Stream of consciousness warning...

Today's posting has almost nothing to do with my darling offspring. Except in that some day, through the wonders of technology, he may be interested in reading what his cracked in the head mother had to say about certain topics. In which case, I apologize now for any embarrassment he may experience upon reading any of the posts.

So I am home for part of the day today because Cooper was sent home with a mild fever from school/daycare. He is now banned from going back for at least 24 hours. Bob and I are splitting the day so that I can go to a meeting at work in the afternoon. So while taking my time getting ready, because I am not on a time schedule to get me and Cooper ready, I decided to whiten my teeth.

I have spent a lot of time with my dentist lately. It started as just my 6 month cleaning, which turned into a "we should replace that old nasty probably poisoning you with mercury silver filling" which was followed up by the need for my first ever crown. Well, temporary crown for the moment. Topics for several other blogs: the ravaging effects of being over 40 on the female body, dentists, Dancing with the Stars (my not so secret obsession) and how funny I think Adam Corolla is. Back to my teeth - during the first visit my dentist suggested, mandated in fact, that I whiten my teeth. Apparently drinking my own body weight each day in coffee and/or tea has a staining affect on my teeth. Who knew. To her credit she suggested I try one of the over the counter products first, since having her do it would cost close to one months worth of daycare.

Which brings me to the primary thought for this blog - units of measurement. If you think about it, we all have our own personal units of measurement we apply to a variety of situations that have nothing to do with minutes, hours, inches, feet, or cubits. Since having had Cooper I use two that I can think of. The first is what the cost of ____ is in daycare hours. We live in the Boston area, and both my husband and I work full time. This means we pay out the equivalent of what could be a mortgage on a very nice vacation home on the Cape, in Maine or possibly a mansion in the Pochonos. Consequently, when we had to have the circuit breaker box replaced because water was getting into it, I did the math and realized that was costing us, at that time, two months worth of daycare. Cooper was only going three days a week then. Because it is a non negotiable expense in our lives, any OTHER expense is then weighed in relation to how big a sacrifice it represents in comparison to daycare.

I also employ the "how much of my precious free and mostly conscious time am I willing to invest in ____ activity" measurement. Since post-baby I have fewer free moments that are spent in a state of mostly consciousness, I have to choose carefully how I spend them. I told Bob last night I was not willing to invest 2 hours of that time watching "I am Legend" that Will Smith movie with viral infected zombies in it. It is a depressing story from what I can tell - everyone, including Will Smith's family, dies from some virus, except for him. Then he discovers there are some other people who survived, but they were turned into zombies by the virus. In the end he dies. I am willing to invest time in a movie that doesn't have a story book happy ending, but not when it involves zombies and whole civilizations being wiped out by viruses. Zombies freak me out and viral epidemics even more. I don't even like the Thriller video.

But I digress. My point is it has come to my attention that children change your life in ways you don't even realize will happen. Sure everyone expects the sleepless nights, the crying that seems to have no cause or solution, the yakking and explosive poop episodes, but I don't think we realize how our priorities will change in such subtle ways. It is very eye opening.

Hey, I guess this did end up being about Cooper after all.