this one has to do with EASTER.

let me just start by saying that my intention in having this new baby was to have more of the, how you say, "normal" parenting experience. like mommy and daddy and baby and when one parent has had enough, the other comes in to help. or they tag team. or whatever. but with sean working 12 hour days on weekends and me working during the week, we never see each other, and I am often reminded of how freaking difficult it is to take care of a baby alone with no respite. to wit: easter sunday.

it started out okay. trent was with his dad, sean went off to work at 5am as usual. we woke up around 8ish, bella was in a good mood. I put her tights in with some wash so they'd shrink enough so that she didn't have such bad elephant legs. we lounged. I knew I had to be at the (really really far away) restaurant to meet my sister and my mom and the people that go with them at 4pm. figuring since denise decided to pick a restaurant in freakin easton, which is like an hour or more away (and not like in the city an hour away, it's in the middle of nowhere an hour away, which is decidedly longer), and having to pick trent up at his grandparents, I should leave around 2. that gets me to trent around 2:30, his grandmother oohs and ahhs at bella for a few minutes, and we're on the road by 2:50ish. stop for money at an atm, we're in bumblefuck by 4 no problem.

working backwards, as I always do, having to get out the door by 2 means having to get in the shower by like 1ish, probably a bit earlier. I had an advantage in knowing what I was wearing and what bella was wearing, so I could cut out time to find outfits for the 2 of us.

so around noon, I went down to get bella's tights out of the dryer. the dryer is in the basement. I, being the bad parent I am, had put bella in the baby einstein saucer thing (which sean calls "the command center") while I went to the basement. she looked really happy to be in there, even though she'd been in there for about 20 mins already. I literally thought, and I kid you not, "she looks as happy as a pig in shit." seriously.

so I go to pick her up out of the command center, and as she leans forward, I see a HUGE amount of mustard looking stain on her back. that's right. BLOWOUT. of gigantic proportions. the command center seat was compromised. I take her upstairs, attempt to change her diaper, smear shit all over her and me, and then proceed to take her, naked, into the bathroom to give her a not-anticipated bath. it's about 12:30 by the time I get her in there. as it was a rush job, I had just taken the towel she had already used and put it on the floor for when I take her out of the bath.

as soon as I put her in the water, she peed. so I bathed her in pee pee diluted water. some bath. when I picked up her wet, wriggly body to put her on the towel I had laid out, I noticed that maggie, our dog, had picked up the towel and taken it into the corner of the bathroom and was laying on it like it was her personal bedding. so I have a cold, wet, wriggling baby and no where to dry her off. I took her in and put her on the bed and used our blanket to dry her off.

I got her all changed, and I was a little behind schedule, but things were still okay. I put her in the travel swing in the bathroom while I embarked on what would become a marathon shower. because, and I haven't told anyone but sean this, I have not shaved my legs since bella was born. I've worn plenty of skirts, but always with black stockings. if you looked really closely at my legs with the stockings on, you could have seen hairs poking through, but no one looks that closely. easter, however, called for white fishnets, naturally. (they look less trashy than they sound.) so I had to break out the razor. and it took FOREVER. the razor kept getting clogged. this is seriously disgusting but hey, you're the one still reading.

and to make matters worse, we have what I like to call a Shath. I've been shedding like a dog in july but even though I clean out the drain after every shower, I guess enough hair goes down (or other stuff, I don't know what's down in those pipes) that the shower tends to get clogged early on in the shower experience, causing the showeree to have both a bath and a shower at the same time. a Shath. so I'm in the Shath, bits of leg hair swirling around in the water.

(sidenote: during my shower, I was listening to the radio and of course, they were talking about politics and/or the pope and/or terry shiavo. I can't remember which story I was thinking about when I thought of what I say quite often about things: "I'd rather eat glass than...." and then I had another one of those "what if a serial killer kidnapped me" moments where I wondered if I ever got captured by a serial killer and he actually did make me eat glass, what would that be like? and maybe I shouldn't say that in case a serial killer were stalking me and was planning to make me literally eat my words. but anyway.)

so now that bella and I were both "clean", I started to get dressed. I had purchased an outfit specifically for easter from target - a cute pleated skirt, the white non-whore fishnets, an existing black shirt, and one of those trendy shrugs that ties under your boobs. I donned the fishnets and the shirt, and waited until all makeup and hair had been done before I put on the skirt, so as not to wrinkle it. and...the zipper broke. and I spent about a half hour trying to fix it. it's now 1:40. and my target leave time is 2. of course, I tried on every combination of the pieces that were left of the specifically purchased outfit with existing clothing and everything looked dumb. I wound up wearing the white fishnets (signifying spring) with a teal pleated corduroy skirt (signifying fall) and a black cardigan (signifying winter) that had bejeweled buttons (signifying simple bad taste) with red flat mary janes (signifying long-gone youth.) I looked sufficiently stupid as I left the house at 2:25. (after screaming at sean about directions that made no sense. sean, I am sorry.)

we got trent, we let his grandmother ooh and ahh over bella, and actually made it to the middle of nowhere a half hour early. how do these things work out? because though it may seem like "whew, she got there early" it was more like "what the hell am I supposed to do for 30 minutes out in the middle of nowhere??"

the whole time all of this was going on, I kept feeling like - hey, I am married this time, I have a loving husband and father to my child. why on earth do I still feel like a goddamn single parent??????

in the plus column, however, the place we ate at was beautiful. like right on the delaware, with the delaware canal on the other side of the restaurant. our table faced new jersey (in a good way) and we saw ducks and floating debris. beautiful.