Our Story

With our gift cards from the baby shower burning a hole in our wallet, Mr. Candy and I trekked to Babies “R” Us this weekend.  I quickly realized the place should be renamed Headaches “R” Us because finding a needle in the Bermuda Triangle would be easier than tracking down a damn burp cloth in that mess of a store — or actually getting our purchases to the car, considering our shopping cart decided it had had enough halfway through the lot (I guess it had a headache, too) and refused to budge another inch.  I kid you not.  So I had to wait in the middle of the busy parking lot with our ornery cart while Mr. Candy grabbed our getaway vehicle, conveniently parked five miles away.  Which explains why so many carts were abandoned in the parking lot landscaping.  A virtual graveyard for cheap-ass shopping carts.

Seriously.  If I were the CEO of Headaches “R” Us — as we all know I should be — I’d decree that all aisles have an Excedrin stand at the end.  Too much of a bother to actually, you know, ORGANIZE the mess at this point.  But, man oh man, would we ever make a killing in aspirin sales!

Once I was no longer blinded by my pounding headache, I was able to actually see what we’d bought.  Among the items was a lovely memory book that’s supposed to commemorate Baby Girl’s first five years, but — as we all know — will likely only be lovingly filled out for the first five weeks, at which point the book will be ditched faster than a broken Headaches “R” Us shopping cart.  At least, that’s been the case for every baby scrap book I’ve ever seen.  After a month…?  Life apparently becomes a blank.  Much like my college years.

After thumbing through the book, I determined the first page is by far the most important:  “All About My Mommy.”  In all seriousness, it made me think, wow, MY life story… reduced to less than a page, a mere footnote in somebody else’s story.  It’s a reality check, for sure, underscoring that my life will shortly take a backseat to my daughter’s, after thirtysomething years of everything being about me, me, ME.

And, oh yeah, me.

This wake-up call came at an interesting time; I’d been feeling sad the night before when, whilst cleaning my old office to make room for baby, I’d come across numerous outlines for books, movies, TV shows and whatnot.  So many unfinished stories — would I ever have the time to see them through to fruition now?  I shed a few tears, not an uncommon occurrence these past six months, in mourning for these “GREAT” ideas I had abandoned.  That Oscar will never be mine now!  Oh, woe is me!  Then I slapped myself silly, not an uncommon occurrence these past six months, because if I had been truly passionate about those stories — if those were stories I were meant to tell — I would have freakin’ written them already.  I mean, maybe that pitch about the lawyer who moonlights as a rodeo clown-slash-prostitute isn’t so genius, after all.

Those outlines…?  Mere footnotes in MY story, which is far from over.

In fact, one of the really cool things about having a child is that I now have a familial ambassador to carry on my story, my legacy.  So here it is, Baby Girl — “All About My Mommy”:

My Mommy’s full name is: Candace Ann Kirby

But everyone likes to call her: Candy.  Or “Hey, bee-yotch!”

She was born in: Mechanicsburg, PA

And she grew up in: Mechanicsburg, PA

She went to school at: Mechanicsburg Senior High School (see the trend here?); Dickinson College then, after battling depression (fun!), transferred to Shippensburg University, where she got her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and enjoyed the cosmopolitan sound of horse-and-buggies clomping by her apartment every night; and Northwestern University, where Mommy got her Master of Science in Marketing Communications and learned she is NOT part polar bear, thus making her incompatible with Chicago weather.

After (undergraduate) school she decided to:  Go to New York City, where Amish neighbors are slightly less common.

Mommy has many special talents and interests: That’s true.  But I don’t think any of them are appropriate to share with you until you’re at least 18.

Some people say that I inherited some of Mommy’s traits: My apologies for that, Baby Girl.