Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Final Whine of '09

Having a brand new baby arrive in the house in late 2008 pretty much set me up for a sleepless nightmare of burning eyes out of their sockets hell of depravity. And boy! I'm riding 2009 out on that wave of shit, let me tell you.

I've said before, this boy is sweet. Sweet, sweet, sweety, sweet. And it is precisely that sweetness that keeps me from giving him something to cry about, know what I'm sayin'?

In 2 hours I leave for work for the final few nights of '09 of baby birthing and I suppose that there is some sort of symmetry that I share with my patients, what with the over-packed black bags under my eyes. Perhaps they see me not only as the person who is capable of (and often dispatched to) inserting any manner of tubes into their various orifices (and occasionally, making new ones), but also as their ally in this brutal war of the BABY WHO WILL NOT SLEEP.

Wish me luck and send care packages.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Counting it down, chapter one

I hope (and I know you do, too *wink wink*) this will be the first of a few year-end posts from your beloved Nurse.


Some smart lady said recently: "don't people have diaries anymore?". Good gawd, lawd. I couldn't agree more. 2009 may go in the books as the year I started to dislike the internet a leeeetle, leeetle bit. Why? Lemme make a list, this being the eve of Santa's big dance and all, a list might be fun.

1. Please. Please. STOP using your facebook status as the billboard for why you called in sick to work. We get it. You need the time off. We don't need to know about your ass-assault or the viscosity of your mucus. Just stay the fuck home and off the computer, k? *because it's kinda suspicious*

2. Don't like something? Good for fuckin' you. If it's not open for debate, I don't give a shit.

3. Think you're sexy? Think your third grade teacher's grandkid thinks your sexy? Surprise! He does now after you posted that profile pic of yourself giving oral sex to a popsicle using that "artful" I'm-taking-a-picture-of-my-self-hope-it-doesn't-make-you-nauseous angle

4. If you wanted to be a writer/English teacher/professor I'm sorry that didn't work out for you. But you must know, I MUST tell you: it's FUCKING DEPRESSING to read about your favorite poems/essays/themes every. time. you. log. onto. a. computer.

This really isn't about me being bitter. This is about my beloved internet turning into a peep-show for the socially defunct. I LOVE that the webz helps the shy and introverted shake their money-makers. But I fear the shark has been jumped. I want it back the way it was! I want they mystery back. I don't want to know how much you had to drink last night and how much of a hard-on you have for the chick who works the register at the health food store.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Round 1

It took about 24 hours before she went in for the hit. Have you lost a TON of weight?! You look like you have lost a TON! A TON! I may in fact still be bleeding from the eviscerating.

Bitch, please. Don't you know that I no longer suffer from *that* kind of body dysmorphia? Where you see a beached manatee, I see one skeeeeeeny mama. You reminding me that there are 10 extra pounds laying around does not endear me to you. In. The. Slightest.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

One more time

The problem is that since I have been talking so much (to such rapt and attentive audiences) I don't have a whole lot swimming in my brains that I need to squeeze out onto the keyboard and spray across the internetz like amniotic fluid after the head delivers (that was for you; and YOU know who I'm talking to).

I love to write. Love, love, love it. But with my perfection complex and all, if it ain't gonna be great, it ain't gonna git done. I used to make a lot of proclamations. I called them MY UNIVERSAL WISHES. The one I have now is for all the ladies out there to be expunged of their need, their drive to do every.thing.fuck.ing.right. It's a goddamnned ball-buster of a chore to drag around, let me tell you. And after a day of falling short, the last thing we want to do is give someone a blow-job (ironically, a task that even done poorly, is received with standing ovations). Can I get an amen?!

Fuck.

So usually, once the three kids are asleep and I'm reasonably certain my other "services" won't be required and I ostensibly have *time* to write, I'm so flippin' tired that all I want to do is pour a drink and settle in to a few hours of "Say Yes to the Dress" reruns. Either that or I'm snoring by 9:15.

Ten years ago, if anyone had told me this would be my life, I would have sneered in their eye and ordered another Wild Turkey on the rocks. Bitch.

Anyway, if you're lucky enough to catch my live show now and then (best seats @ 3am, 3rd floor of VBMC) tip well. I have a lot of kids.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Dusting off the keys

So I took off the last three months. Sue me (and while you're assembling the documents for trial, can you please tell me wherethefuck all the time went?).

That's it. That's all I got right now.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Happy Anniversary, babe

I haven't looked at the picture in a long time, but I see it clear as day in my mind. I look fucking GREAT in it. All American Apparel ad meets Kubrick meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez-ian tragedy.

Me, in my nude underpants, my first pair (but certainly not my last) of high-end "granny panties" & raw silk, bright red bra. The motel was tacky, but I loved it. The cheesy bedspread laid out underneath my butt and open thighs (one hand behind me, planted onto it to keep me from falling over). I was tanned and just before I took the photo: blissfully happy.

You can't see my face behind the camera and the flash is perfectly reflected in the floor length mirror in front of me. It's a sexy shot. Trust me. Exactly the way I wanted to be remembered on my wedding day, the day I was abandoned by my fiance.

Turns out he didn't leave me that morning. Well, he did leave. Took my flip-flops and said he was going out for a bottle of Wild Turkey so we could toast our marriage. He was gone for 2 hours and this being Virgina Beach in the middle of summer, I knew a liquor store couldn't be all that hard to find. When it settled in that he was gone, my rubber sandals on his feet to keep me close, I sat down to take the snapshot. I refused to put on my wedding dress. REFUSED. So in my skivvies it was.

When he walked in the door 10 minutes later, sweating, frantic, GORGEOUS with a dozen roses in his hands (the bourbon, too, THANK GOD) I felt like I was floating out of my body. He was saying something about getting lost finding a florist and how he didn't want me to get married without flowers and and and and and if I wasn't so fucking perfect in my underpants, we'd have consummated the som'bitch right there.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Can I just eat my soup? Please?

Took my mother out for her birthday today. 3 weeks late. With all three kids and my mother in law (yes, that one). I knew it would be weird but not even I could see this one coming: After a decently lengthy conversation on the differences between AMOUNTS & TYPES of medication (and how they are NOT related), she asked me if I knew how Farrah Fawcett acquired her particular type of cancer. My mother, a breast cancer survivor, has an acute interest in such matters.

Anyway, I go: I don't know what kind of cancer she had. She goes: I do. I go: OK, I don't. And then she's all: *anal* Whispering the shit across the table at P&G's with Ruby, Penelope and my mil in the firing line.

Motherfucker. What did she expect? That I'd lay it all out there that old Farrah must have been taking it up the ass from Ryan O'Neal all these years?

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

I wanna be... so high

The pleasure I get from taking care of this baby! I have often wondered how great a heroin high would feel; cooked down & main-lined, straight to my CNS. These days, I'm conjuring up main-stream mommies hawking pure oxytocin at PTA meetings...

Friday, June 5, 2009

Random Part 1

Characters in my books will drive around for hours killing time by cruising drive-thru-s & one dollar cheeseburger at a time, fill the minutes till they go home and purge. They will dis-impact their own stool in the shower, pick their noses and smell their pits. They will revel in the gross-ness of their yellowed teeth and stinky farts.

They'll be rude bitches who give the stink-eye when other people's kids eat a banana in the grocery store BEFORE THEY BUY IT! (but only in a minor, barely supporting role). They will drink too much. Yell too much. They will plant gardens with poisonous plants right next to the neighbors fence. Their cars will be stolen and they'll have bodies buried back behind the swing-set. They'll hate their mothers and fuck their friend's-sister's-room-mate's-nieces.

Their dreams will be graphic and they will be vegan. They will be bad kissers, racists, bus-drivers & waitresses who don't wash their hands and serve you salad with their fingers.

The books will be good.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Who's your (grand) Daddy?

Tomorrow is my father's birthday. He's a loser. Well, to me he is. He may very well be a great dude to the people currently in his life; who knows? I can't actually come up with a more unremarkable person that I know.

Since my parents split in 1981, I have seen him 4 times and the last time we spoke, he called to ask for money. He's been invited here to meet my husband and the kids, he's been given email addresses and cell phone numbers... He is the kind of person that (I suppose) lives much better in denial. I assume it's too painful for him with each passing year to find a way to re-connect. So there he is, in Michigan (might as well be Madagascar) and here I am, we are, in New York. Ruby used to ask about him, Penelope never does and only time will tell what Lincoln brings to the party.

Weird thing is, my mom (who lives 10 minutes from me) is turning into the same kind of person. She waits for me to call, to show up at her door, to invite. She has told me it's my duty, as the daughter, to make these overtures (that's my word, not hers).

So, a healthy paranoid person can't help but wonder: Is it me? I am pretty in touch with my shady side. I can be a fucking jerk. But I can also be a lot of really great things. And then there are the kids. We have a new baby that my mother has seen 4 times. It hurts so much to type it. Fuck. The kids are tantalizing, succulent things! I can't fathom how their grandparents, these grandparents, can let them slip away.

I look so much like my father it's creepy. Cree-pee. And I carry around a nice dose of his temper, his insecurities & clumsiness. I can't get away from the guy, not that I'm trying, mind you. But sometimes the fucker sneaks up on me he like a gorilla; a gorilla clinging to me so hard that he shoves me into the dirt and won't let me get up.

Don't suggest therapy. I'll be fine in a little while.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Stress can aggrevate your condition...

I don't have health insurance right now and I'm pissed. My hair has started falling out again.

I had a decent bout of alopecia areata in the early 90's that seriously fucked with my moshing career (hard to be all reckless and head-bangy when you're worried the cute guy in the tattoos thinks your patchy bald head is NASTY), and I fear it's back.

Now, as you may all know, I recently had a baby and am currently breastfeeding that baby around the clock; two things that can wreak havoc on one's hair.... but with my history, the confirmed alopecia diagnosis... I just don't think I can blame this on the baby, too.

So thanks to Google, I now believe I also have pernicious anemia and a thyroid condition. My kingdom for a complimentary CBC and a TSH!

Head, meet pillow

For the past two nights, big-daddy-main-man-sgueglia, has taken the "first shift" with the Milkman. This means that for the past two nights I HAVE SLEPT UNTIL 4 IN THE MORNING WITHOUT INTERRUPTION (if you don't count the dream I had last night with Dennis Hopper chasing me down with a weird pointy penis through an Old Timey Wild West Town as an interruption, that is *shudder*).

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Newsflash

Little man found his feet the other day. Apparently, the toe bits are delicious.

Today he founds his, uhm, balls. And let me just say, if anyone else ever grabs those bad-boys that hard, I will have them arrested.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

We Never Close

So there's all this stuff I'm supposed to be doing, like all the time. But all I can consistently manage is feed the children, get the children to school, get the children home, put children to bed. I'm pretty good at cleaning the kitchen, too. I'll give myself that.

I'm starting to think that feeding the children is what is sucking the life essence from my pores. Not a coincidence that one of the children is quite literally & exquisitely sucking out my life essence; and as fucking AWESOME as that is, it wears me out. Put on top of that, the 17 bowls of cereal, 3 sandwiches, 4 bananas, 14 yogurts, 30 glasses of water and 1 bowl of mac n cheese Penelope eats every day and the 3 cubic tons of fruit, eggs and tunafish that Ruby can consume-- all of which I prepare serve and clean up after-- just may kill me dead. Dead. DEAD.

I'm afraid of how much food they eat. I think about their intake more than I think about anything else at this point. Sorry baby. It's not you, it's not me IT'S THEM AND ALL THE GODDAMNED FOOD! HOW CAN WE HAVE SEX WHEN I HAVE TO MAKE ANOTHER GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH IN 4 MINUTES!?!?!

And just when I clean the shit up? Oh, yeah, baby! Bring it on! Nothing screams FEED ME to an 8 and 4 year old like a sparkly clean stove. BOO YAH! It's bizarre, I want to cut them off "kitchen's closed bitches" and all that... but, I mean, they're hungry... Maybe they're Amazons? Cylons?

So with one on the boob, two at the counter (and one waiting in bed. Again, sorry babe. YOU'RE HOT), I'll be flipping fish sticks and squeezing ketchup. Perhaps I can turn this circus into a reality show, make some money for the grocery bill...

Friday, February 13, 2009

Three, my magic number

Oh, to have had this third baby first. The anxiety spared, the confusion muted. It's yet another gift of The Milkman: I don't tweak when he cries, I coo right back. I don't sweat the YEARS OF DOOM AHEAD WITH NO SLEEP, I know that he will eventually sleep and I crave his sweet little toes tickling me all night long as he looks at me with his wide awake & dreamy as-all-get-out eyes. I pump milk. I'm not afraid to leave him for a night of work. I let his sisters snuggle him up and change his diapers. I don't think they're going to hurt him. He's just that great; and I'm just that much more grateful to have him.

There's this song that I've been running my heart out to these last few days. A song that I listened to on the day Lincoln was born. A song I knew I wanted (needed?) to listen to on that day.

So yesterday, at 5 miles an hour on the treadmill in my basement (whatever, YES! I run on a treadmill, not the ground, sue me) I'm listening to the end of a "This American Life" story, gearing up run like mad (as mad as I can) for my last 20 minutes and I pop on "Into the Ocean". Within seconds I am sobbing and singing at the tops of my lungs. Snot running down my face, arms floppy; I'm running. Re-played it 3 more times and finally, with my sleeve covered in my mess, I stumbled off the treadmill and cried some more on the basement floor (briefly noting how relieved I was that we had poured concrete on said floor a few months earlier).

And then today: I'm nervous as a turkey on the 2nd Thursday of November. I have no idea how I'll react to "the song" or if I'll react at all; I'm such a tease. In any event, I CAN'T WAIT to get down there. And whaddya know? Today? Today, I laugh like a maniac when I hear it. Laugh like Santy Claus. I felt great and crazy and great. I felt like a billion $$. Just amazing.

So, here's the story I've been thinking I'd write for the past 3 months. The story intermingled with some song lyrics that will live preciously in my brains for ever and ever. (Doing this, by the way, reminds me of an assignment given in the 12th grade AP English class of my high school. Everyone looked forward to this assignment; it was like, legendary, you know? The assignment was just that cool. 2 years before I was to get "The Assignment", a kid named Austin Cooke hit it so far out of the ballpark that no one wanted to do it again. Ever. He annihilated the thing; nothing left for anyone else. What he was charted to do (like hundreds and hundreds of seniors before him) was this: Pick a song, any song in the whole wide world and interpret its meaning. Wow. This was the eighties. Pink Floyd, Run DMC, Motley Crue... HOLY SHIT, right? Well old Auddie Cook picked-- are you ready? "Hotel California" by the Eagles. He dissected the masterpiece line by line and by the end of day that he turned it in the whole friggin high school knew about it. Intense. I know.)

My water broke at around 3:45 on Saturday 11/15. I was sleeping and was woken up by two things: A very strong and painful contraction that I realized had been going on for a *long* time and a bizarre sensation in my vagina, like something soft and squishy pushing out and then getting sucked back in. Right after that: POP! GUSH! I went to the bathroom, put on a pad, woke up the husband with the news and went back to sleep. By 9am NOTHING had happened, I was bummed.

I wanted something, anything to have changed. The midwife came anyway, at like 11 and my contractions were still infrequent (10-20 minutes) and moderately uncomfortable. Big whoop.

Chris and I went out for a walk sometime around this point and I hoped so fucking badly that we'd have to run for the house, he carrying me in his arms over the threshold with just enough time for me to deliver on the kitchen rug. But alas, NOTHING.

Each contraction continued to bring a RUSH of amniotic fluid that began to trouble me at noon or so; I also thought there was bit of meconium in the fluid... I was also absolutely freezing although the day was turning out to be freakishly warm, windy and spitty with rain.

Now floating up and down
I spin, colliding into sound
Like whales beneath me diving down
I'm sinking to the bottom of my
Everything that freaks me out
The lighthouse beam has just run out
I'm cold as cold as cold can be
be

It's around 3 and still nothing. My midwife is reading People magazine (the Obamas are on the cover, can you blame her? Little Malia and Sasha! Soooo cute!), I'm massaging my nipples at her insistence and Chris is (no shit) rubbing the outside of my little toe. NOTHING.

At 4 we decide to start ramping things up with some cohosh; 12 hours ruptured, possible meconium and positive GBS, we need action and we need it now. I'm mandated to continue abusing my nipples; my husband a ruthless (but loving; I mean the guy taped towels to the toilet seat for me) lieutenant, making sure the midwife's orders are being carried out.

By 6, our efforts have paid off. I'm still losing a lot of fluid with each (now quite regular and intense) contraction, though. I check in with the baby often. It moves for me when I need it to. I'm getting tired and start losing my bearings. I'm so incredibly tired and getting desperate for it be over.

I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion... yeah
Let the rain of what I feel right now...come down
Let the rain come down

By 8 or 9 or so I'm moving from the bed to the toilet to contract. It hurts and I'm more tired than I imagined possible. My girls are home from the neighbors and they pop in to see me. I remember this. I remember my lovely neighbor coming in to see me as well(her breath smelled like garlic and wine and it was awful). But I don't remember what any of them said or what I said (if I could have said anything at all)

I'm treading for my life believe me
(How can I keep up this breathing?)


The next several hours are a haze (thankfully!). I hurt so much. So much searing muscle pain with each contraction. I truly believed I'd be injured for the rest of my life during this birth. My midwife is insisting that I labor on my left side and Chris is doing his best to encourage me. The pain is excruciating. Truly. She tried to give me a remedy to help me sleep through the contractions but it didn't work. It sucked. The baby was kicking my ribs and ripping apart my pelvis and I was miserable.

I can't pinpoint the time, but I have memory of the moment I felt like a wild animal: Puking on myself, guttural, reaching between my legs & hoping for blood. At about 11pm, I got my blood and I tell my midwife that I feel the baby pushing on my perineum. I'm sitting on the toilet at this point and she and Chris usher me to the bed

Not knowing how to think
I scream aloud, begin to sink
My legs and arms are broken down
With envy for the solid ground
I'm reaching for the life within me
How can one man stop his ending
I thought of just your face
Relaxed, and floated into space

Lincoln was born at 12:17 on the 16th of November. My uterus was so tired from all the fluid, the 9 lb baby and the hours and hours of labor that he needed to be pulled out after I delivered his head. I had nothing left after his head emerged and I heard him cry (!). He was also presenting with a fist and part of a shoulder; dude was huge and BUSTING his way out.

When his whole self did finally emerge, he was bluish and still, what we call a "smurf" in the biz. Since I had already heard him cry, I wasn't in the least concerned. He told me he'd be ok over the past 20 hours and I believed him. In just 15 seconds or so, he was yelling and squirming and being put to my breast. It was over.

Now waking to the sun
I calculate what I had done
Like jumping from the bow yeah
Just to prove I knew how yeah
It's midnight's late reminder of
The loss of her, the one I love
My will to quickly end it all
Set front row in my need to fall

I never thought I'd have another baby (I know, I know I KEEP SAYING THAT) but once it settled in like concrete footings that one was indeed coming, I got sad. Sad for the loss of Penelope as my baby. Giddy that I'd be able to try and have another homebirth. Terrified I wouldn't be able to endure labor again. Determined to try.

Great fucking song, eh?

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Whooo are you? Who, who?

My oldest child is a lot like me. So much like me that I often make the BIGGEST PARENTING MISTAKE IN THE WORLD and act like her twin sister or even worse: like her kid. As much as that sucks, I get it. I recognize Ruby and I know that I may be a real harsh on her mellow sometimes, she recognizes me, too.

Lincoln, even at this wee stage of his deliciousness, is someone I recognize as well. He nurses like Ruby, all passionate and gripping at me, nursing simply for nursing's sake. He moves and moves and moves and he seems to see things that none of us can, just like Ruby. So far, so great.

Then there's PJ. Miss P. Penelope Jeanne. And lemme tell you, world wide of internet, I have NO IDEA who this person is. I've never met her before, I have no frame of reference. Consequently, I'm continually surprised by her actions, how she functions & gets what she needs. I said it out loud when she was tiny, tiny hoping for the universe to step in and throw me a bone. It didn't. Instead, it threw even more Penelope-ness right-the-hell-at-me. BOOM! Welcome to Penelope! Just try and figure her out, SUCKAS!

She is our wild-ride, our soup-ed up roller-coaster the one who loves us more than anyone could or will. She burns long and hot and believe me when I say that we hit the cosmic jack-pot of fierce loyalty and adoration when she joined us here and started breathing air.

Now if I can just find a way to get her to stop flippin' yelling at us all the time...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Words to live by

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

-- Leonard Cohen, Anthem

An extremely thoughtful friend sent this to me yesterday and when I read it I was all: FUCK YEAH! It's the sort of sentiment I wish I could read, see, ingest every single day. I'd be a better person; gentler with myself and less of a goddamned bitch.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Little ole me

Not having a great day.

I think about the moment (moments?) that I went from the young girl who looked in the mirror one day and decided that I would in fact grow up to be pretty *phew* to being the young woman who thought nothing of flinging her head over the edge of the toilet bowl, determined to stay that way.

And now, at 39 My body dysmorphic issues have never really gone away. 3 kids, a bit of therapy, love and admiration from a few hot humans, the stunning devotion of my husband have done their part the mask the issue, to make it sneakier, harder to pin-down, smack around and show it who's boss.

I know enough about the disorder to know it's all about control, my control of my body, my space, my life. My, me, MINE. But like a rather cute therapist from San Francisco once told me: "you're too smart NOT to be crazy". So smart and crazy I sit, horribly uncomfortable in my own skin. It sucks, internets. Truly.

My 8 year old daughter told me last night that a girl in the 4th grade with her is so concerned about her weight that she skips meals!?! At 9 years old. Holy Fuck.

The challenge before me: To not have a starving, puking, self-hating child.

I'm running or walking almost every day now. I'm not complaining in front of the kids about my "Incredible Hulk-ness" and I'm keeping myself off the bathroom floor, for now (It has occurred to me that my disdain for toilet scrubbing and my 4 year old's propensity for getting pee all over the floor may be working to my advantage in this department).

Later.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cry Baby

Lincoln's tears found him this morning. Damn you, cruel world! Damn you!

Coincidentally (?), he's a few days into flat out BARKING at me. Squealing like a pig all up in my grill many, many times a day.

Told my husband, Lincoln's daddy, the main-man running things, the guy who rocked baby loco to sleep in 10 minutes flat last night, that I remember this time with the other babies; this time that we, the booby-liscious-mommies can at equal intervals, calm our babes with our milk & drive them to the brink of INSANITY with it.

This all means, of course, that he is getting way too big. Too big, too big, too big. Like I said: DAMN YOU!

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Wise One Strikes Again

Does anyone really know how you feel?

Is life really good or bad?

Is there only room for good and evil, black and white?

Will we ever find out? Does the truth always have to be told?...



~Ruby, age 8

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Hey Lincoln!

Hi sweet buddy-man. You're sleeping right now; and why not?! It's 10:00AM, why be so *boring* as to sleep at the other 10:00? You're a renegade, baby, and I love you for it.

These past 2 months with you have been an exquisite pleasure. You are lovely, lovely baby. You smiled at 3 weeks, cooed at 4 and laughed at 5; every day, we are reminded of what a gift you are.

Now, I am not naive enough to think it will remain thusly, you being all lovely and all. I've been around the block *with Penelope* and I KNOW that bad moods can happen to good babies. DUDE. I know.

But for now, you are my delicious milkman, my sweet, sweet guy who loves his mama, is calmed by his papa and who sublimely tolerates diaper changes by his sisters. We're a bunch of lucky, stoned-out of our minds mother-fuckers because of you, Lincoln. Thank you, baby. We needed you.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

@!#*&!%!$!!!!

Health insurance, health insurance providers (ha!), unions can all kiss my chilly, white ass.

Not that anyone comments, but if you care to comment, do any of you three fearless readers of mine have a POSITIVE anecdote for me? I need hope. Or millions and millions and millions of dollars so I won't care so much any more about getting reimbursed.

Nothing can make me feel so helpless, so at a loss than when I'm dealing with this business. It is crazy making at its most maniacal. And if I were still the hitting-my-head-on-the-wall type, I'd have one helluva cracked skull and if I weren't a wild-animal-starving nursing mother, I'd be contemplating picking up that eating disorder again. Not kidding.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

A departure

So. I've been privately working out more and more what my thoughts are on the election and looming inauguration. I am still thrilled and still a squeamish with said thrilled-ness that we get to get Barack Obama. Holy shit. Barack Obama.

I think a lot about what sort of nasty things will come to a head and what kinds of wonderful forces will repel them. I feel bit the kid in a candy store that I get to live in such a monumentally important point in history.

Back to the nasty things, though. Again, I believe this to be the crux of my own mixed up feelings on whether or not I get to be proud of our next president.

While I really don't think I think that just because I happen to be a white person living in America, that I am equally responsible for the reprehensible things my anscestors did during slavery, I also don't think that just because I happen to be white that I shouldn't get grouped into the herd with fucking yahoos who still perpetuate hate RIGHT NOW. The latter is much trickier for me to peel off.

Here's an email I got from a friend the other day:

"We got through the pediatrician (Phoebe) and the dentist(both kids) with only mild trauma, so I took the kids to the Perkins restaurant in Middletown for lunch to celebrate.

I was thinking, snobbishly, how everyone in the restaurant looked troglodytic, then chastising myself for making assumptions about people based on how they looked. I said something to the kids about how calm they'd been at the dentist's like, "Who's better than you? No one!"

And Phoebe laughed and said, "Well, sometimes some people are better--like Obama!" I felt suddenly self-conscious and worried,
then thought I was being paranoid to think that anyone at the restaurant would have a problem with a 5 year-old being excited about Obama. Well. Here are some snatches of the conversation I overheard at the next table:

"I didn't love him, but McCain..."

"Of the four of them, Sarah Palin was the only one qualified...experience...Alaska..."
[OK, so far it's just the usual Fox News talking points, nothing
revolutionary.]

"And he's not even American!"
[Um...what?]

"Now they're gonna think this evens everything
up..."

"Now one of them is President..."

"The day after the inauguration we're going to be
picking cotton."
[Big laughs over this. Sweet Jesus.]

"Someone's gonna whack him."

"Somebody SHOULD whack him."
[Then some discussion about what method
"somebody" should use. The consensus
is reached that explosives would be best, like "at
that federal building
down there." Holy fuck. I am in a nightmare. The rest
of the conversation
was just as lovely.]

When I went to pay and the manager asked how everything
was, I tried to make a joke about how it was fine except for the racists at the next table and burst out crying, just to add a little embarrassment to the agony.

Why am I always surprised by how awful some people are? And
why do I expect stupid people to be embarrassed by their idiocy and not broadcast it publicly?

I feel really scared about how many people in this country
think EXACTLY the way those guys do. Millions of people. And I don't mean scared for Obama.

That kind of talk--about fearing for his safety--is just a
distraction from the big fucking void at the center of this country where a soul should be. I mean scared for me, my kids, and the future of this country. I'm scared by how empowered these people have become, having been pandered to by the anything-for-a-vote end of the Republican party for so long.

I'm scared that so many people believe this line of thinking goes hand-in-hand with loving God and country. I'm scared that Phoebe's going to say something positive about Obama at school next year and get punched in the face for being a n-lover. I am just sick over it.

Going back into my bubble now."

My friend isn't white, she isn't black, but she isn't white. Like me. Like the fucks who wrecked her lunch.

For months and months I carried around a terrible fear that Obama was going to be assassinated; a sick, palpable fear, now I trust his protection more and more and that agony has been replaced by something not so sinister a thought process and I'm grateful for that because what happened in that nasty little restaurant in upstate NY is what I need to focus on, not how I can protect the life of my president and his family. Because I may be a bad-ass, but let's be serious.

I grew up with my grandmother and other family members talking about n-----s and "those people". I went to an integrated school in Boston in the 70's and I witnessed some maniacal hatred. I never want my kids to be a part of anything like that or like what happened at Perkins. And that's what I think Barack Obama is going to bring; he's going to bring the wonderful forces that will wipe away another layer of shit-spewing ignorance.

I am hopeful that Barack Obama, my black president, will make white people into better people.

Monday, January 12, 2009

The Understudy

Very recently I decided I needed to get to know my oldest child. She, being the extremely capable, competent, intelligent, self-sufficient sort, was kind of easy for me to, uhm, ignore. For a while.

Now, it's not as bad as it sounds. Actually, it might be as bad as it sounds. Of course, the child was fed, clothed, kissed, disciplined, loved, encouraged but rarely meaningfully engaged by me, her mother.

Isn't that tragically sad? And I mean "Wuthering Heights" tragic. "Terms of Endearment" sad. Sad like you get when you read a news story that just takes your legs out.

When I realized it, not a small piece of me ignited and in a flash, turned to cinder and will likely cling to some other, still living chunk of me until the day the rest of me dies, as a reminder of what a horrible thing it was: ignoring this girl.

Not a surprise, it took me a few tries to link in to her. My husband, a truly gifted parent, can do this INSTANTLY. I flubbed and stuttered and acted the fool for a few rounds before I felt like I was really getting her and she was letting me get her.

I can't express the relief the terror of the relief I feel that I got my self re-connected to this child prior to the "bus incident". This week I got to tell her that as a mother, as her mother, I know I make a lot of mistakes. I got to tell her that I know I kind of suck sometimes. I also got to tell her that with this thing, this "bus incident", her mother will shine. That this thing, I will get absolutely right. And I will. I am.

She's only 8 years old. She's spectacular. She needs me. ME. Not that nasty crone I send in all too often to fill my slot. I need to take back my role and own the bitch.

Friday, January 9, 2009

say whaaaat?

"Today was: math test, spelling test, punch in the nose"
"Huh?"
"Math test, spelling test, punch in the nose"

Those fucking little bitches. I hate them and their parents. I hate their dogs and their ugly houses. I hate them.

Being the parent of the bullied one puts the heartbreak right up front. Gets the shit over with. And the older they get, the smarter and more aware of the world, the worse that heartbreak is and the less you can do to massage it away. Being the parent of the bullies? They'll get their heartbreak, too. When their loser kids are still living in the basement and eating all the Cheetos past their 30th birthdays.

My kid knows these kids suck, but she wants their friendship anyway. She told me so. "Ma, they're jerks. But I want them to like me", she said.

So today, after three years of their BULLSHIT, one of the little twats PUNCHED MY KID IN THE FACE. Happened in the Thunder Dome, I mean the bus.

I have no big words or fancy ideas to express how I feel on this one. I'm sad and violated and angry and depressed. How do 8 year old girls who live in upstate NY, in apple country for crissakes, get parented to the point that they don't see that punching someone in the face *just because* is wrong? As my equally tweaked out husband said: Where's the filter?

I hate them. And on Monday, I'm going to... ha! Caught myself, Interwebs! Phew. That was close.

Gonna go look at my violated babe now, all fast asleep in her blue blanket. How could someone punch her?

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Shock it to me

Been wanting to be here for a while now. I have. But I've been a bit busy. Just ask my boobs and the dust MOUNDS that have overtaken e v e r y t h i n g. Ask my solid food eating children who can count the number of homemade meals that I've cooked for them on one hand. The place is a wreck I tell you! And only one person is to blame: The Milkman

Having a baby around is fucking wild. It's a straight up trip and a half, I tell you. And maybe it's my age, or my planetary alignment or (and this is where I'd put my money, people) or that this particular baby is just that good, but this time, I'm cool as a goddamned cucumber about all of it.

The laundry alone could kill a man. Fugeddabout the dishes, the toilets the aforementioned dust problem... but I don't care! I have a baby! And he is as sweeeeeet as the condensed milk at the bottom of my coffee glass.

Who knew? Not me, I'll certainly cop to that. I was terrified to have this baby and now I'm electrified.