I swear I'm still here

I'm still here, I swear.  I'm lurking, hitting the j's and emailing folks, but it's all quickie.

Not that kind of quickie.

The truth is that I am being held hostage by the five year old.  Apparently she has taken all those comments regarding duct tape to heart, and duct taped herself to me. 

Okay, well, it's not literal, it's figurative.  (But she may as well be physically taped to me--I nearly stepped on her twice the other day.) She wants to know my whereabouts, every minute.  She sits next to me whilst I'm doing my journal lurking.  So close I can't even move my elbow.  I'm totally beat by the time her Dad gets home, and by the time she finally hits it....I hit it too. 

It's totally something I try to handle in stride, a passing phase, if you will, but it's still annoying.  I know, cherish each moment, blah, blah, but do I have to cherish ALL my moments, even the moments in the bathroom? 

I've never been so happy that a doorlock works ever.

Calm. Blue. Ocean.  Calm.  Blue. Ocean.  breathe, breathe, breathe...

And then,  AND THEN,  right when I am ready to jump, right then, she says something like this, which happened on Friday.

"Mommy, why are we going to the mall again?"

"I need to get some face powder." 

(Of all my beauty extravagances, I will not, no way, no how, compromise on the foundation/powder I get.  I buy it once a year, which is fine because I am rendered sightless for days when I see what price beauty truly entails.  Cursed, bad, funky-hued skin....sigh...)

Anyway.  Where was I? 

"Powder?  For you face?  So you can be pretty like me?"

"Yes, so I can be pretty like you.  Although, I don't think anyone could do anything to my face to make me as pretty as you."

(Okay, I'm a little indulgent, but she's five.  I'm just padding her brain as a precautionary strike against "I'm so ugly" adolescence.)

This is where she floors me, where I want to let out a whoop and stop the car, and hug her, and it makes me forget how awful it was that morning, getting out of the house with a list THIIIIIIIIIS long of things  I needed to do, on which there was no time allotted for YET another bathroom break.  ("We all have heard the question: "Mommy, I need to go potty." -- A simple, no-brainer type of request, or a plot to make you lose your last tenuous grip on sanity?  Live at five."  As they cut away to uber-Mom, wipes and smiles at hand, escorting the perfectly behaved little one into The Cleanest Bathroom On Earth; superimposed over some lady with crazy hair, a wad of Kleenex, and a bucket in the housewares aisle, cart full of melting ice cream, heard hissing "I told you to go before we left the house.")

I've done it again.  Where was I? 

She says to me, without skipping a beat, "Mommy.  Just be yourself."

Oh.  Wow.  I don't know what makes me more impressed, the fact that someone's been eavesdropping, and paying attention; or the fact that she understands that being yourself, comfortable in your own skin, is what makes someone pretty.  And that she felt that my being myself was pretty.

I was really touched.  "That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.  Thank you, sweetie."

My girl, she's pretty AND smart.

Of course, I still hit the makeup counter. 

I figured it couldn't hurt to take out a little insurance, for those days when I'm not myself.