This is my life now
Jun. 1st, 2011 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imamaryanneI've been feeling a little....I don't know. Something lately. It's hard to explain. I've been thinking a lot about my life and whether or not I like where I am. The truth is that I kind of do, though it isn't really what I expected. And I need to come to grips with the fact that I'm a different person than I thought I would be.
I always knew I wanted kids. But at the same time, I always rolled my eyes and was very derisive of the minivan driving, short-and-easy-haircut-having suburban mom who was all gungho about PTA and volunteering at her kids' school. I just got my haircut. I drive a Mazda 5, which is a minivan on a bad day, a station wagon on a good day. I enrolled the big boy in Nursery School for next year, and it's a cooperative school. Which means it's owned by the parents and run by a board of directors made up of...parents. And it means that parent volunteerism is required. Three times a month as a classroom assistant, plus one special parent job (field trip driver, housekeeping, librarian, co-op scheduler, newsletter writer, etc.)
The first time I had this feeling was before I even had kids, when Dave and I bought our condo. We live in suburbia which is just not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in an urban area. But when you both get jobs just miles away from each other outside the city, it doesn't really make sense to buy a place in the city. So I made my peace, and it wasn't that difficult, because we're at least in close-in suburbia with easy access (one block away) to the Metro. And the building is at the very least a high-rise.
Then I had Grady, and many of my friends had kids right around the same time. And I had to make peace with the fact that our get-togethers no longer involved long games of drunken Trivial Pursuit (we're nerdy, but at least we're drunk nerds), and now involved trips to the park and calling it quits at 8:00. This was also fairly easy to make my peace with because parenthood was new and fascinating to me, and I was in good company of new parents.
But this? This new me? The suburban mom with short hair driving a minivan/station wagon, volunteering at her kid's school, looking up new recipes on the internet, getting in long conversations about cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers, clipping coupons (but usually forgetting to bring them to the store), and worrying about the mortgage on only one salary? I don't know.
Here's a secret. I love it. I love being little Miss Suburban Mom, and that makes me kind of angry with myself. My vision for who I'd be as an early thirty-something was an urbanite with one kid, a job, and plenty of time for writing. This post is the longest thing I've written in one sitting since Gus was born three months ago. This time on LiveJournal is the longest I've been on the Internet on my computer (as opposed to my phone) without looking up a recipe for dinner tonight or trying to find sales on diapers. (Cloth vs. Disposable? We used disposables for Grady, but I've switched to modern cloth diapers....as if any of you asked or cared.) The thing that shocks me the most is that I like to cook. I used to be the Take-Out Queen. Not so much anymore. I like to cook and shock of all shocks...I'm pretty good at it.
Who am I and what have I done with the Nikki I'd always imagined?
I always knew I wanted kids. But at the same time, I always rolled my eyes and was very derisive of the minivan driving, short-and-easy-haircut-having suburban mom who was all gungho about PTA and volunteering at her kids' school. I just got my haircut. I drive a Mazda 5, which is a minivan on a bad day, a station wagon on a good day. I enrolled the big boy in Nursery School for next year, and it's a cooperative school. Which means it's owned by the parents and run by a board of directors made up of...parents. And it means that parent volunteerism is required. Three times a month as a classroom assistant, plus one special parent job (field trip driver, housekeeping, librarian, co-op scheduler, newsletter writer, etc.)
The first time I had this feeling was before I even had kids, when Dave and I bought our condo. We live in suburbia which is just not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in an urban area. But when you both get jobs just miles away from each other outside the city, it doesn't really make sense to buy a place in the city. So I made my peace, and it wasn't that difficult, because we're at least in close-in suburbia with easy access (one block away) to the Metro. And the building is at the very least a high-rise.
Then I had Grady, and many of my friends had kids right around the same time. And I had to make peace with the fact that our get-togethers no longer involved long games of drunken Trivial Pursuit (we're nerdy, but at least we're drunk nerds), and now involved trips to the park and calling it quits at 8:00. This was also fairly easy to make my peace with because parenthood was new and fascinating to me, and I was in good company of new parents.
But this? This new me? The suburban mom with short hair driving a minivan/station wagon, volunteering at her kid's school, looking up new recipes on the internet, getting in long conversations about cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers, clipping coupons (but usually forgetting to bring them to the store), and worrying about the mortgage on only one salary? I don't know.
Here's a secret. I love it. I love being little Miss Suburban Mom, and that makes me kind of angry with myself. My vision for who I'd be as an early thirty-something was an urbanite with one kid, a job, and plenty of time for writing. This post is the longest thing I've written in one sitting since Gus was born three months ago. This time on LiveJournal is the longest I've been on the Internet on my computer (as opposed to my phone) without looking up a recipe for dinner tonight or trying to find sales on diapers. (Cloth vs. Disposable? We used disposables for Grady, but I've switched to modern cloth diapers....as if any of you asked or cared.) The thing that shocks me the most is that I like to cook. I used to be the Take-Out Queen. Not so much anymore. I like to cook and shock of all shocks...I'm pretty good at it.
Who am I and what have I done with the Nikki I'd always imagined?
