I know that everyone has heard the expression "day from hell." It's been used to describe everything from traffic to weather to work conditions to a death in the family. Everyone has their own barometer that defines what miserable is to them. Nightmares are subjective. What's a living hell to me might be only uncomfortable or an irritant to you. For example, that period of time when the boys were newborns and getting me up at all hours of the night to eat wasn't nearly as disturbing to me as it was for most other women. I certainly won't say that it was pleasant, I won't tell you that I would want to do it again, but it wouldn't be the thing that kept me from having another baby. However, I know of one woman who had a great pregnancy, an easy childbirth (relatively speaking), and pleasant hospital stay. But those first couple of months were a hell for her like nothing she had ever experienced. She had incredible difficulties adapting to the lack of sleep. Her baby wasn't colicky or a difficult eater, he just woke up every 3-4 hours like newborns do, and she couldn't cope well with that. What was easy for me to deal with was hard for her. On the flip side, though, we both had difficulties in our pregnancies. I worried it to death, bemoaned it, whined, and writhed around in pain. She was all "eh, it happens" and handled it like a champ. Again, what was miserable for me was just another thing for her.
My point (and I do have one) is that I expected some bad days as a parent. I expected some days when the kids would draw on the walls, they'd track mud through the house, they'd be bratty, all that great stuff. I expected days like that. But I never, ever expected days so bad that I would find myself sitting in the floor weeping, thinking "I was not meant to be a parent. I should never have had children. I am a terrible parent and these children would be better off with someone, anyone other than me. I don't know that I even want to be a parent anymore. I just was not meant to be a parent." This level of 'crappy day' hit me broadside.
Nobody ever told me that there would be days I would doubt whether or not I should even have had my kids.
I wonder about my ability to parent my kids all the time. I feel like I fail my kids constantly. For everything I do that I feel like I've succeeded, I feel like I've let them down 50 more times. 'Oh, you made them pb&j for lunch? Why didn't you cut up apples and grapes to go with it? Or fix them ants-on-a-log? You put out paper and crayons for them to play with and turned the TV off? Why didn't you send them outside to play in the fresh air instead? Or make them homemade play-dough? You're on the computer blogging? Why aren't you playing candyland with your kids? Or cleaning your house so they have a better environment to grow up in?' This is the soundtrack in my brain, and it's not pretty. So when they misbehave, while I recognize it's their behavior that's wrong, it's also my fault for not teaching them correct behavior. Especially with my oldest child who knows better. And he's been giving me a fit lately...he KNOWS better, and yet he continues to do these things. No form of discipline is entirely correct, there are detractors and supporters for every type of discipline out there. Different kinds work for different children. And you just don't know what works for your child until you try it. Unfortunately, that means you're inconsistent until you find what works with YOUR child. In the meantime, you feel like an utter failure and your kid acts like a turd.*
I can't offer any resolution or advice here. To be honest, the day from hell I'm talking about was yesterday, I was sitting in the floor crying 14 hours ago, and I'm still in the bad-day hangover as I write this. I went to bed crying last night and woke up this morning ready to cry. Although today has been a good day so far, I'm still halfway ready to throw in the towel, knowing it's impossible to even think about. This post isn't about finding resolution. It's not even about offering advice. My one and only aim here in exposing my heart so openly is this: I felt utterly alone last night. I feel pretty sure that I'm not the only person who has felt this way, about my children and about feeling alone in my feelings. I wanted other parents who have felt this way to know that they are NOT alone, they are NOT bad parents and that it is OK to feel this way. The bad days happen, and we just have to remind ourselves that good days and fair days far outnumber the bad. Believe me, I've been repeating that to myself today like a mantra....the good outnumber the bad. The good outnumber the bad. The good outnumber the bad...the good outnumber the bad....
Stay warm in this cold snap...and hug your babies. <3
*by "you" in this instance, I mean "me."
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Endless Heartbreak
This is a post that's been rattling around in my head for a while, I've been tooling around with how to phrase it, how to frame it, how to put it together. In fact, I started it a long time ago, have come back to it twice, fiddled around with it, and then put it back down and walked away from it. It's deeply personal and terribly painful, but something I think some of you may relate to, so I feel like I should put it out there, no matter how vulnerable it makes me.
My oldest son is the child of divorce. I was married to his father for a whopping 16 months, only 4 of them after he was born. I was married to him for 4 months when I realized I'd made a mistake. To be honest, we both made a mistake. Under different circumstances I think he and I may have had a good shot together, but the circumstances weren't different and we weren't compatible. I intended to tell my ex that I was leaving on New Year's Eve - you know, make a clean break and a new start at the same time - and found out I was pregnant on Dec. 30th. Of course, you can't leave someone while you're pregnant, right? Right. So I stayed, and nothing improved but our living arrangements. He was unemployed at the time we found out I was pregnant and I was working full time in a retail job. We were living in an apartment with a roommate. By the time I was seven months pregnant, we had bought a house, he was working at a good, solid job, and I had a part-time, temporary job that was scheduled to end on my due date. Everything should have been coming up roses, but it wasn't. Our marriage was broken, it was a Thing That Should Not Have Been, and both of us knew it -- even though we wouldn't admit it. I think we loved each other, but we couldn't fix it.
Our son was born and things deteriorated. It seems cheap and somehow hollow to try to encapsulate everything that happened in that four months in those seven words, but I don't know if I can write about all of those things and expose them to the public at large. Things were said that should not have been. Things were done that should not have been. And frankly, I don't want to relive all of that right now. So I will just say "Our son was born and things deteriorated." One year to the day after I found out I was pregnant, I told my ex I wanted a divorce. I will never forget that. He was repainting the bathroom...the bathroom I had painted for him as a Christmas gift. I had done it wrong, and he was fixing it. I went in, sat on the bed, and told him that I wanted a divorce. He wasn't angry. A little shocked, but not angry.
The divorce itself was very amicable. The custody battle was not. It was actually rather epic in it's nastiness. It took four years of nasty, hateful, seemingly endless court wrangling before it was all hammered out and the judge cut our son into portions. Again, this is something that I can't write about. First, because it took four years. Nobody wants to read about a saga that went on that long. But also because it was so ...nasty. It's just something that doesn't need to be relived. We'll just say that very ugly things happened, my son was jerked around, back and forth, from one house to another... and despite the fact that my ex and I tried very, very hard not to fight in front of him (and I can honestly say that we both did try), he saw and heard things that he should not have seen and heard. My son's custody schedule changed three times, only once by our mutual agreement (with some crazy schedule we came up with - I regret that schedule)*. In the end, we ended up with a court order of sole legal and primary physical custody to me. But it was hell getting here.
I said all of that to say this - all of that drama, all of that gnashing of teeth, all of that jerking back and forth, all of that tension...all of it effected my son deeply. I never knew. I mean, I knew. I knew kids of divorce growing up. But I never really knew.
Nobody told me just how deeply and powerfully my divorce from his father would affect my son, even though he was incredibly young while it was happening.
My son has an incredibly deep and abiding fear of abandonment. If he's upstairs in his room and I'm downstairs, he will sometimes come barreling down the steps wailing, screaming that he thought I had left him. I was too quiet and he thought I had gone. At no point during this child's life have I ever left him anywhere without letting him know. But he's petrified I'm going to abandon him.
My son won't talk to me about his stepmother. At all. He won't mention her name. The only time I ever hear him mention her name is either in conjunction with his Daddy's name or if he slips up and calls me by her name when he first comes back from their house - and that rarely happens. She has been a part of his life since he was 5 months old. I don't understand this, unless he was so affected by the acrimony between us that he is afraid of mentioning her. I don't know whether he talks about me there.
Andy has a very compartmentalized life, a very compartmentalized way of thinking about things sometimes. He has Mommy's house rules and ways of doing things, and then there's Daddy's house. Things that are OK at Mommy's are not OK at Daddy's. Things that he can get by with at Daddy's are not going to fly at Mommy's. He can make a huge mess at Mommy's and that's fine, but he'd better have his clothes on, they'd better match, and he'd better have read his books. At Daddy's he keeps his room spic and span, his toys are neat and organized with all of the parts put back in the box neatly; but he can wear whatever he wants even if it doesn't match, and if he's missing his socks that's no big deal. And my son has to jump from one life to another every other weekend. He has to remember what's okay where. He has to remember where it's okay to say what, where it's okay to leave your socks in the middle of the floor, where it's okay to say "fart" and where you'll get put in time-out for it.
Andy needs love. He absolutely has to have it, all the time. He begs me every night to cuddle him in his bed. He's constantly walking up to me rubbing his face on me like a cat (That drives me batty, but it's because this is the season of runny noses, and he's essentially wiping snot all over me. Which is not loving, it's gross.) If I'm sitting in a chair, he's on top of me. He craves my love and attention all of the time. And it's impossible to give him all of the love and attention he needs. I have two other children who need love and attention as well. Andy craves and needs more than they do, but I'm constantly sending one child or another away disappointed - sometimes all three. It hurts to send any of them away, but somehow it hurts most to send Andy away because I know how much he wants and needs the extra love.
It must be nearly impossible to be him. My husband and I spend between $90 and $130 every month in copays for counseling for him. He's not a bad child, he's not even really a difficult child. He's just in a bad, difficult situation. I never dreamed when I was going through the heartbreak of my divorce (and don't get me wrong, it was heartbreaking, even if I was the one who initiated it), that I would still be feeling the heartbreak of that divorce years and years later when I look at my son's face every day. I never thought for a moment that I would still be having repercussions of the decisions I made 8 years ago now. It's one of those things that either nobody told me, or they told me and I was too dense to realize or take in. It's like having your heart broken a little bit at a time constantly. And it sucks. It sucks hard.
And then there's the question every child of divorce asks his parents -- "Do you still love my mom/dad?" In movies, I had always seen the parent who was asked look distressed, then smile a wan little smile at their child and say, "I will always love your father/mother because he/she gave me you." I always thought that was a crock. Why would parents lie to their kids? Santa Claus is one thing, but about something as big as this? During my divorce and custody I worried constantly what I would say when that day came, and I thought I would have to lie to protect my son's feelings. But I couldn't lie. What would I do?
Then the day came, my son asked me that very question. I had to examine myself, my heart, and my emotions. I had to think about everything I had been through with his father. I had to think about our ill-fated marriage and the fighting therein. I relived the bitter misery of our custody fight for just a moment. And I realized in that moment that sometimes Hollywood gets it right. I smiled at my son, kissed his forehead, and told him the truth - that I would always love his Daddy because his Daddy gave me him. Then I went in the other room and bawled my eyes out.
This is the fourth time I've written and re-written this post. It's taken two months. I've walked away from it because it was too painful, and come back to it when I felt strong enough to face it. I'm still not sure how to end it, how to wrap it up. I think that's appropriate, though. There's no way to wrap up divorce, custody and all that goes with it in a neat little bow. It just isn't possible. There's nothing neat and tidy about dividing your child, Solomon-style. All I can tell you, the only way I can think of to end this post is to say this: As much as it hurts the spouses to end a marriage, it hurts the children hundreds, thousands of times more. And the pain that the parents feel never really ends...it morphs and changes and gets revisited every single time the subject is brought up with your child.
*If you ever are in a situation where you have to come up with a schedule for visitation, do it in blocks of time. Don't do it in "one night here, two nights here, then an afternoon here." Just don't. That's too hard on the kids and confusing for everyone.
My oldest son is the child of divorce. I was married to his father for a whopping 16 months, only 4 of them after he was born. I was married to him for 4 months when I realized I'd made a mistake. To be honest, we both made a mistake. Under different circumstances I think he and I may have had a good shot together, but the circumstances weren't different and we weren't compatible. I intended to tell my ex that I was leaving on New Year's Eve - you know, make a clean break and a new start at the same time - and found out I was pregnant on Dec. 30th. Of course, you can't leave someone while you're pregnant, right? Right. So I stayed, and nothing improved but our living arrangements. He was unemployed at the time we found out I was pregnant and I was working full time in a retail job. We were living in an apartment with a roommate. By the time I was seven months pregnant, we had bought a house, he was working at a good, solid job, and I had a part-time, temporary job that was scheduled to end on my due date. Everything should have been coming up roses, but it wasn't. Our marriage was broken, it was a Thing That Should Not Have Been, and both of us knew it -- even though we wouldn't admit it. I think we loved each other, but we couldn't fix it.
Our son was born and things deteriorated. It seems cheap and somehow hollow to try to encapsulate everything that happened in that four months in those seven words, but I don't know if I can write about all of those things and expose them to the public at large. Things were said that should not have been. Things were done that should not have been. And frankly, I don't want to relive all of that right now. So I will just say "Our son was born and things deteriorated." One year to the day after I found out I was pregnant, I told my ex I wanted a divorce. I will never forget that. He was repainting the bathroom...the bathroom I had painted for him as a Christmas gift. I had done it wrong, and he was fixing it. I went in, sat on the bed, and told him that I wanted a divorce. He wasn't angry. A little shocked, but not angry.
The divorce itself was very amicable. The custody battle was not. It was actually rather epic in it's nastiness. It took four years of nasty, hateful, seemingly endless court wrangling before it was all hammered out and the judge cut our son into portions. Again, this is something that I can't write about. First, because it took four years. Nobody wants to read about a saga that went on that long. But also because it was so ...nasty. It's just something that doesn't need to be relived. We'll just say that very ugly things happened, my son was jerked around, back and forth, from one house to another... and despite the fact that my ex and I tried very, very hard not to fight in front of him (and I can honestly say that we both did try), he saw and heard things that he should not have seen and heard. My son's custody schedule changed three times, only once by our mutual agreement (with some crazy schedule we came up with - I regret that schedule)*. In the end, we ended up with a court order of sole legal and primary physical custody to me. But it was hell getting here.
I said all of that to say this - all of that drama, all of that gnashing of teeth, all of that jerking back and forth, all of that tension...all of it effected my son deeply. I never knew. I mean, I knew. I knew kids of divorce growing up. But I never really knew.
Nobody told me just how deeply and powerfully my divorce from his father would affect my son, even though he was incredibly young while it was happening.
My son has an incredibly deep and abiding fear of abandonment. If he's upstairs in his room and I'm downstairs, he will sometimes come barreling down the steps wailing, screaming that he thought I had left him. I was too quiet and he thought I had gone. At no point during this child's life have I ever left him anywhere without letting him know. But he's petrified I'm going to abandon him.
My son won't talk to me about his stepmother. At all. He won't mention her name. The only time I ever hear him mention her name is either in conjunction with his Daddy's name or if he slips up and calls me by her name when he first comes back from their house - and that rarely happens. She has been a part of his life since he was 5 months old. I don't understand this, unless he was so affected by the acrimony between us that he is afraid of mentioning her. I don't know whether he talks about me there.
Andy has a very compartmentalized life, a very compartmentalized way of thinking about things sometimes. He has Mommy's house rules and ways of doing things, and then there's Daddy's house. Things that are OK at Mommy's are not OK at Daddy's. Things that he can get by with at Daddy's are not going to fly at Mommy's. He can make a huge mess at Mommy's and that's fine, but he'd better have his clothes on, they'd better match, and he'd better have read his books. At Daddy's he keeps his room spic and span, his toys are neat and organized with all of the parts put back in the box neatly; but he can wear whatever he wants even if it doesn't match, and if he's missing his socks that's no big deal. And my son has to jump from one life to another every other weekend. He has to remember what's okay where. He has to remember where it's okay to say what, where it's okay to leave your socks in the middle of the floor, where it's okay to say "fart" and where you'll get put in time-out for it.
Andy needs love. He absolutely has to have it, all the time. He begs me every night to cuddle him in his bed. He's constantly walking up to me rubbing his face on me like a cat (That drives me batty, but it's because this is the season of runny noses, and he's essentially wiping snot all over me. Which is not loving, it's gross.) If I'm sitting in a chair, he's on top of me. He craves my love and attention all of the time. And it's impossible to give him all of the love and attention he needs. I have two other children who need love and attention as well. Andy craves and needs more than they do, but I'm constantly sending one child or another away disappointed - sometimes all three. It hurts to send any of them away, but somehow it hurts most to send Andy away because I know how much he wants and needs the extra love.
It must be nearly impossible to be him. My husband and I spend between $90 and $130 every month in copays for counseling for him. He's not a bad child, he's not even really a difficult child. He's just in a bad, difficult situation. I never dreamed when I was going through the heartbreak of my divorce (and don't get me wrong, it was heartbreaking, even if I was the one who initiated it), that I would still be feeling the heartbreak of that divorce years and years later when I look at my son's face every day. I never thought for a moment that I would still be having repercussions of the decisions I made 8 years ago now. It's one of those things that either nobody told me, or they told me and I was too dense to realize or take in. It's like having your heart broken a little bit at a time constantly. And it sucks. It sucks hard.
And then there's the question every child of divorce asks his parents -- "Do you still love my mom/dad?" In movies, I had always seen the parent who was asked look distressed, then smile a wan little smile at their child and say, "I will always love your father/mother because he/she gave me you." I always thought that was a crock. Why would parents lie to their kids? Santa Claus is one thing, but about something as big as this? During my divorce and custody I worried constantly what I would say when that day came, and I thought I would have to lie to protect my son's feelings. But I couldn't lie. What would I do?
Then the day came, my son asked me that very question. I had to examine myself, my heart, and my emotions. I had to think about everything I had been through with his father. I had to think about our ill-fated marriage and the fighting therein. I relived the bitter misery of our custody fight for just a moment. And I realized in that moment that sometimes Hollywood gets it right. I smiled at my son, kissed his forehead, and told him the truth - that I would always love his Daddy because his Daddy gave me him. Then I went in the other room and bawled my eyes out.
This is the fourth time I've written and re-written this post. It's taken two months. I've walked away from it because it was too painful, and come back to it when I felt strong enough to face it. I'm still not sure how to end it, how to wrap it up. I think that's appropriate, though. There's no way to wrap up divorce, custody and all that goes with it in a neat little bow. It just isn't possible. There's nothing neat and tidy about dividing your child, Solomon-style. All I can tell you, the only way I can think of to end this post is to say this: As much as it hurts the spouses to end a marriage, it hurts the children hundreds, thousands of times more. And the pain that the parents feel never really ends...it morphs and changes and gets revisited every single time the subject is brought up with your child.
*If you ever are in a situation where you have to come up with a schedule for visitation, do it in blocks of time. Don't do it in "one night here, two nights here, then an afternoon here." Just don't. That's too hard on the kids and confusing for everyone.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
I love you, but I don't like you. At all.
I taught preschool before I was a mom. And oh, how I idolized the kids I taught. Sure, they occasionally got on my nerves, but on the whole I worshipped the ground those kids walked on. The parents of the kids in my class could rest very comfortably knowing that their kids were well-loved in my class. I adored them and did my best for them, every day.
I quit teaching when I was two weeks away from giving birth to my oldest son. By the time I quit teaching, I had gone from preschool to child care, and my God, was there ever a difference. Maybe it was because I was pregnant, maybe it was because of the kids, maybe it was longer hours (on all of our parts), maybe it was the environment (again, on all of our parts), but by the time I quit I swore I would never go back to child care because I was afraid I would never want my own children if I did. And when he was born, the love affair with kids began again. With both of my boys, I had two years of uninterrupted bliss. My sons were the sun and the moon, and nothing would ever change that. (My daughter is slightly different, I'll get to that.)
Then they hit about two-and-a-half and shit got real. BLAM! Gone was my baby, and here comes this little wiseass Imma-do-what-I-want kid. And I found, to my horror, that there were times that I just did not like my kid. And it took me a while to realize and come to terms with something my mom had told me many times when she was upset...
I love my children all of the time. But that does not mean that I always like my children.
Take, for instance, my Charlie. Charlie is three-by-God-years-old. In just the time it took to write the above paragraphs, Charlie has:
~smacked his sister
~poured apple juice on the couch
~pulled babywipes out of the container and thrown them like confetti and
~climbed on the recliner and jumped off.
Now, granted, Charlie is an extreme example, because, well, you'd have to know Charlie. Charlie was born 4 weeks early because he was trying to kick his way out of my uterus and I couldn't take the pain, climbed the steps at 8.5 months old and has barely stopped moving since conception. He's always been a ball of energy. But still. I'm not digging this kid right this minute. At all.
But there are other times you don't like them and it's not their fault. There have been times that I've not liked all three of my kids and they were completely innocent. Like when they were newborns and getting me up every three hours, screaming until their faces were red while my tits ached and leaked.
Or when I looked in the mirror after losing all of my babyweight and then some, but saw my stomach that looked like a deflated balloon that a cat had scratched all to pieces, and realized that no matter how good I looked in my clothes, I'd never ever be able to look good in a bathing suit again. And in that moment, vanity won. I was not okay with the tradeoff. (I was very soon, but we all have our moments.)
Or when one of those rare moments of all three kids being asleep at the same time happens, and I go lay down to take just a quick powernap, and as soon as I close my eyes, one of them wakes up. DAMMIT!
These are not things that you have to like. Guys, we don't have to eat shit and grin about it. This isn't Caillou. (I hate that show.) Now, I'm not saying scream at your kids when you're frustrated and you don't want to be around them. That just ain't good parenting. I'm just saying that it's a completely natural thing and a completely natural feeling to not like your kids sometimes. Not just the things they do, but the way they act and the aspects of their personality. It's okay to not want to be around them. It's okay to want to leave them in a room and want to be alone.
You don't have to say it out loud. You can just say it to yourself, inside your head. Sometimes the tiny little pleasure of saying it in your head with gritted teeth is enough. The one thing I would caution is that you add, either in your head or out loud in your mutterances: when you say "I really don't like you," make sure you add "right now" to the end. My mother, while she was relatively frequent in letting us know that she didn't like us from time to time, she never ever said that without letting us know she loved us and putting that "right now" on the end. She said "I love you, but I don't like you right now." We always knew we were loved, but we'd pissed her off and we knew that, too.
And we knew it a lot.
I quit teaching when I was two weeks away from giving birth to my oldest son. By the time I quit teaching, I had gone from preschool to child care, and my God, was there ever a difference. Maybe it was because I was pregnant, maybe it was because of the kids, maybe it was longer hours (on all of our parts), maybe it was the environment (again, on all of our parts), but by the time I quit I swore I would never go back to child care because I was afraid I would never want my own children if I did. And when he was born, the love affair with kids began again. With both of my boys, I had two years of uninterrupted bliss. My sons were the sun and the moon, and nothing would ever change that. (My daughter is slightly different, I'll get to that.)
Then they hit about two-and-a-half and shit got real. BLAM! Gone was my baby, and here comes this little wiseass Imma-do-what-I-want kid. And I found, to my horror, that there were times that I just did not like my kid. And it took me a while to realize and come to terms with something my mom had told me many times when she was upset...
I love my children all of the time. But that does not mean that I always like my children.
Take, for instance, my Charlie. Charlie is three-by-God-years-old. In just the time it took to write the above paragraphs, Charlie has:
~smacked his sister
~poured apple juice on the couch
~pulled babywipes out of the container and thrown them like confetti and
~climbed on the recliner and jumped off.
Now, granted, Charlie is an extreme example, because, well, you'd have to know Charlie. Charlie was born 4 weeks early because he was trying to kick his way out of my uterus and I couldn't take the pain, climbed the steps at 8.5 months old and has barely stopped moving since conception. He's always been a ball of energy. But still. I'm not digging this kid right this minute. At all.
But there are other times you don't like them and it's not their fault. There have been times that I've not liked all three of my kids and they were completely innocent. Like when they were newborns and getting me up every three hours, screaming until their faces were red while my tits ached and leaked.
Or when I looked in the mirror after losing all of my babyweight and then some, but saw my stomach that looked like a deflated balloon that a cat had scratched all to pieces, and realized that no matter how good I looked in my clothes, I'd never ever be able to look good in a bathing suit again. And in that moment, vanity won. I was not okay with the tradeoff. (I was very soon, but we all have our moments.)
Or when one of those rare moments of all three kids being asleep at the same time happens, and I go lay down to take just a quick powernap, and as soon as I close my eyes, one of them wakes up. DAMMIT!
These are not things that you have to like. Guys, we don't have to eat shit and grin about it. This isn't Caillou. (I hate that show.) Now, I'm not saying scream at your kids when you're frustrated and you don't want to be around them. That just ain't good parenting. I'm just saying that it's a completely natural thing and a completely natural feeling to not like your kids sometimes. Not just the things they do, but the way they act and the aspects of their personality. It's okay to not want to be around them. It's okay to want to leave them in a room and want to be alone.
You don't have to say it out loud. You can just say it to yourself, inside your head. Sometimes the tiny little pleasure of saying it in your head with gritted teeth is enough. The one thing I would caution is that you add, either in your head or out loud in your mutterances: when you say "I really don't like you," make sure you add "right now" to the end. My mother, while she was relatively frequent in letting us know that she didn't like us from time to time, she never ever said that without letting us know she loved us and putting that "right now" on the end. She said "I love you, but I don't like you right now." We always knew we were loved, but we'd pissed her off and we knew that, too.
And we knew it a lot.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Boo Hoo Hoo
I'm a fairly emotional person by nature, but I don't cry inappropriately at much in books or movies. I mean, yeah, when Jenny dies in Forrest Gump (even though I hated her character), I cry. Steel Magnolias tears me a new one from the moment when Shelby collapses til the closing credits. I cried openly when both Sirius Black and Dobby died. Both book and film. (I was too outraged when Dumbledore was murdered to cry.) But most of those are places where you expect grown adults to cry.
Here's the thing, though. There's something monumentally unfair afoot here, and it's something that sneaks up on you and you don't expect. Hollywood producers are sneaky bastards, and they've done something that I never expected and wasn't warned about. It took me completely by surprise.
Nobody told me that I'd be weeping like a schoolgirl with a broken heart over the TV shows and movies my kids watch.
It's true. I can admit it. Now, I've always cried during Dumbo. Even as a child, I cried during the scene where his mother rocks him from inside the jail car and the song "Baby Mine" plays. But then I grew out of watching kids' TV, and I was spared watching that stuff. Now I'm back to watching all of these shows, and whoa. If Dumbo were the end of it, that'd be fine. But no. Oh no. Disney just can't leave it at that. And the people at Pixar are flat-out sadistic. I think they ENJOY making us weep like sniveling little bitches. At the very least, they've got some kind of backdoor deal with kleenex. I have yet to see a Pixar movie where I didn't leak from the eyes at some point during the film. Hell, I didn't make it 5 minutes into "Up" before I was blubbering all over the place.
But I'm certain there are psychologists employed at Disney who are specifically hired to determine how to yank the heartstrings ofus poor suckers parents. I didn't come up with this conspiracy theory until I sat down with my kids yesterday to watch "Pooh's Heffalump Movie" and cried. I mean, seriously. "Pooh's Heffalump Movie?" This is getting ridiculous. And yet, there I sat, wiping my eyes on the shoulder of my shirt because I was sitting under two toddlers. Who were not crying. At all. Just me. Mom the sucker.
Charlie, 3, turns around to me and says "Mommy, are you sad?"
No, honey. Mommy's not sad. Mommy's just a victim of Disney's corporate tear factory for parents. That's all.
Can't wait for Wreck-It Ralph. *sigh*
Here's the thing, though. There's something monumentally unfair afoot here, and it's something that sneaks up on you and you don't expect. Hollywood producers are sneaky bastards, and they've done something that I never expected and wasn't warned about. It took me completely by surprise.
Nobody told me that I'd be weeping like a schoolgirl with a broken heart over the TV shows and movies my kids watch.
It's true. I can admit it. Now, I've always cried during Dumbo. Even as a child, I cried during the scene where his mother rocks him from inside the jail car and the song "Baby Mine" plays. But then I grew out of watching kids' TV, and I was spared watching that stuff. Now I'm back to watching all of these shows, and whoa. If Dumbo were the end of it, that'd be fine. But no. Oh no. Disney just can't leave it at that. And the people at Pixar are flat-out sadistic. I think they ENJOY making us weep like sniveling little bitches. At the very least, they've got some kind of backdoor deal with kleenex. I have yet to see a Pixar movie where I didn't leak from the eyes at some point during the film. Hell, I didn't make it 5 minutes into "Up" before I was blubbering all over the place.
But I'm certain there are psychologists employed at Disney who are specifically hired to determine how to yank the heartstrings of
Charlie, 3, turns around to me and says "Mommy, are you sad?"
No, honey. Mommy's not sad. Mommy's just a victim of Disney's corporate tear factory for parents. That's all.
Can't wait for Wreck-It Ralph. *sigh*
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Ignorance is Bliss
First let me take a minute and apologize for my absence. I've been really sick. And when I say really sick, I mean REALLY sick. Like, verge-of-hospitalization, can't-get-out-of-bed-or-be-left-alone sick. The last time I can remember being close to that ill was when I had mononeucleosis at age 15...and even then I bounced back remarkably quickly. This had me down for the count for well over a week. Today is the first day I've been alone with the kids for any length of time in just shy of two weeks, and the vast majority of that time I've spent in the bed, flat on my back. I don't do that very well. My mom, the nurse, is fond of telling me what a shitty patient I am, and we butted heads several times (when I had the energy.)
We all have people who we think are cooler than we are. For me, that happens to be everyone, since I am supremely uncool. But today, someone who I happen to think of as really, really cool had their first child. A post appeared on Facebook stating that he and his wife had had their first child after an incredibly short labor, and listed the name and weight. Of course there's a picture of him holding his infant son, looking at his newborn as if the child has come to save the world from the Mayan apocalypse in 5 months. And in that moment, I looked at this man's picture of him looking at his newborn, all doe-eyed, this man who I admire and would never have the nerve to speak to, and thought to myself, "Bless your heart...you know so much about so much, and right in this moment you're so frickin' ignorant you can barely function."
And then I immediately hoped to God he never found out I thought that, because the reason this guy rose to popularity was by cursing people out for money on Fiverr. And I don't want that.
And then I immediately came to blog my thought on the internet for all the world to see.
BUT HEAR ME OUT.
This wasn't a malicious thought. Every parent in the world, at the moment they have their first child, thinks they have it all together. Most of them have read all of the books. They've got the room ready, the clothes washed and laid out. They've decided on a birth plan, the bags are packed for the hospital, everything is ready to go. They know all about meconium, circumcision, breastfeeding, rooming-in...all of those things you need to know about in the first days. They're as armed as they can possibly be. And then....then it all happens. IT HAPPENS.
I remember that moment for me. My oldest child was an emergency c-section and had some breathing issues after his birth (which is relatively common. Frightening, but not unusual.) He was incubated for a short time, and kept in the hospital for a little longer than most newborns. At his two-week checkup, which was the first appointment of the day, they did a chest x-ray to make sure that everything was cleared up in his lungs. At lunchtime, I got a call back from the doctor's office telling me that I needed to get back to the office with the baby right away. I called my then-husband, and we met there. They had a room ready for us, we didn't even sit in the waiting room. Within a couple of minutes, our doctor came in to tell us that our 15-day-old had an enlarged heart, it was a very dangerous situation, and they were making arrangements for us to be flown to Duke University Medical Center on a life-flight helicopter while she conferenced with neo-natal cardiologists. My husband and I just sat there, shell-shocked while our newborn sucked his fist and slept.
We made calls - our parents and his work - and made arrangements to be gone for a couple of days. Then the doctor came back in - Duke was confident enough to let us drive down to them (an hour and 20 minute drive), we wouldn't have to fly. Well, that's swell, but neither of us was in any fit state to drive right then. We went on making more arrangements to get to Duke. We called a family friend to go to the house and pack clothes for both of us and the baby for two days. We notified more family. We alerted prayer lists. We prayed ourselves. We looked at each other and wondered just what on earth was happening. And then the doctor came in again...the NeoNatal cardiologists felt that we could take Andy home and drive to Duke first thing the next morning. We left that office after closing in a daze, after begging them to let us go to Duke right then. Please don't send us home to wait. But wait we did.
That night was the first realization of just how ignorant I was as a parent. My son was two weeks old, and so far, although I had been taken by surprise by the c-section and its aftermath, I'd felt competant and knowledgeable. The books and my friends had prepared me. But this time, there was nothing to prepare me for this experience. And all of that lead up brings me to the point of this post.
Nothing could prepare me for the helpless, desperate, gut-wrenching fear of not knowing what's wrong with my baby, and what I could do to fix it.
(To finish the story, I watched my son all night, every breath. I had some minor psychological episode and refused to allow anyone else to hold him the entire time. The next morning, we went to Duke, the cardiologist saw Andy and said that he was perfectly fine, someone had misread the X-ray, they did a full exam, and my son has a completely normal heart. He has never had to have any follow-up exams.)
There have been many, many other times that this helpless feeling has washed over me...every time they start crying and you have NO idea why. When they refuse to be soothed. That fever with no origin. The inexplicible grumpiness. And then there are the times that they're upset and crying and the reason is something so simple, something you know you always check first thing, but just this one time, you didn't, and that's what's bothering them. Or when they're sick and you've done everything you can but there's just nothing more you can do. It's a horrible, stupid feeling. I always thought I was terribly smart - until I had my children. And now I feel like my IQ drops every day....but I blame part of that on The Fresh Beat Band.
There's comfort, though. For every moment that you feel like the most ignorant piece of shit that ever walked the face of the earth, there's a moment where your child looks at you like you are the greatest human being who ever lived - and to them, you are. For every time you want to tear out your hair because they're trying to communicate something to you, you don't understand, they're frustrated and crying and YOU'RE frustrated and feel like crying - there's a moment when your little angel will come toddling to you, arms up and smiling, and that will communicate love like nothing you have ever imagined. For every tear, there's five smiles. For every temper tantrum, there's a game of peek-a-boo (or my children's favorite, "smell my stinky feet.") I'd like to say that it all balances out, but it doesn't - the good far outweighs the bad. I would just be a complete asshole if I let all the happy-goody fun times get listed and didn't mention the crappy, sad, where-did-I-sign-up-for-this-parenting-gig-and-how-in-the-almighty-hell-do-I-get-out-of-it times. There ARE those times....but on the scales, for me, the "I love being a mommy" outweigh the "kill me now" times.
Most of the time.
Catch me again the week before school starts.
We all have people who we think are cooler than we are. For me, that happens to be everyone, since I am supremely uncool. But today, someone who I happen to think of as really, really cool had their first child. A post appeared on Facebook stating that he and his wife had had their first child after an incredibly short labor, and listed the name and weight. Of course there's a picture of him holding his infant son, looking at his newborn as if the child has come to save the world from the Mayan apocalypse in 5 months. And in that moment, I looked at this man's picture of him looking at his newborn, all doe-eyed, this man who I admire and would never have the nerve to speak to, and thought to myself, "Bless your heart...you know so much about so much, and right in this moment you're so frickin' ignorant you can barely function."
And then I immediately hoped to God he never found out I thought that, because the reason this guy rose to popularity was by cursing people out for money on Fiverr. And I don't want that.
And then I immediately came to blog my thought on the internet for all the world to see.
BUT HEAR ME OUT.
This wasn't a malicious thought. Every parent in the world, at the moment they have their first child, thinks they have it all together. Most of them have read all of the books. They've got the room ready, the clothes washed and laid out. They've decided on a birth plan, the bags are packed for the hospital, everything is ready to go. They know all about meconium, circumcision, breastfeeding, rooming-in...all of those things you need to know about in the first days. They're as armed as they can possibly be. And then....then it all happens. IT HAPPENS.
I remember that moment for me. My oldest child was an emergency c-section and had some breathing issues after his birth (which is relatively common. Frightening, but not unusual.) He was incubated for a short time, and kept in the hospital for a little longer than most newborns. At his two-week checkup, which was the first appointment of the day, they did a chest x-ray to make sure that everything was cleared up in his lungs. At lunchtime, I got a call back from the doctor's office telling me that I needed to get back to the office with the baby right away. I called my then-husband, and we met there. They had a room ready for us, we didn't even sit in the waiting room. Within a couple of minutes, our doctor came in to tell us that our 15-day-old had an enlarged heart, it was a very dangerous situation, and they were making arrangements for us to be flown to Duke University Medical Center on a life-flight helicopter while she conferenced with neo-natal cardiologists. My husband and I just sat there, shell-shocked while our newborn sucked his fist and slept.
We made calls - our parents and his work - and made arrangements to be gone for a couple of days. Then the doctor came back in - Duke was confident enough to let us drive down to them (an hour and 20 minute drive), we wouldn't have to fly. Well, that's swell, but neither of us was in any fit state to drive right then. We went on making more arrangements to get to Duke. We called a family friend to go to the house and pack clothes for both of us and the baby for two days. We notified more family. We alerted prayer lists. We prayed ourselves. We looked at each other and wondered just what on earth was happening. And then the doctor came in again...the NeoNatal cardiologists felt that we could take Andy home and drive to Duke first thing the next morning. We left that office after closing in a daze, after begging them to let us go to Duke right then. Please don't send us home to wait. But wait we did.
That night was the first realization of just how ignorant I was as a parent. My son was two weeks old, and so far, although I had been taken by surprise by the c-section and its aftermath, I'd felt competant and knowledgeable. The books and my friends had prepared me. But this time, there was nothing to prepare me for this experience. And all of that lead up brings me to the point of this post.
Nothing could prepare me for the helpless, desperate, gut-wrenching fear of not knowing what's wrong with my baby, and what I could do to fix it.
(To finish the story, I watched my son all night, every breath. I had some minor psychological episode and refused to allow anyone else to hold him the entire time. The next morning, we went to Duke, the cardiologist saw Andy and said that he was perfectly fine, someone had misread the X-ray, they did a full exam, and my son has a completely normal heart. He has never had to have any follow-up exams.)
There have been many, many other times that this helpless feeling has washed over me...every time they start crying and you have NO idea why. When they refuse to be soothed. That fever with no origin. The inexplicible grumpiness. And then there are the times that they're upset and crying and the reason is something so simple, something you know you always check first thing, but just this one time, you didn't, and that's what's bothering them. Or when they're sick and you've done everything you can but there's just nothing more you can do. It's a horrible, stupid feeling. I always thought I was terribly smart - until I had my children. And now I feel like my IQ drops every day....but I blame part of that on The Fresh Beat Band.
There's comfort, though. For every moment that you feel like the most ignorant piece of shit that ever walked the face of the earth, there's a moment where your child looks at you like you are the greatest human being who ever lived - and to them, you are. For every time you want to tear out your hair because they're trying to communicate something to you, you don't understand, they're frustrated and crying and YOU'RE frustrated and feel like crying - there's a moment when your little angel will come toddling to you, arms up and smiling, and that will communicate love like nothing you have ever imagined. For every tear, there's five smiles. For every temper tantrum, there's a game of peek-a-boo (or my children's favorite, "smell my stinky feet.") I'd like to say that it all balances out, but it doesn't - the good far outweighs the bad. I would just be a complete asshole if I let all the happy-goody fun times get listed and didn't mention the crappy, sad, where-did-I-sign-up-for-this-parenting-gig-and-how-in-the-almighty-hell-do-I-get-out-of-it times. There ARE those times....but on the scales, for me, the "I love being a mommy" outweigh the "kill me now" times.
Most of the time.
Catch me again the week before school starts.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Oh, you're sick? Well, f*** you.
First, let me start this post by saying that I'm in a lot of pain. Like, a lot of pain. I'm lying on a heating pad and waiting for my pain pill to kick in as I type - and I DON'T take prescription pain meds. It's one of my (many) odd little quirks. What's causing my pain is yet to be determined. We think it's my kidney, but we're not even sure about that. I was in the ER (something else I never, ever do) until the wee hours of Friday morning after making a trip to Urgent Care (Thing I Never Do #3) Thursday evening. The general consensus is that I have a kidney stone, but I'm not so sure. Neither was the ER doc. Her initial diagnosis was a kidney stone, but the CT scan said 'no', so she diagnosed me with a urinary tract infection and sent me home with a bagful of high-powered drugs that don't jibe with a simple UTI. In any case, I have an appointment with a real, live urologist tomorrow morning, and I'm actually a little excited about this.
I said all of that to say this - I'm probably going to be a little less delicate than usual today. For that, I beg your forgiveness in advance. Unless, of course, it's funnier/better writing. In which case, I totally meant to do it.
My kids have been pretty great while I've been sick. As great as they can be at two and one, anyway. When I'm crying, my two-year-old will come and give me kisses and say "I love you too, Mommy." My one year old just climbs on me indiscriminately. They both demand to be fed and loved. The diapers still have to be changed, because shit still stinks. Which brings me to my point.
Although people told me this, it never sunk in until it happened to me. There are no sick days when you become Mommy. It doesn't matter how bad you feel. Your baby's needs, no matter how trivial they seem, come first.
Now, I really, REALLY don't want to trivialize non-parents. I don't. I remember many, many times that I went to work sick, did shit I didn't want to do when I didn't feel like it, and did it with as minimal complaint as possible. But there was the option. Nobody's actual existence depended on whether or not I showed up to work.* But with my kids, their lives depend on whether or not I take care of them, especially at their tender ages. They can't change the pissbags that hang around their waists. They can't fix their own food or give themselves their own baths. They can not take care of themselves. So it just doesn't matter if I have a rock trying to work its way out of my peehole. I have to take care of my babies. Kidneys be damned, I have to be Mommy.
*I fully recognize that some people have jobs where other peoples existence relies on them.
When I came home from the hospital with Katie, she was a preemie who had difficulties breastfeeding. I could not get her to latch for love nor money. Therefore, I ended up pumping every three hours around the clock, and then bottle-feeding her the products of said pumping. I was also having problems producing enough milk for her and she was not gaining weight, so I had to supplement with formula. Two bottle feedings every three hours. Plus pumping each breast. Every. Three. Hours. Every 24 hours. I was not sleeping (when did I have the damned time?) and my mental health was slipping, so after 9 weeks of this (NINE FUCKING WEEKS) my doctor patted me on the back and said, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." And I got to hang up the breast pump. Hallelujah.
During that period of time that I was pumping eight times a day, bottle feeding eight- to sixteen times a day, and not sleeping at all, I still had a one-and-a-half year old and a five-and-a-half year old who needed my attention, too. I couldn't say to them, "Oh, hey, yeah, I need you guys to go take care of yourselves until Mommy gets this shit straightened out and then I'll get back to being your mother." Sometimes I wish fervently I could put my kids on hold - particularly when I'm in the bathroom. But I couldn't, and I had to make do. My kids watched WAY more than the reccommended 2-hours-a-day of TV, and they didn't play outside or one-on-one with Mommy nearly enough. I was too busy sucking milk out of my boobs, and that pump is a bit cumbersome for use during Thomas The Tank Engine play. I have terrible guilt about it. But I did what I could, and I'm doing what I can now.
And that's the bottom line. There are times, as Moms, when all you can do is all you can do. Even not as a mom...All you can do is all you can do. Think about that for a second. Do what you can and what you have to, the rest will figure itself out.
If we did everything by the parenting books, we'd be perfect, our kids would never misbehave, we'd feed them perfectly prepared balanced meals every night, they'd never watch more than 1 hour of perfectly educational television a day, and we'd put therapists out of business. And really, who would want that? Personally, I'd die without guilty pleasure TV, fishsticks and mac&cheese, and therapy.
I said all of that to say this - I'm probably going to be a little less delicate than usual today. For that, I beg your forgiveness in advance. Unless, of course, it's funnier/better writing. In which case, I totally meant to do it.
My kids have been pretty great while I've been sick. As great as they can be at two and one, anyway. When I'm crying, my two-year-old will come and give me kisses and say "I love you too, Mommy." My one year old just climbs on me indiscriminately. They both demand to be fed and loved. The diapers still have to be changed, because shit still stinks. Which brings me to my point.
Although people told me this, it never sunk in until it happened to me. There are no sick days when you become Mommy. It doesn't matter how bad you feel. Your baby's needs, no matter how trivial they seem, come first.
Now, I really, REALLY don't want to trivialize non-parents. I don't. I remember many, many times that I went to work sick, did shit I didn't want to do when I didn't feel like it, and did it with as minimal complaint as possible. But there was the option. Nobody's actual existence depended on whether or not I showed up to work.* But with my kids, their lives depend on whether or not I take care of them, especially at their tender ages. They can't change the pissbags that hang around their waists. They can't fix their own food or give themselves their own baths. They can not take care of themselves. So it just doesn't matter if I have a rock trying to work its way out of my peehole. I have to take care of my babies. Kidneys be damned, I have to be Mommy.
*I fully recognize that some people have jobs where other peoples existence relies on them.
When I came home from the hospital with Katie, she was a preemie who had difficulties breastfeeding. I could not get her to latch for love nor money. Therefore, I ended up pumping every three hours around the clock, and then bottle-feeding her the products of said pumping. I was also having problems producing enough milk for her and she was not gaining weight, so I had to supplement with formula. Two bottle feedings every three hours. Plus pumping each breast. Every. Three. Hours. Every 24 hours. I was not sleeping (when did I have the damned time?) and my mental health was slipping, so after 9 weeks of this (NINE FUCKING WEEKS) my doctor patted me on the back and said, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." And I got to hang up the breast pump. Hallelujah.
During that period of time that I was pumping eight times a day, bottle feeding eight- to sixteen times a day, and not sleeping at all, I still had a one-and-a-half year old and a five-and-a-half year old who needed my attention, too. I couldn't say to them, "Oh, hey, yeah, I need you guys to go take care of yourselves until Mommy gets this shit straightened out and then I'll get back to being your mother." Sometimes I wish fervently I could put my kids on hold - particularly when I'm in the bathroom. But I couldn't, and I had to make do. My kids watched WAY more than the reccommended 2-hours-a-day of TV, and they didn't play outside or one-on-one with Mommy nearly enough. I was too busy sucking milk out of my boobs, and that pump is a bit cumbersome for use during Thomas The Tank Engine play. I have terrible guilt about it. But I did what I could, and I'm doing what I can now.
And that's the bottom line. There are times, as Moms, when all you can do is all you can do. Even not as a mom...All you can do is all you can do. Think about that for a second. Do what you can and what you have to, the rest will figure itself out.
If we did everything by the parenting books, we'd be perfect, our kids would never misbehave, we'd feed them perfectly prepared balanced meals every night, they'd never watch more than 1 hour of perfectly educational television a day, and we'd put therapists out of business. And really, who would want that? Personally, I'd die without guilty pleasure TV, fishsticks and mac&cheese, and therapy.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Cutsey-wootsy phrasey-poos
Four days since my last post, wow. I know it looks like I've been slacking, but I promise I haven't. Another little facet of my life is that I run an etsy shop (beebys.etsy.com) and travel around to craft shows on weekends that I can to sell my wares. (Doesn't that make me sound old-fashioned? "sell my wares.") Anyway, that's my contribution to the family as a stay-at-home-mom. I make earrings and headbands, and I sell them online or at craft shows. Well, in the past four days I've made and listed forty earrings and/or headbands. It's been hectic, and I got distracted. I'm sorry.
Back to the show!
I don't follow many blogs for the same reason I don't look at other crafters' jewelry shops if I can help it - I don't want to be accused of cribbing. But there IS one blog that I follow religiously, and I even pariticipate in an online discussion about it. It's the blog of a pagan grifter who makes all sorts of rediculous claims, including that she is married to certain gods and that Freddie Mercury comes to her as a spirit and refers to himself as "Auntie Freddie."
Now. I have absolutely nothing against paganism. As a matter of fact, through the discussion thread I've been a part of for several months as we've followed this blog, my perception of people who are pagans has changed. They're just folks like anyone else, and just like in every religion, there are salt-of-the-earth type people and there are kooks. What I DO have a problem with is someone being a grifter and robbing people blind through manipulation.
But there's something about this person that the others have a problem with, and it always makes me squirm. The writer of the blog we follow uses words like "yummy" and "tummy." When the other participants are railing about how obnoxious those words are, I always shrink a little. I use those words.
Which brings me to my point. When you have children, No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, cutesy words and phrases are going to seep their way into your everyday vocabulary.
Before I was even pregnant with my oldest son, I swore I wasn't going to be one of those moms who did babytalk to my child. I felt like it wasn't good for their development and I told myself I wouldn't be a babbling fool. For the most part, I stuck to it. I used adult words instead of nonsensical words and avoided babbling. But yummy, tummy, butt-butt, and other various cutesy bullshit worked its way in there. I'm still not sure how. But I found out how deeply it had entrenched itself one night in a most humiliating fashion.
There was a period of time after my oldest, Andy, was a year old that I was single. And being single, I went out very occasionally. On one evening, I was out with a girlfriend, Mitzi, and I had a bit much to drink. She was driving me home, and I suddenly felt carsick. I rolled down the window to get some fresh air. She kept asking me if I was alright and I assured her that I was fine. Suddenly, though, I was not so fine and asked her to pull over the car.
"Mitzi, pull over."
"Mitzi, pull over."
"MITZI, PULL OVER, QUICK! QUICK LIKE A BUNNY!"
Yes. I said "Quick like a bunny." To my friend. Who is an adult. Who thought it was hilarious.
But that's not all. I have a diploma (that I don't use) in medical transcription. Both of my parents are registered nurses, and my mother has been a nurse for 39 years. My entire life has been drenched in medical terminology and medical knowledge. I am not medically ignorant, not in the least. I've almost always had pleasant experiences with doctors and nurses, and I think it may be because I have at least a slight idea what I'm talking about and can use the correct terminology.
So I went to the doctor for what I thought was a gall bladder attack. My doctor came in and asked me what the problem was, and I proceeded to tell him what my symptoms were, rattling them off without putting a lot of thought into what I was saying. Then I noticed him looking at me a little funny, and I realized what had just come out of my mouth. I had just told him I was having pain not only in my upper right quadrant, but also in my tummy like I was about to have a really yucky poo.
/blink
/blinkblink
Did I really just say that?
Oh, FFS.
Back to the show!
I don't follow many blogs for the same reason I don't look at other crafters' jewelry shops if I can help it - I don't want to be accused of cribbing. But there IS one blog that I follow religiously, and I even pariticipate in an online discussion about it. It's the blog of a pagan grifter who makes all sorts of rediculous claims, including that she is married to certain gods and that Freddie Mercury comes to her as a spirit and refers to himself as "Auntie Freddie."
Now. I have absolutely nothing against paganism. As a matter of fact, through the discussion thread I've been a part of for several months as we've followed this blog, my perception of people who are pagans has changed. They're just folks like anyone else, and just like in every religion, there are salt-of-the-earth type people and there are kooks. What I DO have a problem with is someone being a grifter and robbing people blind through manipulation.
But there's something about this person that the others have a problem with, and it always makes me squirm. The writer of the blog we follow uses words like "yummy" and "tummy." When the other participants are railing about how obnoxious those words are, I always shrink a little. I use those words.
Which brings me to my point. When you have children, No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, cutesy words and phrases are going to seep their way into your everyday vocabulary.
Before I was even pregnant with my oldest son, I swore I wasn't going to be one of those moms who did babytalk to my child. I felt like it wasn't good for their development and I told myself I wouldn't be a babbling fool. For the most part, I stuck to it. I used adult words instead of nonsensical words and avoided babbling. But yummy, tummy, butt-butt, and other various cutesy bullshit worked its way in there. I'm still not sure how. But I found out how deeply it had entrenched itself one night in a most humiliating fashion.
There was a period of time after my oldest, Andy, was a year old that I was single. And being single, I went out very occasionally. On one evening, I was out with a girlfriend, Mitzi, and I had a bit much to drink. She was driving me home, and I suddenly felt carsick. I rolled down the window to get some fresh air. She kept asking me if I was alright and I assured her that I was fine. Suddenly, though, I was not so fine and asked her to pull over the car.
"Mitzi, pull over."
"Mitzi, pull over."
"MITZI, PULL OVER, QUICK! QUICK LIKE A BUNNY!"
Yes. I said "Quick like a bunny." To my friend. Who is an adult. Who thought it was hilarious.
But that's not all. I have a diploma (that I don't use) in medical transcription. Both of my parents are registered nurses, and my mother has been a nurse for 39 years. My entire life has been drenched in medical terminology and medical knowledge. I am not medically ignorant, not in the least. I've almost always had pleasant experiences with doctors and nurses, and I think it may be because I have at least a slight idea what I'm talking about and can use the correct terminology.
So I went to the doctor for what I thought was a gall bladder attack. My doctor came in and asked me what the problem was, and I proceeded to tell him what my symptoms were, rattling them off without putting a lot of thought into what I was saying. Then I noticed him looking at me a little funny, and I realized what had just come out of my mouth. I had just told him I was having pain not only in my upper right quadrant, but also in my tummy like I was about to have a really yucky poo.
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Did I really just say that?
Oh, FFS.
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