My Life as a Bed

So much for that whole 'now I can blog more regularly thing'. The last post was open in a tab on my laptop for over a month before I finally finished it and got it up. (Mind you, it WAS unusually long.) I've had another one going for over a month again and somehow just never get around to finishing it.


It's funny how time just disappears when you're staying home with an infant. I have a pretty good 'to-do' list awaiting attention, and that doesn't even include the big projects I want to get to. And yet, day after day, I'm delighted if I manage to get to the dishes. The days just melt into nights like nothing. But when Mo asks what I did all day, my report is quite short in nature, since it's basically just a cycle on repeat all day.


I keep wishing I could go back to the conversation I had with my boss and our Board Treasurer last summer, when I was about 2 months pregnant and hadn't yet told them. We were planning our upcoming 20th anniversary event and discussing the potential involvement of a board member who was on maternity leave and how much we thought she could/would do. I, of course, was saying that we should contact her to assess her interest/ability to participate, since presumably a maternity leave would apply to board involvement as well as her job. I'm just sayin'...

Yes, that's about how mad I was ...

Boss and Board Treasurer (both men -- middle-aged white men, one of significant means) immediately jumped to, 'Well, what else is she doing? She's on maternity leave. She's doing way less than when she was working!' Mind you, this was coming from someone who gets to go out in the world and stake his claim as a psychology expert in working with survivors of Gender-Based Violence. Lovely that he has no concept of sexism/feminism, huh?? But that's a whole different topic, and one on which I don't care to get started again, as I've wasted many a breath and high blood pressure on it already.


In any case, Board Treasurer, married to an Asian-American woman, commented that his wife threw their baby on her back and was back out in the rice paddies the next day (Don't get me started -- wrong on SO many levels), so surely the board member should be at our beck and call for event planning services, cuz, ya know, she's already been off a couple months already and stuff, so she can only get so many more pedicures and massages. (Okay, he didn't say that last part, but it was certainly implied.)


It was one of these moments where, not yet having experienced motherhood myself, I knew intrinsically that I was *furious* with them and that what they were saying was ludicrous, but I didn't have the specific language to respond when they asked what in the world she could be doing, particularly since the baby sleeps all day! I mean, REALLY!! Lap of luxury!!


So here I am with Baby Who Only Sleeps On Humans, unable to do much other than care for him, wishing to go back in time and tell Them Who Never Stayed Home With Their Kids just exactly what that board member's days probably looked like and why we should feel eternally grateful if she was willing to contribute any tiny amount of time at all. 

Alas, I have moved on and have zero interest in dredging up old anger spots. It just makes me think and roll my eyes. And be grateful that that is all behind me and that instead of working with people who make my blood boil all day, I now get to be greeted by a tiny person who flashes a gummy grin at me all day long. (Okay, part of the day when he's not flexing his oh-so-strong lungs. But that's a different post for a different day.)


So, as I begin to extricate myself from being a bed to him, I will get back to posting more and more. I'll just have to catch you up on the last four (!) months by integrating into the reports of the now. My head is constantly brewing with ideas to reflect upon here in the blogosphere, so be ready to be word assaulted once I get going!! Once I get done "luxuriating", that is ...