I so dearly wanted to spend today doing traditional day-after-Thanksgiving things like lolling under the covers with a book, something nice and low-brow with the author’s name in bigger type than the title. I wanted to eat pie and take nap after nap, and watch television until my eyes bled. Baby be damned!

Instead I spent the day reading slender tongue-twisting books aloud, and swabbing baby parts, and hauling my boobs in and out of my shirt, and playing endless rounds of Scarf Face.

It wasn’t even a bad day. In fact, it’s been one of the better baby days I’ve spent with him. My Fraudulent Parent feelings were at an all-time low — usually I feel like a bad actor playing the role of Mommy. But today I almost felt natural as I cooed and clapped and sang my weird self-narrative songs (“Now mama’s eating cold stuffing with her hands!”). But it definitely wasn’t the all-about-me day I was hungering for.

When I first got knocked up and started to consider what it might actually be like to have a baby, I figured I’d miss the impromptu nights out…the dinners with friends, the movies in actual movie theaters, the strip clubs. But in practice, I’m finding that more than anything I miss the plans-free, pants-free days at home doing disgusting amounts of nothing at all. It’s hard to imagine getting a sitter just for one of those kinds of blank days. In fact, planning in advance to have such a day would defeat the whole purpose.

Stupid babies. Ruining my nothing!