door

Earlier this week, I took off the door handle to our apartment's bathroom door in an effort to make it fit and close better. The handle had been preventing the door from closing all the way, which is kind of awkward if you ever have someone over that needs to use your bathroom. Then somehow, I got stuck inside. Tim and S. were on the outside, and he ended up having to break the door itself in order to free me from my tiny prison. It wasn't so bad being stuck in there, though. I brushed my teeth, did my hair, even plucked my eyebrows a little. I might have showered, too, except there were no towels on my side of the door.

Now the problem I was trying to fix is worse than before, and the lesson I've learned is that trying to fix small things always creates bigger problems and so you should probably just resign yourself to living with lots of small issues and pretend they don't exist as much as possible. Good lesson, right?

maternity shopping

Confession: I continue to shop for maternity clothes, even though it's been 18 months since I gestated anything in my uterus. Despite not knowing whether there will ever be another occupant in there.

It's kind of weird.

When I was actually pregnant, I was hoping to not need to buy maternity clothes for as long as possible. And if I ended up needing them, I was hoping to buy clothes that could be worn at any stage throughout pregnancy or even when I was no longer pregnant. One size fits all.

I like the one size fits all approach in theory, partially because I feel like a lot of my values are sort of defined by the concept of frugality, which is another topic I'd maybe like to blog about. If my baby doesn't wake up from his nap, I could post 4 times on my blog in a single day potentially. This activity seems excessive, though, and goes against my sense of economy and moderation.

Maybe because I never felt incredibly successful in my maternity shopping pursuits when I was pregnant, I have perpetuated them. I guess I'm thinking that if I find good ones, I could wear them now! And wear them later, if I ever get pregnant again! Win win, right? But am I really fooling anyone? Maybe this stuff is obviously meant for women who are actually pregnant and isn't designed to flatter my current shape, and maybe it just looks silly.

Perhaps my biggest motivation for caring about maternity wear now, despite not actually being pregnant (can I overstate that? I am not pregnant.), is that it's pretty hard to look cute when pregnant. Or at least that was my experience. I felt pretty sickly during almost the entirety of my pregnancy, so feeling gross made it hard to not look gross. Also, I gained A LOT of weight. I still can't explain or account for the 70 pounds that should have been more like 27, but you can bet I looked fat. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see me and I felt ugly. No one likes to feel ugly.

I guess I'm interested in stocking up the next time around, if there's a next time around, because it gives me a sense of control. Maybe if I have a few cute maternity tops, I'll be able to avoid everything that I wasn't able to avoid the first time. When I think about being pregnant and giving birth now, there's very little that I would not go back and change. I think there might have been genuinely good moments the first time, but all I remember now is feeling nauseous and depressed and helpless. Is it possible to have a really different experience next time? Maybe I'll sport a genuinely cute baby bump that doesn't misshape my face and turn me into a miserable mess. Cross my fingers. If I prepare now by building my maternity wardrobe slowly but surely, maybe I can avoid the failures of my nulliparous prenatal self.

Now let's talk about how to treat pregnancy-induced nausea.

organ art

The other day we went to an organ recital at the Cathedral of the Madeline, which is becoming a tradition or something.

It's pretty cool but not very baby-friendly so we left S. at home unattended. Joke. He actually hung out with his grandmother, who was home and not working for once!

Sometimes I kind of feel bad that we don't pursue the whole babysitting thing more often because I think it's good for all of us in some ways. Call it laziness, or call it not having a bunch of options that are both close and available, or call it helicopter parenting, you could be right. I think S. likes hanging out with other people though. He gets more attention usually and they think of ways to please him that I don't consider when we're hanging out 24/7 and I'm trying to do any number of any other things.

The organ festival is cool, but I have to be honest with you here: I've concluded that I don't understand art. Does that make me less human? Uncultured and unintelligent? I don't know if I fully appreciate the value of standing around museums or listening to an impressive organ player play something impressive on the organ. Maybe there are other things that resonate with me, but I am not sure if  the organ festival is my thing. I'm impressed with it objectively after once taking an organ class and attempting to coordinate my own hands and feet to play something musical, which I never really mastered. But I guess I kind of find it a little boring? I also find it a little enjoyable, at the same time, so it's okay that I've been attending for three years now. But I feel ashamed to admit it! Am I the most uncouth?

Facebook withdrawal

I'm currently Facebook fasting because sometimes Facebook is addictive and I think that I spent more time on Facebook than its true-to-life value. As withdrawals go, I imagine, the thought occurred to me to check Facebook frequently after I first deactivated my account. That thought is gradually decreasing, so maybe someday I'll have the wherewithal to Facebook without being compulsive about it, and also fasting increases your self-control (so I hear). In the meantime, I'm enjoying the freedom. Now if I could just stop working at my job, I would have no reason to ever get on the Internet, practically, and my liberation would be complete.

Why is social media sometimes addictive? Don't make me feel pathetic by telling me that I'm the only one who is somewhat compulsive about Facebook (or instead insert other form of social media here) usage, and let's just humor the possibility that I might be a normal human being for the sake of this blog post. I may actually be pretty normal, only I might be a little more willing to admit that I have issues and describe them to you in minute detail than most normal human beings? That's weird, right? Anyway, this social media addiction: it's a thing, right? Why is it even a thing? Husband, being the great person he is, was willing to honestly entertain the question and said something about an unceasing flow of new content, and I think there's definitely something to that.

Also, I realized that most of the people who I see updates from most often on Facebook are actually people I was only acquainted with back in high school, and these are people who I don't know if I could have called real-life friends, even then. I wish my real-life friends presented me with a constant stream of new content about their lives, but alas, they're probably too busy living their lives.