

For now I'll just have to take it day to day and hope it gets easier. At least he changed jobs at a time when caring for Ava on my own isn't as harrowing as it initially was (the thought of him making this transition when we first had her would have been mortifying, to say the least). And because he's in the city now, it gives me more of an excuse to head in and have lunch or dinner with him when I can.

But still, even after five years of marriage, I have this sense of urgency with him and our relationship. It's that butterflies-in-your-tummy, I-can't-get-enough-of-you urgency that makes you do crazy things when you're dating a boy you love, like stay up late talking all night on the phone, make out like teenagers in the rain, or drive for hours just to see him for a quick visit. It's a drug, that urgency, and for some reason I still feel it with J, which makes him working like this all the more harder for me to stomach. But paper covers rock and dollars cover wife, so again I shouldn't complain.

Regardless, I still (and always will) miss him.

The baby blues

Tuesday officially marked my baby's two-month birthday. By the way, her name is Ava.

Ava celebrated this momentous occasion by sleeping through most of the day, only opening her eyes and squeaking or crying when she wanted to be fed (right now she doesn't ask for much). For the first time in eight weeks, I finally -- finally! -- have time to sit down and write something, which I really should have been doing from Day 1, but all other excuses aside, I've been so busy with Ava that I often can't remember what day it is, much less how to even begin recording my thoughts on this whole process online or getting back to writing the book. While time, or the lack thereof, was a factor keeping me from blogging, I have to be honest and say that I was also scared to start writing about it all. Especially that first month of having her. Why? Because it wasn't the idyllic situation that I always envisioned having a baby would be like.

I felt that if I admitted this through words it would make me a bad person (and an equally bad mother). Something like Joan Crawford's character in Mommy Dearest, minus all that wire hanger business. By week 4 or 5, I literally felt like I was going insane. Of course I love Ava to death, but those first few weeks were so foreign to me. It felt like I was tossed into a maelstrom of transition that I wasn't prepared for, what with the sleepless nights, uncomfortable healing "down there," and the stress of hearing a tiny baby emit hours of bloodcurdling cries and an inability to understand what it is they actually want after diapers are changed and tummies are fed.

The frosting on the cake for me was my detachment from the situation. I felt like I wanted to turn in on myself and disappear. Sometimes I felt like she was a stranger when I'd hold her. Other times I felt like she didn't love me because she didn't recognize me as her mother (which is stupid, really, since at that age she couldn't recognize a zucchini, much less her own mother). Often I'd resent her -- for needing so much of me that I had nothing left over for myself. Terrible to say, right? And I feel guilty for even writing it now, although I've since come to grips with most of this. I'd cry for no reason, missing my "old" life even though I was happy to say goodbye to it up until the day we brought her home. I'd be so pissed at J, sometimes even resentful of him, for giving me this new life and being able to leave every day for work while I had to suffer through it alone. I hated how my post-baby body looked and missed the old times where I could actually feel my core and use it for good posture.

Every day was an up/down confluence of emotions, going from extremely sad to (once in a while) very happy. I felt like I was stuck in someone else's life, taking care of this baby that I had no connection with. I was scared that I felt any of this, even though I'd read about it in popular baby books and heard from endless television doctors that this was "normal." Well, it might be considered normal but it didn't feel normal to me. Normal moms were put together and organized, loved their new lives as mothers and got pure satisfaction from their babies. I felt sad and resentful, terribly absent-minded and mentally scattered, like my brain was in a fog. The worst part was that I didn't want to talk to anyone about it. J was the only one who knew what I was going through. I felt guilty for feeling the way I did and that I'd somehow be a failure if I admitted any of it out loud to close friends or family, which made me feel more isolated because I didn't feel I could be honest with anyone, sometimes not even myself. This would just feed into my sadness, which would make me feel even more isolated and...well, you get the cyclical point.

So at my six-week postpartum checkup with my doctor (you know, that awkward office visit where doctors pretend everyone alludes to sex as "intercourse" and they let you know whether you can or can't have it yet), they made me take a written postpartum test. On this test I had to circle answers in multiple choice form and apparently I couldn't hide my sadness enough because my doctor told me I had borderline postpartum depression.

My first thought was: "Great, I'm officially a statistic," because though I'd read about postpartum depression I didn't think I'd actually ever get it. It was one of those scary things you hear about and hope to never experience, like foreclosures or herpes. Other people might get those things, but those type of people serve as cautionary tales. My second thought was "Jesus, if I'm borderline, I cringe to think what full-blown postpartum depression is." After all, I was always a happy-go-lucky girl, easily finding humor in even the worst situations. That girl is still in me, but now I just need to work at maintaining her. My third thought was: "How the hell do I get better?" I didn't like feeling blue all the time.

My doctor's answer was simple. "Prozac," she said, suggesting it like taking Prozac was as common as chewing gum.

"I'd really rather not," I said. After all, she had just said I was borderline, not full-blown, and I refused to believe that medication was the only way to happiness again. At least not in my circumstance. 

"It would only be for a month or two. Three tops. Then you can stop taking it," she said.

I think the look on my face, a look made of two-parts confusion and one-part fear with just a dash of skepticism, said it all. "Okay, but is there anything else I could do besides take pills?" I asked. Visions of me losing my mind and moving to L.A. to be a failed actress with my anti-depressants instantly surfaced, because clearly -- to me, at least -- anything related to pills has to be lifted from the pages of a Jacqueline Susann novel. Yes, my limited knowledge of prescription drugs pretty much centers around Valley of the Dolls.

She asked if I used to work out, and through my haze I did actually find this funny since there's nothing I loathe more than working out, except maybe men who wear athletic sneakers. I told her I used to walk a lot, but this wasn't so much for working out as it was a good excuse to get out of the house and listen to my iShuffle. Nevertheless, it was still some form of physical activity that didn't include getting off and on the couch according to Bravo's TV show lineup.

"You could try walking again," she said, and then went on to tell me how endorphins play a part in us humans being happy. "...But when I see you at our next appointment, let me know how it's going and whether you want to start Prozac," she added (endorphins aside). Jesus, I thought, this lady was really pushing the meds. I thanked her and said I'd think it over between now and our next appointment, but the truth was I wanted no part in Prozac.

So I started walking. Even when Ava cried or acted fussy for hours on end and it probably would have been easier to stay at home in my PJs with her and zone out on some Real Housewives episode, I'd get dressed, pack her up in her stroller and we'd stroll the neighborhood together. She'd fall asleep while I (quietly) rocked out to Lady Gaga and miraculously I started to feel better. Just a little. At about week 6, I decided it was time for her and I to get out into the world more, past the confines of our neighborhood. I know this doesn't seem like much, especially since the old Crystal went out into the world every day, but with a baby, the world kind of feels like a new place. Taking your baby out into it for the first time is terrifying. What if she cries while I'm shopping? I'd think. How or where will I change her diaper if she needs to be changed? What if I can't get the carseat properly put in the car? What if I run of out of bottled milk while we're out and she has a fit? (I'm not one to whip out the boob in public. I just. Can't.)

Slowly we'd go out more, running an errand here and there. I got the hang of snapping her carseat in and out of its base in my car. I grew more sure of myself unpacking and packing her stroller into our trunk. If she'd start to cry in a store, I became more adept at understanding what she'd want. Pretty soon us going out became like second nature to me and the blues I had slowly began to fade.

Then one day she decided to smile for the first time and it was like sunshine peeking through my gray cloudy haze. All of a sudden something connected between us, with that smile of hers, and I couldn't help but smile back. That smile told me that she finally recognized who I was, that all this hard work was paying off. I smiled back at her and it was all over. Since then she smiles almost every time she sees me and in the last week or so she's started babbling and trying her hardest to mimic sounds I make. They're all nonsensical sounds, but it makes me so much happier to feel like we're somewhat communicating with one another. If you had told me this the first couple weeks of her being home I wouldn't have believed it -- how would a smile or babbling make me happy? But it just does. Maybe it's this instinctual thing hardwired into my mother gene. Who knows.

As much as I love the babbles, I also knew I needed to make friends with other moms in my area, which would motivate me to get out even more. So I did. Right now I'm part of two mom groups in my town and while I still routinely have out-of-body experiences when four or five of us walk down a street with our strollers (I never thought I'd be one of those women), it's nice spending time with people who are going through the same thing as me. I don't connect with all of them equally but unlike clubs for books or movies, babies seem like a true commonality you can bond over.

So in the end I am doing better (thank God) and this whole "being a mother" thing seems to get slightly easier every day. I still don't always have the time to eat breakfast or lunch, and there are days I want to bang my head a few times against my brick fireplace because I've been holding her for 4+ hours and I'm tired and hungry and my arm feels like it's going to fall off, yet I can't put her down or else she'll start wailing. But then there are days where I can see what people mean when they say it's "all worth it." Those are usually the days where she'll look up at me with those baby blues and give me a big toothless grin. Just a simple, silent grin. And on those days it feels like my heart smiles.