Friday, Dec. 09, 2011 8:47 p.m.

so tired (of)(and) growing old

I feel like I always have so much to do, especially since it's Christmas.
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D is on the cover of W magazine this month. I don't know why we have this sitting on our kitchen table right now or where exactly it came from, but it's there. And there she is, so grown up.

That was such a strange time in my life. I could almost pretend it didn't happen. I didn't talk about it too much with people; the celebrity of it all overwhelmed me and I never felt prepared for it. It was too much for me and though I tried, and though everyone was civil about it all, I know I floundered. I'm a million times better of a teacher now - I'm ashamed that they'll never know me for how good I could be at it. I wish I could do that time again.

If I hadn't held on to a few of her old papers and notes she wrote - I'd probably one day be able to convince myself that those several moths were a figment of my imagination.

She's so old now; practically an adult.

I'm so old now then too, I suppose.
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Having a child is interesting in many ways. I love it, but it's exhausting. It's not that I've lost myself, as I'm not unhappy, but it's that the focus of my life has shifted and I've lost part of that individual drive that I use to define myself by.

Earlier this week, I got an email to one of those test movie screenings. I used to go to them all the time. It's been years and I figured I should get myself back out there and go. So I clicked the link and started registering to attend. Then suddenly it hit me - I can't go to these things anymore. I have a kid. Who requires childcare, which is usually myself. I don't have the freedom anymore to do random things like this. Oh yeah.
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Now that K is in the writer's guild, he gets all the screeners in the mail and get tons of invites to the free screenings. I used to be his date to these things; I had looked forward to the day he'd be in the guild and I'd get to be his date to lots more of them.

I don't get to be his date though. He takes friends. I stay at home with baby C.

It's not that he wouldn't swap nights with me and let me go out instead of him some nights. It's that I have no where to go. And he does. I don't have close girlfriends to call up. All of my friends are "our" friends. And since they don't have kids yet, most of the usual get-togethers are not really baby-friendly. So I stay home and K represents us.
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Financially, we're kind of precarious right now. Any spending money goes to Christmas gifts and traveling. We don't have family close and the idea of hiring a stranger as a babysitter to watch baby C still seems to foreign. Some of our friends offer to watch her (usually the engaged or newlywed friends that probably want to "practice" having a baby) - but I cant let them watch her. Not for paranoia, but because I don't want to torture them! :) Babies cry a lot. I mean, I signed up for this parenthood thing, so I deal with it an am calm about it. But people not used to it? Eeek. I feel sorry for them! Maybe in a couple months, if her behavior is more predicable. Now she's just too young right now.
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Having a baby does make me feel old. I think of my mom (who had me at just 21, btw, and I was 10 by the time she was my age - I can't imagine having a 10 yr old right now!) and how quickly she's aged as I have aged and grown. And now, as Baby C grows up...so will I.

It's as though my aging no longer matters - I age only as Baby C grows and learns and passes new milestones. I think about her learning to walk, and starting school, and getting involved in hobbies, and figuring what she wants to becomes, and seeing her get married and have her own kids. And then I'm reminded - oh yeah, I'm only going to get older and older as those things happen too.

Why is it that on the inside, we always feel the same age? It's only when I look in the mirror and start to see my first slight little age lines around my eyes or mouth when I smile that I realize, oh yeah, I'm only getting older.

I no loner have the potential to grow into beauty or youth - only out of it, and I suppose I should grasp at the little of it that I have left. I suppose I have another decade of relative "youth" left, but I'm slowly fading out of the years in which a woman can generally be considered attractive.

How is it that I'm now getting old, instead of growing up?

I'm glad I now have a child to re-live all of childhood with.
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Yet, as strange as it is, being sad about my inescapable aging - I a also so fulfilled by realizing that I have contributed another step in the circle of life. My parents were once children, then they grew and had me. I was a child and then I grew and now have a new child. My child will one day grow and have her own children. As scary as it is to get older, it also just feels so right.

Stage 1 in my life was growing up. Stage 2 in my life was being a non-parent adult. Stage 3 is raising a child.

I can't stop time. So I'm left to just embrace what comes next.

It's scary and exciting.

I hope there is life after death, just so I can continue to reflect on this one. I hope it matters.
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A regular weekday: 24 hours in the day. 5-6 hours devoted to work, while K watches baby C. Of the other 18 hrs, 3 hrs. are spent feeding baby C, 6 hrs. entertaining or changing or soothing her, 6 hrs. of my own sleep.

This leaves about 3-4 hrs. when baby C is napping and I am not and can actually get something done. Often this is extra work stuff - only sometimes is it something recreational that I want to do just because. Of course, I can give up some of my sleep time to do things like type diaryand entries and sometimes I do because its more worth it than sleep to me.

But I have other things to do too. Like make Christmas presents and make dinner and clean the house and do dishes and and watch tv and send emails and shop online and surf the internet to find answers about raising babies.

It's like I can never catch up.

But I asked for all this, so I guess I can't complain.

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