Medium Delirium

Having taken a year off, I frequently get asked what I intend to get up to with all this time on my hands. The question frustrates me a little because while I’m off work, my days aren’t exactly devoted to leisure. There actually isn’t a great deal one can get up to while concurrently functioning as a 24/7 security camera and safety net for a small, fragile creature who spends most of her waking hours trying to wobble into a sitting or standing position, and who finds irresistible any piece of furniture with a surface her hands can reach – which of course perfectly overlaps with the sort of furniture that she can fall and bump some part of her head on. Case in point: I found her the cutest low table and chair. J assembled it this afternoon and placed it in the middle of her play mat. She crawled over at top speed to investigate, was delighted, and promptly slipped from the chair and hit her mouth on the edge of the table, sustaining a small cut.

So all this is to say that, basically, I’m kind of at work, just that my boss is small, pre-verbal, and shits herself. I enjoy it – there is nothing quite as gratifying as lying in the middle of the play mat while she uses me as a soft play area, her personal Everest – but I do sometimes lie in bed at the end of the day lamenting the absence of anything particularly accomplished. I’m freed from enacting constant surveillance in the 2.5h or so in the day when she naps, but in these periods I am so weakly compelled to do anything besides watching ASMR vlogs on TV.

Things I should probably get up to:

1. Get my driving license. It’s been on my agenda since I turned 18, and back then Gangnam Style was still at the height of its popularity.
2. Make more art. I’ve seriously considered reopening my small commission-based art gig, where I do drawings of people’s pets. I ran it for about a year sometime back and the income, while insignificant, was enough to cover some cab rides and overpriced coffees.
3. Write!! I should really submit something, anything, to someone, anyone, this year. Short story ideas toss around in my head pretty much all the time, and if I commit to sitting down and finally typing them out I’m sure I’ll have something. Not a winner, perhaps, but at least a worthy competitor. I should also write more right here to keep the practice alive. I’ve discovered that the most effective way to maintain a blogging habit is to write whatever comes to mind when I open my laptop, rather than ‘saving up’ topics of interest that are too tedious to recall in the pockets of time I do devote to writing here.

Things I have in fact been getting up to:

1. Going to the market every morning, which has long been a dream of mind. I’m a big fan of buying groceries to cook daily (rather than storing up from a one-time-good-one shop run) and very much enjoy the more human touch you get at the wet market as compared with the cold, big-corp feel of a supermarket. I bring the baby along, which is nice as a morning activity but in her case I do actively try and avoid the human touch, which is difficult as the shoppers are mostly elderly folk who are attracted to babies like moths to a flame.
2. Making pressure cooker Big Soups with whatever spoils we harvest from the market. Delicious. Healthy. Much joy.
3. Observing my baby top to toe, minute to hour to day to week to month. She’s so fun to watch, it’s like being completely mesmerised by a firefly bopping around in a jar (a metaphor I hope is used only by the observer and not the subject …). She has been doing the funniest little bit where she pulls to sit, then immediately claps for herself. Yes little honey be proud!! So are we!!! Clap clap clap clap clap for you.

At barre today I ran into an acquaintance who’d recently suffered a late-term miscarriage. Equal parts sad and awkward, which culminated in me saying ‘sorry for your loss’ while bowing. Mortifying behaviour, and even more cringey to recall. I think it’s an unfortunate leftover habit from the many years I spent in a Chinese school, where 90 degree bows to teachers were the norm. Nowadays I can barely wrangle eye contact from students who breeze past me in the corridors and stairways of school. Not sure if I should get with the times or wallow in despair for the next generation.

Oh, another thing I’ve started with this ‘free year’ and am already struggling to maintain: 6am runs with J. We kept it up for 6 days straight, then had to enforce a hiatus because I went for my first pilates class in years and my body promptly said ‘nope’ and went into hysterics for two days. We’ve been spottily trying to get back on it, with some success, but we really should keep going. At 6, both our alarms start to chime and tingle. I hear mine and turn it off, but also shut my eyes immediately and continue fusing with my pillow. Can I return to sleep? No. J doesn’t hear his own alarm, which seems to be at either a decibel or tone that completely escapes his ear drums. It rings. For an age. My eyes flicker open with difficulty. I flail an arm at whatever exposed skin of his I can see in the darkness. He spasms. He rolls over. He turns his alarm off. We are now both semi-awake but continue lying silently beside each other.

Then it’s 730am and I say ‘I went back to sleep because you went back to sleep’ and he says ‘no I went back to sleep because you didn’t wake up’ and we plod along through the day and the cycle repeats itself in 24 hours.

Well, must remain optimistic, though the trickle of hope I sip from is fast drying up as this late hour marches past 11pm and slides toward midnight. Goodnight world!