Give me my Daily Dooce!

I'm all relieved now, cause I just read some new dooce. I've had her site minimized in my browser all day, obsessively hitting refresh every ten minutes, jiggling with impatience while the site reloaded, crying a little every time it was the old post. But now my body sings with the rush, like a hit of meth. She's that good. Really.

Dooce has saved my sanity as a SAHM many, many times over the past year. I'm never going to meet her, I'm never going to add her to my email-pal list, or ever get any sort of acknowledgement from the Dooce. Yet her blog has saved my sanity and helped me remember why I want to save my life. On those dark nights before I was able to go into the Nursery and see the KittyCat and say, "this is the reason. This is worth it. This is why I've got to keep my shit together." I would read Dooce into the dark hours. Through the insomnia between nighttime wakings, between bottles and diapers and colicky crying, I read Dooce. And it distracted me enough to not cut myself, made me laugh so I forgot about wanting to kill myself. Cause I did think about it. A lot. Sometimes when I'm having a Black day I still do. The difference is between wanting to and doing anything about it. A lot of people don't get that. Still, there it is.

Today the KittyCat and I were at the park before the library opened, and we had a Learning Experience. On one of the other benches were sitting two special needs adults and their caregiver, as well as another special needs adult in a wheelchair. From looking, and I realize that's a lousy way to label a person, they had down's syndrome. I know from my mother and her friends that one thing that such people really love are small children. I could hear them excitedly point it out to each other as we walked up and sat there. So I carefully took my daughter's hands and when we took our practice walk I walked her over to them to say hello. They were thrilled. Tiffany was thrilled. My mother, when I told her about this over the phone later, was thrilled. She told me how proud she was of me.

I'm more proud of my baby girl. She's so loving and open and accepting at this point. I want to nurture this. I want to keep her this way forever. I never want her to know about prejudice or the fear that many people have towards those with special needs. It's not contagious. It's really not. They're as much people as she is. They just don't have the capacity to process as easily as she'll be able to some day.

Give me my girl, and give me a daily shot of Dooce, and I know that we'll cruise through the next couple of years just fine.