cow shoes

02Oct08

HO? maun.

Max is banging on the window in his bedroom and yelling at the brownstone repair crew knocking on the building right outside. They’re standing on decrepit wood planks that are shoved through the scaffolding struts like pick up sticks skewed at all angles. “Hello Man” you’re loud and obnoxious, is Max’s complete sentiments on the matter from where I sit.

The sound of a cat mewing and screeching comes from below. My daughter is trying to kill her prey like an animal trying to stun freshly caught meat by shaking it silly. Only, there’s no need to slaughter her breakfast, it’s my boob. The girl’s only two months old but already I can tell she’s a weirdo. The apple doesn’t fall far.

I wonder why my husband and I subject ourselves, and now our children, to the seemingly unnecessary hardships of living in New York. We’ve rejected the burbs to stay here shielding the baby’s head from falling brownstone paste or dripping water from the scaffolding surrounding the front of the building as we squeeze our way out of the shrink wrapped doors. Max is no longer allowed to ride his race car through the apartment because he inevitably gets stuck between a bouncy seat and bassinet or something else crammed into the apartment. The ensuing wail of frustration coming from the two year old with an adult size head makes the plaster shiver on the walls.

We sit around thinking our living conditions are unbearable, but is it? It could be a lot worse. And it brings us closer sometimes, and not in the literal sense. I sat across from the mister on our beat up gray sofa that would yield maybe a quart of orange juice/apple juice/spit-up/milk if someone ever invented a couch juicer, and we whispered and giggled about the day’s new adventures:

1. Max asks for cashews. “Mah-me? Cow Shoes. Peez.” This is a thrill for us and I totally qualify it as an adventure. (We’re not easy to please either.)

2. Baby D says with a smile, “ayrAyrAyrOWwwww”. What the? She’s a Fucking Genius.

3. Baby D has slept for six hours. Forget about it. She’s Doogie-Meow-Wow-Howser.

4. Baby D has covered two thirds of my body with an amazing gurgling fountain of regurgitated breast milk in the conference room of the attorney’s office where we’re about to sign a contract for our new apartment. I spend an hour and half signing and initialing while smelling more and more like vomit as my clothes dry.

5. The economy has gone to shit and I’m possibly unemployed. No really.

FUCK.

We discuss strategies. Options. Should we pull the plug on the new place? How long can we survive in this apartment? Should we move to a different country? I could sell all my shoes! Let’s get head shots of the kids and make them earn some cabbage for a change.

It feels like we’re sitting around a campfire, scared and thrilled at the same time. I’m amazed at that. Despite everything being on the line and absolutely nothing being for certain, I find myself married to the man that I’m meant to be with. A small revelation that kind of shocked me: I am lucky because of him. Even though I knew that, remembering it really startled me.

Sure, he’s weird and lazy when he’s not being wonderful and productive. For example, there are a bizillion throw pillows on our bed for the open houses that make me nuts, but my husband makes me even more crazy by sneaking into bed without moving any of them when he’s tired. I walk in on a pair of legs and half a torso that disappears into the useless mountain of down and feathers that are supposedly helping us sell the apartment and want to throttle him for not taking the stupid things off. Then, of course, the effort to remove the pillows to find his neck to do the throttling usually proves too much for me and I sneak in on the other side, afraid to throw the throw pillows on the floor.

When he’s not inciting violent impulses in me, he makes me breakfast every morning. He always promises to take care of me when I’m sick, and even though he gets even sicker than me a lot of times, and I end up wondering if he’s being competitive or has ingeniously managed to get out of fetching me a glass of orange juice from the kitchen, he always means to look out for me.

He makes me laugh. I can’t help but laugh at his bad jokes either. His claims of growing his virginity back because of how my ob/gyn had forbidden us to DOIT actually gets a laugh out of me. That’s love, baby, because that shit is not funny.

Hopefully we’ll always have the ability to make each other happy. If we lose on this land deal, at least we’d have that. We used to say that we didn’t care about money, and then we had two kids and stopped saying that.

Hey mister, I love you. Four years is not traditionally known as the pizza year, but I still loved sharing some with you. Happy Anniversary Maun. Here’s to cow shoes and vomit. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Filed under: luff, the mister   |  3 Comments