I can’t get by without you and your big brown eyes

We had to say goodbye to our beloved dog, Callie, on Saturday. In the end, it didn’t surprise me that the thing that got her was a heart four times too big for her body. With the exception of my grandfather’s funeral, I have never cried as hard as I did after my husband left for the vet and I closed the front door.  She’s been a part of our lives for over a decade. We’ve been married for nine years, engaged for 18 months before that, so do the math and realize that we’re not entirely sure how to function without her big fuzzy head shoving us out of the way to get to the door first. I’m honestly at a loss. She was the first pet I ever had.

I didn’t realize how special she was until we got another dog. Gus is a dog who is in many ways easier than she was, a better listener, not nearly smart, so happy to please.  H most certainly a DOG. He loves being a dog, doing doggy things, chasing his tail, following commands, riding in the back seat, submitting to our will. We called C our fur person, obedience school drop-out, kicked out of doggie day care, the soul of a benevolent dictator trapped in the stout body of a terrier. I haven’t ever met an animal quite like her – the bossiest, loudest, smartest, most opinionated creature I’ve ever come across.

She always loved my husband the most. We went to see her litter, and while I lost my mind over OMG THE CUTE PUPPIES, hubs sat down on the floor and she shoved all the other puppies out of the way, crawled into his lap, and it was all over. Home with her all the time during her puppyhood, since he was a law student, they formed something in our house termed The Circle of Trust. Which basically involved his refusal to do anything she disliked.  This included but was not limited to: administering medications, cleaning her ears, bathing her, wiping poop off her butt, not giving her sandwiches, making her ride in the back seat, making her listen to any of the 100 words she could recognize, and kicking her out of bed. If he wasn’t home, I was an acceptable substitute. But she was DEVOTED to him.

And as for me? She took care of me as much as I took care of her.

Several years ago, I had surgery and complications and sank into an untreated depression, on extended, unwanted, unpaid medical leave from a horrible job I hated. I likely would have stayed in bed and shrank into nothing. But every single morning without fail, she literally stood on my face until I got up, fed her, walked her, tended to her agenda, an agenda which didn’t include me shriveling away into dust.

And after I had a baby and was cursed with horrible post-partum depression, she was just there. All the time. Silent, waiting, eyes full of understanding, still constantly trying to steal my lunch. She couldn’t jump up and stand on my face any more, but she let me sob into her fur every day for what seemed like hours. She wasn’t quite sure what that screaming, wailing thing in the weird-looking crate in the corner was, but she knew one of her people wasn’t right. I often suspect I might have been in a straight jacket without her calming presence.

When her breaths got shorter, when you could actually see through her skin how hard her heart was working, she started seeking me out for comfort in ways she never had before. I like to think I paid her back in the end.

It’s never seemed right to me that people compare dogs to your children. It does dogs a disservice. I love my kid to the bottom of my soul and would not hesitate for even one millionth of a secondto push him out of the way of a moving train. I loved Callie to the bottom of my soul too, but the difference? She’s the one who would have jumped in front of that moving train for me.

We’ll miss you, sweet girl.

Consumption

I have been sick since the beginning of time.

Or more specifically, since the kid became a super-mobile running around the house person and started putting ALL OF THE THINGS and their germs in his mouth. My approach to germs is not stringent. I wash my hands and the kiddo’s hands. I wipe his nose and discard the tissues. I breastfed for as long as I could take the biting, and then for one month longer than I wanted to because I have a martyr-guilt complex. I keep the house clean and mop the floors, etc. But I also believe that a little dirt is a good thing and that his body needs germs to practice fighting the bad guys. I don’t follow him around with lysol. I don’t constantly sanitize our hands or anything else in the house. We don’t have antibacterial soap or cleaner, because when I was around gross kids all day teaching, the minute I stopped using that stuff constantly was when I stopped getting sick.

And until quite recently this approach seemed to be working, since I got maybe one or two colds a year pre-kid, and in the 14+ months of this child’s life, he has had approximately four runny noses of note, a few not worth noting, and has never been sick enough to warrant a visit the doctor, even though we all love his doctor. He’s never had a fever higher than 100.

BECAUSE ALL THE GERMS ARE AFTER ME. Here’s the progression.

Kid goes to playdate because I am a responsible mother providing socialization. ALSO THE WALLS OF MY HOUSE ARE CLOSING IN AND I NEED TO TALK DURING DAYLIGHT TO A GROWN PERSON. He proceeds to lick every possible surface of disgusting fast food play area. I throw caution to the wind, surely that endless breastfeeding and all this organic food has me covered, right? I shop at Whole Foods, so I’m good, yes?

(During playdate, kid tastes fast food (hooray peanut oil!) for the first time and two minutes later, poops himself in epic fashion. That was me. The lady carrying a baggie of poop-covered clothes through Chick-Fil-A  with the toddler wearing only a diaper until I could squeeze him into the three months too small emergency outfit that I forgot to switch out for something bigger.)

24 hours post-playdate:  kid’s nose gets runny. He sounds stuffy when he’s gulping down his beverages. I clean the humidifier and steam up the bathroom and fight the good fight to get saline drops up his nostril.

48 hours post-playdate: kid is grumpy. Clingy. Our day goes like this. Me: Here, have this amazing toy made of wood from Sweden. Him: I HATE THAT TOY WAIT I LOVE IT SO MUCH WHY DID YOU TAKE IT I AM NOW FULL OF WOE. We spend half the day playing no no don’t touch the humidifier and the other half of the day, I chase him around the house with a tissue, trying to wipe his nose, while he runs away crying because OH THE HUMANITY OF GENERIC FACIAL TISSUE. Kid also begins to get upset that snot runs down his face into his mouth but fails to see that my tissue and I just want to help with his problem. He sees me coming with the saline solution and his entire body tenses, he screams bloody murder and then…realizes he can breathe again and sticks his face out for more. Until I touch his nose with the bottle and his entire body tenses and we repeat the steps.

49.5 hours post-playdate uhoh. Funny feeling in back of my throat. MUST WILL GERMS INTO SUBMISSION. CANNOT GET SICK.

56 hours post-playdate – kid is stuffed up, having trouble sleeping, is up all night for two nights in a row. Husband has major trial in am, offers to help. I tell him to sleep (see aforementioned martyr-guilt complex and also those generic tissues don’t pay for themselves) and wake up the next morning with a semi-stuffy nosed kid who feels just fine (BRING ON THE TOYS) with my raging sore throat/stuffy nose/cough/ear infection/consumption of my own. SHIT AM SICK. IS BAD.

72 hours post-playdate – Having ignored my sickness because really, I have no choice, I am now ordered to bed on a Saturday by my husband but I ignore him because I hate missing out on family time. WE ARE GONNA SEE SANTA, GOD DAMN IT, AND WE ARE GONNA LOVE IT. ACHOO. We don’t get enough time together during the week, so why shouldn’t I ruin what little we do have with coughing up a lung and sneezing all over the place? I last usually until Sunday night when I look in the mirror and see a Victorian heroine with a tubercular pallor staring back and me and I promptly collapse into bed.

Everyone has suggestions. Get more rest, eat more, drink more water, take more time for myself, take vitamins, load up on zinc, exercise more, eat a vegan diet, swallow the blood of a baby goat born on the second Tuesday of the month, etc. By everyone I mean my childless friends and people who have forgotten about this part of parenting as they have teenagers or whose children have moved out or are robots. Because trust me, I would love to do all those things. I would love a sick day where someone brings me chicken noodle soup while I lie on the sofa and watch bad television, but I’ve accepted that this just isn’t going to happen right now, and so I soldier forth, wiping my nose and discreetly coughing into my elbow.

And don’t tell my kid, but I save the fancy tissues with lotion for myself.

A Rambling Rant. About Sleeping. Or Not Sleeping. Guys, I’m Tired.

I should be napping right now, but I’m not, because the minute I close my eyes, the toddler on the other end of that baby monitor is gonna go off, and there’s no worse feeling in the world than The Nap That Almost Was. If I don’t take a nap, then I can sit here and instead dream about The Nap That Could Have Been, which in my head is the greatest two hours of my life except for the time I hugged John Stamos.

Why do I need a nap?

WELL LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT.

Some background: I had no idea the complexity of sleep until I went and hugged John Stamos, rendering my birth control ineffective.  I have never been a good sleeper. Mostly,  I have a lot of trouble falling asleep. I tend to lie there in bed and think “I could be reading that book. Hey, what happened at work today? What should I make for dinner?  Did I wash my husband’s socks? Yes, a new episode of Homeland is on tomorrow. I wonder if Brody is a spy for real.” and so on until my brain races and I wind up downstairs on the sofa watching a commercial for plastic cups you can use to hard-boil eggs in the microwave.  (Which, by the way, totally suck.)

When I eventually fall asleep, I’m good for a while, but getting there takes a lot of work. But I never thought about this in relation to a child, because I thought, you babies, you sleep when you’re tired. I have seen you in all the diaper commercials with your peacefully closed eyes and your little smug half-smiles. And the baby books tell you all about how sleep will be challenging, but I figured, eh, this kid will take after my husband who cannot be roused after ten p.m. Plus, I’ve seen those babies in the commercials.

HAHAHAHA ZOMG.

I had this baby who for the first four months of his life ate around the clock because he weighed approximately zero pounds and I was his only food source. So neither of us really slept too well. But, sure fine, whatever, eventually he stopped looking like a scrawny chicken and got all baby-chubbed. And that was worth it, because I got to be a smug breastfeeding mom. And by smug I mean exhaustedly counting down the days until that kid turned 1 year. I made it ten months. I am going to want a trophy for that for the rest of my life.

And then we had two month of bliss after feeding the kid actual people food.  Six or seven hours of sleep a night in a row. thank you sweet potatoes.. One wakeup to eat. The world was technicolor again. And then there were two new teeth, a shot, and a sort-of cold that he gave him a runny nose but transformed into ebola once it hit my immune system. And again, there was no sleep. Then we did the whole (LOOK AWAY IF YOU ARE INTO CO-SLEEPING AND WANT TO JUDGE OTHERS, JERK) Ferber thing, a soft, muted, gentle Ferber thing that worked amazingly.

Then, more teeth and more shots and more runny noses and developmental milestones. So two weeks of great sleep, two weeks of shitty sleep, blah blah blah. But hold on, one day he figured things out and HOLY CRAP 12 hours of sleep in a row for two solid months. Waking up at eight in the morning, going to bed at seven. OMG I’LL HAVE TWENTY KIDS.

BUT NOW. For the last month, he’s not sleeping again. Due to molars, or his constant need to MOVE AROUND, or who knows what.  I’m afraid the fact that he’s not sleeping because this child IS ME, IN SMALL, LITTLE BOY FORM. In almost every way imaginable. (My poor husband, now there are TWO whackjobs in the house who aren’t going to remember to start the dishwasher, always need to brush their hair. and cannot properly sit on any piece of furniture.) I’m terrified that instead of sleeping, he’s waking up thinking “where did I leave those stacking cups? I wonder if I can have yogurt tomorrow? Are we going to the playground? I’M MISSING YO GABBA GABBA! OMG Walking is awesome I wanna do it all day!” He refuses to go to sleep for anyone but me. The babysitter texts us at ten p.m “Um, your kid is awake and is in his play pen gang-stomping Tickle Me Elmo instead of sleeping.” He wakes up every night, often for several hours.  Since he can’t express things, when he wakes up, he screams. SCREAMS. Not those cute little baby cries in those fucking diaper commercials that lied to me. MAD, ANGRY, PISSED OFF, RED IN THE FACE WAILING BECAUSE TEETH HURT/CAN’T HAVE YOGURT/NO YO GABBA GABBA/WANNA DO ALL THE STUFF WHY CAN’T I DO ALL THE STUFF. Screaming that does not die down if we wait it out. It used to die down. Now it escalates to the point where I’m pretty sure he’d throw up if we did not intervene.

It is good that I am not working because I am so tired I am useless. Intelligent thought has been replaced with mushy zombie staggering. Today I googled “honey baked ham” but mistyped it as “hiney naked ham” and it took me a full five minutes to understand why my computer was full of porn links. (People do weird shit with sandwiches, let me tell you.)  I have been a shell of myself the last few weeks, with a hair-trigger temper and an inability to focus on anything of substance. I doubt this post is coherent. My undereye circles have undereye circles.  I tried to go out and have intelligent conversation with a friend, and I sat there the whole time going OMG OMG PLEASE BE ASLEEP WHEN I GET HOME PLEASE PLEASE and of course the kid wasn’t.

This is the single most frustrating experience of my life. Because I feel I’m failing at something that is not solvable EVERY SINGLE DAY. I have no answers. I have researched this so much that google responded with “LADY, I GOT NOTHING HAVE YOU TRIED YAHOO?” People have made suggestions, we have tried them, they have not worked. I know: your baby slept for 12 hours straight out of the womb/was ferberized and  won the gold medal for baby sleeping/slept with you in your bed until he got his MBA which is coincidentally when you stopped breastfeeding because you’re better than I am/had food allergies and once you switched him to an all soy/vegan/wheat free/whatever diet, he slept for hours. I get it – everybody has a good sleeper but me. Everyone else has a baby who loved teething so much that they never even knew a tooth was there until it pooped up.

(I’ve considered running away and joining the Occupy movement because I heard they have tents. With sleeping bags.)

(Not really, my husband basically lets me sleep the entire weekend and also does the dishes and gets the groceries. I have a good one.)

I KNOW. I’M DOING SOMETHING WRONG, but how do I fix it, especially if this is encoded in his DNA? I know in my brain this will pass and we will go back to blissful nights of silence but my brain’s too pooped to keep reminding me of that.

We keep trying. That’s the one thing I know how to do right. Because this kid is awesome in all other ways:

Breakfast with H, a Play in One Act Because the Second Act is Me Cleaning the Floor for the Third Time Today

Me: YAY TODAY WE WILL EAT A DELICIOUS AND NUTRITIOUS BREAKFAST! (toddler book says to show enthusiasm! for! food! and! the! Child! will! eat!) (Toddler book is a morning person. I hate toddler book)

Homemade mango yogurt faux pop tart – crust crumbled into a million pieces that I will be sweeping up until I’m the one crapping my own pants.  Remnants thrown to the dog

ME: OK, LET’S TRY SOMETHING ELSE! LIKE SLEEPING TILL NOON AND EATING COLD PIZZA OUT OF THE BOX LIKE THE REST OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD! (Toddler Book judges me.)

Vegan pumpkin muffin from Whole Foods that cost about six hundred dollars and might turn the kid into a twirling phish fan but who cares, this one time H ate a bite of one and didn’t act like I was putting battery acid in his mouth so I bought four of them – half mashed into hair so effectively it will likely remain there until prom, other half thrown to the dog

DOG – YO, CAN I GET SOME DECAF OVER HERE

(intermission) (this is the one time today when I go to the bathroom by myself.)(it is amazing.)

Regular milk in an Elmo sippy cup – H begins to sob when drinking it.

ME: THAT IS OK! WE HAVE SOY MILK! LET’S TRY THAT, IT WILL BE SO TASTY! OH MY GOODNESS! WHO THE HELL WAKES UP THIS EARLY AND IS PLEASANT? (Toddler book answers “Good mothers” and I give an inanimate object the finger for the first time today.)

Soy milk in fancy, spill-proof sippy cup with straw – cup is not spill-proof as promised. straw fits up baby’s nose quite well.

DOG: WHOA DELICIOUS LIQUID IS RAINING FROM THE SKY!

Toast – Eats a bite! My hopes soar. Wait. H decides toast is poison, removes toast from mouth, throws to the dog.

Apple slices – pre-chewed then thrown to the dog.

DOG – YO, I STILL HAVE ALL MY TEETH BUT THANKS

Expensive organic cheese made from milk taken from cows fed ground unicorn horns and grass grown by magical elves  – one piece eaten, one hits the dog in the face, one taken away and eaten by me.

Me: HELL NO YOU DON’T GET TO THROW THE EXPENSIVE CHEESE AT A DOG WHO THINKS GOOSE POOP IS FOOD!  (puts toddler book in garbage! disposal!)

Dog – ENOUGH WITH THE FOOD HITTING MY FACE HAVEN’T YOU HEARD I HAVE A MORTAL HEART CONDITION JK THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE IMMA LIVE UNDER THIS HIGH CHAIR FOREVER ALSO GOOSE POOP IS DELICIOUS

Me – Eyes the tequila

-fin-

Inaction

I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts about why I’ve been so deeply disturbed by what happened at Penn State.  I mean, sure, being disturbed is the normal human reaction to the sexual assault of children, but I can’t shake it.  I can’t stop thinking about it or reading about it. Over and over in my head, all I hear is the sad drumbeat of repeating words: those poor kids, those poor kids, those poor kids.

I thought at first maybe my extreme reaction is because I am a new(ish) mom. I can’t handle it when my little boy bumps his head. When I think about someone hurting my kid the way those kids were hurt, my stomach contracts and my eyes involuntarily slam shut. My entire body clenches and nausea sweeps it and I turn to the inanity of twitter to think about something less destructive. My husband tells that the only reason Jerry Sandusky is still alive is because those kids hadn’t told their fathers. Before I had a child, I’d have replied that that isn’t the way to solve anything.  Now, I’m the cliche who thinks maybe my husband is right.

But that’s not it.

And so then I thought it was maybe because I grew in Pennsylvania. I could probably off the top of my head name 25 friends and family members who went to Penn State.  Our kid got two PSU onesies as baby gifts even though I have no direct ties to the school.  There’s a paper cutout of Joe Paterno in my parents’ basement – my mom used to take it to her school and do funny mock interviews with it over the student news channel. If you grew up where I did, the one enduring story in PA sports was the inherent goodness of the Penn State football program, the mythology of Joe Paterno’s clean, pure approach to shaping the lives of young men. While culpability should most certainly be spread around to everyone who thought inaction was the right action, if we’re talking specifically about the actions of authority figures at Penn State, Paterno’s bother me the most.  He’s the one I know. There are no cardboard cutouts of the school’s president in my parents’ basement. I couldn’t pick an athletic director or assistant coach out of a lineup.  But Joe Paterno? I know him. The problem with mythology is that sometimes, our collective beliefs don’t hold up to scrutiny.  There’s a part of me that’s pretty sure that he had the power to do something far beyond the choice he made, and he simply didn’t. (And if you don’t agree with this, that’s ok. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind here or argue facts – I’ve learned today that people on opposite sides of this argument are not going to find middle ground at the moment.)

But that’s not it either.

While I was rocking my little boy to sleep, praying to the universe to keep him safe as I do every night, I finally realized why I’m so shaken.  It’s because of a girl named Amber. A story I’ve never told anyone, something I pushed the back of my head and never thought about, something that’s clawed its way to the front of my consciousness today, pleading with me to write about it.

Amber (not her real name) was one of my last students before I quit teaching.  It was a tough year for me, and I was pretty wrapped up in my own misery and health problems and hatred of a job I had once loved.  Amber was in my homeroom that year, one of my special ed English classes, and wound up in my photojournalism class. Amber was tall and awkward, wore hand-me-downs, and sat in the front row. She never made eye contact. Her clothing was always inappropriate to the season, and for some reason, I have a clear mental image of the cheap canvas slipons she wore, regardless of the weather. 9th graders are brutal, and she was bullied because she was incredibly poor, very different, didn’t really talk, sat in the corner humming, doodling and writing furiously on notebook paper I had to give her with pencils from my purse because she never had any of her own. Hygiene seemed to be an issue, so I spoke with her guidance counselor, who bought her toiletries because she reported that she had none at home. One day, I put my hand on her back to get her attention, as she was lost in her own world – the bell rang and it was time to stop writing and go to her next class. I tapped her shoulder. She jumped three feet in the air and ran out the door.

She tore at my heart. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d had poor students before, students whose poverty stood out among their more privileged peers, but that wasn’t what struck me about Amber.  She was so withdrawn, so afraid to make any sort of personal contact. Her outlet seemed to be writing, and while she often rambled and didn’t make a lot of sense, neither did most of my freshmen. The year went on.  In a series of unprompted actions that gave me hope for the future, one of the other girls in our daily journalism class, a shy freshman with glasses and braces and freckles who wore very high-waisted pants and velcro sneakers, reached out daily to Amber and they forged some semblance of a friendship. The two of them formed an uneasy wall against the other students who ridiculed them daily in the lunchroom.

Then one day, the class was assigned an essay talking about their goals for the future. Amber had one goal: to run away and get a job far away, a place of her own where she could sleep as much as she wanted, and never come home. I thought that was odd, referred it to her counselor, and they spoke about it, but she could not get much out of her other than Amber reporting that she made it all up. Calls home to her dad went unanswered. We decided to keep a close eye on her and her counselor started meeting with her on a regular basis.

A few weeks later, I was wolfing down half of a sandwich during my 20 minute lunch break while frantically editing yearbook photos.  A pale, freckled face peered around my half-open door.

“Mrs. J, I need to talk to you about something weird.”

“Ok, sweetie, but make it fast, I have lunch duty in ten minutes.”

Lunch duty. I was worried about lunch duty.

“Well, we had gym today. And we were changing in the locker room and I saw something.”

Freckles hesitated. I (nicely) told her to please, spit it out, because I had places to go.

“I think something’s wrong with Amber. She had these weird bruises on her back that she tried to hide, and I’ve seen them before and didn’t say anything but I just saw them again and I think something is wrong but she won’t tell me and she never invites me to her house and I’m worried and we need talk to the resource officer.”

So many puzzling pieces made sense now. Someone WAS hurting Amber and I felt like an idiot for not seeing it, for needing actual bruises to thrust me into action. But the second I heard the words “has weird bruises,” I leapt into action. I went immediately to the school resource officer after sending Freckles on her way, promising that I’d take care of it. Amber’s guidance counselor was called in, and, as she informed me later (after reporting what I knew, I was asked to leave) the resource officer called in a female social worker and parts of Amber’s story slowly tumbled out after her initial panic. I will not repeat those things here, but they were not good things. She was removed from her father’s home and went to live with an aunt in another state. I hope she gets to sleep as late as she wants and never has to come home.

I  will never understand how a 14-year-old child understood inherently that when she saw her friend had been hurt, she needed to tell a police officer, but a bunch of adults at Penn State didn’t know what action to take when someone reported being a physical witness to a child being raped.  It wasn’t a weird essay. It wasn’t a kid acting strange or being withdrawn. Someone saw a kid being raped and they told their boss, and their boss told his boss and then, I just don’t know what happened. Some of the parents didn’t report their suspicions. That is why I am so disturbed. Because is this endemic? Is this what adults think should happen, that we should follow protocol and wait around for someone with some kind of amorphous authority to do something? What more authority do we need than “You are an adult, do something?” What other kids are being hurt because someone isn’t acting on the moral absolute that you help a child in danger? I’m terrified.

Child abuse, sexual abuse, is the Other. It is silent and insidious, hidden away in the cracks. A scary stranger doesn’t show up at the door in a black hat and proceed to harm a random kid – most children know their abusers and the abusers don’t look like bad guys. They look like bus drivers and cub scout leaders and friendly football coaches.  If someone at PSU had witnessed a shooting or a man assaulting a woman or a robbery or a brutal beating happening, I absolutely believe they would have immediately either tried to intervene or call the police. They would not have waited to talk to their boss. But they did. They waited, they embraced inaction because it was technically the approved thing to do, and I don’t understand why. And I’m scared that other people are doing same thing in other places – so how do we help our kids stand up for themselves? How do we make sure our kids are safe if the adults don’t know what to do?

Matching Outfits: A Cautionary Tale

My sister had recently enlisted in the Navy at the time of this photo.  Brimming with enthusiasm right down the patriotically jaunty flip in her hair, she prepared to sail the seven seas and battle evil approaching by water.  Jaded by a few years of low pay, deck swabbing, hardtack, and rats occupying my bunk, my rictus grin says it all. I’d had enough. I’d lost teeth to scurvy and stopped maintaining any sense of patriotism in hairdo choice.  Forget the yankee doodle flip; I was backsliding into a pair of messy socialist braids. FRENCH braids.  It soon would become clear that putting children in charge of America’s naval defense was a bad, bad plan.

Because we lost to the Germans. BUT I gained awesome lederhosen and excellent, Teutonically rigid posture. And we learned toddler bitchface is the most authentic kind of bitchface.

Is there anything more awesome and more horrifying than matching Christmas sweaters. Yes. Christmas sweaters a with scary, siddhasana-posing teddy bear with 3-D ball on top of his hat.

Somewhere, I’m sure an annoying Zooey Deschanel-loving, PBR-drinking hipster who doesn’t understand the distinction between irony and looking like a jackass is wearing this sweater and a greasier version of my bangs. It’s ok, misguided hipster friend. Acid-green polyester is now the fabric of your life.

LIVING

I get the most comments on a post I wrote about something called the Wheaten Greetin’.  Dog people are so weird; they really like to talk about their dogs in incredible detail at length to strangers on the internet who also own the same breed of dog.  When I say “dog people” and “they,” I really mean “this person right here doing the typing.”

But I get the most comments in real life on That Post I wrote about my experiences with postpartum depression. Comments from friends, random college acquaintances, people on twitter, (one of my) high school boyfriends, an old neighbor from childhood, my husband’s former girlfriend, friends of friends, etc. After they inevitably thank me for sharing, they say one of the following: That was me. That was my wife, sister, girlfriend, partner, neighbor, cousin, co-worker. And then they tell me that they read my post, shared it, talked about it.

I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to write about what happened after H was born.

I can’t even go back and read That Post without weeping. So many things happened the wrong way. I missed weeks and weeks and weeks of time (months, really, but I still don’t like to admit this) when I could have been enjoying my baby instead of hiding from him in my powder room. Weeks when I could have been holding him and snuggling him instead of sitting on my sofa not feeling anything. It’s hard for me to deal with the fact that when I look back on the first few months of H’s life, the main things I remember are sadness and fear. Putting feelings that seemed wrong and shameful into words terrified me, but sharing those feelings with the world somehow felt like freedom.

I was compelled to do it because once I got better, I didn’t want to forget. I didn’t want anyone to be ashamed or scared. I wasn’t ever at the point where I was going to hurt the baby, but I sure wasn’t going out of my way to enjoy him.  I wasn’t ever at the point where I was suicidal, but I certainly wasn’t trying too hard to live.

All the comments and messages and emails I’ve received?  They’ve made me realize that the scariest words I ever had to write helped other people be less terrified. The horrible, horrible time I had helped other people make a phone call to get help.

I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

And then the final question I get is: How are you now?

Guys, I am so good. H is awesome. Staying home full-time is bizarre and wonderful and awful, and it’s certainly not something I’m equipped to do forever. There are moments when I feel like the clouds are gathering, but I know how to get rid of them (mostly, some days are hard but I can cope. HAVING COPING SKILLS: MORE AMAZING THAN DONUTS.) In some small way, getting to spend so much time with the kiddo makes me feel like I’ve atoned for all those days in the beginning. We are LIVING.

(If you think you need help, go here. Don’t be like me and suffer needlessly.)

Ten Things My Friends Never Mentioned About Having a Kid (Subtitled: Thanks, Assholes)

(I’m not going to apologize for never posting because I went to Catholic school for 12 years and if you want to have the guilt Olympics, I’ll win the gold medal. But I refuse to have any sort of guilty feelings attached to my blog. I’m tired. The baby is a lot of work. When I have a free hour in the evening, I want to first shower off all the disgusting and varied fluid he has coated me with for 12 hours.  Then I want to talk to my husband.  Then maybe be catatonic and look at awkward penguin memes or read a book, not write something. I’m not exactly setting the world on fire over here so you get a post when you get a post and you’ll like it that way.)

AND HERE IS A POST.

I shall sub-subtitle it: Reasons to Wear a Condom Unless You Want This To Be Your Life.

1. Babies are disgusting. Not as in “oh, how cute, she farted.” More like,  “I think my child just sneezed a stream of snot directly into my mouth. Which is no big deal because earlier, he stuck his hand down the back of his dirty diaper and then inserted it carefully into my very own nostril before I could stop him.” I want to wear a hazmat suit all day and bleach my entire house at the end of every night.

2. There will be ugly primary colored plastic shit all over your house. I somehow thought our kid would like stylish, modern toys from Sweden. Toys that made no noise and also taught him a foreign language  and somehow turned invisible at night. Except now my house is covered in plastic junk that he loves and climbs on and puts in his mouth and all the stylish wooden toys have been thrown under my sofa. And the baby is still not speaking Swedish.

3. Breastfeeding is hard. I know, I know. It’s easy for a lot of people. La Leche League is going to find me now and waterboard me with their defrosted giant stash of frozen breastmilk that they are still feeding their teenagers, but guess what? I hated breastfeeding. I did it for ten months and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. (Partly because I had this thing called D-MER which was zero fun. Google it) Because I like my personal space and it was CONSTANTLY INVADED by a small alien. I’m really proud that I made it that long, and if I’m being honest, it was 100% worth it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But I wish someone would have said to me: understand you are doing this for your kid, not you. And stop whenever you feel like you need to, formula is not poison. You don’t have to be a martyr.

4. Sundays are the hardest.  I’m ok with my time being not my own during the week. When I was working, it wasn’t my own anyway. And Saturdays are family fun day, which are fun. And full of family. But Sunday. Sunday used to be the day we woke up whenever we wanted, did whatever we wanted, maybe had some beers, occasionally got out of our PJs and wandered around town. And now, I wake up on Sunday and THE BABY IS STILL THERE and we can’t really do what we used to do.  People say you just accommodate the baby into your life and it goes on the same way, but that’s bullshit. Things change. It’s like you had this puzzle that was easy to put together because you’ve had it forever. Then, suddenly all the same pieces are still there but they are shaped very differently and don’t fit together the same way. It’s hard and I’m often very grouchy on Sunday afternoons. And I suck at puzzles.

5. All you do is sweep the floor. My floor is like the golden gate bridge, and I am like the painters that start painting it again as soon as they finish. Now that I spend the whole day on the floor with the kid I learned: We are disgusting, disgusting people and the baby is our king. And he PUTS EVERYTHING IN HIS MOUTH so if I don’t sweep the floor, he’ll choke to death on that Target tag I shoved under the sofa after ripping it off a pair of his new pants in the middle of a poop emergency.

6. You can’t make him eat things. We swore we’d not raise a picky eater. And even though we offer him everything we eat, all he will feed himself EVER are vegan rice cakes, organic wheat crackers, and the expensive brand of greek yogurt. Apparently I was impregnated by someone from a hippie commune.  Sorry about all the disposable diapers, unknown hippie father of my child, but I’m too lazy to use cloth. And I hate the earth.

7.  Your mom knows everything. This one kills me but as soon as I had this baby, suddenly my mom became a genius.  Not so much because she has all the answers but she had a baby (me) and THEN HAD ANOTHER ONE ON PURPOSE. So she must know it all. You will be unable to get your tiny infant to stop screaming and then your mom will take him and he’ll magically shut up.  She’ll tell you it’s coincidence but it’s secret gramma magic. I promise you, deep down inside, she’s remembering the teenage you that slammed the door in her face while shouting “GOD MOM, you don’t know anything.” And she’s gloating. Let her have her victory.

8. The guilt and resentment are normal. If you’re not working, you’ll feel guilty you’re not working and resent your spouse who gets to leave every day and occasionally have leisurely lunches.  And then you feel guilty for resenting them even though the baby never goes away and is always with you.  (If you’re like me, you’ll feel so guilty that you refuse to spend any money on yourself until your husband tells you to please stop looking like a hobo, buy some new clothes, get a haircut and stop being ridiculous.) If you are working, you’ll feel guilty because you feel like someone at daycare is raising your child for you and you seem them an hour a day.  If your spouse is at home and you are working, you’ll feel resentful that your spouse is with the baby more than you and guilty that you are working all the time and see the kid sometimes three minutes a day.  Here’s the thing: your child probably tries to eat his or her own poop sometimes. Babies aren’t so bright. But they know mom and dad love them.

9. You were once a huge ass. Once you were the friend with no kids. And your friend with kids said something like “My kid refuses to sleep and I don’t know what to do and I”m so tired.” And you said, “Wow, that sucks.”  BUT you THOUGHT, “You just put the kid to sleep for crying out loud. Shut up about it already, how hard can it be?” The answer: have you tried to translate quantum physics into Swedish while standing on a tightrope? Getting your kid to sleep is often harder and more frustrating and possibly as dangerous. And you owe your friends an apology, you jerk.

10. It’s also pretty awesome. Because most of the time, at the end of the day, I’m all, “I taught this little person (who sleeps in the exact same position as my husband and looks just like my dad) how to walk today. What did you do that was so cool?” (Just imagine how awesome it will be when he FINALLY learns Swedish.)

ON NOTICE: THE RETURN

Diversions: A Cautionary Tale

Growing up, we did lots of things to keep ourselves entertained.  This was before cell phones and laptops and iPads and fancified infused liquor. It was a simpler time when we had to adjust the antenna and lived without a microwave and drank plain old non-cucumbered-up vodka.

Until my parents got a microwave.  It was approximately the size of half the kitchen and I’m pretty sure you needed punch cards and a crank to operate it, but man, could it make things alternately lukewarm and scalding hot.

Instead of fancy musical toys playing Mozart and fake baby computers,  I had my good friend, the golf ball. Thankfully, my parents also prevented any confusion in later years during my one golf lesson by providing me with a grass-like avocado green shag rug on which to practice my duffing skills. If you’ve never seen someone with no depth perception and double vision try to hit a golf ball, I suggest you take your clubs and head to the nearest eye hospital.  Start waving some twenties around for volunteers, because that shit is hysterical.

The late 70s and early 80s had to be so much more exciting for babies.  We got to bounce around in things made of metal that now are considered death traps.  Our parents dangled us from seats attached by bungee cords to doorways. We got to sleep on our stomachs and have pillows and blankets.  Some of us got to lick lead paint.  Our crib mobiles had long strings.  BABIES LIVING ON THE EDGE. (Please note behind me the baby walker, a.k.a that thing I careened in down the stairs causing me to land on my head.  I TURNED OUT FINE.)

Look! A wooden horse with a creepy expression.  Look how excited I seem to be forced to rock back and forth.  It was hard work, holding my giant noggin aloft. My grandmother used to have to make my jackets so that I would have hoods big enough to fit. (Our baby’s head is also measuring in the gabillionth percentile or something, and to alleviate our wonderful doctor’s concern, I twittered him some pictures of my head. He responded by sending me a hysterical youtube video.  My grandparents do not understand that last sentence).

My sister’s pastimes included looking surprised and wearing overalls.  I’m not sure how she was able to join the Mickey Mouse Club at such a young age, but I suspect there was some sort of check-kiting involved.

She also enjoyed playing the piano for tips at several local bars. I’m sorry, I have to say it, but she totally sucked at the piano.

Sadly, she spent all her tips on her two true loves, cake and novelty bibs.

She also enjoyed novelty swimwear.  It was around this time we were forced to tell her that she maybe needed to lay off the cake and get herself a baby-sized thighmaster.

Her other favorite pastimes included taking mom’s keys, going for joyrides and stealing my friends while I politely pose for pictures.

I liked My Little Ponies. I don’t know what happened to them, but I think maybe my sister ate them.

There are no words. You write the caption, because I don’t even know.