Ask me, ask me, ask me!

We took my girls to see my sister graduate with her doctorate of nursing practice. Claire sat on my niece's lap for awhile during the ceremony, then turned around and said "Is this important?"

Hannah is so close to walking that you could call her a walker, but what she doesn't do well is stop. When she gets this piece down I will post videos to you heart's content.

My daughter has become addicted to the Tom Petty song "The Waiting" and makes me play it over and over. Her dad gets fed up and won't do it but I generally will because I still experience the joy of doing that myself. I just uploaded a bunch of my old CD into iTunes so I have 350+ "new" old songs I have loved for years on the iPod. When I cam across the Smiths "Ask" today I had to play it three times in a row. The Smiths were one of those bands for whom the lyrics of my favorite songs often bore no relationship to my life bit I liked the sound so much I couldn't stop listening. And in "Panic" they stated it perfectly:
because the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life
. . . hang the DJ! hang the DJ! hang the DJ!

My day began in an OK fashion and ended with me vomiting out the door of my car on my way to pick up the kids, presumably from the virus one of my stepsons had last week and brought home or possibly from food poisoning from a top ramen noodle thing I ate for lunch. Not that I am done both shivering, aching in inexplicable places, and sweating as if I were exercising, and now that I have many medications and 16 ounces of liquid taken in very small doses on board, I am going to bed.

I realize this stream of consciousness post bore less resemblance to a jet stream and more to an El Nino pattern, but it is all I had in me, given that one of my eyes is closing in a neurological fit of disgust with the state of affairs, and that I am only sitting up to increase the odds of my test food staying down. I will now leave the land of the semi vertical with a stock pot in bed for deposits should they be necessary, and just try lying all the way down to hope for the best.

I'm Fighting the Battle of the Bulge. Send lawyers, guns, and money.

I can't believe how far I've come, to let things go this far downhill, but I can't take it anymore, and I am now formally and fully committing myself to losing weight and getting more fit. Will I be thin, in the end? Probably not. But it would be nice to match my miniature people somewhat. And I clearly need to reduce in size to be able to adequately chase Claire, or take Hannah down a slide in the guise of therapy. I think if I had not had to move about helping Hannah get mobile I would have been able to ignore this state of affairs a bit longer, but the strain on my weak neck from crawling about made my neck ache, my head pound, and my middle big and squishy. OK, maybe the middle was already squishy, but anyway . . . The last six months have made it apparent that I simply have to make changes and I really can't afford to wait anymore, for Hannah and Claire and for me. I went back to physical therapy two months ago to work on my neck specifically, and found that PT exercises for necks have changed a lot since right after my neck fusion surgery thirteen years ago. Although I was given exercises to do after my surgery, I did not get the breadth of information that I got this go round. I make faces and blow raspberries at the therapists, just because I can, and when I've had days where I couldn't turn my head to the right I blamed them but soldiered on. I have been faithful about stretching every day, and then working on strengthening my neck and all the supporting muscles of the upper body. For years I have been going to a gym, where I walk on a treadmill or use an elliptical trainer and I always tell myself that I am just getting back into exercise, so I shouldn't or needn't work too hard. I have been playing this mind game now since before Claire was born, and the upshot is that I barely sweat at all when I "work out" because I've really not been working very hard. So, last week, I saw a Jazzercise sign out in front of a community enter near me. I went to Jazzercise three to six times a week for about ten years, and although I wasn't thin, at least I was fit-ish, and my neck really caused me very little pain, unless I raked too many leaves, or paddled too hard on a river trip, or did something one sided or extreme. I called the number, got the schedule and this week I went back to Jazzercise. As I huffed and puffed my way through the first class on Wednesday I shed a few tears of joy to be back. I'm certain no one saw the tears through the sweat that soaked my face. I have not exercised hard enough to sweat into my eyes like that in going on five years. I went back on Friday, and today, and signed up for the whole summer. And right now I can barely move. I am pounding pills, taking fish oil and cal-mag, doubling up on vitamins and tonight I am going to bed kinda early and considering a massage for tomorrow. I had no idea my lower back was so weak, and adductors? I guess I haven't had much call to lift my leg sideways lately. So now I can't stick out a hip to park a child on it, without pulling on twenty different sore muscles. I keep thinking of that Far Side cartoon, where the cowboy is all shot full of arrows and says "Yeah it hurts Jeb, but it's a good hurt." This, by the way, is a joke that will not translate to your physical therapist if she is from Ukraine and did not grow up getting a Far Side book every Christmas. If I get through the next week then I am home free. But did all ya'll know there are muscles in your ribcage that seem to connect to both your hips and your neck? This baffles me. Maybe there is a supplement for that.

Motherhood, juxtapositonally speaking

My sister made a point to tell me Happy Day for Claire's birthday, and told me she always feels extra special on her kids' birthdays. I felt special but sort of bitchslapped too, so much so that I ended up crying at the bakery when I picked up Claire's fancy cake for the family party. I thought of how I'd brought home a cake from that bakery when Claire got home from the hospital, and how much bigger it was than her tiny wee head, and how addicted I became to that buttercream frosting, making her at least %25 butter for the next two months when I stayed home with her, trying to fatten her up.

It had already hit me some on Saturday, with her party coming up and me racing around doing party prep errands on a sunny spring day, high on my SECOND Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato, blaring Tom Petty in my minivan, and feeling the love. Jason had said something like "I wish I'd gotten this much when I was a kid" and I said yes you do, everyone should be so lucky to be as loved and cared for as my dear girl. It all came together in some weird "I won't forget this moment" sort of way, with the pleasure of giving her a great time and making her feel cherished and important, and the sun was shining and then came the juxtaposition of some of my old punk rock playing on the iPod, followed by Tom Petty with me screeching along with "oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now, don't it feel like something from a dream?" Yes! It is heaven! I get this lovely creature to spoil and fawn over and cradle in my arms, and then I remembered how I almost didn't get her at all. Once it hit me I couldn't let it go - how close I came to not getting to have heaven on earth. My doctors had no idea my baby was struggling, since I measured normally and the heartbeat was strong, but she is only alive because I asked for that extra test, just because I felt that I didn't feel enough movement. As soon as they slapped an ultrasound on me it was apparent the baby was not growing and needed to come out and be fed. When I asked how they could have just been willing to let me go home from the clinic that day, and what would have happened had I not sought extra testing, the doctor looked me straight in the eye and said "stillbirth."

I am normally a glass half full kind of gal. My glass has pretty well stayed on the full side except when it comes to motherhood. I should be able to just revel in the result, because the results I have are indeed astounding and glorious. Not for nothing did I make up a song like "Claire the Magnificent" to croon to her at night. Something about motherhood brings out the naked part of my soul. Any of you read the Narnia books as a child? When a character who has done wrong, really wrong, meets the Powers That Be and the all powerful Aslan rips through the extra bits right down to his soul, all naked and slippery? That is about how this motherhood gig goes. I am tooling along with just the joy, on a sunny day, in my minivan, and smack here comes the other side of it all, the fear and the worry and the oh-shit feelings. My people tell me how wonderful I am to have noticed and taken action, and saved the day for Claire, but it doesn't always look that way inside my head, through the PTSD. They tell me this too in relation to Hannah, that I noticed the signs of her CP before her doctors, before her father, and jumped on the therapy bandwagon at the first possible moment. I keep remembering how shocked I was that there was a problem for either of my kids, how inexplicable it all seemed, how close I came to not getting that first baby at all, let alone the second. I think sometimes how if I had not planned to breastfeed my second baby, despite all the motherfucking pumping and hassle with feeding Claire, in fact probably because how hard that all was I was determined to breastfeed baby number two and get it right, but if I had chosen to just formula feed, Hannah might not have CP at all, because she would never have dipped too low in calories learning how to nurse. Am I a good mother? Well, of course I am, but on the inside, I doubt, I wonder, and I feel guilty as hell. And then here comes that joy again, when I snuzzle them on the backs of their necks.

Twice this week total strangers asked me for advice about the big parts of motherhood, how to pick a day care and whether to use a day care for a medically fragile child. My name gets given out as an example of someone in the know. Fuckity, fuck, fuck I say! I don't know anything!! Of course I give advice but still, on the inside, I am full of self doubt. I keep wondering if I'll get caught faking.

Claire now has a new favorite song, because we played The Waiting for her on the way to the party. And now the poor girl at Mrs. Backer's bakery thinks I am insane since when I ask her to prepare a cake for us, I find myself telling her why I have to have a Mrs. Backer's cake on the actual birthday even though Claire would be happy with a Costco cake or even one of lesser quality, but I must have the buttercream icing that says "Claire came home" to me, and always will.

Haiku Friday: the brown smear slalom during dinner event

A tired old leaf
rests quietly on our floor
from last summer's pears

What is that, that glob?
Smeared across the kitchen floor?
And behind the chair?

Oh dear, a turdlet
A dingleberry dropped off
the furry beast's bum

Oh horrors, here's more.
Some dollops and a big smudge
strewn hither and yon

What the hell happened?
Lord Honey says "check her paws!"
When you examine

the last paw you check
behold, you find she
stepped in her own crap.

The brown smear slalom
requires hopping, mopping,
cleaning profanely.

We nailed the dismount
had to skip the day's fine meal
but we still medaled.

One O'Douls and a spleef of Spice, please

I heard this week that a criminal defendant was pulled over and about to be arrested for DUI when the arresting officer found him driving amidst a cloud of pot smoke. Later I learned from his probation officer that he was not charged with a drug offense when it was determined that he was not indeed smoking pot, but instead smoking Spice, a weedlike substance that is, in fact, not weed. It looks like weed, smells just like pot, and is available at local headshops for purchase. I had to ask the probation officer I had been speaking to "Wait - this here weed is for those who aren't cool enough to smoke pot but want others to believe they are cool enough? Who wants to be thought to be that cool, but really isn't cool enough to smoke pot? Who??" I spent some time pondering what the purpose might be - not wanting to fail a drug test at work but not wanting to lose face with homies? Is it like a pregnant woman who misses beer and gets an O'Douls out of sentimentality? I pictured a woman who has fake breasts, fake nails, dyed hair, and an O'Douls out on the lawn at a summer concert, sending a Spice joint down the row, smiling and saying "pass it on!" Um, I laughed. A lot. Because I am too cool to smoke fake pot in order to be thought cooler than I am.

It all got a bit less funny when we realized it is actually a drug which is impairing and which contains some variant of cannabinoids but is different from dope on a molecular level and is therefore dopey but not dopey enough to be illegal. Yet. So it is way less funny and one more thing for parents to be concerned about, as it now gives a basis for those wacky younguns to insist a water pipe really is for smoking something legal. Twenty five years ago I might have saved up my babysitting money to buy Spice, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

My kitchen clock is meant to look Victorian, with scrolly letters and an aged look, which is demonstrated by its representation of fake mold. Yes, fake mold. I realized this some time after I hung it on my wall. I decided I had to keep it until it wore out but I vowed then not to ever buy anything that represented fake decay. Real decay maybe, but no more fake decay.

Christmas tradition: the ties that bind

This is for Write of Passage - see here for details


As a child I struggled against my mother's Christmas traditions. I found certain of the strictures beyond enduring and others filled me with comfort and joy, just like the songs we sang at church.

Christmas trees were decorated on Christmas Eve only, and taken down on Epiphany. During the pre-Christmas season of Advent, an ancient German glitter bespecked cardboard bird was hung in the house, and our parents told us Walter would tell them and Santa how we'd behaved, and if we would deserve presents. Our Christmas morning began with stockings to be opened by each person at their speed of choice, either as fast as possible in one's own bed, waiting for the others to get up and enjoy each other, or slowly, over the course of the day or even the twelve days of Christmas. All stocking presents were wrapped in gaily colored paper, and every single thing in the stocking, even Kleenex, was wrapped except gold coins in the toe and candy canes at the top, peeking out, just so. Our breakfast was always, and I mean always, Little Sizzlers sausages, grapefruit halves, and Sara Lee pecan coffee cake. We had to go to church and on our return we could finally get at the presents. Before we began to open "tree" presents we would first open the "couch" presents that were all presents from anyone other than immediate family. All tree presents were wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with red ribbon, no exceptions. Friends might call me at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. to compare our respective loot, only to find I had not yet opened any of the real presents.

Some of these traditions remained difficult to carry on. I challenge you to wrap a bicycle in sheets of white tissue. When my sister married her husband balked at the white tissue. My husband snorts with laughter when I swear at the layers of wrapping as I put tissue on gifts, then ask him to stick his finger in to help me knot the ribbon. Five family gifts this year went out from my house in white butcher paper as a compromise, and I probably had only ten presents in white under my tree. After blackmailing my daughter with Santa's ever watchful eyes, I didn't hang my Walter bird and tell her he'd be observing her, because I thought that might be a lot of pressure for a three year old, and, she might put his eye out. Still, I wrap every gift in the stockings save candy, at great personal cost to my sleep in the weeks before Christmas. I don't attend church anymore, and I miss the Advent hymns, but I can't remember them well enough to torture my children with more than an opening line. My tree must be large to hold all my cherished ornaments and it looks just like my mother's always did.

When I was young I hated the waiting; now I can hold onto presents for days without batting an eye, in fact, I feel joy in the savoring. This may have been the beginning of me actually learning anything at all about patience. When I was young I did not know how comforting patterns were, and how disturbing to have the people around us change. As a parent, the necessity of routine is much more apparent, and I know now what it is to feel lost when the pattern is lost.

This year my mother ate her sausages at our Christmas brunch at my sister's home, and liked the sausage links I brought. Perhaps a woman shouldn't know and love the taste of a certain type of frozen sausage but she does. I brought a sauage I like better and so we didn't have Little Sizzlers but she liked fresh maple links more. We laughed, but it hurt just a little to see her change. It's her second year without a Christmas tree in her home, as the physical effort to put it up and take it down has become too great for her and my dad. Change is coming, and it won't be easy. I hope it tastes as good as maple.

Four years and two babies ago

Exactly four years ago tonight, Lord Honey and I came home from our wedding and went to bed, to sleep. We were exhausted and exhilarated and ready to fly to Hawaii the next day, if only to get warm. I remember feeling so overcome with emotion, and grateful, and hopeful, it kind of cracks me up to reflect on how I felt. I had wondered if Lord Honey was the right man for me, but made up my mind to give it my best. Now looking back, with all that water under the bridge, the reasons to worry look pretty different. And how would you know just what water would go under your bridge, and just whose skills would be needed? That multiple times I would call Lord Honey from a hospital room, shrieking about a baby coming too soon, or a baby coming now, or a baby that came and then went floppy, and all the rides in the car back and forth to the babies, and all those sleepless nights. And he was calm, Water, bridge. Bridge, water. Talk amongst yourselves, we need to grab a cup of coffee. And then the little things, more like puddles on the edge of the water under the bridge, like Lord Honey singing "The Battle of New Orleans" with me in a call and answer fashion while I shower and then finding the video of the song on You Tube. These were things I didn't see coming when I made my wedding vows.

Sweet Hannah got sent home from daycare today, after her caregiver was worried by how much she coughed while she napped, so she woke her up! So we opted not to put the girls at the babysitting night they were hosting at the day care, and instead stayed home with the wee ones and had pizza and watched Up. While I put the girls down one by one, Lord Honey crashed on the sofa and now refuses to go to bed although he cannot wake up enough to watch our grownup movie. This must mean we really are an old married couple. I had at least hoped for some anniversary action, but by the time I go to bed I'll be too tired myself. Maybe next week.

Who I used to be

Last night I had a whopping three drinks and I can barely keep it together today. Three! Working in criminal court will quell any appreciation for "tolerance" as a truly positive personal attribute when it comes to alcohol use, but I am not the woman I used to be when it comes to drinking and dancing. Truthfully it is likely not the alcohol that dragged me down as much as the sleepless night with a feverish baby who wakes and sleeps in fits and starts, but with vodka tonics before the sleepless night, well, let's just say I am not the brightest star in the heavens.

I struggled also today with returning a defective "smart" phone and selecting a different model thinking our smarts might match better. Technology just isn't my thing. Even though I love this blog I still haven't made it pretty and sleek and I still have no blogroll and I lack many other things I can't yet even name, because the tech part will never be the part for me. It is wonderful that my laptop can let me leap from place to place but the how, why, whistle and bell just don't don't hold my interest.

Some of my friends have teased me for having a cell phone and not giving out the number, even to people I liked (true). Others joked about how I actually used a pay as you go phone for years because I didn't really need more than that. When I got a RAZR three years ago I thought I was movin' on up, but was informed two and a half years ago that my phone was obsolete (also apparently true). I accept that I will never be on the cutting edge. I submit.

Weirder still, I have realized that I am not the shopper I was. I used to love to plunk down my card with a host of rationalizations about why I could spend money I didn't have. I liked to get new stuff and then take it someplace to show it off. Clothing sprees became distasteful as my weight increased from young adulthood. Bra shopping was the highest level of torture but some relief came in the Cinnabon stores at every mall. Now I find the getting of regular household stuff incredibly tedious. I get sweaty and annoyed just deciding on a product and the number of choices I have directly increases my tension. I'm sort of overwhelmed by the stuff I have and feeling a bit guilty for having it (except baby gear, which defies all reason, everywhere, I am certain). I generally combine all my errands not just to save time but to get the shopping over and done with so I can get back to my life. People, tell me, should I be worried? Am I leaving my old self too far behind? Shouldn't I like shopping more? Have I totally lost touch with myself and my inner spendthrift? Does this mean I am becoming a man?