Category — Ramblings

The start of a new year always gets me thinking about resolutions and other nonsense.

This year, 2012, — the final year of our planet’s existence, as everyone well knows — I’m determined to make a good one. I was on autopilot last year. I’ve been on autopilot for some years now, actually. But there’s something awakening within me. I’m caring about my life and the meaning of it. I’m caring about the impact I make on the world, however small that impact may be. Lately, I feel like I’m being guided toward a new path.

Yup, I’m getting all transcendental on your asses.

For many years, I was really into yoga and meditation. I read about Buddha, meditated over crystals, wrote esoteric phrases in little black notebooks. I observed a lot. Things meant something to me. Colors were more vivid, people were more alive. I was more alive.

I may also have been taking a lot of acid or other hallucinogens at the time. But that’s really not the point.

THE POINT, my friends, is that I’ve lost myself somewhere along the way. I stopped feeling compassion, stopped feeling joy. I’ve been sucked into a cycle of self-imposed self-punishment. I’ve spent a long time believing I’m meant to suffer, to pay, to wither inside. I’m not allowed to feel good. I used to punish myself in physical ways; now, it’s emotional, mental — which can be, in ways, more powerful. To live in self-punishment in one’s own head, over and over, day in and day out.

This has translated into a great degree of emptiness, anger, agitation, frustration, sorrow, self-loathing. I don’t feel good-ness anymore. I only feel the pinpoints of rage and the longing of something, anything else to fulfill me.

Although I’ve known for a long time that I have “issues,” the revelation of me punishing myself (for whatever reason — it doesn’t matter) and the subsequent manifestation of that punishment into an overall shitty attitude is a new thought for me. It’s not that I’m a bad mom, a lousy wife, and a crappy friend; it’s that I am flogging myself inside, and I’m so angry and hurt and empty that I have nothing to give to anyone else.

Our feelings are reflected in our behaviors. When we feel good, we do good. When we feel bad, we do anger, rage, frustration, sadness.

So, what to do? I’m not sure. That’s what I’m starting to explore. What I do know is that I’m not talking about suppressing feelings or tricking myself into feeling something different. I’m not talking about not feeling bad things. But I do think there’s something underlying those emotions that, if I can learn to just observe rather than retain, I could clear up the grayness that has taken over me.

Sigh. I don’t think I’m even making sense at this point.

Just trust me when I say I’m going through some serious touched-by-an-angel shit over here and there’s going to be some positivity up in this mo fo, by golly!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE holiday of all. It has the right idea: food, friends, family, football, excessive drinking. It’s what Christmas was meant to be before Black Friday/Thursday/Wednesday/Last Tuesday happened.

I am endlessly thankful for the three most amazing, interesting, funny, intelligent, and adorable little babes I could have ever dreamed of. I’m thankful for my devoted, hilarious, sexy husband.

And this year, I’m thankful for a photo of my entire family actually looking at the camera and looking semi-normal.

Thanks to Maria Melee for capturing this once-in-a-lifetime moment on camera — especially because this is what our family photos tend to look like these days.

Or this….

Or this…..

I used to be smart.

No, really. I think I used to be smart. That’s what my professors used to tell me, anyhow. And my grades. I used to get A’s and say thoughtful things and read complicated books. I graduated with honors and got into a Smart Person Honor Society (not even the kind that publishes that fake book that you pay to get into) and got a full ride to grad school and everything.

Now, as a full-time stay-at-home mom, I struggle to access even a fraction of that knowledge. My brain just doesn’t work the same. I’m reading a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel right now. Pulitzer Prize winning! The very alliteration of it makes you sit up straight. Every few pages, I engage in some critical thinking: “This passage appears to be about the male psyche’s struggle to disassociate – nay, circumcise itself from the specter of the father at the same time that it cannot possibly extricate itself from same.”

But then, I completely lose track of the words, my brain engulfed by a ceaseless soundtrack of preschool show theme songs (“There’s a party in my tummy! SO YUMMY, SO YUMMY!!!”).

When I left my job two years ago to stay at home with my kids, I vowed I wouldn’t lose my sense of curiosity and individuality. I would nurture my brain. I would remain true to myself. In my supercilious, pre-SAHM mind, I swore I would not, under any circumstances, become one of “those” moms.

Mm-hmm. You mean this mom? Because she, I have become.

I have a case of Mommy Brain in a most pointed sense. It’s not simply that I’ve become scatterbrained or chronically tardy; it’s that I feel I have lost my very sense of intelligence. There’s no way in hell I could keep up with my old college cronies because I genuinely do not even understand what they’re saying anymore. The depth of the problem hit a serious low when I Googled myself recently and discovered that my master’s thesis was no longer on page one of the results; now, it’s some idiotic comment I made on the Facebook page for Duke’s Mayonnaise.

YES. MAYONNAISE. (Note to self: Become more concerned with one’s digital identity.)

It bothers me. I feel stupid and unworthy and irrelevant and uninteresting.

I suppose, then, that it means I was never really smart to begin with. I just practiced a certain language a lot, got decent at it, and lost my fluency when I was no longer immersed and I stopped using it. It wasn’t innate intelligence – it was an impermanent skill, like tap dancing or getting really good at Tetris.

And that bothers me even more, feeling that, not only am I no longer smart – I’m now just a mom. My life is one long playdate, a series of diaper changes, a daily battle with juice stains and toddler tantrums and lactating breasts and OH MY GOD MY TWO-AND-A-HALF-YEAR-OLDS AREN’T POTTY TRAINED I’M A FAILURE AS A MOTHER. My career will forever be in the shitter. I’ll end up in some job interview five years from now and won’t get hired when I instinctively tell them to stop asking Mommy so many questions.

But then I think about it more and I get defensive. What’s so demeaning about being a stay-at-home mom? How is my work now less valuable than any paid position I’ve ever held? My value as a human, as a woman, as a mother at work, is not quantifiable. It is not defined by me bringing in a paycheck. I’m raising the next generation of contributing members of society. This is important work. Like, for reals.

Oooh, the valve-less sippy cups I ordered just got here!

Sorry, I got distracted.

So. Mommies? Daddies? How do you deal with these feelings? Am I alone here? Does anyone even know what the hell I’m talking about? Answer me or I’ll put you in a time out!

Did you know that there’s such a thing as a repeat root canal? As in, the first one didn’t take so they stick needles in your jaw and rip things out of your face all over again while you stay perfectly conscious and white-knuckle it because this time you skipped the Xanax?

Well, it happens — apparently often enough to warrant a brochure and everything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was minding my own business, eating my dinner and dessert. Somewhere between the feta-stuffed chicken breast and the chocolate brownie, the crown on my lower rear molar broke in half. No crack, no crunch, no uncomfortable swallow. It just broke — less than two years after getting it.

Now, if you read anything about my previous issues with this tooth, you won’t be surprised to know that I went to a completely different dentist for treatment. I’m pretty sure that, unlike my previous dentist, this one did not blow his way through dental school. He seemed pretty legit when he referred me for a repeat root canal with a different endodontist.

Because I had to throw out all of my thrush-laden frozen breastmilk, and because I couldn’t realistically have anyone watch all three kids for an entire day so I could pass out while high on sedatives, I decided to brave a root canal with only Novocaine.

Hell, I gave natural childbirth. I can surely survive a root canal without a hammer to the head, right?

Well, the technical answer to that question is yes. Yes, I did survive. But honestly, don’t EVER ask what a root canal consists of , and don’t EVER be a candidate for a second one. And whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA. Because either way, it involves drills that smell like tire fires and the violent wrenching of tender gum tissues and something that looks like this.

Now, I await my replacement crown, which has put us squarely back into credit card debt but will probably actually fit the first time, rather than taking four fittings and three months like my last one.

If there’s a next time, though, fuck bravery. I’ll take an IV of Xanax in my freaking EYE, thank you very much.

I’m pretty realistic about New Year’s resolutions. I dislike the idea of choosing to change something in your life based on a particular date rather than the actual, willful, personal drive at any other time of year. I end up going easy on myself for any resolutions I do make because I figure I probably won’t achieve them anyhow, so why set my sights too high?

I know. The ambition is staggering, isn’t it?

But still, like millions of others, I usually make a mental note of something I’d like to accomplish in the new year.

This year, I have a few things I want to do:

1) Get a rein on my Starbucks addiction. It became a serious problem during the pregnancy, especially toward the end. I kept telling myself “You won’t be able to continue this caloric intake after the baby’s here. Might as well take advantage.” When I found myself at that cursed drive-thru for the fourth time in nearly as many days — amounting to nearly $20 in icy, caffeine-infused deliciousness gone straight to my ass in less than a week — I realized I’d crossed a dangerous line.

So, Starbucks no more than once a month. Promise.

2) Start working out again by three months post-partum. I almost laugh to say this because I tried with every good intention to do this after having the girls. It is freaking close to impossible, I’m telling you. But it’s part of my mental and physical health and, with three kids, I need every semblance of sanity I can get.

I figure I’ll have to be pretty flexible with my definition of “working out.” It’s not going to be my old hour-and-a-half jaunts to the gym or doing a DVD at home. It’ll probably be more like 20 minutes a few times a week, as I make the time. I’ll have to learn to be okay with that.

3) Get back into my pre-Amaia clothes, if not my pre-Elise-and-Althea clothes. I gained 28 pounds with Amaia and have lost 18 of it. Losing that will still have me at 10-ish pounds over where I was before the twins, though, making for a total of 20 pounds to lose. I’ll be ecstatic if I get rid of 15 of it.

The problem I  had during the first year after the twins were born was that I discovered I’m NOT one of the lucky ladies that loses tons of weight by breastfeeding. My body hoards every calorie I give it, and I had a VERY difficult time losing more than five pounds during that first year post-partum. Once I was down to breastfeeding only two or three times a day, the weight finally started coming off. So I have to be realistic about that, too.

Mentally, I’m already antsy to get back into the workout and weight loss swing of things. But physically, I’m not there. I’m still very much freshly post-partum, as evidence by the 80000 maxi pads I go through every day and the ravenous appetite of the early days of nursing. (Hey, you going to eat that?)

4) Go easy on myself with all of the above. Really, I mostly want to get a grip of running the house again and getting out and about with three little ones. I’ll be happy if I manage to get everyone dressed and fed every day.

Notice I didn’t say that everyone has to have clean, matching clothes. Notice I didn’t say anything about being fed healthy foods. I just said that there would be clothes and food involved on a daily basis. And, in general, the clothes and food will not be confused, a la Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

Baby steps, people. Little, tiny, underachieving baby steps.

I came home from running errands this evening. Pulling into our cookie-cutter subdivision, I saw something out of place: the flashing red lights of two ambulance trucks.

We live in an area of Florida that is rife, replete, overflowing with senior citizens. Many live here full time. Many more are seasonal residents, dubbed “snowbirds,” who filter in around Thanksgiving to clog up the roads, stand in the middle of the grocery aisles, cause accidents, wear loafers without socks, and pump much-needed money into our local economy. They trickle out by Easter, leaving the roads once again navigable for the rest of the blazing-hot summer.

So when I saw the flashing ambulance lights, I was semi-not surprised.

Until I saw who it was. Until I heard what happened.

We met quite a few of our neighbors at Halloween when we took the girls door-to-door. Directly across the street from us is an older couple. The wife works two jobs. The husband helps her walk their three dogs. When we met them at Halloween, she told us to come over for anything at all, including emergency babysitting or a cup of sugar. We returned the invitation.

This evening, I stepped out of the van, tempted to walk across and asked what happened. But then I heard the wife sobbing violently.

“Why did he die? Why did he die?”

He. Died. He. Died.

Her husband. Dead. Dropped dead of a heart attack on the side of the house. His body still lay in the grass, awaiting the coroner. Police cars pulled up, flicking their flashlights around the garden. Other cars pulled up. Grandchildren sobbed. Children wailed. People hugged.

Chris and I watched with morbid curiosity and sadness. We turned to our children. We turned to each other.

Why did he die?

That poor woman. Her husband’s body will be carried away. Her dogs will go to sleep. Her family will go home. And she’ll wake up to an empty house, the shadows of her husband omnipresent in every corner, every scent, every simple action. And yet, she’ll be alone.

I think of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” I think of my mom. I think of my grandma.

I don’t often ponder what would happen if Chris died without warning, but when I do, the lack of ability to process this possibility is overwhelming. What would I do? What would the girls do?

What would we do?

I’m grateful that tonight, my husband is solidly asleep on the couch and my kids are breathing peacefully in their cribs.

If you are pregnant, or plan to get pregnant, and have any plans for moving at any point during your fertile years, I will give you this general warning now:

DON’T.

Thank me later.

My god. Moving while pregnant is pretty much the worst invention ever. It has been awful. My uterus is violently protesting my every movement. My ankles are telling me to just sit the eff down already. I wake up feeling drugged, I’m so tired.

But enough of my bitching.

The general house update is this:

In mid-July, we/the bank got a cash offer on our house, which we’ve had on the market as a short sale. The bank came back asking for more money. The buyer agreed. Everything seemed good, but I was secretly dreading the house inspection — and for good reason, it turns out. Our roof started leaking shortly before the inspection and got worse with every rain. During the inspection, the inspector told me that he suspected the roof was original to the house.

Our house was built in 1959. It is 2010. You do the math.

(Though you do have to hand it to good old-fashioned construction. A 51-year-old roof? Not bad.)

In addition to the roof situation, we found out our shower pan has been leaking for years — there was visible water damage that showed water has been seeping through the wall into our closet for a long time.

(Side note: With such major issues, we’re curious how the hell the house passed inspection five years ago when we bought it. The inspector was frank with me and said he feels we were really taken advantage of.)

Surprisingly, the buyer came back a couple of days later, still willing to buy the house cash if the bank would accept a slightly lower offer. Nearly one agonizing week later, the bank accepted the offer. Chris and I got the hell out of Dodge and signed a lease on a house.

Emotionally, it’s been a much more difficult adjustment than I expected. Going through all of our stuff at the old house stirred up a lot of memories — friends, parties, children, family. Moments of love and conflict. Gain and loss. All of the hopes and dreams we had when we bought the house five-and-a-half years ago, all being wrapped up in boxes and moved to another place that is not our own, a place we’re just borrowing. The reality of the financial and personal impact of a short sale and all it entails hit me too. It feels such like a failure, like we’ve lost something, like something was taken away from us. It’s a violent and humiliating feeling. A lot of emotions I didn’t think I had.

Of course, logically I realize that it’s not the end of the world, that we’re among millions of others in the same situation, that we’ll be fine and recover and life is all flowers and rainbows. The house was a huge weight on my shoulders that I can now let go of. I know all of this and, luckily, I think about the positive stuff more often than the shitty stuff.

I’ve heard that home has more to do with the people around you than with the walls you stare at. I guess, sure. But there is something to be said for the memories that walls hold.

There’s also something to be said for having all my Tupperware available for food storage rather than catching rain from a leaking roof, so…

I have this thing with my mouth.

No, not herpes. And get your mind out of the gutter. Jesus.

I’m a chewer. A chomper. I destroy pens, chomp endlessly on ice cubes, chew gum. I smoked for 15 years.

Point is, I release stress by chomping on things — including food. Sadly, I’m not one of those people that gets all sick to my stomach, loses my appetite and upchucks when I get stressed. Oh no, I run straight for the fridge. I think I’m the only bride that got fat before my wedding.

Right now, I’m experiencing some epic stress. We got the final approval papers from the bank on our short sale. The buyer has already put money into escrow. We have a closing date.

But…

But it’s all still pending the home inspection, which happens tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Until we’re assured that the buyer still wants the place once he gets written proof of all the things wrong with the house, we can’t put down a deposit on a rental house.

NOT that we’ve had any luck finding anything we can afford that we would actually live in. We’ve looked at probably eight houses and so far, we’ve seen some crack dens and a couple of shoe boxes.

Basically, I have no fucking clue what’s going to happen with our house or where we’re going to live and it is driving. me. MAD.

Will we have to put the house back on the market? Foreclose? Will we end up moving when I’m gigantically pregnant? Will we be forced to move into a shitbox because we can’t find some place safe that also includes an intact roof and floor?

I don’t know.

So yeah. Stress. Want to eat. A lot. Can’t sleep. Going insane. Praying to a little plastic statue of St. Joseph that I buried upside down in my backyard.

This is not a rational person speaking here.

Luckily, there’s banana bread and M&Ms and Heath ice cream.

I don’t know about you, but nothing puts me in a more festive mood than making some hot, thick bean soup in the middle of August in Florida.

I’ve been saving this recipe for a Spanish-style bean soup for a while. The craving finally hit and I made it, using Spanish chorizo instead of andouille sausage. But that’s beside the point.

The point is this:

I’ve never used great northern beans as called for in the recipe. Neither have I ever worked with kale, a collard-like green, leafy vegetable.

Turns out that these items are pretty potent. The soup was delicious. Deee-li-shus. But I’m estimating that, between the kale and beans, there were approximately 18 grams of fiber per spoonful of my soup.

We ate the soup on Sunday evening. Within a couple of hours, it hit us. A little cheek lift here. A walking rat-a-tat-tat fart there. A poof of wind on the way to the kitchen.

Soon, these innocent gastrointestinal gusts started getting more dangerous. Throughout the night, Chris and I lifted the bed sheets — and not in a kinky sort of way, either.

Monday morning, Chris emerged from his daily visit to the throne, complaining of some minor intestinal upset. Specifically, his insides had liquefied and he was concerned that he would die of dehydration or an evaporated bowel.

Lucky for me, I have a stronger stomach. Gas, yes. Pee shits, no. Monday afternoon, I dared to have a bowl of the tasty soup for lunch. Again, within an hour or so, I was doing the one-cheek salute to expel the increasingly toxic fumes.

The problem wasn’t the farting in itself. Around here, we enjoy, announce and even celebrate our gas. It was the intensity, the frequency and the duration of the gaseous episodes that ended up posing an issue.

Eight hours after consuming my bean soup for lunch, I was still farting like a geriatric. Even Elise and Althea were noticing, imitating a farting sound every time Chris or I would pass gas. At one point, I went to the bathroom and Althea pointed at the bathroom door and said, “Ama! PPBBBLBLLLBBBP!”

I knew things were out of control when I let a silent-but-deadly one fly and saw the cat lift his head, take a sniff and — I shit you not — move to the other couch.

If you’ve ever owned a cat, you know that it takes a lot for a sleeping cat to get up and move from a comfortable couch.

Monday night, I decided to freeze the remainder of the soup. Tasty as the soup was, Chris’ tender stomach and my sulfuric intestinal juices couldn’t handle any more.

We chuckled at the whole experience — haha, crazy pregnancy cravings; haha fiber soup; haha our colons are gone.

At about 6 o’clock this morning, I wasn’t laughing anymore. There was no mirth or merriment when Chris threw back the sheets, jumped out of bed and screamed “AWWWWWWWWW SHIT!”

I flailed awake in a panic. “What?? What the fuck is going on?”

“God damn that bean soup! I just shit the bed!”

“…….Are you serious?”

“I dreamt I was taking a shit and I shit the bed. Mark your calendar. I’m 36 years old and I just . . . Oh JESUS CHRIST!” he screamed, holding his butt cheeks together as he ran off to the bathroom.

From behind the closed bathroom door, sitting on the toilet, shitting his brains out at 6 a.m.: “GOD DAMN THAT BEAN SOUP!!”

This pregnancy is posing a lot of issues for me — issues I didn’t have or feel with the twins, so this is all a bit scary. To explain:

When I found out we were having twins back in April 2008, I felt like we’d been somehow “chosen.” Silly, I know. But I saw it as a gift, a great responsibility with which I’d been entrusted. I took it as my sole duty to nurture and grow those babies to the best of my ability.

Despite having battled serious body issues throughout my life, I felt little trepidation about the weight I purposely gained. It was all temporary, I thought. When the stretch marks appeared, I took them in stride. When I explored my post-partum body, I accepted its changes for what they were and promised myself I’d do the best I could to improve it.

At 16 months post-partum, all was beginning to feel fine and well. I was back in the gym, just a few pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. I’d finally pulled out my “skinny” clothes, even fitting into some of them. I had weaned the girls from breastfeeding so I could get back on Lamictal, a medication for bi-polar disorder that I’d had a ton of success with.

I finally felt like I was getting my body and life back.

In the back of my mind, I was dreaming of the surgery that would re-join my stomach muscles. In an even further recess of my mind, I thought maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t have more kids. Our girls were perfect and awesome. Why mess it up?

And then . . . Well, I got pregnant again. I really, really wasn’t ready for it. It’s not that I didn’t or don’t want or love the baby. It’s that it wasn’t planned and really caught me off guard.

So this time around, I’m having body issues. 21 weeks into the pregnancy and I’ve gained about five pounds. This is nothing compared to the twenty-ish I’d gained by this point with the twins, but every ounce of this new weight is filled with panic and self-loathing.

That nagging bitch of a voice in my head questions, Five pounds so far — so what does that mean for the rest of the pregnancy? How on earth am I going to keep my weight gain below 25 pounds? 20 pounds? 15? I don’t want to puff up, I don’t want a fat face, I don’t want melting thighs and a monster ass.

The bitch goes on. My stomach . . . Ugh, my god, my stomach. The silvery-white stretch marks circling the center of my abdomen, scarring the folds of loose skin left from my last pregnancy, are turning faintly purple. The weakened skin is going to give out. Again. And stretch even more. Again.

I panic. I self-pity. I don’t understand. I thought I paid my dues with my first pregnancy. I sacrificed and worked hard and did everything right. I let my body do what it wanted and needed. I grew two full-sized, healthy babies, delivered them vaginally, nursed them for almost a year and a half, stayed home with them to raise them in the best environment I could give.

And this is what I get? Anxiety about weight gain, depression, stress and more stretch marks?

I realize all of this is unhealthy thinking. Frankly, it’s shameful and embarrassing to feel any of this at all. It’s so superficial, so shallow, so silly.

I’m supposed to be jolly and maternal. I’m supposed to give motherly smiles to strangers. I’m supposed to be glowing, goddammit.

But that nagging voice, that belittling bitch that tells me how worthless and disgusting I am, is seeping in.

I thought I was too fucking old for this shit. I know better than this.

These are just feelings. They are temporary. I love this baby, her little punches and kicks, the weight of her growing body, the thought of her in our lives. I will grow her and adore her and do a good job with her, too.

But these damned feelings…

So I tell my little girl I’m sorry and I love you and This has nothing to do with you.

My only defense right now is not thinking about it too much. It hurts — hurts to feel it, hurts to admit I feel it.

I promise I’ll try to be sarcastic and funny again soon. Right now, I’m just working through this the best I can.