Goodbye and goodbye and goodbye

As you might surmise from the thought-provoking title to this post, this was a weekend of goodbyes at our house, three to be exact. We said goodbye to Clementine's first car seat, to a large bicycle and to a beloved pet. It was exhausting.

The car seat is obviously not such a big deal because I never loved the whole baby-in-a-bucket thing I had going on. Sure, it was handy when she was asleep and I was mobile, but let us all recall for a moment the great car terrors of her early months. I could go nowhere, so it wasn't such a bonus to me that if I was able to make it out of the house and through the screams of terror and last long enough that she would also fall asleep I could pick the seat up and transfer it without much effort. Lately hauling that thing around was wonderful exercise and my flabby biceps will certainly miss that little bit of flexing they get these days, but Clementine was busting out of it and I had to either strap her down to the point of pain and frustration or let it be loose around one of her shoulders (thus negating the point of a car seat--why don't I just let her sit shot gun with me?). She hated both options, so we desperately searched our local Targets to find one that wouldn't cut into my ridiculous internet shopping problem or look awful in my car. Is it so wrong that I don't want anything brown in my black interior? Or anything with animals on it? We found a good evenflo one that looks like a little egg, and I was surprised at my own restraint because you know (given my expensive taste in high chairs) I wanted the $300 Britax one with the cushy cow print fabric. Am I cheap for not buying my kid the top of the line in safety? I did pause to think about that and the kind of social Darwinism that rewards those of means with increased safety and comfort but I decided that the expense was for the gullible. How much safer can a seat three times the price of most others really be? Three times as safe? I just don't buy it. It doesn't matter much anyway because despite having more room to kick around, Clementine cried the entire way to daycare and the entire way home. I just can't win.

We also said goodbye this weekend to the pregnant lady bike. The what? you ask? The pregnant lady bike, of course. The bike Nate and his friend David built for Red Bull Dragster Day, a very cool, funky race they held in downtown Detroit pretty much on my due date. When we saw the posters calling for entries last June I knew Nate had to do it--he loves to tinker with bikes and do crazy artistic stuff, so the fact that I would be in labor or about to burst had no bearing on whether or not. In fact, it gave him a theme: the bike was called "You're doing WHAT on my due date?!" As it turns out, Clementine arrived a wee bit early, so here is my least favorite picture of everyone but her. My husband in a diaper, me a few days after birth (and still lookin pregnant--thank god whoever took the picture managed to get my stomach in the shot) , my beautiful and very fresh child and the pregnant lady bike in all her glory:

It's a two person bike, and Nate and his friend Rich were dressed as babies "crowning" as they raced down the strip (click on the pic to see some of them in action...and full shots of them in diapers). Amazingly enough they didn't win--a smaller, more streamlined bike took the prize. Who would have thought? But the bike has lived on with us for the last 9 months, occasionally being dragged out and ridden around the neighborhood to secure our title as the world's oddest neighbors (a hard title to hold to here as our neighbors are always drunk and acting fools). Nate convinced some guys from Critical Mass to take her off our hands, and we will look for them as they block rush hour traffic in a large, lovely homage to childbirth.

Our final goodbye is still hard to talk about, though I know many will think it's a little disingenuous of me to say that. We put Kitty down on Saturday because she was in renal failure, living in our basement, not eating and peeing uncontrollably everywhere. Kitty has been in my family forever, but no one has ever loved her quite as much as Nate, who is taking this very hard. For my part I was struggling with Kitty since bringing a baby home. I know it makes me a horrible pet owner, but all of the sudden the tufts of cat hair, the cat shit licked off in the middle of my living room and the incessant meowing from yet another needy body were sometimes too much. Not all the time, but sometimes. Of course now I'm full of guilt and think my neglect is probably what killed her, but our vet assured us there were other forces at work. Besides, Nate loved her more than three good pet owners, so he totally balanced me out. As the old saying goes, though, you don't know what you have until it's gone. When Nate came home from the vet I had a good cry thinking of all the time with Kitty I'll miss. I'm especially sad Clementine won't have her to play with. Enough said. She was such a pretty cat that for a few minutes Nate and I joked about having her stuffed so we could still gaze upon her, but in the end we decided to have her cremated. It's morbid, but I've been surprised at how profoundly even this small brush with mortality has effected me. I'm sad about Kitty, but I can get worked up to even bigger tears when I imagine having to deal with other deaths, deaths I won't even mention. And so it is goodbye, Kitty:

Today as been a Bangles-worthy Manic Monday, cut short at work by the fact that I am a total MORON and forgot my breast pump. By 2:00 my boobs were hard as petrified grapefruits and I could literally feel flames rising off them. I had to flee. I hope to avoid further mishaps as the week progresses, as I'm angling for an early start to my long weekend--we're heading to Chicago to act like tourists, not just like people visiting family. I'm putting together a long list of things to do, not the least of which is examine Roscoe, home of the Kitchen on Roscoe (very cute little diner) and a dozen cool baby shops. Maybe I can start a life as a travel journalist--my angle, of course, will be traveling with a kid and still trying to be cool. No Disney store for me, thank you very much.