ISO: Invitations, sanity

While I laid awake this morning, unsuccessfully trying to go back to sleep, I started working on my response to Melissa's tag for the six word memoir. After all, it was a great thing to get accomplished until I could get to that greater thing of sleep. Okay, not a good idea. After two hours lying awake, I finally got up, only to realize that in my sleep deprivation I'd forgotten all the great six-line memoirs I'd come up with. Truly, there was a whole progressive series, of which I have no solid recollection. So I guess it's back to the drawing board.

I obsess. Is that response okay?

There. No, I really will come up with something more representative, but after spending the entire week neurotically hunting K's first birthday invitations, it's the one that seems most apt. For one, it's not even a big party. The big party, the one with all her little friends, comes several days after her birthday and is thankfully a joint venture with someone significantly more well-balanced than I. This is the family party. You know, the one for all the people you could just call on the phone to invite. But I want invitations, cute invitations, something that will end up in her baby book. So I obsess. I shop. I research. I think I like the ones at the first store better, only to go back to the first store and find I actually liked the ones at the second. "These have caterpillars," I say to myself, "which are kind of creepy. These other ones have bears, which K likes, but they're a little too purple." This brings me to point number two: K doesn't care. She has the focus of, well, a one year old. Her memory is about as reliable as my recollection of history. Maybe even worse. This is the girl who just moments ago looked up at me after nursing, nearly asleep, only to suddenly discover that I have a mouth! And teeth! What fun! (Weren't we going to bed, dear? Oh, apparently not now, not when there are teeth involved).

So why the obsession? Who knows? It probably has something to do with the fact that my baby girl is turning one, that I want to make every moment/memory/opportunity perfect in every way possible, that I want to do it right just one last time. And when you know you can't ever achieve such perfection, when you know that whatever you do won't change the fact that your last baby's first birthday will come and pass in a month's time regardless of every stalling technique you can drum up, well, you end up obsessing over stupid things like little cards of paper people will only inevitably discard. It's a heck of a lot better than just sitting around crying.

I really will get back to that memoir. Just as soon as I get those invitations.