Three Saturdays ago, my phone rang at 1:45 a.m. A police officer was calling to say that the truck turned up in an obscure part of town. It had been missing for two weeks by ths point; why the he couldn’t until a decent hour to call is beyond my understanding. While fighting a sleep-induced fog, I tried to make sense of the details. The truck’s front seats were missing. The steering column was destroyed. And our belongings were nowhere to be found.

By now, the thief’s mother/wife/girlfriend has shown her new bag to all of her friends. Mike’s pool stick is either in the garbage or at at pawn shop. And I, for one, am still a bit peeved. I’m using an old black bag that I found at the bottom of the coat closet. It’s too small, and the straps are failing. I absolutely hate it.

I felt like an adult for the first time in months. Mike and I were having dinner with Kevin and Sharon. Good food. Good conversation. No kids. It was a combination that I had promised myself to seek out from time to time.

We were still chatting and laughing as we walked to our cars. I was silently patting myself on the back for suggesting a night out.

“Babe!” Mike yelled. “The truck is gone!”

I hopped off of cloud nine and looked up and down the street for the light grey Dodge. Sure enough, it was gone.

“That sucks,” I said. To be honest, I wasn’t too upset. The truck was a company car, so the loss didn’t really affect us. Mike was pacing in a tight circle, furiously punching the buttons on his cell phone.

“Hello,” he growled. “I want to report a stolen vehicle.”
I didn’t understand Mike’s frustration. Sure, we were a bit inconvenienced, but at least the car wasn’t ours. I turned to talk with our friends while we waited for the police.

“Did you have anything in the truck?” Kevin asked. “Just a tote bag and an umbrella …” I began.

I started thinking more about my missing belongings. That just wasn’t any old tote bag. It was my Dooney & Burke Tassel Tote that I got for an incredible deal during a department store close-out.

Not to mention, I had dropped my checkbook (credit card included) into the bag on my way to work that day. So the thief had a new ride, the means to gas it up, and a present for his mother or girlfriend. Oh, and my favorite sunglasses were in there too.

Mike was rumbling something about his $200 pool stick and dart collection. “That was a McDermott titanium cue! I’ve had it for seven years!”

That didn’t mean anything to me, but I could feel his pain.

As I pictured some stranger prancing around town with my bag on her shoulder, headed to a nearby pub to see her man hustle the locals over a game of billiards, I got pissed. “Bastards!” I yelled. And I continued to yell that throughout the week as I called the bank and credit card companies to switch over my accounts.

I am thankful, though, that they took the car and ran. It could have been worse. My daughter could have been in the car when the thief decided to take it. Or finding the address in my checkbook could have inspired a visit to our home.

I’ve found another pair of glasses. They are similar, but not quite at cute. Mike has been playing pool with borrowed sticks, and he says his game is suffering. And my Dooney? Well, it’s long gone; the company doesn’t make it anymore.

If you are reading this, and your son/boyfriend/husband/secret admirer has just given you a light brown signature Dooney tote with dark brown trim, beware! It is quite possible that your benefactor is the no-good so-in-so who stole our stuff. Check the pockets. You may just find a pair of black rhinestone-studded sunglasses.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, so you may not even notice my blog’s title change. Concepts in clarity was a little to lofty; some days I’m not too clear about much of anything. So I decided that Diva Script was a better fit. I think that those who know me will agree. Nobody but a diva has a shoe and bag collection like mine!

Too much information. The phrase has become a talisman to ward off those unwanted bits of information — like the bathroom habits of a good friend, or the sex life of an unattractive coworker. I am still reeling from that horrible day two years ago when a colleague told me about a one-night stand with his friend’s sister. I regret not whipping out the TMI shield sooner that day.

Since then, I’ve been quite reserved with the information that I share, mainly out of the fear that something I say will encourage others to tell me things that I don’t want to hear. I try to stick to the basics. Yard work, restaurants, current events. Since Elyse was born, I’ve found myself talking about her a lot, and occasionally, childbirth and motherhood have tipped into the TMI category. But I’ve been trying to catch myself.
I was able to relax those restraints with one coworker a few months ago. Kevin joined the department while I was on maternity leave last year, and for the first time in who knows when, I was not the only African-American in my department. We developed an instant kinship.

Our first lunch was a discussion on corporate culture laced with humorous dish on our coworkers. Later talks on workplace challenges led to conversations on past jobs. Then past lives. His college days. My Delta days. His military family. My jovial one. His penchant for fitness. My madness for shoes. His goddaughter. My first daughter. Our shared love of Kenneth Cole.

Five months after that first lunch, Kevin left the company in search of greener pastures. His departure propelled me back into exchanges on lawn care and home improvement.
I saw Kevin a couple of weeks ago at an awards banquet. He greeted me with a warm hug. “Where’s Mike?” he asked. “He had to work,” I said. Kevin turned to the woman at his side. “This is my wife, Sharon.”

Wife? Not once in five months had I heard Kevin mention her name. I don’t even remember seeing her picture on his desk. I’m surprised that she couldn’t tell that I was caught off guard. I smiled at Sharon and said, “Nice to meet you.” She returned the smile and nodded with recognition when he told her that we used to work together.
One hundred and one scenarios went through my head as to why I’ve never heard of Mrs. Kevin. But instead of dwelling on those, I decided to just ask. “I’m a private person,” was his reply.

Private person? Bull. As much as we talked, her name should have come up once or twice. Or should it have? Was it that Kevin had been too closed, or had I been too open? Does the existence of a wife fall into the category of too much information?
As soon as Mike got home from work, I told him about seeing Kevin and Sharon at the dinner.

“You never mentioned that he was married,” Mike said. “That’s because he never said anything,” I told him.

Mike was stunned “What?” he said. “How can you not talk about your wife? I talk about you and Elyse all the time. I even show pictures.”

“I guess everyone is not as open about their personal lives as you are,” I said.

“Whatever,” Mike said. “I just don’t see how it didn’t come up.”

I couldn’t help but agree. Mike and Elyse are a big part of who I am, it’s difficult separate my family self from my work self. Although, I can see the appeal. After having one of those days when you want to cuss out everyone in the building, I would like to be able to leave my issues at the office. And I know for sure that Mike could use a little practice with that skill.

So perhaps the TMI force field extends a bit farther than I thought. I could benefit from a little separation where work/life balance is concerned. So I’ll stick to my landscaping and home improvement dialogues for a while to see how it goes. But I’m going to keep Elyse’s pictures on my desk. She’s just too cute to not show off.

When I was pregnant, I went to a designer baby store to look for crib bedding. “Sucker” was probably written across my forehead as I wandered doe-eyed through the aisles and fingered all of the store’s delights. I fell in love with a set called “Velour Animals.” Lions, giraffes, and the like prance around palm trees on a white background with green gingham trim. I wanted everything from the comforter to the window shades, and I especially wanted the mobile. What I didn’t know at the time was that this store, with its high-end prices, produced a low-end mobile. Don’t get me wrong; it looks great. Five plush animals — an elephant, a giraffe, a lion, a zebra, and a brown thing (I think it’s supposed to be a tiger) — dangle from white cord and spin lazily to “It’s a Small World.” The problem is in the mechanism. In a market filled with battery-operated gizmos that amuse kids with song after song, this mobile is the wind-up kind that plays for barely five minutes.

I didn’t get around to opening the mobile until after Elyse was a few weeks old. When I cranked it up for the first time, I was pissed. I had just seen one in a competitor’s catalog that had four or five settings. Just at I was about to snatch it down and put it back into the box, I noticed that my daughter was mesmerized by its lackadaisical action. My daughter slept through the first few weeks of her life, so I was surprised to see something hold her attention.

That mobile, in its simplistic glory, has become my friend during the past few months. It’s a safe-haven for Elyse that gives me a few moments when I don’t have to be within arms reach. And I can get more done in those five minutes than I ever thought possible. Here are just a few examples:

Tidy up the kitchen. I can unload and load the dishes into the dishwasher without sacrificing a single plate.

Laundry. I can put a load in the dryer, start a new load, and bring up a basket of clothes. If I’m lucky, I can even put them away.

Shower and dress. I have to run back into her room after the shower to restart the mobile so that I have time to get dressed. One day, I forgot that the blinds were open. I wonder if that’s why the neighbors don’t wave to me anymore.

The good news is that the mobile has helped me to learn how to break bigger tasks up into smaller ones so that I can finish them. The bad news is that I don’t always know when to slow down, and I rush when I don’t have to. Some nights after my daughter is asleep, I’m still whizzing through the house as if the mobile will shut off at any second. I speed through the supermarket, trying to buy $200 worth of groceries in less than 20 minutes. Or, I cram too much into a time span. Not even The Flash can get up, make breakfast, dress two people, take one of them to the sitter and get to work by 8:30 if he doesn’t wake up until 7:35.

When I was five years old, you couldn’t have told me that I wasn’t going to be the next Wonder Woman. I would spin in circles until I was dizzy, hoping that my stars-and-stripes Underoos would transform into plated armor. I accepted my fate as a mere mortal once I got older, but I think that motherhood subconsciously made me revisit that decision. I’ve been trying to take on the world, and there are a few chinks in my armor as a result. My nails are a bit misshaped. I carried a brown bag with a black outfit last week, and I haven’t been to the hair salon in three weeks. (For me, this in particular is a tragedy. I used to go to the hairdresser every Thursday.)

So I’m hanging up my golden lasso and seeking balance. It’s far more important for me to spend time with Elyse than to clean house or run errands, so I want to get that stuff out of the way. But if I’m wiped out from the race against the clock, then the time that I have with her isn’t well spent. I’m learning to sit my butt down and stop obsessing over the forks in the sink or the clothes in the hamper. I’ve decided to work in a couple of long baths or get a pedicure instead. And the next time I turn on the mobile, I’m going to stay in the room with Elyse and see if I can figure out what that brown thing is supposed to be. Maybe it’s a buffalo.