Not Ready for Mom Jeans (38 page)

Monday, November 3

Elise came into the office today to approve the final expenses for Logan’s event. She was supposed to come in around 3:00 p.m. but didn’t arrive until almost 4:00 p.m. She rushed in, clutching a red alligator messenger bag and her Prada purse. I quickly closed my Internet browser, as I was salivating over our new house, closing on Friday, for the seventh hour this month.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! I got caught up at Logan’s school. Have I totally thrown your schedule off?” Elise panted as she sat down in my office.

I turned away from my computer and smiled at her. “Not totally.”

“Traffic was a nightmare trying to get here. Do you think this city plans construction projects for when it will be least convenient for commuters?” She sat back and ran her fingers through her silky hair.

“Most likely. Don’t get me started. My husband rages about this on a daily basis.”

“So,” she said, and flipped open her messenger bag, “lay it on me.” She pulled out a pen and paper, snapped on a pair of reading glasses, and looked at me.

“OK, well, I worked up what I believe is going to be a very accurate estimate for everything. I also built in ten percent for error, as is wise to do with any event, especially ones taking place at someone’s home, since you never know what might arise on the day of the event.” I slid a spreadsheet across my desk to her. “The various components are itemized in the budget, so it should read somewhat easy.”

She fell silent for a moment as she scanned the paper. She stopped when she came to the total amount. She looked up at me. “Remember when birthday parties were a bunch of crepe paper and balloons?”

I smiled back at her. “No kidding. A few gift bags, a homemade cake, and some pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and I was happy.”

“No shit. Well, I guess it is what it is,” she said, and took her glasses off. She paused for a moment and then stood up.

“Anything else you need to me to do right now?” I said and stood up to walk her out.

“No, I don’t think—” She stopped as she saw the picture of Sara on my desk. She picked the black frame up. “Is this your daughter?”

“Sara,” I said. “She’s ten months old. I can’t believe how big she is.”

“She’s beautiful,” Elise said, and set the frame down on my desk. “Who takes care of her during the day?”

“She goes to a wonderful day care.”

“That’s great. God, I remember the first time I brought Logan to day care. It was like
Sophie’s Choice.
You get one foot out the door and the guilt just sucker punches you.”

“No kidding. It was nearly paralyzing in the beginning, but I’m at least managing to function these days. It helps to have exciting events to work on.” I smiled at her. “But I’m still hoping to leave the house one day without a smidge of guilt.”

“I wish I could tell you it happens, but it doesn’t. It never will.” She smiled ruefully at me.

“A girl can dream, right?” I said.

She turned to leave and then stopped. “I almost forgot, Logan wanted me to give you this,” she said, and held out a manila folder.

“What is it?” I asked, and took the folder from her.

“I think it’s pictures of the flowers she wants for the table centerpiece,” Elise said as she fished around in her enormous bag for her car keys.

I opened the envelope and pulled out pictures of pink peonies and roses. “Beautiful!” I said. “I remember she said she wanted pink.”

“She wants to do pink in honor of my mom.” Elise smiled wanly.

I looked up at her and smiled. “How so?”

“My mom passed away three years ago from breast cancer,” she said.

“Oh, wow. I’m so sorry,” I said. I bit my tongue hard as I heard Mule Face coming down the hallway, so I just said, “These are great. I’ll let the florist know.”

Friday, November 7

6:30 A.M.

Closing day.

In approximately four hours, Jake and I will be home owners. We will also own a mortgage, which requires us to pay a Scary Amount of money every month.

But it’s time to move on. Time to take another step forward. Time to keep moving firmly through Responsible Adulthood.

Must not freak out. Must meditate myself into a Zen-like state.

Ommmmmm….

WAAAAAAAA!

So much for meditating. Sara’s up.

4:46 P.M.

Closed.

The closing was totally overwhelming. It was basically Jake and me signing documents reading, “We really,
really
promise to pay the bank.” By the end, I didn’t even pay attention to what our lawyer said about each paper, I just heard, “Blah, blah, blah, you owe a lot of money, blah, blah, blah, sign, blah, blah, foreclosure, blah, blah, blah, here is the key.”

The entire time, one thought ran through my head:
Why the hell are they giving us this much money?
I mean, I was impressed when the bank lent me money to buy my car. This had a few more zeros on the end. It was like I thought we were getting away with something.

Until they asked us to fork over a few thousand bucks for escrow.

Really pulled the wool over their eyes, huh?

But we did it. We closed.

Sara was at Marianne and Frank’s house, so Jake and I swooped over and picked her up before heading straight over to the new pad. Walking around, I realized the shiteousness of our apartment and the fabulosity of the new house.

Apartment: old and busted.

House: the new hotness.

We walked around and let Sara crawl on the rug in the living room for a while until we had to head back to the Old and Busted to finish packing.

Tonight, we are spending the last night in our apartment. While I’m very excited to move into the new place, some twinges of sadness are creeping into my brain. My nostalgia is getting the better of me. But it’s hard to not feel a little sad. I mean, this was the place Jake and I returned home from our honeymoon. This is the apartment where I announced to Jake that I took a pregnancy test and, um, it wasn’t negative. This is where we lived when we brought Sara home from the hospital.

This is where we lived when I cried about having to go back to work. When I actually went back to work. When I hated it. And this is where we lived when I started to accept, and finally like, being a working mom.

In short, a lot of amazing things happened in this place and while we lived here.

I’ve already taken a million pictures of Sara’s nursery and shed just a few more million tears, thinking about how we painted and decorated it just a few short months ago. She has a new room, with a beautiful view of an old oak tree, as opposed to her current view of a parking lot. And I can’t wait to bring her into the backyard and look at the birds and the leaves and watch her pudgy toes wiggle in the grass. Not to mention the joy Butterscotch will feel when he realizes there are, like, twenty new rooms for him to piss on the carpet.

But this is the place where Jake and I started our marriage, where we started our family. Our family will continue in the new place, but this one will always be the first. This is the apartment we’ll talk about when we tell Sara stories about after she was first born.

So, it’s hard not to feel a little wistful.

I must go post more photos of our new abode online so the drooling and manic jealousy can begin.

Sunday, November 9

All that flowery shit about missing our old apartment and sniffling about Sara’s first home?

So over it.

I’ve spent the past forty-eight hours up to my elbows in corrugated cardboard boxes and packing tape, and I still can’t find my toothbrush.

The movers came yesterday morning at the crack of dawn. Sara and I hung back and watched Jake direct the movers. I was somewhat wary when they showed up, since two of the three of them were smaller than me, but before I could even offer them a cup of coffee, those guys had our china cabinet tucked into the moving van and were shrink-wrapping our couches.

Sara looked totally confused and started whining. She wanted me to put her down on the carpet and let her suck on the rolls of packing tape on the floor. Since I never let her do that in front of strangers, I held her tight as she fussed.

Within an hour, the entire contents of our apartment was loaded onto the moving van and Jake and I were following the van in our car, also packed to the gills.

I waved one last time to our apartment, one last time to our neighbor Champagne Wayne’s apartment, site of many, many swinger parties and sexually transmitted diseases.

As the movers unpacked the van at the house, I spread a blanket out on the living room floor and tried to entertain Sara. She had zero interest in any of the toys I brought her and wanted to suck on the carpet instead. So, I walked around and jiggled her.
For three hours.
Three hours until she finally fell asleep in my arms, exhausted from all the overstimulation. It took so long to get her asleep, I was terrified to put her down, so I sat on the still-shrink-wrapped couch, feeling like I was at my grandmother’s house, frozen until Jake carefully took Sara from my arms and I collapsed on the floor.

I lay there for a moment until I read the box next to me: kitchen. (Of course the box was in the living room, shows how smart our movers were, huh?) I remembered this box had V.I.C.—Very Important Contents:
wine
. I ripped open the box, located the wine, a corkscrew, and some plastic cups, and self-medicated while Jake put Sara to bed.

After two glasses of wine, I offered to order a pizza and did well until asked my address. I froze. I couldn’t remember our new address. And Jake was outside, so I ran outside and tracked him down so he could tell me where we live. Might be a good idea to figure it out myself sometime soon.

We unpacked only the essentials last night, like the inflatable air mattress and toothpaste. We set up shop in the master bedroom and let Sara sleep in her stroller bassinet on the floor. I just wasn’t ready to put her in an empty room. I was worried it would scare her.

As Jake and I lay on the inflatable air mattress, I snuggled against his back.

“Feel like home yet?” he mumbled into his pillow.

I shook my head against his T-shirt.

“It will,” he said, and sighed.

I nodded into his back and knew he was right.

Sunday, all three of us woke up the minute the sun rose, since the previous owners took all the window treatments. Our bedroom faces east, so at 6:23 a.m. we all woke up to a blinding sunlight beating down on our heads. Pre-baby, Jake and I would’ve grabbed pillows, covered our faces, and fallen back asleep. But post-baby, we were up for the day. Sara woke up ready to party in her new house. I let her crawl around in a few of the rooms and she shrieked and cooed at all the open, empty space. She stopped in the center of the dining room, looked me square in the eye, and made the loudest-sounding poop I’d ever heard. Complete with beet-red facial grunting. Then she was off again. I took it to be her stamp of approval.

She didn’t sleep much at all today, so the only thing I really got accomplished was to unpack my makeup. Of course, I didn’t have time to actually put any of it on, but it’s unpacked. Butterscotch doesn’t seem to like the new digs. He slunk around, stomach dragging the floor, all through the house before finally hiding under the couch and hissing at anything daring to come near. After a few hours, he moved to under the dining room table, which he has claimed as his room and thus refuses to let Jake enter. Sara and I are cool. Jake? Hell no. Every time Jake attempts to so much as enter the room, Butterscotch comes out from the table, guns blazing, claws out, teeth snarling, mouth hissing. He chases Jake out of the room each time.