Crowded out!

When I became a mom, I often felt like a was getting crowded from all sides. Connor needed my attention constantly, Ed and I had the balance or our lives completed disrupted, and overall - it felt like we had much more to do and much less time to do it in. We still feel this way sometimes - but it's getting a lot easier. Connor will often hang out in the backyard while I start cooking dinner (and by cooking, I mean heating up whatever Ed cooked the night before while I was putting Connor to bed, catching up on work, or picking up toys, mail, etc that seems to accumulate around the house). I still feel crowded out sometimes - like when Connor spends the whole day repeating whatever I say, but I know there are traits that I possess that Ed and Connor will never possess.

One dynamic in our relationship that hasn't changed up until now is that I am the spacey one, and Ed is the organized one. Before we were married, I told Ed I wanted a nice engagement ring, and Ed pointed out that this was like throwing thousands of dollars down a drain because I would no doubt lose it within a month or two. At dinner that night, I tried to persuade him how responsible I could be - and he almost bought it, until the waiter chased me down as I was leaving the restaurant letting me know I had left my wallet behind, we walked out to the car and realized all the CDs had been stolen (INCLUDING ABBA GOLD!) because I had left the doors unlocked (oh - and because some jerk who Ed claims has no taste, witnessed by the fact that the jerk took my ABBA GOLD CD, opened the unlocked doors and swiped our CDs - did I mention, it included my ABBA GOLD CD?). And, to top it off, we went to a bar later that night and I left my wallet in the bathroom, which I realized about 1 minute after I got back to the barstool I was occupying before the bathroom break and I had to tell Ed that I needed to go to the bathroom again...right this minute. Thank you, kind ladies at the bar who left my wallet alone. When we went biking in the Loire Valley a few years ago, I told Ed that I was trying very hard to be a responsible person and somehow I convinced him that I could carry the tickets for the audio guide of some castle all the way from the place we purchased the tickets to the place headphones were handed out - about 100 yards away. Well, guess what? I was wrong. Somehow I lost the tickets - but it didn't really matter because I used my very bad French and pathetic sounding English speaking to explain the situation to the person with the headphones who happily handed them over, probably to make me go away.

But Wednesday night, even this role was finally swiped from me. Building on Monday's locking the keys in the car performance, Ed showed up at a baseball game WITHOUT his ticket. As in, he had it in the morning, had it when he left his office, but couldn't manage to keep it for two subway stops and a short walk to the entrance of the park. Luckily, new tix can be picked up for $5, so it wasn't that costly. Unless you count the cost of me losing the last piece of my personality that belonged to me, and only me. I think I will try and perform an exorcism on Ed this weekend to get my spirit to leave his body. It's just too weird.

Elaine