Seven years ago, I was driving Molly the red Mustang. The backseat was littered with half-written newspaper articles, running clothes and empty bottles of Cherry Coke. I was attending K-State’s journalism school hoping to one day become the White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Which was a great idea until people stopped reading newspapers and preferred Justin Bieber’s paternity test results over the political news of the day.
I eventually landed a job in Minnesota where I met face-numbing cold, and my husband, Shea.
A month after we got engaged, he convinced me to trade in the Mustang for something that didn’t routinely slide off the road into a snowy ditch. This might have had something to do with the fact he had to drive to the middle of Wisconsin to rescue me in a snowstorm after I refused to drive that good-for-nothing, rear-wheel-drive car one more mile.
After our wedding, we moved to Kansas City where I taught Shea both the horror of Kansas in August and the awesomeness of Kansas City barbecue. I spent my first year here in search of a good sushi restaurant, training and successfully surviving a half marathon, learning to swing dance (not as successfully), and attending K-State football games. And then four months ago, this little man entered our lives.
What seems like a sudden shift, my days are filled with washing cloth diapers, trying to get to my full-time job without baby goo on my shoulder, doing grad school part-time and figuring out a way to keep my marriage exciting, my son alive and my insanity hidden. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I write about it all on my blog, Gatsby Diaries, and now I’ll be writing here every Monday. After all, there is nothing more real about a woman’s car experience than when she has to nurse a hungry baby and change a dirty diaper all in the backseat while parked at an Iowa truck stop. True story.
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