Throughline? Phoo-line.

Rambling, that's what's on the menu tonight, and then off to be with me. After a couple crummy nights, Tankbaby had a better night Wednesday night (Jeez, stop saying "night"), but at about 5 am, he started calling for some open debate about wake-up time. Finally, at 7, I figured I'd go ahead and get up early and get a shower. But MOTH staggered out of bed and got to the bathroom first. And then, there were...noises. Unpleasant noises.

So, I ended up staying home from work yesterday and watching Tankbaby so that MOTH could rest. I tried to keep Tankbaby out of the house so that MOTH could get some sleep (when you share 740 square feet, there's no place you can sleep and avoid the toddler shrieks), so we went to the museum's "Science Lab" (a wondrous room of water tables and sand areas and flubber and fake hollow trees and block play and air chutes and fossils and basically anything your toddler or preschooler could want). I thought I could make a good snarky, funny post about the people-watching (MOTH likes to play a game he calls "Mommy or Nanny?" in such circumstances), but I lost my stomach for it when, as we were getting ready to leave, I saw a mom sitting in the employees' room, shaking and crying, while the purple-vested museum staff asked questions like, "Does he know his name?" and "What color shirt was he wearing?" while they radioed the front desk. This mom had been over by the water table when we were there earlier, and had strange, snappy passive-aggressive moment with me when she thought I was judging her for bringing in her stroller (which isn't allowed), because she didn't want to disturb her sleeping infant. I found myself getting bristly in response, but I remember too well those early days of Tankbaby, and if he'd given me the gift of momentary rest, you couldn't have paid me to risk waking him. So I tried later to give her a friendly smile when her kid splashed water on my kid, and she smiled gratefully back and I moved on feeling like, wow, a little moment of compassionate connection. And a half-hour later, she was sitting, stunned, trying to dial a cell phone with trembling fingers, and I found myself irrationally worked up over it. I'm sure they found the kid eventually (seeing as how it hasn't made the news), but I just kept thinking about what that moment must have been like. As moms, we have a thousand moments where you think the kid is about to fall or where it looks like he's choking or where she almost slips in the bath, or where you glance up and have a split second of panic when you can't find him...but then he rights himself or swallows or you grab her arm in time or you turn around and he's right there. I can imagine, with too much terrifying clarity, what it feels like when you look up and can't find him, and then turn around...and he's not there. And you think to yourself, "OK, don't panic, he's probably right over--" and he's not. He's nowhere.

OK. That was yesterday, and I'm still shuddering, thinking about it. This is why someone with anxiety issues should really never have kids. Or pets. I might be able to maintain emotional calm about a nice houseplant.

Anyway, we went from the museum out to my classroom for lunch and then we stayed a bit and saw my class. I'd intended on just explaining to them why I couldn't stay for class, but Tankbaby was enjoying the room so much and I was so tickled by watching them interact with him that we stayed. These are my social-emotional-behavioral kids, kids who are pretty typically developing in other areas but struggle with things like sitting near another kid without touching them. With fists. But they were so cute and gentle (or their idea thereof) with Tanky. One little girl with a truly horrifying background (Cliff Notes: Went into foster care after mom left her in the care of a convicted sex offender--not the same sex offender that fathered her, by the by--then went back to mom, who then abandoned her at a DHS office. Is now in foster care, but still has visits with bio mom, after which she tells her foster mom, "You don't love me. I'm a bad kid." Add to this behavior physical aggression and deliberate meanness, like intentionally taking the pink cup so that another kid can't have it, and then loudly gloating about it: "I got the pink cup so you ca-an't haaave it!") lit up at the sight of Tankbaby. She cooed, "Ooh! A baby! Hi, baby! You can hold my hand! Aw, you're so cute!" and darned if Tankbaby didn't hold her hand and let himself be led all over the place. If there'd been a Grinch around, you betcha his heart would have grown three sizes, yessireebob. It's possible I might have shed a womanly tear or two myself.

And then there was meal planning and grocery shopping and, gloriously, peeing by myself in the evening when MOTH was finally feeling well enough to shuffle around upright (we disappeared for over five hours and returned home to no indication that he'd ever left the bedroom). So I started to write last night, but at 9:30 decided that I needed rest to combat whatever I was being exposed to in our little germ incubator over here.

Which is why I didn't write all this yesterday. But now that I have, it's 10:30 and I am literally falling asleep while typing (or "falkaaaa" as I just wrote before I caught myself), so this not-terribly-interesting-or-particularly-well-organized post is going to grind to an unceremonious halt.

Oh, except! Can I just share with you these boots, so that we may all ooh and ahh and wonder what the blue fuck they are made of that they are worth $415?! Unicorn hide? I mean, I love them. I really do. But, as MOTH said, "Do they have rockets? Because for $415, you had better be able to fly." He's not wrong. And the copy underneath is pretty rich ("one of those magical styles that make you think God was guiding John's pencil"? I mean, they're divine, but I don't think they're Divine). And while the communist part of me that listened today to how much funding our program is about to lose is appalled at the frivolity of $400 shoes...they're just...so...pretty....