People often think that because you’re a blogger, you follow lots and lots of other blogs, that blogs are your thing–kind of like how people often think that if you have a cat you’re a cat person and love any and all cats and cat nicknacks and trinkets and cartoons and Martin Luther King Day greeting cards with cats on them.

But really blogs are just a way for writers to write–to force themselves to put their writing out there in some kind of coherent and/or timely fashion–and one of the only blogs I follow–and that I’ve been following for a really long time, but not as long as, say, Marie‘s first incarnation of blog, which was one of the first blogs that ever existed in the history of the internet, since before “web log” was even SHORTENED to “blog,” thanks–is Dooce.

It is authored by Heather Armstrong and has chronicled her life in very witty, engaging prose, and I’m sure this is true about a lot of blogs, but once you start following, you develop something of an emotional attachment to the people being chronicled–in this case a decade or so down the line.

What I’m trying to get at here–and it’s actually something I’ve secretly been freaking out about for months and pointedly avoiding addressing here–is that I am basically an emotional wreck over Heather and her husband’s trial separation.

Hi, my name is Bess Jankowski, and I am a victim of the emotional ramifications of cyber-voyeurism.  Or something.

I’m actually kind of fascinated with how upset I am over it.  Every time I see that she’s updated, I hold my breath in hopes it will be to announce they’ve decided to have another go at it.  I know this is as naively unrealistic as praying one’s parents will get back together, which is exactly what I did when my own parents split up in 1986 or whenever, but it’s weird: I just can’t accept it for some reason.

Of course, a little-known fact about me is that the main reason I was so reluctant to get married is that I’m oh so much more reluctant to get divorced.  I mean, sure, isn’t everyone?  No one “wants” to divorce, but seriously, I am, like, CATHOLIC when it comes to divorce.  Yes, it’s the age-old child-of-divorced-parents cliche, but I just don’t believe in it.  I really don’t think it’s Inevitable in Certain Cases™.  I simply don’t see why people would even think about getting married unless they’re a million percent serious about staying in it for the long haul.

I have no idea what happened between Jon and Heather–the whole thing is just so sad, least of all for poor little blog-following me–and I’m not going to speculate or judge.  But I kind of feel sorry for my own husband, because I don’t think he realizes what he got himself into by marrying me. As a child of parents who are still together, I don’t think he shares the same stay-married-or-die philosophy, and it’s probably never occurred to him how difficult I would make it for him to ever divorce me.

Of course, since he’s a child of parents who are still together, he’s also ridiculously well-adjusted and obscenely normal and probably doesn’t view marriage as something you should rush to get out of–which is how I’m starting to think the rest of the world views it.  Maybe I should have asked him how he views it BEFORE we got married, but where’s the fun in that?

In any case, last weekend I officiated at the wedding of some friends, and luckily the couple wrote their own vows instead of leaving it up to me, because those in attendance didn’t really need to be made privy to my just-now-revealed-for-the-first-time-ever uber-radical marriage views!

But since the couple did write their own vows–instead of having a member of the clergy spew recycled, yawn-inducing bible verses like at most weddings–I got to observe the thought processes that went into it, and I must say that it was very refreshing.  Imagine: choosing the words that legally bind you to another person for life!  Rather than having a random third-party bystander do it for you!

Part of that wording included a section about their friends and family vowing to hold the couple to their promises–helping them figure things out together in times of trouble rather than siding with them individually–and as officiant I had to ask the attendees at one point to literally say: “we do.”

That was the part of the ceremony I was most nervous about because–well, first of all, I was a train wreck about the entire thing in general. And in particular I was afraid I wouldn’t verbally have set that one part off enough from the rest of what I was saying, and that everybody would be nodding off and wouldn’t have heard. But when it came, enough people were paying attention that many–if not a majority of–voices did respond, and for a second it was pretty moving.

In a way, the entire internet–or, at least, all those bloggers who follow all the other bloggers–is that room full of voices, vowing to hold Heather and Jon Armstrong to the promises they made to each other. Or, in my case, wanting to reach through the computer screen to SHAKE THEM. And I know it sounds prohibitively dated and uncharacteristically old-fashioned and that I totally need to get with the program and accept that most marriages end in divorce even when both parties mean really really well? But I’m not going to.

And there’s nothing anyone can do to make me.

Kind of like how there’s nothing anyone can do to make me care about other people’s cats.

I always have to stifle a little chuckle when my pregnant friends talk all definitively about what kind of parents they’ll be. I’m sure I did the same thing before the baby came–even if I didn’t say anything out loud, I was probably thinking it–but now, in retrospect, it’s downright LOL-worthy to think I thought I had any say in the matter.

I remember vividly the day we were given our first electronic toy for the baby. I knew Elliott was thinking the same thing as I was: our kid will not be playing with electronic toys, thank you very much.  Turns out that very toy is currently among his favorites, and were we weak to give in?  Did we first try to sustain him on a strict playtime diet of faceless Bruderhoff dolls?  In all honesty, I guess he has a pretty balanced mix of electronic and non-electronic toys–I haven’t actually thought about it that much, because one of the other things my pregnant friends will learn is that when you become a parent, you don’t have time to sit around agonizing over that kinda thing.

But here’s the challenge.  Here is what will break even the most hardcore of simple, noiseless wooden and/or cloth toy proponents: look at your baby’s face LIGHT UP IN UNADULTERATED DELIGHT over some absolutely dumbass tune electronically piping out of a plastic Winnie the Pooh toy, and try DENYING him that toy.

You can’t do it.  I know you’re thinking it’ll be different with you, but it won’t be.  I’m not exactly softcore when it comes to sticking to my convictions, people.  If I’ve given into electronic toys, chances are you will as well.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of exactly how much of a wuss I’ve become since giving birth.  At some point I guess we’re going to have to start disciplining the baby, but even that doesn’t really sound like something I’ll be able to bring myself to do.  I mean, he’s so good!  And so cute!  When he yells indoors it’s adorable!  He doesn’t MEAN to be loud!

And then there’s the cosleeping.  I know what most of you right now–especially those who don’t–or don’t yet–have children–are thinking, and maybe some day I’ll devote an entire post to my defense of cosleeping,  but right now let me just say, again: not something I planned.  Would I trade it for anything in the world?  No way.  I love having my baby right next to me where I can gaze upon him all through the night, and I’m dreading the day when we’re no longer nursing and it won’t be necessary and he’ll be a big boy sleeping by himself with a big sign on his door that says “NOAH’S ROOM!!  KEEP OUT!!”

Also, sidenote: what animals in nature give birth and immediately set their children up in a “nursery” down the hall and/or up a flight of stairs–and let them scream through the night to “teach” them to be independent?

I’m telling you, I thought I’d be able to do all of that before the ACTUAL BABY came into our lives, but now I can’t.  And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

People have actually asked us if we’re thinking of having additional children, and it’s like, Really?  We’re supposed to have started thinking about that already?  I mean, I know some people have the spacing all figured out (my own midwife even asked me about it as my FIRST post-natal appointment), but for starters, I think we need to see this baby safely to his, I don’t know, first birthday?  And secondly, I actually HAVE thought about it because we’re far enough away from seriously having to think about it that I can be really honest and candid with myself about it, and I must say that I don’t know if I have it in me to be diplomatic enough to have more than one child.  I just don’t know if I’m mature enough as a person.  I wouldn’t be able to constantly take sides (or constantly not take sides) and in my imaginary scenarios of how it would play out, I’m always siding with Noah, since he was here first.

That’s probably not a very healthy approach to parenting.

But then again, maybe that’s one of the things that would change about me post-more kids.

In the meantime, all you parents of multiple children can stifle little laughs and smirk knowingly at each other.

I “dated” this boy in seventh grade–we’ll call him Adam Stein, since that was his name–and I’ve been thinking about our “relationship” a lot recently.

Our “relationship” consisted of maybe a week’s worth of phone calls and exactly one–somehow unchaperoned?  how did that happen?  maybe just because it was Adam Stein, thanks?–date to the movies and then to–wait for it–Friendly’s for ice cream.  For those of you tuning in locally, yes, this did take place at Middletown’s very own Caldor Plaza, circa the Caldor 500 days.

We saw Joe Versus the Volcano and we even discussed it afterwards over the aforementioned Friendly’s ice cream, because hi, this was Adam Stein and he was a thirty-five year-old trapped in a twelve-year-old’s body.

I’ll never forget how I’d gotten dropped off at his house that evening and since Adam “wasn’t ready,” I hung out with his parents in the kitchen for awhile, and I’m only mildly exaggerating when I say that they quizzed me on world events and asked me what my favorite “studies” were.

I was twelve. Those were among the most terrifying ten minutes in my life.  Still consider them to be a little.

Adam was super-duper-smart–still is, no doubt–and went on to become a straight-A super-genius in high school, heading up various extracurricular activities and volunteer groups like he owned the place.  He turned into an exceptionally charming young man, which came as no surprise to anyone, but at the time–in seventh grade–he was slumming at the Caldor Plaza with the likes of me, and also at the time he was involved in some kind of hardcore regional gymnastics competing, wherein every day after school he was driven several hours away to face off with other really awesome gymnasts, returning home very late–with just enough time to quickly complete his homework and hit the sack.

And so it came to pass that my most vivid memory of my brief “relationship” with Adam is the time on the phone he declared to me that he always, always  fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

I guess my response must have been complete silence, because after a few seconds he added, “I mean, don’t you?”

I probably lied and said, yes, Adam–of course I do!  I definitely don’t lie awake for hours past my bedtime every night worrying about all the dumb things the typical, remotely self-aware seventh-grade girl worries about, like whether she’ll be let in to the outer ring of the cool girls’ lunch table the next day or if she’ll instead have to casually take her tray to dine in Mr. Huldie’s classroom, pretending that’s what she’d planned all along.

Actually that was eighth grade, but I digress!

Anyway, point being, no, I did not fall asleep in a timely fashion in seventh grade because my days were not spent tra-la-la-ing about which of my “studies” I preferred and musing intelligently about what was going on in the outside world, because?  I was a seventh-grade girl and all of my efforts were concentrated on being accepted for who I was by my peers . . . where my peers equaled the 1990 equivalent of the cast of Mean Girls. I don’t think I have to tell you that that meant lying awake all night trying to mold “who I was” into a watered-down cookie-cutter form most easily digested by the cool crowd.

And right now, here at thirty-five years young and a new mom, I am going on the record to say that this is the first time in my life I’ve pretty routinely fallen asleep the moment my head hits the pillow.  My days may not consist of Odyssey of the Mind competitions and “away” gymnastics tournaments, but they are full of a baby who keeps me on my toes, and more importantly, keeps me engaged.  I could sit and just look at him for hours.  Unfortunately if that’s all I did, someone would call CPS.

But I fall asleep pretty soon after my head hits the pillow, and these days–when I’m not staying up to work at my second job, thanks–that comes much earlier than it used to.  Waking up for the day comes much earlier than it used to as well, and I’m actually starting to enjoy it.  That’s correct: I, Bess Jankowski, Lifelong Late-Riser, Am Beginning to LIKE Rising Early.

Not that I wouldn’t mind casually being able to walk out of my apartment, go to a movie, and sit afterwards discussing it over sundaes without a care in the world!

As long as that movie is something other than Joe Versus the Volcano.

Or Mean Girls.