Jun
26

Operating Without a License.

I was delighted to see that Simone managed to eke out a TWELFTH Baby of the Week victory—I believe that’s a record. I thought the Lindbergh baby might pull in a large sympathy vote, but happily not. He’s had his fifteen minutes. I also noticed that none of you made any comments about Jennifer Grey being in the corner, probably because your senses of humor are more refined than my own.

On Tuesday, I managed to subject my defenseless spawn to the equivalent of a Scandinavian hot-and-cold bathing ritual, thereby securing my place in history as THE VERY BEST AND MOST COMPETENT PARENT EVER. I had taken Simone to the patio of a nearby restaurant, where we were joined by my brother, his roommate, and his friend the Medical Examiner. We had a little lunch and a little wine, and as we were contemplating the dessert menu some 90 minutes later, it occurred to me that I might be baking my only child. It was wickedly hot, and though we were in the shade and Simone was protected by the double canopies of her car seat and stroller, the sight of the word “brulee” made me suddenly uneasy and I asked the Medical Examiner for her medical opinion. The Medical Examiner asked whether Simone felt sweaty, and I couldn’t tell, but it seemed like maybe she did, a little, and within moments I was gathering up my things, casting a rueful glance at the place on the table where a bottle of Moscato d’Asti would shortly appear, and galloping toward home, pushing the stroller ahead of me. Simone, it should be noted, was sleeping peacefully in the shade of her carriage, but I wasn’t going to let a little thing like her appearance deter me from my panic.

Once home I stripped the baby naked and swabbed her with a cold washcloth (which she deeply resented), and then I turned on a fan, slapped the air-conditioner into high gear, and hunkered down in the chair next to the vent, feeding my daughter a bottle of cold milk.

I am discovering, as I write this, that it is difficult to type whilst hanging one’s head in shame.

Some time later I looked at Simone more closely and saw that her hands were the color of freshly-picked blueberries. My first thought, naturally, was OH MY GOD SHE’S NOT GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN.
(I know. Like I said, BEST AND MOST COMPETENT PARENT EVER!)
Sooner or later, though, my brain cell kicked in and I realized that the blue color, along with the fact that her hands and feet could have been used to ice tea, meant that she was cold. Once again, I sprang into action, this time smacking the air conditioner off, dressing Simone in a velour sleeper, wrapping her now shivering body in a blanket, and crawling under the bedcovers with my (crying) baby clamped to my chest. Eventually she stopped mewling and fell asleep, her extremities slowly regaining their flesh tone, and I lay there wondering how long it would be before child services showed up to wrest her from my arms, perhaps turning at the door to slap me hard across the face. With a pistol.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |