lawmummy

When my oldest daughter finally started walking and talking, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Maybe it was because she was my first baby… Maybe it was because she was a really difficult infant (two more kids later, I still believe this)… Maybe it was because I’m not a “baby” mom. You know what I mean, I am not one of those moms who was ever really into the “I love babies” phase. I really enjoyed my children more when they were older - the first six months for each of them was kind of a blur of diaper changes, late night feedings and crying.

So I can’t exactly explain why I am feeling enormously sad about the milestones that my son is making.

Is there such a thing as post-baby depression? Cause if there is, I sure got it.

Charlie turned two in May. He is an exceptionally charming little guy. And I have loved seeing him get older.

But I felt a little pang of sadness on his birthday. He was no longer my baby.

Then, belatedly, we weaned him from the pacifier (like his older sister, he liked his pacifier at night).

And he finally stopped using the bottle (no hate email on this one, I know it was time - he likes to drink milk from a bottle, everything else was in a sippy cup).

And yesterday, the girls’ bunk beds arrived so we moved Charlie into a toddler bed. I cried while I disassembled the crib. The impact of how very, very sad I was just hit me all at once. I don’t have a baby anymore.

And no, I don’t mean a little bundle wrapped in blankets to kiss on the head. As a mom, I’ve never really had lots of those “baby moments” that are romanticized on television. When you have children close together, I think the idea of solitude with your baby just goes right out the window - and of course, my oldest never wanted any solitude. She wanted to be in the middle of everything, wide awake, even as a baby.

But with every little “Mommy, I can do it!”, my heart sinks a little bit. And maybe that’s why I was overly annoyed this morning when Katie made me breakfast - that’s my job, right?

It is a terrible feeling. I want my kids to grow up and be wonderfully productive members of society. It’s just, well, why do they have to do it so fast?

Is this how it feels every year from now on? That you’re needed just a little less?

Don’t get me wrong. On some level, I welcome having a moment to myself. Just this morning, being woken up with my son bouncing on the bed, yelling, “Good morning, Mommy! I want to watch Caillou!” was not the way I had hoped to wake up after a stretch of sleep-deprived nights.

But I feel like I was just kind of figuring this parenting thing out and now the rules have suddenly changed on me. I am not coping well with the switch.

Curious George annoys me. I feel that he takes advantage of the Man with the Yellow Hat. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

There is a lot going on in my head right now and really, very little of it has to do with my distress over Will getting voted off of “So You Think You Can Dance!” (Really, America?)

But tonight, as Charlie settled in to sleep in his new bed (more on that later), eyes half closed, he let out a big yawn and then mumbled, “Mommy? Ka-chow.” He then fell asleep.

I am ridiculously in love with my son.

Yesterday at dinner, Katie spilled smoothie on her arm.

“Oh damn it,” she said, wiping it off.

Chris says to me, “What did she say?”

I say, “She said what you think she said and I’m going to ignore it.”

Ignoring it is the best solution at this age, as I found out after telling my children to stop calling each other “Poopyhead” - now everyone in the world is “Poopyhead.”

But where did she get it from? Hey, stop swearing around my kids, damn it! Oh wait…

Soooo flight to Philadelphia is delayed a few. That means I have a little bit of time to tell my San Francisco hotel story.

Chris and I are members of a private club in Philadelphia called the Union League. There are lots of advantages to being a member - think of it as a country club in the city - but the biggest is that there are reciprocal clubs all over the world. We take advantage of the reciprocal clubs when we’re staying overnight, or just for the day. We’ve done this all over the place - Chris mostly in Europe (Germany and the UK). I’ve mainly taken advantage of it in New York at the New York Athletic Club (which is fab).

There were three clubs listed as reciprocal for the League in San Francisco. Since we were unfamiliar with the area, we chose the University Club. It has overnight accommodation and it was location on the same street a few blocks away from the conference center.

I arrived a bit early so I stashed my things and went for a walk around the neighborhood. When I came back, my room was ready and I checked in. I’m not going to go through a long list of what was wrong with the room but here’s what you need to know: it was a first floor room that I was paying a lot of money for that had a broken window and no chain on the door (it was broken off). Now, if I had been staying in Rye, this would not have been an issue. But, as I mentioned in my prior post, I did not feel safe in San Francisco. I was quite unhappy. I didn’t know what to do because I am actually (for all of the bravado that I might impart through the blog) not a confrontational girl and I don’t like conflict. But hubby advised over the phone - and he was right (though don’t spread it around) - that I should ask to be moved. I did. The second room was no better. Again, no laundry list to share because it’s not worth it but I was not, not, not happy.

I did some quick searching and found a hotel, the Marine Club, nearby that was also a reciprocal club. I plodded over to check it out before I committed. It was terrific, very clean, very safe, staff was super nice. The only caveat is that I would have to change rooms on the last night of my stay, which was fine with me. I made the reservation and went back to get my stuff.

I dreaded going back to the front desk at the University Club. Dreaded it. Had a zillion possible speeches in my head. I wheeled my suitcase down and said, “I’m going to check out now.” And they said, “Okay.” And that was, shockingly, the end of it. I told my mom that I got the feeling that wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world that I was going to check out.

So about 6pm, when I was supposed to be at the Speaker’s Social for BlogHer, I was checking myself into a small but clean and comfortable room at the Marine Club. Since I had already missed all of the good stuff (training and social), I decided to go for a run in the Fitness Center and then head out to check out the city some more (I had wandered through neighborhoods just north of Nob Hill earlier while waiting for my room to be ready). I went in search of Chinese food in Chinatown for dinner, travel agita largely over.

In a few hours, I’ll be on a very crowded plane back to Philadelphia. I’ll land at nearly 11pm, Philly time, which means that I will have to find a cab to get home since hubby will have already put the children to bed. It is hot and humid in Philly, nearly 95 degrees. And yet, I can’t wait.

This has been an exhausting trip. It’s been a good experience for me. I’ve met lots of good people and been inspired in a hundred different ways. But I’m ready to come home.

I flew out of Philly on Thursday. I landed at SFO to some pretty remarkable weather. It was in the 50s out on the platform as I waited for the BART (SFO’s transit system) to take me into the city. I was already loving it.

But that’s where the love fest ends.

I’ve wanted to go to San Francisco for years. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Clearly, I need to re-examine my sources.

This is not to say that it’s not a lovely city, it is. The views of the bay are beautiful, the architecture is varied and interesting and the weather is terrific. It’s just not my kind of place.

For one, it is the most tourist-y city that I’ve ever visited. This is saying a lot considering that I’ve been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit. The level of tourists crammed into a fairly mid-sized city is overwhelming and the clear pitch to woo tourist dollars at every turn is distracting. And it’s not just in the main tourist areas. It’s all over. I’ve walked the city from Union Square (admittedly the heart of tourist central) to past Nob Hill, through the financial district, to Japantown, China Town, to Russian Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf and Telegraph Hill. Tourists at every turn. And not a few sightseeing tourists. Large groups of tourists with bulging shopping bags and flash happy cameras.

Now, admittedly, I didn’t see the entire city. You can’t do that in a few days. But I did try to venture out as much as I could, opting out of some of the BlogHer parties to see the city. At every corner, I found pushy crowds, long lines and kitschy souvenirs.

The tourists have clearly contributed to the other mind-boggling thing about San Francisco: the expense! It is incredibly pricey. And I’m not talking about expensive doo-dads from tourist kiosks. I paid $1.65 for a can of Diet Coke off of the main drag. A small bottle of water cost $3 at a nearby Walgreens. My breakfast on Saturday - a yummy veggie omelet - at a midrange Mediterranean restaurant was a whopping $22 (with coffee and tip). My Cafe Americano at a small cafe near Russian Hill ran $4. And on and on. And it wasn’t just me being frugal. My friends expressed similar surprise at the cost of eating and drinking (consumer goods, ironically, were priced about the same as in Philly).

Perhaps most shocking is the amount of extremely aggressive panhandling in the city. I’m used to begging in Philadelphia and New York, it is a sad reality in American cities. But in Philly, we learn to walk by panhandlers. In San Francisco, that doesn’t sit well with those who beg. On my first day in San Francisco, I was cussed out three times for not responding to beggars. I was followed and yelled out when I shook my head “no” when asked for money. On the way home from a bar early Saturday morning, I was followed by a man who told me that he knew that I had money to give him and harassed for not handing it over.

I’m not the only one. One of the other women at the conference reported being followed to the parking garage by a homeless person - inside the parking garage was a sign with a photo of an aggressive panhandler and a note to call police. And fellow conference attendees reported that they were sometimes followed as much as half a block when they refused to give money to the panhandlers.

I don’t spook easily - heck, I used to walk to Temple in North Philly from my apartment in Old City in the evenings. I consider myself fairly city savvy. But I felt continuously uneasy while walking around in San Francisco. A woman who lives outside of San Francisco told a group of us that this is a relatively recent phenomenon in the city. I hope the city figures out how to deal with it - it’s definitely not appealing for women traveling on their own.

Similarly, I was surprised to see how dirty and trashy the city was. Trash is something that Philly has struggled with over the years - it is definitely one of the downsides to urban life. And I didn’t expect to see so much of it in San Francisco. Maybe it’s the amount of tourists wandering around who don’t feel invested enough in the city to walk over and toss their garbage in the bins, but there is an amazing amount of trash on the sidewalks and streets. In my mind’s eye, I had always pictured San Francisco as squeaky clean. It is not. I was also advised to not assume that the poop in the park was dog poop; I’ll just stop there.

I feel like I complained a lot about the city. And I didn’t set out to. And I don’t want it to sound like I’m trying to talk anyone out of visiting (my friend, Kristin, has already texted me that she’s disappointed in my assessment because she had wanted to go). I don’t want to change anyone else’s impression of the city. I’m just remarking on my own. I think maybe it’s just that I had so many expectations about the city, having heard my whole life how terrific it is and I was really disappointed. It will not be on my list of cities to come back to.

Apparently, my SF post angered the technology gods. It has disappeared from my blog and now will not post at all. *sigh*

Last weekend, I was at an event where I had the opportunity to chat with folks, a handful of which I had not had the chance to sit down with for awhile.

Halfway through, I started noticing that I was apologizing for things. A lot of things.

When did I start doing this?

And no, not “I’m sorry that I knocked over your glass” type apologies. More of the “I could have made a lot of money if I took that job I was offered in the spring” ilk. Defensive, icky apologies for how I live my life.

I’ve been mulling this over in my head, this notion of why I feel compelled to defend my choices out loud and even on the blog, which is more or less the same thing. I think I’ve figured out that I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that I’m good enough. I think it’s a very needy attempt to make people feel okay with my choices - which is crazy because no one needs to feel okay with my choices except me. Well, me and Chris. But that’s a whole other ball of wax.

My whole life, I have tried to make other people happy and comfortable. Perhaps it’s a southern girl/cultural/hostessy thing. It’s definitely a middle child thing. And there are clearly self esteem issues at work.

And I want to say that I can put that away and just say “f*ck it” but I can’t.

But I am going to try to stop apologizing so much. I must be doing something right. I’m still here.

And more than a little grumpy.

But finally safe and sound in San Francisco (I’ll share my three rooms, two hotels experience later) ready for BlogHer.

I miss my family.

I have the 25th anniversary edition of Thriller on my iPod. Today, when it came on, Amy started freaking out.

“This one,” she says, “I like.”

She stares at the album cover for a moment and says, “Because he sounds like a girl.”

Yes, Amy, yes, he does.