sweeter than slurpee syrup If anybody reads this, let me apologize for the stupid shit I write in here sometimes. Or most of the time. Or all the time. But you're the one reading it, I guess. On the wall above our bed I have thumb-tacked a little cloth strip with black-and-white pictures of simple objects for a baby to focus on. On the strip, there are a smiling woman's face, a house, and a baby's face. The other evening, while I was trying and trying and trying to get Juniper to sleep while she was physically struggling to stay awake, she happened to notice these images, mainly the smiling woman's face. She herself began to smile her sweetest smile at this black-and-white woman. I have never seen her smile at an object before. But she grinned and grinned, and I began to be jealous of this black-and-white woman: always cheerful, always relaxed and smiling easily, even when the baby lays there punching herself in the face to stay awake at half past bedtime, even when she wakes up at 4:30 a.m. ready to start a new day. I'm sorry, baby, but your mommy isn't anything like black-and-white woman. |