downtown where you can always go

The sunny weather today inspired me to go on a little trip with Jonah, his first time out and about downtown. Our adventure started in the morning with Tim dropping us off at the library which, it turned out, was still closed. I looked for a warm place for us to pass the time. It was chilly out, a thick layer frost on everything when I woke up. Most businesses were still closed, but I found a lobby of sorts with tables and chairs that was open and heated. Just a couple of morning birds were there reading the paper and a group of retired men happily chatting away over coffee about where it's snowed lately and the meaning of the word Arizona. Then there was Jonah and me, awkwardly smiling at the guard. When we finally made our way back to the library, the doors were still closed, so we ended up warming up the stoop with a whole bunch of homeless folks and strange types wearing strange outfits. Really I felt like we were extras on a movie set and I was the weird mom with the baby in a sling.

Before I set to do this trip I made a mental map of the possible places where I could nurse and change Jonah comfortably and somewhat discretely, need be. And sure enough, I used them all and then some. The funniest place to feed Jonah was the library. It was so quiet in there you could hear a pin drop. His slurping, burping, and pooping sounds must have carried far and wide. Jonah had his first diaper changing experience in a public restroom, not a type of an experience I would like to undergo more often than necessary.

With baby asleep in the sling, I took the Czech-made tram to my favorite bookstore where I had decaf coffee and a pastry, not realizing, of course, until I was midway through eating, that it was covered with chocolate. I'm supposed to be staying away from chocolate, remember? But, what the heck, I'll just finish this puppy, I thought. And tasty it was. Now that it's almost Jonah's bed time and he is fussy for the first time all day, giving dad a hard time, I'm wondering if he really does have low tolerance for chocolate. I promise I'll try even harder to stay away from it from now on.

At the bookstore I read a magazine and later nursed Jonah again. I had a pretty good spot at the cafe, turned away from nearly everyone except those out on the street in front of the giant glass windows. But there was one dude - overweight, dirty, scruffy, handle-bar-mustache-wearing graying man, scavenging the comics section, facing me, but half submerged in an aisle behind bookshelves. I couldn't see his face, but wondered if he was waiting for a peak at my boob. He lingered which made me even more uneasy. I saw his head move around like a jostled egg behind a magazine display rack. I gave him another chance to display some decency, but lost my patience pretty quickly. My heart beating fast, I got up in the middle of nursing and walked over to see for myself where this yuck meister was looking. I was ready to confront him in a rage if what I imagined was indeed the case. When I stood nearly face to face with him, he was non-chalantly staring at a comics book like he had been reading it for hours. Now, I have no way of knowing if the man was actually staring at me nursing, but the idea of it makes my skin break out in hives. The situation reminded me of a highly unpleasant encounter, to put it mildly, that happened while I was traveling solo in Mexico. I won't go into the details here, because the story would be just too disturbing. But let's say my radar has been out for creepy man behaviour more than ever since then.

When Jonah was done eating, it was pretty much time to head home. We took the bus (Jonah's first time) where he again got hungry and, after having another snack, promptly fell asleep. I included some pictures I took to document our "downtown adventure."