Ah- choo.
Crap.
AHHHH-CHOOOO.
Well now I’ve done it.
Steve looks at me with sympathy from the bedroom door. He is dressed and ready to ride his new bike to go food shopping.
Oliver flat out laughs. “Its sort of funny how you smile and frown at the same time.”
I’m sitting on the bed with my laptop trying to spur some sort of post, and now I am going to have to get up and change my clothes and the sheets.
Since the new kitten with her less than perfect litter box skills and the old cat and her literal pissed off protest our lives have been full of pee. Not that much of it mine. Until now.
It has been 8 years since I have given birth and being a mother has changed me.
Its sort of funny that I used to love to sneeze. At least at home. Now I feel intense dread. I have peed in meetings, at dinner parties, and during almost every work out in the past eight years. I know what people say about particular exercises and have practiced them at every stop sign I have hit for the better part of a decade. I think those smug moms have not given birth to 10 pound babies.
I look up from the computer to catch Steve’s eye again. “Are you leaking some fluids?”
I tell him “I probably shouldn’t put that in the blog.”
“Is that what you are writing about? Peeing in your pants?”
I walk off to the bathroom without answering.
It doesn’t sound like such an important topic when he says it out loud.
I have read about evolutionary biology and how its advances are leaving a constantly more slender sliver for the non overlapping belief in both god and Darwin.
I have read about the re-election campaign for Colorado’s democratic governor. How his mid level gun control policy of limiting magazine size to 15 rounds might cost him the election.
I have brushed Oliver’s mint smelling clean hair as he sits in front of me wrapped only in his white fuzzy blanket. I wonder whether to show him the pictures of the Japanese volcano erupting. The images up on my screen include buildings completely covered with ash, housing what is estimated to be 35 dead hikers. Before I can figure out how difficult that would be for him to see I have sneezed and he has left the room with his own half smile half frown.
The op ed about workplace evaluations and how many many more women receive criticisms related to their personality than men has stuck in my head. I can’t remember the figures, which or course are only two clicks away, but the idea is in there. Words like pushy and bitter litter descriptions of women in management while their male peers are called forward thinking and leaders.
This last paragraph has been sitting here for a few minutes as I watch the Europeans retain the Ryder Cup. Steve had turned on the match a few hours ago and walked away. Although he calls himself a sports fan I have not seen him sit down and commit to a game, match, whatever, in the twelve years we have been together. Through my combination of sports love and general lack of interest in leaving the bed I have finished many many games for him over the years. I watch the champagne cork prematurely ejaculate and Rory sneak into the crowd to hide his own leaking fluids.
Looking back to the laptop the curser blinks and I remember that this is the name I am going to give my book. Curser.
Which means I need to up my game on the cursing department. This has been a very effective time together. I have learned a lot. I will take 30 round magazines off of my Chanukah wish list. I will never hike near a volcano in Japan. Steve totally owes me for finishing the Ryder cup and probably hundreds of hours of other sports viewing as well. I should start criticizing men based on their personality deficiencies. Oliver needs a bathrobe.
It is pretty fucking unlikely that there is a god.
And if there is, she is probably smiling and frowning while sitting in a puddle of her own pee.
Since I wrote this post the US has reclaimed the Ryder cup, Oliver owns a bathrobe and some amazing women have launched underwear that contains pee. That reads SO WRONG. Underwear that holds pee. There very well may be a god.