Those Special Someones

Ari and B at the park

So, being a queer mommy is a lot like being a straight mommy.  (I imagine.)  Even when there are two parents (in our case, both hard-working, non-shirking, and engaged) and only one child you feel somehow, eternally, outnumbered.  I have been toying with potential solutions.  There is the age-old one of hiring a nanny, preferably someone who will live in your enormous home, somewhere removed but always accessible.  Someone who speaks several languages, has no discernible prejudices, has endless energy, no romantic aspirations but no social diseases would be ideal.  In other words, the impossible.  And then, when you find that person, you can't afford to pay them and, if you are me, you don't have the enormous house anyway, so what is even the point of looking?  And I don't.

But I do have an imagination, and for the past threeish years I have been toying with the idea of marrying someone else.  Not as in leaving B (Heavens no!), but as in adding to the number of adult parents in the domestic situation.  Because, as I said before, we are somehow outnumbered.  Even though there are two of us, and we both work as hard as we can, we can't keep up.  The world is ahead of us.  Ari's cup, which has 570934972097 parts that must all be washed by hand and are shaped like bendy straws, lies dirty in the sink, and no matter how many I buy, eventually I have to wash one.

Yesterday I made him pink cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles because he asked me to.  He has eaten exactly one half, and I hate them.  (Too pink tasting.)  But I cannot complain about him not eating enough sugar, can I?  It is all so complicated.  Today I made him banana bread which he refused.  He is perfect and an icon of kissability, but an endless chore-creator.  Even shopping for his clothing, which I do almost all online, is a daunting undertaking.  He is long on top, short on bottom, and evidently the skinniest toddler in the United States.  Yes, I know, I should take him to the store and have him try things on, but have you taken an almost three-year-old clothes shopping?  He is agreeable and will happily try things on, but then he wants 12 of the same shirt and cries when he can't stay in the suitcase store all day.

Again, I digress.  I have been looking for other couples to marry.  Not romantically.  (Though I would have to like them, and they could not be ugly because life's too short.)  But, domestically.  I think we should find some other couple with good parenting skills and shack up in an enormous mansion which we could easily afford on the four person income.  We could then take vacations together and help raise each other's children and babysit for each other on date night and be friends and use energy more efficiently by combining laundry loads and whatnot.  Sounds complicated, I know, and I'm probably just trying to be cute and trendy by even considering it.  But I can't help myself.

I spend time sizing up the potentials.  When Ari was first born, B's best friend Cindy came to visit.  She held the baby while I shoveled grapefruits down my throat.  All I wanted to do those first few weeks was sleep (Ha!) and eat grapefruits.  She made protein shakes I actually liked.  She made excellent dishes, which I was too exhausted to commit to long-term memory.  Though of course I realize she was on her best "new baby support" behavior for the days she stayed with us, I considered her.  She was already B's best friend, so obviously they got along.  If it hadn't been for her husband, whom I just don't know well enough, I might have proposed to them.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We have other friends who might do.  One couple has this cute little boy and works very hard, both domestically and career-wise.  They are fashionable and funny, even cute.  There is, however, this mammoth dog who lives with them, and I guess he would have to move in, too.  Forget it.  There are others--some pregnant couples--one of whom makes their own beer.  Some of them already own nice homes.  Of course, we'd all have to move to make a "joint" decision about where to live together.  And the couple who makes their own beer would have to cut back on their hours at work.  And the other couple has a lazy man in it.  That would not do.

Is this normal?  Do other parents dream of dividing the labor by marrying their friends?  When Clinton said "it takes a village," was she kidding?  Was it a cruel joke?  Or does she just not realize that THERE ARE NO VILLAGES IN THIS COUNTRY!  I love Hillary more than anybody, but the only way to make the village is polygamy.  Preferably the queer kind.