This weekend while running super exciting Saturday morning errands (Target, Home Depot, sporting goods store, my life is so glamorous), E and I ran into someone we used to know. Someone from a long long time ago. Eight years to be exact.

Right there in the aisle of BJ’s, holding an oversized jug of olive oil and a sleepy baby, I was faced with just how much my life has changed.

I have written and deleted a zillion words here to explain this next part because there is no way to sum up college in just a few paragraphs. It was new. It was crazy. It was fun. It was full of drama. It felt like the most important time ever in the history of anyone’s life ever. It felt like it was going to last forever and I was totally OK with that. I hated change.

If 19 year old Suzanne were suddenly dropped into my living room, she’d be totally horrified. She’d think I was boring and kind of fat and oh my GOD when was the last time I had my eyebrows done? What do you mean I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in a year? How is it possible that you spent your weekend vacuuming and thought that was a good time? And ew, breastfeeding, really?

But 19-year old Suzanne was shallow and vain and selfish. She made a lot of bad choices. She didn’t love anybody as much as she loved herself. She was only an average student, an average friend, an average employee. She was not always a nice person. So I don’t really care what she thinks.

My life now may be boring but I have a beautiful son.

I may be kind of fat but I’m strong and healthy.

The bad choices I make these days are more like eating french fries than possibly ruining someone’s life.

I love where I am now and wouldn’t give back the last eight years for anything.

Besides, that guy we ran into? Was pushing a cart full of diapers for his three kids.

So the good news is we won’t be moving this year. The bad news is we won’t be moving this year because E didn’t get selected for Limited Duty Officer by the Navy. Being passed up for LDO sucks, but it sucks extra hard because I know he feels like it’s a direct judgment of his worth as a person. Which I think it RIDICULOUS because he’s amazingly good at his job, including all the itty bitty meaningless hoops the military loves to make people jump through – like always saying numbers a certain way or rechecking a valve you checked literally 30 seconds ago just because it’s a step in the procedure manual. He knows that shit inside and out. His boss got a call from another captain this week just to let him know how awesome E is and how lucky the office is to have him. And yet some guys he’s never met down in Washington DC decided he wasn’t ready to be an LDO based on a few pieces of paper and one interview. I’m so pissed on his behalf I want to punch someone and scream profanity in their stupid faces.

Last year when he didn’t get selected, I wrote a blog post for Military Spouse magazine (which seems to have disappeared into the dark void of the internets Found it) about how even though I was sad for him I was super relieved not to be uprooting our life right then. I was 8 months pregnant, the housing market had just tanked, we were kind of broke, and I was totally unprepared to start over in a new city in a new state. I got a few positive comments about how hard being a military wife can be sometimes, but one asshole wrote a jerk-off post about how I was a terrible person for even THINKING there was an upside to not getting selected, let alone writing about it on the internet. He said my selfish attitude was probably to blame and called me everything besides a traitor to our armed services. Charming and helpful all around.

This time, my disappointment on E’s behalf is greater than my desire not to upset our lives. Even though his selection would mean an even more difficult move, leaving so many more friends, losing all my real-life support, and still be a pain in the ass financially, I know how much he wanted it. How much he DESERVED it. And I am genuinely disappointed that the Navy doesn’t appreciate all his hard work. I guess I’ll just have to make sure he knows I do…until we go through this whole damn mess again next February.

Can someone PLEASE help me explain to my husband how hard and exhausting and exactly like a job taking care of a baby is? How although on the surface it might look a lot easier than driving to an office every day, in the end you get to leave an office but you never get to leave a baby? And how even if you don’t really, truly, 100% believe that being a stay at home mom is work it is NEVER a good idea to accuse your wife of “playing” all day while you’re at your Real Job? And not just because when you say shit like that your wife might storm out of the house and leave you dinner-less, but because it really hurts her and makes her feel useless and unappreciated? Yes, please help me explain that.

(Sidenote for fairness: in my uncompleted posts queue right now is an entry about how awesome E was during The Great Sickness of 2009 and our holiday travels. He slept with the can’t-put-him-down-or-he-screams baby almost every night and did at least 50% of the daytime comforting. He’s also helping with the night weaning, which proves he cares about my sanity at least a little, as it doesn’t matter to HIM if the baby nurses all night. But yesterday I did not care about any of that.)

From the point of view of someone who doesn’t have kids, my day looks easy. Get up, eat breakfast, workout class, hang out with friends, lunch, some housework, errands, computer time, start dinner, serve dinner, clean up kitchen, watch some tv, do a little knitting and then bed. Yawn, a life of leisure.

But when you do all that stuff with a baby it looks like this: Up at 6 am with baby, nurse baby, change baby, dress baby, make sure baby is occupied long enough to go pee, rescue dog from baby, run upstairs to brush teeth and put on clothes, clean up baby spit up, get the baby a snack, clean up snack, clean up baby, change baby, eat an apple, nurse baby, get baby and all baby’s stuff in the car, take baby to baby-themed stroller workout class, take baby to breastfeeding group, entertain baby while trying to have adult conversation, put baby back in car, take baby home, try to get baby to nap, nurse baby, rock baby, nurse baby, baby falls asleep, jump in shower, start laundry, finally find something to eat…and that’s just before noon. I could keep going but I’m trying to finish this post before the baby wakes up from his nap. As you can see, baby-free time is precious around here.

Now from E’s point of view, at least 70% of that “work” is my own fault. I don’t HAVE to go to Stroller Strides. I don’t HAVE to go to breastfeeding group. I don’t HAVE to go to the store with the baby. I can stay home. I can run errands on the weekends. I could, quite easily, never leave the house. Like, duh, that’s why pizza delivery was invented. I could also quite easily go TOTALLY FRICKIN INSANE and end up babbling incomprehensibly about poopoo and diapeys and numnums and nappy naps. I’ve already used all those words at least once this week. The edge is near.

It doesn’t help my case that on the weekends I try to give myself as much time off as possible, so E sees me sitting on the couch while the baby naps and imagines that’s how I spend all my days. Never mind the clean socks in his drawer and the toys in the toy box and the milk in the fridge and the food on the table. Never mind the baby is dressed and fed and happy. Never mind my lack of a full night’s sleep for the last 9 months. Obviously if I have time to knit a sock mitten wrist warmer AND maintain a blog, taking care of a baby is cake. And since our not-ever-officially-negotiated-but-status-quo relationship is I’m in charge of the household, why should he have to do more work after his Real Job is done? What do I mean I can’t unload the dishwasher and watch the baby at the same time?

I know I have friends and readers who are thinking to themselves RIGHT NOW that I got myself into this and it’s really my fault for having such an old-fashioned, gender-stereotypical marriage. You’re thinking you’re way too smart to marry a guy who doesn’t have a truly feminist and shared view of parenting so you won’t ever feel like this. And I hope you’re right. But I think every parent in every kind of relationship ends up feeling unappreciated at some point, be it every day of their marriage or just for a few hours once in a while.

The hardest part of this whole thing is sometimes I feel like I DON’T do enough. I feel like since I don’t earn a paycheck I need to earn the right to stay home. I feel like dishes in the sink or unfolded laundry or a funny smell coming from the living room (which turned out to be BURNT CAT VOMIT from where the cat threw up on a radiator) are big black marks against me in my Wife & Mother Weekly Performance Review. I mean, there are moms who have three kids and a real job and a house and a dog and still manage to make organic, homegrown, vegetarian lasagna every night with time left over to volunteer at the soup kitchen. I definitely don’t work as hard as that mom. I don’t want to work as hard as that mom. I want to be happy. I just want to be happy.

Last night I was having a lovely talk with an old high school friend when he mentioned someone we used to know was teaching college while working on her doctorate. While also raising two daughters. By herself. Now, this is someone I remember best as getting in trouble for sneaking her boyfriend INTO her house after getting grounded for sneaking OUT of her house. Our deepest conversation ever was a lesson in visible panty lines. And did I mention she’s younger than I am? The whole situation just made me feel like I was staring at a giant sign that says “Welcome to Inadequacyville! Population: YOU”.

No matter how much I love being a mom – especially a stay at home mom – it just doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. You don’t have to be smart to have a baby. In fact, stupidity really seems to work in reproduction’s favor COUGH16andpregnantCOUGH. Sure it may be hard to be a GOOD mom but you don’t get any fancy letters after your name for the three hours you spent caring for a sick baby last night or your infinite patience cleaning up spit-up or the pain you went through for the sake of breastfeeding. Ok SURE you get a happy, (mostly) healthy, well-adjusted child but the only people who really appreciate that are their teachers, future spouse and the person who sits next to them at work some day. Blah. Would anyone even notice if all I wrote for the rest of this post is whine whine whine complain complain so ungrateful for all I have annoying self absorption whine whine whiiiine?

This is why the only people who look forward to their high school reunions are Bill Gates and Barack Obama.

Dinners in our house fall into two three categories:

1. Real meals using recipes I’ve marked in cookbooks/torn out of magazines/found on food porn websites and involve complicated grocery lists, several pots and pans, and careful measuring.
2. Stuff with ground beef.
3. Fast food.

I’ve never considered myself much of a cook, even when it comes to casual family type meals. I’m intimidated by all aspects of cooking, from chopping vegetables to knowing if the meat is done, to adding a “pinch” of anything. Cooking is art – the balance, the nuance, the improvisation – and art has never been my strong suit. Baking, however, is science, and baking is my friend. It’s exact, it’s chemistry, 2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 40 minutes at 350 degrees. I can bake anything you can write a recipe for, even if I end up using a wine bottle as a rolling pin and a light bulb powered oven.

So my anxiety levels always get very high right around 4 pm when it’s time to start thinking about what’s for dinner. I’ve tried making meal plans, with one epic trip to the grocery store for a week’s worth of ingredients, but invariably something isn’t in stock or the potatoes start molding before I get to them or no one really FEELS like having chicken again so why don’t we just have a pizza delivery…and the whole thing falls apart. I’ve tried deciding what’s for dinner at 3 pm and making the Stop & Shop run once E gets home and I can pop in and out without the baby, but I always come home with a cart full of avocados, Pad Thai in a box, brownie mix, and oranges. Which, surprisingly, are NOT the ingredients for tacos. Or anything else. So one of us runs out and grabs burgers and fries and I sit on the couch hating myself for eating that junk again.

My other obstacle to cooking is my super picky husband. If you’ve ever tried to eat a meal with him, you probably already know how he feels about mushrooms (FUNGUS ISN’T FOOD), which rules out about half the recipes in both of my trusty, easy to follow Rachel Ray cookbooks. He also hates olives (no Mediterranean food), curry (no Indian food), pretty much anything green (no vegetables) and soup. Yes, soup. And chili. Seriously, if you ever consider marrying someone, FIND OUT IF THEY EAT SOUP before accepting a proposal. I’ve done a pretty good job expanding E’s previously even more ridiculously limited diet – for example, he now eats fish – but nothing is more frustrating than making a nice dinner and discovering he hates it after two bites. A few times I’ve just made whatever I felt like making and told E “if you don’t like it, don’t eat it” and left him to forage for himself…but I always feel guilty because dinner falls under my tasks per our very delicately negotiated household responsibility list and feeding both of us shouldn’t be that hard. But my cookbooks have all been read and bookmarked and my list of family approved recipes is still woefully short.

It’s times like this that I really admire my mother and her ability to get a home cooked meal on the table every single night, without a single frozen lasagna in my memories. The only chance of that happening in my house is if I win the lottery and hire a personal chef. Or if I legally adopt the pizza delivery guy.