My New Laptop

I am typing this blog post from my new laptop and this fancy new-fangled MS Word function that I think will allow me to type the entry into Word and publish it straight to my blog, thus eliminating the sheer torturous drudgery of hitting ctrl-A and then ctrl-V. Whew, thank goodness for Bill Gates. Oh how our mothers and sisters before us suffered so…

I am sitting in a Doubletree hotel in Jersey City. I have been here for 2 days working and I am ready to go home. I miss my house and the smell of my bed and familiar curve of my pillows. Plus, I do not have an active elevator in my house and thus do not hear dinging all night long. And, of course, my sweet boy is at home.

Last night, I had dinner alone at an Italian restaurant here in Jersey City. It is a chain. Weirdly, everything in Jersey City seems to be a chain. Jersey City is right across the Hudson River from Manhattan, but it might as well be across the continent. I sat in a booth near a young family – Mother, Father and little boy. The little boy kept looking at me from his perch on the back of the booth seat and he would scrunch up his nose and eyes and smile. I fell instantly in love with his little button nose and the way he kept saying, "My croc fell off! My croc fell off again!" His Dad would say, "That's because you keep kicking it off," and the little boy would laugh and laugh.

His mother apologized to me saying she was so sorry he was bothering me. I assured her that he was not at all bothering me and that watching him was much more fun than reading the 65 page contract in front of me. (Dimly lit Italian restaurants are not ideal for editing, but I was hungry and desperate to get out of the hotel room.) It occurred to me that I usually do the same thing that mother did, I apologize for Max and I live in fear he might bother someone. I wonder why I do that? Isn't it pretty much none of my business whether someone is bothered by my son?

I mean, sure, if he starts throwing gobs of spaghetti at diners or hurls his shoes across the room, then we have a problem. But do I really need to apologize for an errant shriek or peals if hysterical laughter? Really, aren't there worst things in life? And, if I mumble "I'm sorry" too often, doesn't it tend to lose its worth when I really am sorry for something major?

All good questions to ponder.

I find my blog kind of hard to write the last few weeks and I am not sure why. I feel repetitive, as if I have lost some of my voice. Maybe I am just tired from work or going through a dry spell. Or maybe there is something bigger and deeper going on with me and I need to dig to find out what the block is. Perhaps I should do a thorough searching of my soul and discuss with a friend my darkest and deepest secrets.

Or, maybe the new laptop will cure everything.

Whatever the cause, I will not do as I yearn - I will not apologize for the sparse entry, I will not apologize for potentially boring you, I will not apologize for me or my son…unless we hit you with a flying croc.