Book: Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom
Author: Kristin van Ogtrop
Published: 2010 (Little, Brown and Company)
Pages: 259
Awe: the state in which I hold working parents. I have taken care of kids (daycare summer job) and am right now easing myself into a professional life; separately, each of those things have exhausted my punk ass to the point where I am really, sincerely, bewilderingly curious as to how the hell people do both at the same time without keeling over.
But: everything I’ve read about it has such a well-worn fondly crazy lightheartedness that I can’ tell what’s exaggerated for laughs and what’s damped down for sentiment. Van Ogtrop’s stories don’t go any deeper than the rest of them.
Can: it be something you just have to DO, like moving your legs when you want to learn how to run, or when you discover that nobody actually knows how to be an official adult and everyone just b.s.es their way into it until something clicks?
Does: the blurb that says “The ideal girlfriend gift!” mean a great present for a significant other or something to give a female friend? Either way sounds a little insulting and presumptuous.
Everything: this does not make me want children. Like, at all. I’ll settle for cooing at them while their mothers are preoccupied, thanks, so maybe both of us can visit the other side of life for the brief second that will be all we need. Also, I wanna play with the Legos.
My good friend and his wife, just down the street, are definitely BSing their way through it. They have plenty of advice, of course, but the changes in their lives-- or perhaps I should say the complete replacement of their lives with new, different lives-- isn't something you can get advice on. I think you're right, you just have to do it and then you can do it.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that simple, and it's just that hard.
ReplyDelete