Welcome to my mesk.

Mess + desk = mesk. I have a mesk.

Twelve bottles of ink. Three Shiseido foundations: one powder, one brightening veil, one smoothing veil. One bottle of Estee Lauder Idealist, a gift, unopened. A charger for a phone I no longer own. Johnson’s baby fresh cleansing wipes. Nars blush in Gueule de Nuit. Shiseido lipstick in P1 Acorn. A can of Oxycan, Life in a Can! Beauty Formulas Face & Body cooling mist. A can of Diet Pepsi. A loupe. Two green plastic binders. Cake Satin Sugar refreshing hair and body mist. Three pairs of pliers: cutting, round, longnose. The Fountain Pen Hospital Annual 2008. Today’s newspapers. A gift pack from Rogemson. L’Occitane’s Thé Vert au Jasmin eau de toilette. Binder refills. My old Wacom tablet. A basket for coins. The Moleskine twinset 2008 limited edition. A hair stick of buffalo horn that I can’t wear because I no longer have hair. Assorted pens. Assorted receipts. My MBP, the current Wacom tablet, a CD case that is now a coaster.

What I need is a large cabinet where I can hide away everything and pretend, gratefully, that I am revitalized and organized.

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Three moms and a baby.

Lucien has three moms – a working mom, an auntie mom, and a granny mom. We frequently vary in our opinions, and our way of relating to Lucien, but I can only hope that his rapidly-multiplying neurons can cope with us.

Single-parent guilt is bad, but triple-parent guilt is worse. Not only do I have to deal with the intricacies of living with my mom, from whom I seem to have inherited a particularly stubborn streak, but I also need to navigate my relationship with my sister, whom I am only used to dealing with on a younger-sister basis and not on a co-mom basis. Of course everyone is quick to reassure me that “you’re the mom,” but that’s not really the point. It’s not about the ownership of the mommy title, or whose womb was the teleport station. It is really how the day-to-day mommying goes.

I am lucky, damn lucky, to have my mom and sister around. I can work and put aside money for Lucien. I am trying to manage my worklife so I can leave a little late and come home a little early, and gradually I am succeeding. Maybe, if I can acquire the credibility, I can go freelance one day and spend even more time with Lucien, as several parents I know have done. This will most likely start with dropping the “maybe” and planning for it with more care.

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