The Valvoline

OK so I got my first public breastfeeding experience at the Valvoline. Yeah, the Valvoline. It was way time to get an oil change, like ten thousand miles, yeah I know it’s better for the engine to do it every three but I honestly hadn’t looked at that little sticker in the upper left hand corner of the windshield in months, not sure how many months, obviously because ten thousand miles went by. Anyways, so it was a million degrees last week here in Tennessee and I was sweating bullets, and my daughter who is now all of four weeks old, was also sweating bullets. She was starting to give me that look like, “I’m getting ready to blow. Feed me now, or I am going to blow.” And God knows I didn’t want her blowing at the Valvoline, plus I’m a pretty nice person and I generally do not condone the starving of children, so I decided to take her inside the little lobby inside the Valvoline, you know with the linoleum flooring, the ugly black and chrome chairs, the funky car magazines and Ellen Degeneres on T.V. So I sit down, and I get out this really handy thingamajig called a BeBeAuLait which is basically a glorified apron that you hang around your neck and it has this underwire contraption at the top so that you can look down and see your child, but no one else can see you. So I get her all comfy and ready to go and this burly, non-shaved, 60-some-odd year old construction worker of a dude decides to start telling me every joke he has ever heard on the planet. And then he decided to rant on about how much he loves children and how I should really enjoy these years because man do they fly by and all about his oldest daughter who is living in South America as a missionary and how she’s not planning on settling down anytime soon, no sir, because she wants to see the world.
And all I could think of was, “Okay, I’m sitting in the Valvoline, my child is slurping like a banshee, and this old guy is trying to pretend he isn’t totally uncomfortable with the fact that there is a small child breastfeeding in his presence, although I am completely covered (to the pride of my Mennonite-at-heart husband) and that he has taken it upon himself at this very moment to pass down all of his various bits and sundries of knowledge and wisdom on this new mother who gives a crap. And at that very moment, on the Ellen Degeneres show appears the something dolls, the voo-doo dolls, the pussy-cat dolls, something vile like that, and out they storm with their thighs and their leather and their pursed lips doin’ the MilliVanilli while they seduce every man in America and about that time the Valvoline boy tells me where the remote is if I would like to change it and I said yes I would and thank God Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was on and the little train was just getting ready to come around the corner. Whoo, saved by the train.
All that to say, motherhood is wonderful. I am fully embracing it and I am taking care of myself in the process, which is nice to admit. My husband is awful helpful and he just got me a double barrel electric on top of all that.
So. I’m not sure where June went. I don’t remember June. June doesn’t remember me. But I’m planning on writing June and asking June how June was because it’s all a blur to me. Other that that, I’m just trying to figure out what day it is, where the passy went, the “passafrasser” my husband calls it, and how to take a bath once a day.
So how are you? Please write and tell me because I am home most days wondering.
Good morning July…