Noah and Josie went to day care today.

Unfortunately, we’d had such a rough night last night that I didn’t have the mondo productive day I’d imagined. Last night Josie was up until almost 11, then again at 2, and 4. Noah thought 4:15 am was the perfect time to play with cars, an idea that could only be appreciated with an audience. At least he went back to sleep; we all did until about 7:30 am.

He seemed a little bit out of sorts when he got up for real, but I blamed the 4 am racecar driving impulse.

But apparently at day care, he was cranky after naptime, and around 4 or 4:15pm, it nosedived into hot, listless, and whiny. At shortly after 5, his fever was about 101.
Happily, tylenol made a difference. Although Noah was still tired and a little crabby, he ate dinner, and not too crabbily went to sleep. His forehead feels hot again, but at least he seems soundly asleep.

Josie has no fever, but was also fussy and cranky all evening, and nursed like a maniac. Not quite the maniac she was one evening last week, when she nursed for 4 solid hours, but a solid hour at least.

Tomorrow? Who knows?

But I hope he’s better by Wednesday. I have an appointment to check out a preschool — one that I actually attended as a child! How cool would that be?

My biggest hope for 2009 was that it would be utterly unlike 2008 — no emotional roller-coaster, no drama, etc. Just some nice quiet raising of children and finding of jobs and houses. (Oh wait, I guess quiet is silly in context.)

Still, so for, 2009 is not doing what I hoped.

Jill came back (yay!) and left again (boo!), leaving behind a sad family. Josie seems to have a nasty cold. Noah is practicing being extra stubborn. I am having paperwork challenges. But I did have two positive unbloggable moments this week. (Not job interviews.) And I joined Weight Watchers online. My goal is 140 at 40.
I also have a new mantra, especially for the next few months while our family is out of sync and then gets back into a new routine:

I can be right, or I can be married.

It’s sort of the “du jour” iteration of our wedding vows, which I’m also trying to keep more “front of mind.” Specifically, I’m thinking about the part where I pledged to cause Jill’s life to work for her, moment by moment by moment.

I *know* that my life also works better when I’m focused on causing her life to work, but it is so easy to forget that when I’m distracted, exhausted, and cranky. You know, like the latter part of 2008.

What’s your “zone of privacy?”

I imagine that some of my readers think I don’t have one, and some of my real life friends and relatives might worry that mine is too small. After all, I write a lot about the less glamourous aspects of motherhood and non-legally married life.

In real life, I will pretty much answer any question or get into a discussion with a friend about anything. During my first pregnancy, I got very comfortable answering the awkward question from new acquaintances, “um, how does a lesbian get pregnant?” (Short and embarrassment free answer: It started out with the most surreal online shopping experience ever, and the rest is boringly medical.)

My sense of personal modesty has also been fundamentally altered by parenthood. While I generally dress pretty modestly, I follow the “when in doubt, whip it out” school of parenting infants. I try to be discrete about that in public, but that part doesn’t always work as well as I intend.

There are, however, some lines I don’t cross here — like the intimate details of that non-legally married life. And in real life, that zone of privacy, though small, is pretty darn rigid. For example, I hate it when people go into my purse, wallet, or laptop bag. Don’t ever open my mail.

If there is any reasonable alternative, I would rather that you didn’t borrow my computer, and I will try not to borrow yours too. If I do borrow yours, you can bet that I won’t be saving my passwords, and I will try not to log you out of any of your pages or look at what you were doing, with the possible exception of looking at the news if your browser home page is set to a news site. (Hi Mom!) I also won’t be casually reading your email over your shoulder, and if I think you might be doing that to me, I’ll probably switch to a new browser window immediately.

Related to that, I really do a whole lot better when I get to be by myself, in my own space, on a regular basis. That has been the silver lining to this whole single parenting thing. I’m very social, but I need to balance that out with being alone. That has been the single hardest thing about being married and having kids. I remember one of my biggest Noah-pregnancy meltdowns happening when I thought I was going to get the whole day to myself, in the house, and then Jill’s plans changed.

Anyway, my point here is that while I don’t need a lot of privacy, what I need, I really REALLY need. And when I’m expecting it and I don’t get it, I become a seriously unhappy camper.

I know that many of you in the blogosphere have come up with creative ways to protect your privacy, or that of your friends and family members. How do your online privacy needs map against your real life privacy needs?

Dear AT&T:

You called me this morning around 11:40 am. It is now 1:08 pm.

You called to tell me that I hadn’t activated my DSL service. I knew that; I’ve been trying to cancel it for about 10 days now. Cable, not that I love them either, offers me more than twice the speed for about $10/month more. So I picked them instead.

When you called, I pressed the “talk to someone” button, and was immediately transferred to tech support in India. (Guessing from the accent.)

When I told “Jody” that I wanted to cancel the service, she transferred me to someone who sounded like they were in the US. Hold time was about 5 minutes. That person thought I was trying to cancel a business account, but I don’t have a business account. After much back and forth over the fact that I don’t know my new land line number and HEY DIDN’T YOU PEOPLE CALL ME? DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT ACCOUNT THE COMPUTER CALLED ME TO DISCUSS??? she eventually transferred me to what she said was 800-228-2020.

Since being on hold with that transfer, I have pumped 9 oz of breast milk, plugged in my cell phone so that the battery won’t die — it is still trying to — had an argument with my wife about our new banking plans in our new city, resolved the argument, researched 2 banks and 3 credit unions, read lots of updates on Facebook, bought long underwear online, had a hormonal roller-coaster & stress driven meltdown, complete with tears and door slamming, and resolved that too. Oh and made and eaten lunch.

I’m still on hold.

You’re never going to let me cancel that DSL service, are you?

After we go open up our new savings account, I have another priority errand, but either late this afternoon, or next Monday, I’m going to be calling and leaving a message for some nice paralegal in your legal department, asking them to help me cancel the account so that I don’t have to take the issue to small claims court.

You see, even though I am currently a stay at home mom, I still have better things to do with my time than spend more than 2 hours on hold to try to cancel an account. ESPECIALLY since, may I remind you, YOU CALLED ME.

Oh yeah, and this is the second time I’ve danced this exact dance with you. You called last week, but I gave up being on hold when I got to the grocery store — only 10 minutes after you called.
Total time spent connected to AT&T that produced exactly zero results: 1:42:31.

Hi, Vonage? I still need a landline for Jill’s work, maybe you can help?

I’m wiped out, so this is going to be short.

My intention for 2009 is for all of my family to thrive — in health, career, friendships, and as a family.

For me, that looks like achieving the following goals:

• When I turn 40, I weigh no more than 140. To get there from here, I will have exercised at least 100 times.
• I begin working in a job that I love, that I can imagine being in for at least the next 10 years. The job begins in February 2009.
• My book proposal is accepted by April 2009, and published by April 2010.
• I have an unbelievably great 40th birthday party.
• Nothing awful happens to me, Jill, Noah, or Josie this year.

The structure of this meme is the first sentence of the first post of each month for the year. Somehow this one misses my layoff, which seems odd.
January: Apparently, Noah’s New Year’s Resolution was to stop sleeping.

February: I’m a longtime election geek.

March: Dear Sick, Would you please get the hell out of here?

April: We have a slot at our church day care (NAEYC accredited) starting 5/19.

May: Yesterday I had my regularly scheduled monthly prenatal appointment, with the artist known in my birth story posts as Calming Older Midwife.

June: Jill took Noah to a car club cruise-in on Saturday, giving me almost 6 glorious hours on my own.
July: Jill was recognizable on TV during the Dream game, and she had a really good time.
August: The human body has some serious design flaws.
September: As you heard, our laptop and the hospital wifi refused to play nicely with one another.
October: Well, the house is officially on the market.
November: On Thursday, you turned two months old.
December: Hi Blog! Hi readers! I’ve missed you!

Dear Josie,

You turned 4 months old today.

Of the entire family, I think you are handling the chaos the best. Thank God that stranger anxiety hasn’t hit you yet. You happily grin and coo at all the new faces you’ve encountered this month, from old friends of your mommies’, to relatives, to day care providers, to airline personnel and fellow passengers.

The best thing that happened in the last month is that we finalized your legal adoption. You now have two legally recongized parents, forever and irrevokably.

We could not be more thrilled. Unfortunately, by picture taking time, you were a little hungry and tired, so you don’t look all that excited about it.

You’ve become a social delight this month, not just smiling, but laughing and “chatting” with cute conversational babble while sitting up and looking at other people. You haven’t decided to roll over yet, but you like sitting up and being part of the action. We big people inevitibly find this charming, and you could probably get some of your friends and relatives to buy you a pony, just for being so cute and sweet. Even your big brother thinks you are “soooooo cute!”

At the moment, you’ve just begun crying, so I need to end this and go pick you up.

I love you.

That Mommy
The only thing that makes you cranky seems to be the food situation at day care. You are not thrilled by this business of drinking from a bottle, and some days, you reject it almost entirely.