this town isn’t big enough

The last week has disappeared in a cloud of cooking and mystery novels. The cooking is for a diet called “Body After Baby” and the mystery novels started as a stop-gap until I can get my hands on the more recent Rick Riordan juveniles. As to the first, I’m spending an awful lot of time preparing and measuring, while spending the rest of my time making fun of it to whomever will listen, just so they know I’m not a dieter, for heaven’s sake.

The novels were the result of discovering that Riordan has a parallel career writing adult mystery novels. I read voraciously these days, as hoisting a paperback is something I can do with a baby on me, and I quickly ran through the stockpile of new materials I picked up while pregnant. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with the idea of myself as a mystery paperback reader, but I can’t quit the adventures of Tres Navarre, so I’ll have to be graceful about it.

Last weekend was a weird one, in that I managed to run into The Boy every day. I should have seen each one coming, although not surprisingly, I didn’t. On Saturday I drove Blake to a safety class, dropped Mason at a massage, and then had two hours to kill with Miss Maggie. I had planned to visit the library, but they weren’t open, so I visited the café where Sage & I shared a hotdog on New Year’s Eve. I knew it was where the New Girl meets with her knitting group, but I planned to leave before their start time. I was walking a fussy baby and staring at a bulletin board ad for musicians, recognizing the Boy’s handwriting and thinking about all sorts of childish additions I could put on it, when the author of it and his wife came in the door behind me. (It’s so easy to feel a mixture of superior and bitter when I see anything the Boy does.) They admired Miss Maggie and I went back to knitting by myself, across the room from the official knitting group. I could hear the new arrivals admiring her from a distance, New Girl saying that it was Blake’s sister. It was not as uncomfortable as our run-in the BIAF, not the hell I would have anticipated if I were smart. Still, I was glad to flee to the library, and even glad that the Boy offered to carry the loaded carseat into the car for me. (Mason was even less thrilled that my ex dared to touch our offspring’s carseat.)

The next day I ran into him at the jiu jitsu class my brother teaches for the city. Again, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. I swallowed my pride long enough to get a ride home for Blake, and took the baby home. I was glad for Monday, when the chance of meeting diminished to zero.

I know it’s better for Blake if his dad and I get along, or at least appear to. It’s hard, though, and I have yet to find a good professional to help me with these issues. I know that holding a grudge forever takes too much energy, but beyond that I don’t know.

“I will hate and re-like people for you. But you can’t get mad if I can’t keep track. Robbie? Don’t we hate him? No? We love him? Okay, okay, sorry.”
– best friend rules, mindy kaling

Blake is at solo Cub Scout camp this weekend, as in solo, as in without me. This was one of my favourite things about Beavers: the opportunity to go to camp and rock it in a way that I couldn’t as a kid. Being a mom at camp is fantastic, like going to a grubby spa. All you have to do is show up, keep your kid from going insane and work up a little enthusiasm about the activities and you get fed and entertained for a whole weekend. There’s none of the social anxiety I would have felt as a kid, no status to be lost or withheld by mean peers. Plus, last year I got to sneak extra snacks from the kitchen because I was pregnant.

In five more years I’ll get to go with Miss Maggie. Until then, I hope he’s enjoying the hell out of those jam jams.