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Snot and Lingerie

Posted May 20 2009 1:24pm
Greetings, KuKd'ers, TTC'ers, and Inquisitive Guests!

Woo-hoo! It's Mother's Day.

A day that brings lots of emotional gloppity-gloop to lots of KuKd mommas and TTC'ers out there. I respect that fact, and I do think it's nice to have a specially sanctioned day for giving thanks to the chronically under-thanked.

This is my second or third Mother's Day (I've lost track) as a knocked down momma. For me, though - unlike a lot of women I know in the Kukd blog-o-sphere and real-o-sphere - this day usually passes without even the faintest sentimental flutter of my heart. I think it's because it feels more like a contrived, Hallmark-Greeting-Card-and-FTD-Floral-Company-Money-Making-Day than anything else, not remotely connected to the actual fact of being a KuKd momma or any other type of momma, for that matter. A meaningless fleck of commercial, profit-driven dust attatched to my sweater, easily brushed aside.

THIS Mother's Day weekend, however, was a tad bit different. Uncharacteristic of the others, THIS one guessed it... snot and lingerie. And that snot did, in fact, come from not just a "sentimental flutter of the heart," but a virtual tsunami of emotional intensity.

Let me explain.

Last night, Kevin and I did what now try to do once a month: a spontaneous, one-night "urban getaway." We put in a low Priceline bid for a fancy-shmancy 4-star hotel in downtown Seattle for a night, stock up on wine, splurge on a sinfully vegetable-less, butter-infused dinner at a French restaurant, know the rest. We chose this particular weekend for our "May getaway" not because it was Mother's Day or anything else of cosmic significance, but because it worked out schedule-wise.

A bit of background: I am not a lingerie-wearing type of person. I'm just not. Buying some expensive, impractical, lacey little thing made out of silk (that HAS to be dry cleaned, of course) is not something that would ever normally cross my mind, especially not in recent years. I don't know about you, but I had positively ZERO libido for the months before and after Zachary's stillbirth. Delivering a dead baby is about the most unsexy thing you can possibly do. Poor Kevin went months and months without getting laid. I felt sorry for him, sort of. But not that sorry.

Then, not long ago, Kevin hinted semi-jokingly that he thought it would be lovely if he came home from work to find me - AND I QUOTE: "wearing lingerie and scrubbing the kitchen floor." Later, he added : "...or doing dishes."

Let me repeat that, in case you didn't read it correctly: "wearing lingerie and scrubbing the kitchen floor...or doing dishes."

Literally, that's what he said.

I laughed at first, of course. We both did. What an absurdly stereotypical, male-dominant, anti-feminist, caveman-like fantasy to have! Coming home to find your highly independent, boldly headstrong, reasonably intelligent wife (who has a Master's degree!!) doing something as subservient as scrubbing the floor? In lingerie? And ME, of all people, doing such a thing? I am about the biggest slob-o-phile that ever existed, hardly noticing or caring if we go five years without washing the bedsheets or vacuuming. Dirt doesn't bother me, so I wouldn't be caught dead scrubbing the floor.

But yesterday morning, I woke up feeling strangly inspired to run over to Victoria's Secret, which I knew was situated somewhere in the bowels of the crowded shopping mall down the street, to at least see if anything there was on sale. No harm in doing that. And, since we were planning on doing our May getaway that night (which was last night) - although scrubbing the floors in lingerie would just be too, too ridiculous for words - I could at least maybe, maybe, surprise Kevin in BED. You know, he emerges from the shower and - BOOM - I'm wearing something outrageously sexy. Or I send him out to look for coffee, and BOOM - he returns to find me waiting for him in something slinky.

That, I thought, I could maybe handle without dying from embarassment.

So I told Kevin I was off to run some boring errands, and drove to the mall instead, my heart going pitter-patter. I felt oddly as though I were doing something illegal, something that might land me in hell, something my prune-faced 4th grade teacher Sister Estelle would surely frown upon.

I guarantee you, she would give me a hard whack with her rule if she knew what I tried on. I only did it because it was on the sales rack, and because I overheard another woman raving about how comfortable it was (for the record, she looked like a normal human being, which made me feel like a normal human being, which made the whole shopping experience instantly seem less scary).

It looked like this:

Black bustier. Made in Italy. On sale. Attached to something like these:

Lacy thigh-high panty hose. Minus the shoes (permanent foot problems were not a part of the agreement when Kevin and I got married).

Now, does anybody else find it more than a litte bit awkward to go to a suburban shopping mall filled with innocent people, walk into a brightly lit chain store, and browse the racks for slinky, lacey articles of "clothing" designed to be worn before (or while) doing the wild thing? It's like this bizarre fusion of two opposite worlds: wholesome-shopping-mall-filled-with-strollers-and-old-people world, and kinky-sex-acts-in-the-laundry-room world. Weird. I felt weird, just being in that place.

But I also felt strangely excited, trying on these foxy items, as though doing something sinful and anti-jesus - like gorging myself on peanutbutter cookies before dinner, spoiling my appetite. I'm pretty sure that grown-ups aren't supposed to purchase things like what you see pictured above. No, no. Grown-ups buy practical things, like frumpy flannel pajamas.

But, seeing myself in the mirror, I suddenly decided: I was sick of being a grown-up, a feminist, a flannel pajamas-wearing prude! Screw grown-up-ness! So I bought it - the entire ensemble - and one other thing - something white and simple and less over-the-top, just in case I decided later that the black get-up was too, too much.

ANYWAY, back to our hotel. Here is where the snot comes in, so brace yourself.

That evening, we drank wine and had a lovely dinner of roasted chicken, then met up with some buddies from work for an apertif in the hotel lobby. Good times. I wore the bustier underneath my dress, which I only felt brave enough to do because of the nearly full bottle of wine we had shared before leaving our room. The plan was that later, when we returned and Kevin was taking a shower or his usual post-beer piss in the bathroom, I would quickly pull on the panty hose and snap everything together (the sales associate gave me a quick lesson on how to do that in ten seconds flat), yank my dress over my head, and be lying there seductively in bed in my Victoria's Secret ensemble when he emerged (not scrubbing the floor, but at least meeting HALF of his fantasy criteria!).

Perfect plan, right?

It would have been perfect if, on our way back up to our room after drinks with my work-buddies in the lobby, we didn't run practically head-on into the LAST group of people I expected to see. It was a giggling gaggle of ladies from the Seattle Urban Expecting Parents Meet-Up Group, the group of which I was THE original founder almost two years ago, which has now exploded to include hundreds of members. I was the social queen-beeyatch of this group back in the day, head organizer of prego-lady parties and potlucks and trips to the market and prego-massages. Of course, when the shit hit the fan, I dropped out, passing the organizing torch over to this gal named C.

C was there, amidst this gaggle of mommies, some of whom I recognized from that time when we were all comparing belly sizes and drinking virgin cocktails together. They all kept hanging out, and still do - their kids growing older in sync. They were there for an overnight "girl's stay" at our hotel for Mother's Day - a little Mother's Day splurge for themselves.

"MONICA! Hiiiiiiii!" they said, and we did the small talk thing for a few minutes, the hugs and smiles and "how are yous" and "how's the baby" and "you're pregnant again? wow!" That was it - just a brief conversation before Kevin and I heard the merciful "ding" of the elevator, and we high-tailed it out of there, up to our floor. Kevin did jump in the shower right away, as I thought he would, and I carried out my plan as best I could, determined not to let disorienting melancholy settle in, keeping me from carrying out my big surprise. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulling off my dress, snapping those gartery-strappy thingies in place.

When he came out, I had the outfit on, but not lying seductively anywhere. Instead, I was sitting on the floor in the corner bawling my eyes out, getting snot on my lingerie and not caring. Kevin silded up next to me because he knew what was going on, and we stayed there for what felt like hours.

So much for my surprise "sexy evening." Of all the nights to have a crying fit - and I really don't cry that often.

* * *

You know, it was one of those situations that just hurts, and there isn't any rational reason for it, or way to explain what it WAS exactly, that I felt. Was it sadness? Jealously? Anger? Resentment? Longing? What was it? I have no idea - a swirling mix of all of those things, terribly, terribly strong. I couldn't escape it or suppress it or anything, not even with a kick-ass black bustier and thigh-high panty hose on my side. Maybe it was the wine in my system, or the sheer unexpectedness of it. Like, one past life colliding with this one, interrupting my plan for a sexy, surprising evening. Remembering suddenly, viscerally, what it was like to hang out with those gals, what the world and the future looked like back then, so different from what reality is to me now. Associating, perhaps, their voices and faces with movement in the tummy, joyful imaginings of good things to come.

All I know is that it ruined my entire plan, resulted in snot on my lingerie, and caused me to wake up this morning looking like a puffed-up sea monster, the way people look when they cry really hard for a long time and the go directly to bed. Oh, and I had a slight sore throat from breathing only through my mouth all night, my nasal passages incurably blocked with snot. For a moment, I thought I might have swine flu, but now I'm pretty sure it's not that.


Ah, well. All is not lost. Kevin WAS pleasantly shocked by the outfit, and said all the right things, assuring me several times over that it looked good, even with the puffy face and snot and all. It's kind of nice that my lingerie has now been "christened" with my own snot. Somehow it feels more "mine" than it was yesterday morning when I first brought it home. I'm keeping the black bustier and its strappy, lacy accoutrements for another evening when I'm more in the mood.

(I've already told Kevin he shouldn't hold his breath for the floor-scrubbing thing, the poor guy).

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