Free To Be Me

Are all babies obsessed by cell phones, remote controls, and car keys? Aren’t these the things in our life we touch THE MOST? Germs, germs galore!

I have a cell phone that has a charm on it (it’s a totally cool Goth Lolita Hello Kitty charm that my brother-in-law bought in Japan and brought back to me…who cares that a 37-year-old woman has a Goth Lolita Hello Kitty charm dangling from her phone, right?)














and Willem is constantly tickling his tonsils with the little plastic feline. Removing the phone from his grip elicits screams of profanity spoken in his native baby tongue and tears the size of beach balls sprout from his eyes. I hold my breath, wait for the perfect moment to give him the ol’ switcheroo and shove something safer in his hand like a toilet plunger. He then scouts for the TV remotes like a heat-seeking missile and promptly shoves them into his mouth rendering them slimy, sticky, and dripping with saliva. Ditto for the keys. It’s gooville up in here.

Speaking of goo, the housekeeper that showed up a couple of weeks ago and melted on my front porch while waiting for someone to let her in came to clean my mansion today. OMG! It was flawlessly scrubbed, even the baseboards! Marlene, who is from Brazil, is a keeper! She’s meticulous about making grime disappear and busted her tail for four hours making magic happen and I didn't know I needed that much magic. I even walked around tonight shoeless which I never do. I’m a houseshoe freak but couldn’t resist giving the concrete floors a run. I’m so pleased! Hooray!

Tonight was a glorious event. I spent two and a half productive hours with baby after work watching him tear apart his room and talk to himself in my just cleaned full-length mirror before he drifted off while nursing at 7:30. I was like, “ Now what in the hell do I do? The house is already clean!” So I opened a bottle of wine, heated up my Indian TV dinner and ordered a movie on Pay Per View. Check, check, and check. I devoured some ice cream, watched the entire movie uninterrupted and am now ready to turn the page of this day. An evening to myself on this level hasn’t happened since baby was born. It was almost as good as when I was living in LA and I had a Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle and I said, “That’s hot,” a lot. No, wait. That wasn’t my life.