faulty vision

…and…

…and…

…and…

We had a great time.

And so did Grandma and Aunt Sako.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“So we just disembarked, and I’m headed to the baggage claim now. Hobbes was a good boy.”

“Oh … crap. I forgot to leave to pick you up.”

Silence.

“You forgot?”

“I’m leaving now.”

Click.

“Hobbes, your daddy is a goober.”

Hobbes grinned proudly at me. That’s my old man.

“I’m not going to be around for Christmas this year,” Sako said.

“Where’ll you be?” I asked.

“Mexico,” she said, and speared a piece of pickled radish. “Or China,” she added thoughtfully.

“Those are two totally different places.”

“Or Thailand. Or Spain. Or–”

“You haven’t been to Africa.”

She brightened.

“What the hell,” I said.

Mom, who has mastered the art of ignoring the vagaries of the daughter most like her, carried on ignoring and munched stoically through her meal.

Traveling all alone with a 7-month old proved about as traumatizing as I expected, though to be fair, Hobbes behaved far better than I apparently behaved during most of my childhood plane trips. Barring his outraged objections over the change in ear pressure during the takeoff, and the crankiness that kept me roaming up and down the aisle for a good hour of the flight, he was fairly well behaved. We ended up on standby and got an earlier flight into Seattle. As a result, we ended up in a middle seat, which is never convenient, especially with a small kid. Fortunately, the two men around us were both parents themselves. They were astonishingly tolerant, and picked up thrown, drool-soaked toys, played peek-a-boo with a delighted and astonished Hobbes, and dealt with my scrotum-crushing baggage with kindly aplomb.

Half an hour before we landed, Hobbes abruptly fell asleep on my shoulder. As a result, he missed the worst part of the flight — the descent, which I’ve always found most brutal on my ears — and only woke up again in time to beam toothlessly at everyone while we deplaned.

“What a good baby,” one of the people from the plane cooed in the bathroom. “I didn’t even hear him.”

In my fevered imagination, I’d been under the impression that he’d spent the entire flight squawking and squalling. “Thank God,” I blurted out without thinking.

Hobbes cooed back at her, and batted his eyelashes.

So Hobbes and I are visiting Seattle.

I haven’t been as good about updating the journal lately, due to assorted other distractions (WORK) and things (WORK) that have sapped me of energy and left me with the creative impulses of a sea cucumber. We’re in Seattle for the weekend, if you can call it a weekend when it’s for Thursday through Sunday. Mom wants to see Hobbes in person more than just twice a year, and I’m amenable. Skype is good for what it is, but it isn’t the real thing.

As it is, I suspect Hobbes believes his grandmother lives in the computer. We park him in front of it for our weekly Skype call, and he gets visibly excited when he hears the dial tone coming from the Mac. The occasional corollary, when nobody answers, results in the corners of his mouth turning down in a very pointed manner.

She came to pick us up at the airport. As might be expected, I was the second person she greeted.

Hobbes was deeply skeptical.

We went from the airport straight to the mall to buy baby food and diapers, with Hobbes chattering busily to himself in the back seat. Once we hit the mall, it was a different story.

“He’s staring at me,” Mom said, eyeing Hobbes eyeing her back. She was pushing the stroller, and I poked my head around to check on him. Sure enough, he was staring beadily at her; his blink function had apparently been turned off.

“Um,” I said, and hurried on.

A few minutes later I heard him start to cry.

The rest of the afternoon was not, shall we say, a joyous reunion between family members. Hobbes alternated staring at Mom with crying because he’d caught sight of Mom, for all the world as though her presence made him physically ill. Sako, who came home early from school to say hi, touched him on the cheek in greeting. This triggered another bout of wails. Hobbes had met his maternal relatives again, and wanted nothing to do with them.

“I wonder if he thinks he’s being kidnapped?” I said, while he sniffled tragically in my arms, his face buried in my chest.

“I don’t– oh gawp,” Sako yelped, and dove out of sight as Hobbes twisted his head around to see who was talking. “Did he see me?” Hobbes started to cry again. She snickered. “He saw me.”

It was evening by the time he’d grown reconciled to his surroundings. By 6 pm, he was letting Sako hold him, provided he didn’t actually have to look at her face. 7 pm, he was letting his grandmother hold him.

I figure by Saturday, he may even let them walk through his field of vision.

It is hot.

It is beyond hot. 93 degrees? That is brain-sizzling hot, and it is Hobbes’s first experience of a heat wave. Babies are not terribly good at self-regulating when it comes to body heat, which explains how it came about that he was rolling around the floor this evening wearing nothing but a diaper.

If I had my druthers, I would’ve done the same thing.

(Without the diaper.)

From a Russian coworker who fell in with me while walking down the hall.

“You look all … bitchy today. No, wait, maybe my pronunciation is not so good. I mean you look like you are going to a beach– stop that.”

I laughed for the next five minutes. On my way back to my office, I caught sight of her again.

I laughed for another five.

I haven’t posted in a while, for the simple reason that I’ve been pretty much exhausted and without leisure for a while. In fact–

Here. Let me quote from my weekly status report to my boss.

The past two weeks have been a series of those domestic disasters that scriptwriters turn into comic scenarios and sell to Lucille Ball. This happens to me more often than is entirely comfortable to admit, actually. There was an incident when I first moved to San Francisco that I am informed actually was an I Love Lucy episode, though this was before my time and anyway, I’m not in the habit of turning to sitcoms for my home ec credits. I was babysitting. There was a dishwasher, good intentions, liquid detergent and then a kitchen floor covered with bubbles come morning– I refuse to feel ashamed about this. Domestic technology is confusing when one’s family takes dishes down to the creek and beats them with rocks to get them clean.

I digress. My point, from which I wandered, consisted of the following. The baby was sick: first with oozing diaper rash; then with a four day fever of 101 – 103 degrees. The husband was sick: not with diaper rash, true; nonetheless full of crank and lassitude. I was sick: allergies and guilt over my assorted failures as both domestic and professional goddess. As a result, I ended up only working about 66% (give or take a few percent) of the normal 40 hour work week.

“–for which I blame you,” I informed my son. Like the dishwasher, he blew indifferent bubbles at me.

I am not particularly professional with my status reports. It’s a character flaw. I’ve learned to live with it. So has the rest of my Engineering department, who gets to read my status reports on a weekly basis.

In between shuttling back and forth between home and the sick baby — the daycare service was kind, but firm. Applying cream to the raw bottom of a baby with diarrhea? Yes. Dealing with a feverish infant? No. Their standards seem to me both arbitrary and perversely masochistic — I spent all of the time I could spare catching up to myself. Pinging people about deliverables. Asking people for updates on status. Cramming people into rooms and asking them silly questions. On the (project) front, I struggled and failed to remember the new product label, (product name). Not that it doesn’t have a ring to it, but my memory is lacking. For instance, I’m almost seven months into parenthood and I still can’t remember to call my son by his actual name.

“Is your son’s name really ‘Sprog?’” D. asked me on Thursday, puzzled.

The point, which should not be lost here, is that Hobbes has been reeling through the stock deck of baby illnesses for the last two weeks. He started out with a raw, red diaper rash that covered most of his little butt and kept him awake for several nights in a row. It’s astonishing how bad it got in the space of a day — a noticeable redness turned overnight into oozing, open streaks on his buttocks where the outer layers of skin had actually rubbed off from his squirming — and it was mostly downhill from there. To add insult to injury, he came down with a raging case of diarrhea. By day two, he was pooping every 20 minutes.

That’s a lot of diaper changing, y’all.

The day care called us to pick him up early because of his discomfort levels, and we spent all of one weekend parked in the living room while Hobbes rolled around on the floor, completely naked from the waist down. He had to. It was medical necessity. We laid down plastic and towels, but– let’s just say that replacing the carpet with hardwood has become our top priority for this year’s household projects, and leave it at that.

Meanwhile, QA was given at least one major deliverable in the shape of the first (code) drop, along with a bill of materials for the next few weeks that would make (male member of QA) and me squeal girlishly if we weren’t so incredibly dignified and mature. I read both announcements to my son. “Yay!” I said. “Look, baby. Email from Oliver. From O-li-ver. He’s the lead for the (product line). Those are milestones, see? –wake up, darn it. This is good stuff.”

*snip*

It’s really remarkable how little of my status report has to do with actual status. It fascinates me that people actually continue to employ me, even after the full glory of my new employee ‘best behavior’ has lapsed enough to reveal my version of ‘professionalism.’

“And that,” I told Hobbes, “is called ‘release planning.’”

The baby punched himself in the face.

“Stop that,” I said. “Look. Here’s another email from Tom. D.’s calling him her ‘BFF’ now. It’s about (product name). Here, let me read it to you–”

The baby punched himself in the face again. Then he tried to hurl himself off the sofa. I caught him just in time, much to his annoyance.

“That’s just rude,” I said severely. “What would Tom say if he knew you were acting like this to his emails? I fail to see why you’re objecting to this. All the parenting books say you’re supposed to read to babies. It builds good vocabulary and improves higher brain function. It’s supposed to be a good bonding ritual. –Oh, look! I just got an email about reporting. Let’s read i–”

I pointed at the screen, at which point the baby shrieked, “Awpfff!” and attempted to claw one of my eyes out.

“Use your words, child,” I said.

Hobbes clutched at his hair and slowly sagged over my knees until his head disappeared over the edge of the sofa. “Woo,” he said sadly.

“Oh. Tom gave us an update on the (product),” I reported to his little stomach. “In this email, he says, ‘4. QA will not get a build for the (product) until next week.’”

The baby sniffled pitifully. I patted his leg.

“I know,” I said. “It’s hard, but we’ll make it. You’ll see. Next week isn’t really that far away.”

He sighed.

“What really sucks is that it’s D.’s second week,” I complained to my husband later. “I’m spending half my time running around like a useless, headless chicken.”

My husband gave this some thought. “And what are you like at work?” he asked finally.

“She probably thinks I’m an idiot, plus she’s taken over the X project — and I heard that, so don’t think you won’t pay for it later.”

By Monday, his diaper rash had healed enough that he would tolerate being held and would actually sit on his butt from time to time. On the other hand, he was running a fever of 101. It was our first encounter with childhood disease, and to be fair, it isn’t as though Hobbes eased us into this. I called the advice nurse, who was both kind and firm, and did not by so much as a smirk ask us if we were first-time parents.

Keep an eye on him, she said. Give him baby Tylenol. If his fever lasts for more than 3 days, call. If it goes above 103, call. If he starts acting uncharacteristically lethargic or behaves strangely, call.

I hung up, eyed my red-faced, beaming, tearful son, and let my thumb hover over the redial button. It’s a weird trait of the kid that his ‘I’m going to cry’ face looks exactly like his, ‘I’m so happy to see you, I think I’ll wet myself’ face. He gaped at me and glowed.

“Right,” I said.

“Mmf’n,” said the Guy.

Hobbes drooled.

Back when we were in our ‘Parenthood for Dummies’ class given by our local clinic, we were informed by the ferociously cheerful teacher that the most reliable way of measuring a baby’s temperature was rectally. “It’s easier to take it by ear or under the armpit,” she told our class of grotesquely pregnant mothers-to-be and anxious, attendant fathers. “But if the reading you get worries you, you might as well get it from the butt before you call us, because that’s the first thing we’ll ask.”

“…and crap, we need some kind of lubricant,” I told the Guy, after he made an emergency trip to the local drug store to buy a rectal thermometer. (”We could’ve just used the one we have,” he reported when he returned and handed me a digital thermometer that was, sure enough, the same make and model of another one we owned. Except it was blue.) “We can’t do this dry.”

“Diaper cream?” he asked a bit hopelessly.

I eyed him. He became defensive.

“It’s not like it doesn’t all go the same place anyway,” he argued.

“Lubricant,” I said loudly, reading off the package. “Water-based. Do not use–”

“Or Vaseline–” he said.

“–petroleum gel,” I read.

“Because it breaks down rubber,” he finished, as though that was what he meant to say all along. “Of course you can’t. You have to use something like–”

I muttered to myself, wrestling with the squirming, angry baby, and the Guy disappeared. I heard him banging around downstairs; a few minutes later he reemerged from the garage, looking both defensive and triumphant. He handed me a plastic bag full of little foil tubes.

I looked at them. Then I looked at him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

“Water based,” he said loudly. “Look, it says on the package. ‘Water-based lubricant–’”

“On a baby.”

“It’s safe!”

“Baby.”

“If it wasn’t safe, they wouldn’t sell it, would they?”

“But not for babies– oh, bother.”

Anxiety and fatigue make for a poor baseline off which to make health decisions. I lost my head a little. We trooped into the nursery with the baby under one arm and the little bag under the other, and proceeded to take his temperature. He hiccuped crankily, aggrieved at the utter indignity of it all.

“Oh bother,” I fretted afterward, while he consoled himself with my thumb. “This is so wrong.”

The next night, the Guy went out and bought appropriate lubricant, and we called the advice nurse again because Hobbes’s temperature had hit 103.4. On Thursday, he saw the doctor, who diagnosed an ear infection and sent him home with antibiotics. On Friday, our daycare was closed because there was some sort of holiday that’s apparently important to Christians. Good Friday, yada yada, Easter, yada…. All told, I managed to work a grand total of 20 hours last week. “Thank you for not firing me,” I told my boss on Friday.

“You’re welcome,” he said amiably.

Anyway, Hobbes is better now.

And so are we.

Good night.

“I just had an insight into your mother,” the Guy said.

I was seated on the living room couch, poking through facebook updates. I looked up to find him standing in front of me, swathed in blue flannel.

“What?”

“The way she views medicine,” he said. “You know how she takes medication sometimes and sometimes doesn’t, whenever she feels like it?”

“Yeah.”

“I think she views them as power ups.”

I stopped to think about that one. It took me a few seconds to trace the phrase back to its source: video games. An image of Pac-man popped into my head. My mother as Pac-man. It worked for me. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

He looked excessively pleased with himself. “It just came to me when I was refilling my medicine box,” he said. “Power ups.”

He trundled happily off.