One of the benefits to cleaning out my trunk for the first time since before I was pregnant was finding some small treasures from before I was pregnant. Like, a coke-stained cd case with some cds I was missing.
From before I was pregnant.
They're great road trip cds, so my daughter is just going to have to learn to live with
OPM, 3 Doors Down, Seether (okay, maybe not that one),
Holly Williams, Cowboy Junkies, and SEVERAL mix cd's labeled things like Rock A, Rock B, Vacation CD #1, Vacation CD # 2, Country Girls, and MAN (it actually has his name on it, but I can't think of anything better to call him at the moment and WOMANIZING DRUNK takes up too much space.) I can't WAIT to hit the road and start listening to the gems that I remember are on them, and the ones that will be a surprise.
The first one, though, was extremely fun to listen to this morning on the way to daycare.
After a particularly gut-wrenching episode with the drunk womanizer (where he married someone else while I thought we were dating and I didn't find out until I went to work on Monday) I started going out to listen to live music. Mostly alone. And mostly trashed drunk. But listening to live music was something that I truly adore, and so I picked my (drunken) self up off the floor and found some venues and some shows and I went.
Some were particularly enjoyable. Some were marginal. Some I got a contact buzz, which was a new experience for me.
One in particular was a CD release party by a local band I'd never heard of before. But hey, 10 bucks got you in the door, a free cd, and your first drink, so why the fuck not? The band was called
Gardenhose, the album titled Epiphany, and sure enough, I got a cd and a drink with my 10 bucks. Me and the other 10 people standing around.
The opening act was a woman who sang my entire life while sitting on a stool with a guitar, so I just hid in the corner and wept. The actual band was pretty good (god, I must have been really drunk), so I was glad for the cd.
I have thought about that night and that cd several times, and wondered what happened to it. I couldn't remember the name of the band to even look them up online to see whatever happened to them.
Then last night, deep in the trunk, under all the trash and the pair of size 3 toddler shoes and the Christmas dog that I hid from my kid because she knows how to make it bark. Under magnets from my old office that fell out of the box, and a pile of wet, dirty business cards that probably came from the same place, under grimy posterboard from who knows when for who knows what ... I found the purple, stained, once-glittery cd case.
This morning on our way to daycare, I popped in "Epiphany" by
Gardenhose.
Oh my god, it's bad.
The guy can't even sing on key. How did I not notice this?
The guitar is awesome. The song is fairly well written. But I'm laughing hysterically at the vocalist.
The song hits me in the gut. I can remember standing there that night, listening to them play. I can remember drinking beer after beer out of a can to try not to feel what I was feeling. I can remember wearing my red barn coat because it was cold. I can remember trying not to meet eyes of others so they couldn't see I'd been crying. I remember wanting to drown.
I don't remember how bad the music was. Now I'm realizing how bad it really is.
Then the best part? I look into my rearview mirror to see my girl ... jamming to the guitar in the song. Nodding her head, shaking it back and forth, in time to the beat.
That's my girl.
--
My morning was going to be well choreographed. My day is going to have to go exceedingly well to accomplish everything I need to do, and try to get enough sleep to hit the road on time. We made it out the door on time, dropoff at daycare went smoothly. Until ...
The daycare director asks me to stop in her office. To give me "beach thoughts". Huh? "Something to think about." Fabulous.
Blah blah blah too many kids blah blah blah filling back up blah blah blah. Basically, we have the opportunity (!) to make
another transition or stay in the room we are in, but the composition of both those rooms will be changing.
Essentially the decisions I need to make are:
- Do I want my child to be the youngest in the group or the oldest in the group? We discussed how much she blossomed when she moved up to the Twos room initially (hellos,
numbers and letters here). I talked about how much she learns by watching others and the director talked about how much she soaks stuff up. The director mentioned that some children can regress in their skills if they no longer have older/more skilled children to look up to. Other children do not regress, and enjoy being a leader of the group.
-Who do I want to be my daughter's primary caregiver? This answer might be mutually exclusive with the previous answer, so which gets more weight?
-My daughter is
part of a clique. There are three girls who are all friends, plus a boy that pushes and hits. The director has talked to the other girls' moms, who want to keep the group together. One for all, kind of thing - was the director's exact words. When I shared that my daughter seems like she has bonded with the Twos caregiver after her last transition, but that I think she might be okay with the other caregivers if she moves up, the director noted that the other moms felt the same way. Well, one other mom. The other mom she hasn't talked to yet.
-I didn't think to ask about the biting. Are the kids in the creeper room still having issues with biting, and if so, are the biters the ones that are moving up? She wasn't supposed to, but she answered that question the last time we transitioned. I didn't think to ask about that this morning.
Pros and cons list, here I come. After
all the other crap I have to do today to get ready for THE BEACH!
