One of my book club friends does not read blogs as a rule. She's all smug about it, as if the whole Internet were a waste of time. She has about eight remote controls on top of her TV and records and watches many, many hours of television every day.
This month at book club I could not drink the Yellowtail because I was on antibiotics for gingivitis. I had such bad gingivitis on the gums of my bottom front teeth I actually had to take flagyl. You can't drink on flagyl. I told everyone what the hygienist told me: I brush and floss properly; this is just my body's response to stress.
"Why are YOU stressed?" this friend snorted at me. She has no children and works full time after having earned her Ph.D., which I'm sure was very stressful. It was obvious that she imagined a life for me consisting of sipping tea with my feet up while my children play charming, imaginative games of their own devising and my house staff cooks and cleans and my--I don't know, my clone?--my clone does my part-time office job and my freelance articles for me. "I don't know, maybe having a baby with weird birth defects has something to do with it," I answered.
My book club, Ex Libris, used to be my favorite evening every month. Recently some members drifted away. One simply quit. One moved to Indiana. One said it wasn't worth paying a babysitter for. Madness! It's at the top of my list for babysitting money. Then I really sat down and thought about it.
The friend who doesn't read the blogs--she is my friend, even though it sounds like she's a big jerk. That's the thing that I used to like so much about my book club. Everyone is different and has all kinds of opinions. My friend Meredith started the book club and I have been proud of my long-term relationship with her, a pro-life Republican. But Meredith left the book club years ago to pop out twelve babies in a row.
I can't imagine life without my book club. It just doesn't feel like my book club anymore. Or maybe I don't feel like my old self anymore. I only want to read chick lit, like the Sophie Kinsella novel I just sucked down in two days. In the car, I only want to listen to safe, calm 1970's music (the John Denver Favorites disc is burnin' up my CD player), or Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. I'm so thin that I can easily pull my jeans off without unbuttoning them. I find myself wishing the cat would get run over just so I wouldn't have to listen to her scream at me a hundred times a day. And yes, on top of all the normal parental worries, I'm always thinking about Charlie and how he's going to feel about himself and is he going to have trouble in school because he can't hear well from one ear and what kinds of surgeries will he have to have and will insurance cover them and will he need glasses and if so what do we do about the fact that he only has one ear to hold up the glasses and will his torticollis ever resolve? I'm happy, like I've said, but I'm also very stressed out, and that's not fun for anybody, except the bacteria that live in on my lower front gums, who are apparently really enjoying themselves.
I spent Thursday and Friday with the moms I've known since I joined a new mom support group when Summer was three weeks old. We didn't do much of anything but wrangle the children and chat. I spent today with my best friend (and fellow Ex Libris member) Julie, eating cole slaw at Friendly's and walking her new puppy Stella and watching her put on a kitchen-utensil puppet show with Summer. It's been kind of like what our other book club friend probably imagines my life is like all the time, and it's been just what I've needed. I think I need to do more of it. This post pretty much sucks, but I don't want to get stressed out about not being clever enough on my blog, because I need to put less pressure on myself, not more. Now I'm going to brush and floss and think soothing thoughts.
"Rocky Mountain high, Colorado..."