22 de abril

How decadent it is to drink Veuve Cliquot in a regular glass, while I smoke, after I had croquetas (one of the humblest foods in Spanish cuisine). Very decadent, I would say. But I don't care, because today it was my son's second birthday. He spent an hour in the morning just opening presents and experiencing each and every one of them. Slooooowlyyyy. We went to swimming class, but keeping the routine didn't work this time. He would have been much happier if we had let him stay home and play with his new toys, mainly trains. He had his chocolate cake, his broccoli pizza (yes, I have a baby who loooooves broccoli, even more than pizza), and had a pretty good day. We are leaving the big party for Saturday, so everyone can come, and we got to enjoy his day alone with him. It wasn't a good day last year. In a way, his birthday for me is also the anniversary of the hardest day in my life, the day he was born. It wasn't a happy birth. Everything went wrong, I didn't get to give birth, and he got a pneumothorax during the C-section that sent him to t he NICU for eight days. What should have been his first happy hours bonding with mom, were spent in a cold room, surrounded by strangers who didn't even know his name, being cured and at the same time attacked by needles, tubes, breathing devices... It was horrible, we couldn't see him for three hours, and we couldn't touch him for four days. Not the kind of start you expect, not the kind of birth you hear about. Most people don't talk about the bad ones. I wish they had. At least we would have been prepared. Today, he is a healthy, strong and happy baby (well, definitely toddler now), and I'm still healing from the whole experience. But I try to make the best out of what I have. And I try to give him the best I have. So he can forget about that day. Because I'm sure that, in some way, he can remember. And I can't forgive myself for that.

Of Birthdays and Kid Rock

The other day was my birthday. I'm just one year from hitting 30, and it feels weird. It's like this part of me is about to die. I guess I had a crazy enough "teenagehood" that lasted until my early twenties, and it's hitting just now that it will never come back. Midlife crisis, anyone? As I do every year, when everyone says "How do you feel one year older?" I end up thinking that I'm not a year, it's a day, and hour, maybe even a minute older. That year doesn't happen in one day, it takes a whole 365 of them. I guess it's just another convention we have all agreed on, to have at least a happy day a year. They used to be happier, though. I used to be all excited in the weeks prior to my birthday, preparing some kind of party, hoping for the calls and cards... Waking up in the morning feeling like a kid, a happy one. Enjoying the celebration. That hasn't happened the last two years. I don't feel the excitement anymore. And everyone seems a little bit bothered by it, but I cannot live according to other people's expectations. Maybe it's due to the fact that I'm a mother now, and I got that excitement when little L's birthday approached, back in April. But I miss my own. I miss being a young girl. That may be the reason behind my apparent musical crash on Kid Rock. Of all people. In Spain he has only been seen in some tabloids because of his wedding to Pamela Anderson. I had never heard his music until some weeks ago. I heard "Picture" in the radio, and I liked it a lot. Then I heard "All Summer Long", and I liked it so much that I got the CD. The guy is wearing a fur coat in the cover. A fur coat. That's not me, my kind of music. Or maybe it is and it's not my kind of cover. I only know I love the song. It's a midlife crisis song. Perfect.