Real is Good

42. Just like 24 but waaaay better

2012-01-27T11:30:00.001-05:00

Today is my birthday. It's 11:29 AM and I am sipping a coffee with Bailey's in it.

This day is already a major, major success: I woke up early and happy and free of random aches and pains. I made coffee, took a shower and found beautiful, hand-made jewelry from Ruby strewn across my pillow.

Lincoln, new haircut and all, RAN into school holding my left hand in his and clutching a note pad and pencil with his other, delicate, strong and glorious appendage.

PJ looked me in the eyes while we waited for the bus as I held her elfin cheeks and told her she was my best present every single day. I love you, mama. She said. Yes, girl. Yes, indeed. I love you, too.

Tonight I get wined and dined and very likely exquisitely laid by my incredible husband.

My belly flabbs and my eyes do puff. My vision sucks and my chin hairs rage. But today? I couldn't care less. It's probably the Bailey's, but I don't care about that either.

For better or worse. I get it.

2012-01-25T19:31:00.003-05:00

Let me get this straight, do you want me here?
As I struggle through each and every year.
And all these demons, they keep me up all night.

Uhm. I'm kind of a handful these days. The effort I am making to clear out my ghosts, to look fondly at my faults, to live in (not around) my emotions is baking up a not so tasty cake for the people around me... ok, for my husband. Let's face it, he's the right and only man for the job and he loves the way I cook, even when I'm cooking "crazy".

I fell in love with him for a lot of reasons but the one that I tell most people about, because it's so beautiful and rare and incredible is that he wants to change! He wants to be better and he wants to settle in to the good parts when he finds them. He's not perfect and he gets on my nerves and... he, he sees me. He knows me and he loves me anyway. And I'm pretty sure he's going to for a really long time and when that time is here, we'll remember right now in the best possible light; because that's just the kind of man he is.

(and just so you don't get jealous that i'm all sitting in my bed with a glass of malbec and a wistful look in my eye: this whole time Lincoln was crawling all over me going "wheeee, wheee, wheee in this deep, guttural voice and then he straddled my lap and drooled into my cleavage.)

2012-01-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

She is her father's daughter: Every night that Chris has been away and Penelope has slept with me, she's gone to bed with socks on. And every morning, I find them balled up at the bottom of the bed.

She married him. Twice.

2012-01-19T22:04:00.002-05:00

A lot of people in my family thought (think?) that my wicked step-father "messed with me" or "had something to do" with me. He didn't. Other than punching me, stabbing at me with a pocket knife and shaking me like a busted candy machine, he never laid a hand (or anything else)on me.

He did get drunk a lot and hit on my friends, though. That was fun. Once, he slipped and fell on the ice outside of our house trying to get one of my friends to not drive home. We DIED! Watching his pathetic ass fly up in the air and crack on the solid ground, our eyes meeting over his splayed form. She got in the car and I ran to the room, both of us knowing that if either of us got caught laughing at him, I'd be screwed.

He was a beast and he scared me so much. He threw chairs at my brother and told me how great it was having sex with my mother. He wore shiny, cordovan leather boots and always, always had his shirt tucked into his slacks with a coordinating belt. Always. I mean, unless he was sitting around in his underwear, his boxers billowing around his hips and me hoping, praying the tiny mouth of penis-hole fabric stayed shut and I wouldn't see it.

When he punched me in the face (I don't know the season, time of day... when I think back on it, what the memory feels like is that I was on a soundstage in the middle of nothing. I was in a paneled room with shitty carpeting and an encroaching roof. There is no time, no time frame for me to reference. It just happened) I couldn't believe it. He fucking hit me! HE HIT ME! HARD! And then, I was in more trouble because I made him do it and I made my mother upset because I made him do it.

It was the longest punch in the universe. It lasted the entire 16th, 17th & 18th years of my life (until another, different prick decided it was OK to hit me)

That same insane few days was when he pulled a small jack-knife out of his pocket and jabbed it at my hands as I sat at the kitchen table. He got me a few times. My mother did nothing to stop any of this. I am a small person, I was even smaller then. I needed help. What I got was hell.

Intertwined with these memories are the memories of the boy I was in love with when all this was happening. He was why all this was happening... He was handsome and funny and smart and he had an older girlfriend for like 4 years so by the time I came around, he was pretty clear on what to do for the ladies. We never had sex back then but that summer he would sneak in my bedroom window at 4 in the morning and make me feel like the only girl in the world. He'd tell me I was beautiful while he kissed and held and touched me. He was good and what we were doing was perfect until it wasn't. Until I was given front row seats to the madness of that man.

Untangling my glorious sexual beginnings from insane physical & emotional abuse has been... difficult.

When the beast found out I had a boyfriend (and that he had me; in the palm of his hand) he went wild. WILD. He drank and stalked and left his job and lost his fucking mind.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I have this really terrible relationship with anger. Everything I know about it I learned from very damaged people. I learned that pleasure and shame share very small spaces with one another. I learned that anger means IT'S YOUR FAULT and when it surfaces it's my job to mop it up... with my guts.

I am asking for help again. And I'm getting it (in does I'm able choke down). Please tell me it gets easier to feel good.

Do you see what I see?

2012-01-17T21:07:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the video of the Autistic girl who learns to type to communicate? It cemented some thoughts for me, internet.

Many of you have heard me rail against typical therapies for atypical people. The goal of therapy must be to help the individual, to exploit their gifts and talents, not to make them more "table ready" for society.

My son is smart. He's funny and musically talented. He's emotional and expressive. He can learn. He just doesn't go about life the same way the rest of us do. And therein lies the huge fucking problem.

I believe we are going about this the wrong way. Carly, the teenaged girl who speaks through her keyboard and my sweet son and all the rest of you incredible people should not be IQ tested. Should not be asked to do things the way typicals do them. Should not be held to the same standards of behavior or social rules.

We need to meet them, not force them to catch up or worse, leave them behind. We need to think like them, they don't need to think like us.

I'm not quite finished with this... There will be letters written and videos made. There will be loud speeches and pontifications. There will be some hell raised.

2012-01-16T01:46:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Lincoln puts himself to bed? That his new routine, that our new life, means he PUTS HIMSELF TO BED?

He did it the first time a few months ago, a fluke. Busy night, lots of friends and a tired, tired baby: We found him under his duvet snoring like a sailor.

About a month ago, the hot husband mounted a TV on the wall of Link's room and it has transformed our lives. Now, around 9PM we put on a movie and put the boy in his awesome robot chair. At some point, he crawls into bed and falls asleep like the most amazing magic trick in the whole universe.

He sleeps, damnit. He sleeps and we all are finally, finally breathing easy. Well... easier.

more and more layers

2012-01-14T22:51:00.001-05:00

Another me would have done the math in an entirely different way. Would have calculated the worth of this day in more concrete terms than the now me; the right-this-very-second-me.

A successful passing of time would be measured by what I did, what I got done.

Today, this right-here-me, can tell you that THIS DAY was and is still wonderful and amazing because of how I feel. And this feeling of 'complete' that I feel, the wholeness I am experiencing is thick like homemade frosting and just as sweet.

Today we curled hair, painted toes, tickled, giggled, ate pizza, watched movies, drank juice and celebrated with friends.

Today we, 'I' feel love.

...that only a mother could love

2012-01-14T13:50:00.000-05:00

Yes. YES. YES! I know. I know that Lincoln and Penelope LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE. I know. My genotype/phenotype twins born four years apart.

They are beautiful children. Breathtaking, ethereal; almost impossible to define. They are photogenic. They light up a room. They are so unlike any people I have ever met and they are so like themselves.

My impossible, magical babies. Yes, I know.

looking for the brilliance in the grey zone

2012-01-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

Guess what? I flew off the handle and I didn't break my life.

Nevertheless, it isn't the way to go (going all crazy). And guess what? My emotional life isn't cool-calm collected OR One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Guess what? There aren't just two choices...

Out of the mouths...

2012-01-10T20:50:00.001-05:00

I had some time to waste in the city today before my appointment and instead of shopping (again) I decided to just walk around. It was about 4:30 and the streets were teeming, teeming with children and their caregivers. Like, I couldn't walk half a block without moving for a stroller or getting whacked in the ankles with a wee-little back-pack.

Maybe because I didn't have the supreme focus of HUNTER GATHERER today and I was just there, just walking, that I noticed the kids so acutely. But day-um! Their sweet voices! Their steady gaits! Their intent looks to their mothers, their nannies... Their voices.

Their voices just about fucking killed me today. I want a toddler who talks in sing-song-y tones. One who mis-pronounces things while trying to explain very complicated thoughts.

Today I was overcome with the sadness that I will never hear Lincoln's delicate baby voice say more than 2 or three words at a time. I want that. So bad.

Go ahead, ask me

2012-01-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

As a know-it-all, I mostly get through my days just fine. No annoying questioning of my choices or actions.

I have always been a know-it-all, too. Just ask my brother, the one who'd push me down a flight of stairs for being "smart" aka "calling him a dick".

But now, knocking on the door of my 42nd birthday, I am finally realizing that this is just another one of my shields. Another layer of protection. And worse? It's cracking and it has to get knocked down with all of my other brilliantly designed (if I do say so myself) facades.

This in no way demeans my SMARTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM status, by the way. I still *do* know pretty much everything, but I'm going to try to own it more and not make all of you buy it. Get it?

PJ

2012-01-06T11:03:00.000-05:00

While the hot husband is away for the NEXT THREE WEEKS, I will have the pleasure of sharing my bed with the wee Penelope, she of the champion snuggle-tude.

Her body is so small, tight, lean, warm, soft and fragile. Her tiny breathtakingly beautiful face with lips that ooze pink vitality framed by wispy locks the same exact color as her dad's is enough to make me cry when I see it sound asleep next to me.

Penelope has Fragile X, too. We found out about a month ago. PJ. My delicate, precious, emotional boiling pot of fierce love and affection has Fragile X.

We suspected. We waited. We knew but we didn't want to know.

The years she spent stuck to me. Her yelling, screaming years. Her ever present separation anxiety, her volatility. My worry, my husband's worry for this child's psyche... all explained yet again by the dangling little leg off of the X chromosome I gave her.

Before diagnosis, we made a pact to handle her more carefully, to give the smallest girl in the room, the most space we could. It's working. She's more at ease, we are reveling in her company. She deserves it; my lovely Penelope.

It's 11:05 in the morning and I can't believe it's another 10 hours till I get to have the littlest elf of all cozied up in her mama's arms under the covers in the safest place on earth.

2012-01-05T21:03:00.000-05:00

I spent $22 on one lipgloss today. A really incredible lipgloss. A lipgloss that I deserve and that I didn't realize the price of till I got to the counter and handed it over along with the $12 lip balm I impulse purchased while waiting on-line.

This is very much what some of my life is like. I was in NYC for a few hours and I got a coffee at Starbucks, got a birthday gift for my friend's kid. I also saw my therapist.

For fucks-sake it is so hard. So bloody painful. Today I thought I had a story to tell that I believed would convey a certain set of emotional conventions that would explain how well I'd been ingesting the sage advice I'd been receiving over the past month or so. That's when he told me that my vocabulary, though impressive, wasn't worth much in my therapy space. That all my fancy words were keeping me from, from... from FUCKING WHAT?!?

From my emotions. Those bastardy things again. While I kept driving to tell my story he kept stopping me to try to get me to dig in on myself and get dirty. But I won! Ha! I only cried a teeny, tiny leeetle bit. Guess what? Turns out that means I Lost. I lost at therapy today. Good thing I had already won at lipgloss or I would have been really pissed.

Xmas 2011 is in the books, people

2011-12-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

So. The past 24 hours have been intense. I am one rusty emotive machine.

The good news is that I can certainly whip up some pretty tasty passion. The bad news is that I can spread the moldy leavings all over people that I love.

In the past 24 hours I have called my husband terrible names. I have cried (sobbed, really) in a post-coital heap that would make Kubrick blush. I worked my santa magic and had my babies eating out of the palm of my hand. I've napped & had too much too drink. I've snuggled deeply and hopelessly with my son and been the grateful recipient of more 'I love you's' than I can count from my daughters.

Christmas is cool. I really liked Christmas this year and I think as my shedding becomes less difficult, more subtle and manageable, I'll like the plain old regular days ahead of me more and more, too.

Home Sweet Home

2011-12-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

Life does not suck here at 7 Stepehn Smith. The fire roars, the Christmas tree glows, the
Sauvignon blanc glistens and the WNYC enlightens.

I mostly feel pretty good. I mostly actively delight in every piece of this new life. However, no matter how far, how drastically, how vigorously I move, I still live with a monster.

Several weeks ago I started seeing a very smart, very aggressive, very tender, very motivated therapist. The good news? Apparently I can be fixed. The bad news? I am so jammed up, so tight and controlled that I have no idea how to start. I'm 41 and creeping right up on 42's ass... I don't have years and years to do this. I have shit to do and children to tend to.

Fuck! Is anyone else listening to the radio right now? The carols they are playing are playing right into my cerebellum... 'Tis the season, indeed.

2011 was all about us ingesting, digesting the lusciousness of Lincoln and moving our life and family closer to... to... to more tangible things. And it was a bitch of a whore to navigate. 2011 fucked like a pro.

And here I sit, on the precipice of 2012 terrified of the work before me once again.

2011-12-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

It was my son's birthday last month. He turned three. I couldn't write about it though. He and his 7 year old sister have so destroyed and mangled my macbook that it's impossible to sit at my (ha!) desk and use my (ha!) computer. Add it to the list.

What else is on the list? Which category should we start in? Things destroyed by dog? Things destroyed by dog of significant value or low value? Things destroyed by children? Things co-opted by children? I really feel like I am facilitating squatters around here.

Wasn't my womb enough?

And the fuckinmuthafucker of a dog. Fuck. That. Shit. Look, I love him and I wanted him but he most certainly did not get the "They saved you, don't devour their shit and leave it in ribbons all over the porch/tv room/dining room/hallway" memo. He must have missed the "If you jump on and nibble at small people, they will hate you" memo, too.

I wrote that about 5 weeks ago. The dog has a new (loving?) home and I'm still without a computer. Oh, woe is me. I'm writing this on an iPad. Feel sorry for me yet?

Tempest in a teapot

2011-08-21T09:06:00.000-04:00

Hell hath no fury like an 11 year old girl going through puberty and ain't no heart big enough to love the crap out of her.

Ruby. A gift.

She stuns me with her thoughts, articulations, moods, ideas, expressions of love & fits of passion.

The other night I said "I'm not the fucking maid!" in response to finding that she had (artfully) painted strokes of nail polish on the downstairs shower stall, soggy towels on the bathroom floor and perfect curls of eyeliner pencil frosted with the merest slips of melty, deep blue color smeared into the vanity.

I was pissed and she was stolid. She didn't waver till I uttered the obscenity and then she crumbled. I apologized for the word, but not the sentiment, for the anger but not the message and then I left it alone.

Later, when she was fresh out of tears, I told her that I really was sorry for swearing. And she said, that's ok. And then she said, when I'm all upset all I want is you, mom. I act like I don't, but I do. She closed with a kiss and an I love you.

I asked her to try to be patient with me in a few years if (when) she says that foul word to me. I told her I hope I'd have as much grace and presence of mind as her.

Minus the F-bomb. This shit goes down in my house EVERY DAY. The kid blows my mind like Mikey with the pop-rocks & coca cola. She asks me hypothetical questions (and she prefaces with: This is hypothetical, mom). She tells me she knows it's weird she's addicted to love songs even though she has NO IDEA what it feels like to have an unevenly broken heart that's deeply rolling. She asks me to buy her meringue cookies simply on the basis of their appearance.

Two days ago, she said she's considering vegetarianism again not because of the moral conflict of humans eating meat (we're not the only mammals who do, you know. Animals eat each other. It happens) but because of the filthy practice of turning the sweet hog into savory bacon. Yes, she said "savory".

I'm not kidding. She's extraordinary. And she's changing. Evolving into a most stormy and delectable thing. I don't wish her one second older or younger. I want to eat her alive and rub my tummy. And for now, she wants me to, too.

Motivation is Everywhere

2011-08-04T21:13:00.000-04:00

Since we moved, I've been poking into my brains for the perfect first post in the new digs. Plenty of inspiration. PLENTY. But those trifles will have to wait because tonight I was pulled to the keyboard to officially record a most troubling find:

While I was in the bathroom (on the toilet) cleaning up from a rogue peeing episode by Lincoln all over my lap, pants, undies, legs (more on that later. maybe), I discovered TO MY FUCKING HORROR a grey pubic hair. A G R E Y P U B I C H A I R

Ask and ye shall get a really long answer

2011-07-01T16:42:00.000-04:00

At the pool the other day, a woman made her way over to where Link and I were yucking it up/making out and asked me what his "disorder" was.

Her face was warm, motherly. Her own son really cute & playful with a huge mop of brown curls that he'd lick pool water off every once in a while.

It was the first time that a total stranger had the nuts to ask about Lincoln in public. He was super pumped up that day, twisting his arms up and twirling his hands like a Deadhead all the while saying "gheeeeeeeeee" with the biggest shit-eating, drooling grin. In between sets, he'd maul me with hugs and kisses (read: HEAVEN).

My boy don't come off like other boys. He acts the way we all want to act and it shows. I know it shows and this woman kindly, gently asked me what was up.

What a relief to have someone FINALLY FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT IT! I am a bit of a braggart (this point perfectly, dryly pointed out by Ruby mid-conversation). I love to be interviewed. I'm kinda a show off.

And the other day I got the really fantastic opportunity to show off my child's light and spread it around like the swirling whirls of fireflies.

Turn, turn

2011-06-29T18:43:00.000-04:00

I am moving out a house that two of my children were born in. I am moving into a house where a father died. The weight of these pieces falling into place hit me smack dab in the ventricles today. On July 11th I think there won't be enough Lexapro in circulation to keep me from sobbing uncontrollably at the closing tables.

One of the days we were looking at our new house I found a four leaf clover near the driveway. It's the size of a lentil and I saw it immediately when I looked down. First one I've ever actually spied growing in my life up until that point.

The very first time we toured our new home I was initially underwhelmed. Like bored. But as I walked the halls, opened doors, crept around the grounds, it grew on my like the spongy, welcoming moss that envelopes the earth around one of our trees.

We will be happy there (we'll be happy anywhere, don't get me wrong). But this house feeeeels sooooo riiiiight. And I feel equally at peace leaving our current home. It served us beautifully. My hot husband and I have grown so much here. So many fights, evolutions, jobs, worries, hopes, births, birthdays. We've had sex in every single room. Except the garage. I think. Mighta been drunk that time.

We owned the shit out of this house, damn it. And we'll own the next one, too.

I promised

2011-06-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

Because of him I love the smell of petroleum. When he'd come home from work (he ran the printing press at our local newspaper) the smell of gasoline & ink clung to him like powdered sugar on cake and I drank it in like lemonade.

He was my favorite. He didn't yell (at me). He never drank. He made my school lunches & I look just like him.

When my parents told me they were getting a divorce, it was his soft, mushy white t-shirt clad belly I buried my face into and cried.

I knew he was far from perfect. I knew my mother, her mother and all of her sisters hated him. I knew he was embarrassing, running like a MADMAN onto the football field when a Pop Warner kid went down. Gut churning, sweat flying, tackle box full of EMT tools bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. I knew the neighborhood kids (and adults) thought he was a buffoon when he'd come bursting out of the house, SCREAMING & YELLING and demanding justice for his kid during a game of kick-ball.

I loved him most anyway. Like I said, he didn't yell at me. He never hit me and he promised me the world. Over and over and over and over and over and over again. He PROMISED. He promised.

I was 11 when my parents divorced he disappeared and over the years his lack of remarkableness settled in like soot.

He came to my high-school graduation and when I was about 20, he took my brother and I out to a movie and to the diner for dinner.

He has never met my husband or any of my children. The last few times we talked, he asked for money. Like, lots of money. Could we buy his house for him and let him live in it? Could we pay for him to re-locate to another state?

And the very last time I heard from him, I got copied in on one of those fucking mind numbing, infuriating chain mails that INSIST that Jesus WON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE unless you forward the fucking thing to 20 people. Dick doesn't even know that I'm an Atheist.

Now I know he also has Fragile X. The gift that keeps on giving and he didn't have to spend a dime! Sweet, isn't it?

I promise, the next one will be about my father

2011-06-10T08:06:00.000-04:00

When I was 16 I had an abortion. My mother had no idea. Or maybe she did. I have no idea. When I had my follow up appointment at my local Planned Parenthood I told her it was about time I went to a gynecologist. She didn't argue, didn't encourage. So off I went. When I got home I showed her the receipt that had the diagnosis codes and descriptions. The paper clearly said it was a post termination check up and that I was given birth control pills. She said nothing.

I had been back living in her house just a few months when all of this went down and maybe she didn't want to drum up any more trouble with my step father? I still have no idea.

That year was so insane. I was kicked out of my house and sent to live in Holbrook, MA for several months, stalked by my step father, physically assaulted by him, doing shitty in school and the day I drove to Rockland County to have the abortion, I was pulled over by the police and taken to the station and interrogated because my car and person fit the description of a runaway. Do you parents know where you are they asked? Uhm, HELL NO! Can we call them? NO! They finally let me go, go to have general anesthesia and drive myself home 3 hours later.

My mother was not a willing participant in her life. She didn't want children, but she was supposed to have them so here we are! Yay!

I have a few really lovely memories of her and I remember for a long time (a few years?) thinking she was a fun, good person.

But I also remember getting paddled with a spatula for lighting the matches left in my room by my uncle who was staying with us. He worked nights and slept in my bed all day when I was at school. He had a brown paper bag with porn, cigarettes and matches under my mattress. So this guy was allowed to jerk off in my bed and smoke butts but I get wailed on for lighting those matches in an ash tray?

I remember pooping in my pants long after that was acceptable. I was punished. Sent to my room to feel like a loser with shitty pants and no dinner. I was handed a harsher sentence for soiling myself than I was for driving our Pinto wagon into someone's hedges & porch.

My mother didn't drive me anywhere she didn't absolutely have to. She farted in front of my friends. She gave me a package of maxi pads the day I came home with my period soaked culottes (I was 11).

My mother had a pretty shitty childhood and couldn't wait until mine and my brother's were over. She has no idea what kind of people her children and grand children are.

I don't feel sorry for myself. And I'm not angry. Mostly because I have the greatest inlaws in the world. They are the parents I waited 28 years for.

I've just been thinking a whole lot about that 16th year of my life and how it solidified the structure of the relationship I have with my mother today. Have you ever been to Hong Kong? The scaffolding that surrounds the spanking new high-rises that go for miles and miles into the air are made entirely of bamboo. Lashed together with rope. Take away the rope and that's about right.

Question:

2011-05-25T18:30:00.002-04:00

What is better than having an ENORMOUS B.M. right before you go shopping for new jeans? That's right: N O T H I N G.

No, you can't have her.

2011-05-21T15:05:00.000-04:00

My big kid today told me this: "Everyone in school hates their parents, but I love mine". I asked her if she actually said that out loud. Her reply? "Of course, what do I have to lose?"

So today I fed them all chips, seltzer, choc chip cookies, donuts and pound cake. They're happy, I'm happy.

Today, I am a good mother.

WARNING: Dream Post

2011-05-17T18:47:00.000-04:00

This morning my husband told me that no matter how fat and flabby I get, that he'll never leave me. And I believe him.

I've recently lost 15 or so pounds and I can firmly put my ass back into pre-Ruby pants. And that's alright. Alright indeed.

That feat is made all the more miraculous by the fact that I've been taking 20mg's of Lexapro for the past 3 months. If the FDA wouldn't have my head, I'd invite all the ladies over for daily trick-or-treating for some of this sweet mama candy. Side effects be damned! I'm skinny AND my libido is through the roof. UNH!

Anyway I *have* been having extra bizarro and off the wall dreams, though. Never a slouch in that department, I think the Lexapro brain is making all kinds of random connections while I sleep and churning out some fucked up fodder for my nightly visions.

Last night, I was (for some reason), bounding around my yard in teeny, tiny chinos and a tight grey tshirt. This get-up was really a bonus for enhancing my santa-esque midriff. Jiggles like a bowl full of jelly indeed. I was short, chubby and flabby and dancing around my yard IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND'S NEW GIRLFRIEND. She was really nice, though. The kids seemed to like her.

Hell & D Part II

2011-05-04T19:46:00.000-04:00

We certainly take for granted the amount of and intensity of experience we have every single day on our unit. We hold and process on a spectrum of "healthy". Some of us keep it all in, some of us pretty much wear it from the inside out but most are in the middle. And most of the time, most of us just get through the day. We see what we see and we get through the damn day.

So when you get sucker punched in the face with the reality of your job it's kind of unnerving. Whenever I have the privilege of taking care of a deceased baby I feel the hit. I take my time, take care and talk to the sweet, limp, cold body and try to make the two of us not so alone in the room where these things take place. I don't always cry, but I always weigh the moment. I'm seeing so many things at once: A dead body, an infant who most likely wasn't old enough to live outside it's mother's belly. I'm seeing a mystery, science, love, fear... all of it. I weigh the moment and it is dense and heavy like stone.

The day after our patient dropped to the floor I was given the opportunity to see her. Her 36 hour postpartum body needed to be assessed by an L&D nurse. She was so still. Her uterus hard as a rock (as it should be) and her skin warm and pink. Tubes everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Machines thumping and whizzing. Her ICU nurse asked me about her breasts, should she be lactating? We developed a plan to try to get her breasts producing in the one in a million chance she'd be able to feel her sweet baby's sucks one day. I went to talk to her family about our thoughts. I never saw our patient again.

Back on my unit I went to the room where her husband, family and friends had been staying. I did my quick "nurse knock" and I walked in. Holymotherfuckingshit. HOLY SHIT. I was twisted instantly. I did not, could not understand what I was seeing. Nothing about the scene in that room made sense to me and I wanted to cry and run and leave. I had no intrinsic skills. Everything I did and said felt like it was coming from another mouth. Another brain.

I take care of women and babies. My patients are always women and are most always accompanied by women. Husbands, boyfriends and baby-daddies aren't foreign, are mostly welcomed but are never my patients.

When I walked in the room and faced the husband of our patient and I saw him laying in a patient bed, under the covers, eyes red, arm across his forehead, exhausted, pale, I took a bowling ball to the chest. It's not supposed to be like that. And to make the scene more marked with the absurd, he was surrounded entirely by other men. Men who looked at the floor, who were touching his bed, holding his hand & comforting their tortured, devastated friend, brother, son.

I will never forget it. And I never want to see it again.

Hell & D, part I

2011-04-28T14:09:00.000-04:00

So, you know... life is a bitch. A bitch because that shit is closely followed by death.

I think a lot about what will be the thing to tug me back to the keyboard and write. When I'm driving a million, jillion things drift in and out of my mind and for moments of time every single day, I am brilliant! I have the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD TO SAY. But then I get home and someone needs a hug, a sandwich, a clean ass, a stern word or a damn drink.

It has been a month of flux. And while I can say I am happier than I have been in years, there has been damage. Sadness. Grief. Stress. Tears. Layers have been peeled and the icky sticky underneaths have revealed gifts I wasn't ever prepared to have. I don't think I'm particularly worthy of good things (not feeling sorry for myself, it's just the way it is in the mind of Chez OBrien) but I am receiving my bounty with gratitude (a gift in itself).

Yesterday afternoon, at the memorial service for the 32 year old patient who died on our unit last week, I was thrust into the infinite space of love and light of a friend so precious. I don't touch her enough but yesterday, I couldn't let go.

How do you pound on the chest of a dead woman for an hour to give her newborn baby one sliver of a chance to feel her mother's warm skin one last time and then come face to face with her mourning and devastated family? How do you do that with grace and humility? My friend did that. My badass, beautiful, brutally strong friend.

Not far from the tree... sort of

2011-01-23T10:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I realized that there is one fantasy I've had for my son's future is actually a guarantee. Guaranteed only by his Fragile X-dom.

My son will always be sweet. Will always love and respect women. Will never be a dick-head or a bully. He won't be aggressive or mean. Thanks to Fragile X, my son will be a good man and for that, I am grateful.

11/16/2010

2010-11-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

Dearest, loveliest, sweetest most confounding baby,

Happy birthday, son. Today you turn two. Today you embark upon your third year tucked up deep inside my heart & guts. The day you were born was strange and wonderful as we all knew it would be. Windy and warm and submerged in fluid. So much fluid. And then there you were: purple, motionless and HUGE. Within seconds, you were wailing, I was wailing and our adventure began.

Two years later, you are loving, tiny and endlessly sweet and trusting. Aside from your size, you haven't changed a bit. You have always been Lincoln. And you always will be.

I try and try and try to take the beautiful advice that we haven't lost a thing; that that imagined boy never existed. That it's been you all along. It's hard, though. Hard.

Maybe next year I'll tell you that I've stopped crying every day. Maybe next year I'll be braver, calmer and less itching for a fight. Maybe next year I will be closer to having figured out how to make my world smaller yet more infinite at the same time. Maybe next year, maybe next year.

I love you, Link and maybe next year you'll be able to say it back to me.

The unkindest cut of all

2010-11-12T08:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I had a patient for about an hour post-partum. Lovely woman with the purest, sweetest smile. I walked in to meet her and found her baby ravenous at her breast, cooing in between gulps.

I read in her chart that she was from Somalia and while I wanted to ask her how she came to be in the States, it just never came up.

When the babe was whisked away to the nursery for his bath, it was time to get my peaceful, happy patient up to the bathroom to pee, change her gown and get washed up.

I'm a bit of an over-achiever when it comes to assessing perineums after delivery. While the mom is perched on the toilet, I hunker down like Johnny Bench with my peri-bottle filled with warm water and get a good look at the situation. Holy-fucking-bat-shit-craziness-from-hell. I was not prepared for what I saw. Was. Not. Prepared.

The nurse I got report from is a bit of a dolt and often leaves out pertinent pieces of information. I know this, so I am always geared up to do extra work when I take over on of her patients.

Yesterday, though? Yesterday I wanted to reach out and punch that nurse square in her face for neglecting to tell me that this woman had been subjected to a full, radical, female circumcision.

I wanted to curl up and cry right there on the bathroom floor. I'll never, never forget it.

Listen Up!

2010-10-31T13:46:00.002-04:00

While we were in Sacramento at MIND one thing we got confirmation on and learned way more in-depth about is Link's speech delay.

Fragile X'ers have difficulty speaking for a variety of reasons:
~Their loose connective tissue can make it hard for them to move their mouths correctly to form sounds
~They can have a highly arched hard palette; also causing problems with sound formation
~The over excitability in their brains makes learning in general, very, very hard. Speech often takes a back seat

We learned that Link, at 22 months and 2 words, is very, very advanced. We were told to embrace the fact that this is considered "verbal" in the Fragile X world. We also learned that by age 3, we can expect him to have 10 words. And if he's lucky, he'll be mildly conversational by age 7. Speech development and anxiety are the two biggest factors in assisting young Fragile X'ers with keeping the IQ gap between themselves and typical children as narrow as possible.

Our boy has been getting speech therapy since 9 months of age. And about 3 months ago we incorporated some sign language. Out at MIND they stressed hitting speech hard and heavy. They said up the sign language. They said to use something called "prompting" to help him form sounds. And they also recommend medications. 4 of them.

Within a few days of being home, Lincoln's grandma Jeanne had a "Baby Signing Time" video in our mailbox and a little over a week ago we started the boy on one of his meds.

Today, while he was eating his snack he looked over at me and perfectly and precisely did the sign for "more".

Look out, people. The sweet Mr. Buddy is making his needs known. HALLELUJAH!

23 Months Old

2010-10-17T08:27:00.000-04:00

I feel safe in confirming to the world wide internets that my boy has decided that walking around, getting from here to there on two feet, ain't no thang.

It's been two days. He ambulates like a belly dancer, arms swaying, abdomen driving the train, gut-wrenchingly sweet.

Vanilla Sky

2010-10-16T13:50:00.001-04:00

So there was a part of our visit (mine and Link's and my mother in law, Diane's) out to Sacramento that I was not entirely prepared for.

There were so many balls in the air for this trip. So much planning, wanting, waiting. There were messed up travel plans, missed flights, insurance snafus, incompetent office staffers. I was wound so tight to make this happen for Lincoln, for us, that I was wholly caught off guard for the parts that were about me. ME.

Since my son has an X-linked genetic disorder, he got it from me. ME. Simply, I am a carrier. I've known that rationally since we got Link's diagnosis. I never really felt it emotionally until now.

Why I have anxiety, depression? Why I worry? Why I feel overwhelmed and have a hard time coping? Why I have always, always had a hard time reading diagrams and understanding things like floor plans for fucks-sake? Fragile X, that's why. Why my father was so reclusive, quick to anger & not very bright? Fragile X.

I'm not supposed to wallow. I don't want to wallow. But I'm still crying almost every day. Usually just a little bit... in the car, alone.

Not supposed to think about what could have been, just what is.

But. BUT. B U T! If I had known sooner. If. IF. I F!

I feel like I ruined my son's life and I fucked up Penelope. I want these musings to go away and find a nice tidy home in hell where they belong.

They took my blood out in CA and I sit and I wait for the results of my affectation with Fragile X. I imagine the various outcomes and try to apply some sense to my life (MY LIFE. ME. SELFISH BITCH.) with each one. My gut is that I have a full mutation on one of my chromosomes. My gut is that me and my baby boy are the same. My gut is that I have lived for 40 years as one thing and I'm about to find out that that thing never existed.

Not my best friend.

2010-09-22T07:48:00.000-04:00

I have this really ugly side. As the years have come and gone, I've realized that a lot of humans share this trait so I don't feel particularly unique about it anymore. And I'm not surprised when I encounter it in its various unexpected forms.

For me, something that hasn't changed over time is that I still can't squish the motherfucker down my gullet far enough. The nasty dog crawls its shit stained, piss-soaked tail out of my guts more often then I would like.

This, I believe, is the crux of my unhappiness. Of my depression. When I subdue the dog, I live and don't question myself. I feel good. When the dogs chews threw its leash and bites off its own leg and growls through my psyche, I feel very, very un-good. Phony. Pretend. Like the dream when you take the stage for the recital but you've never rehearsed one step. I know the audience can tell I'm a fraud, but I keep dancing anyway chasing that fucking dog back into its cage.

The kindness of strangeness

2010-09-03T18:29:00.000-04:00

The Witnesses came by today. In their street clothes. That means it was an informal, unofficial visit. And they came to bring Lincoln a gift. This really cool, really tacky, bouncy/twisty/rocking horse thing that interacts with the TV. They thought about it a lot and thought it would be good for him. It is. And as much as I bitch, I do still truly believe there are a lot more good people out there than shitty people. And NO, none of that means that I am suddenly willing to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Resume breathing.

Oh! P.S. HUGE P.S. When Witness Girl (she's married and she's a nurse, she's a woman, but she's so cute and adorable and the size of an Olsen twin that I must call her "girl") bent over to help put together crazyrockingpony, her rather adorable and dare I say *racy* panties poked out over her waistband. And I stared. The End.

Yes, it bothers me that much

2010-09-02T13:51:00.000-04:00

So here's what bothers me about using the word "retard" and any of it's variations as insult, adjective or exclamation (please forward to all of your "but I'm an equal opportunity offender!" types):

When you use that word, the people who you are offending the most aren't likely to realize what you're doing and therefore can't defend themselves or respond appropriately to your assholedness. So, if you are a coward, press on! I'll be looking for you. If you'd like to change and grow a bit, find A NEW WORD.

U. G. L. Y.

2010-08-30T21:02:00.000-04:00

This is the worst I've felt in a million years. Make that a million and a half. I am angry at everyone and everything. My mind is racing over everything that I fucked up today that I half did, half remembered, planned wrong.

I screamed in the car all the way home. Well, not all the way, just from when the fucking change oil light came on after the ABS light came on. The oil just got changed! The brakes suck! I can't take the car in tomorrow! I can't be stuck in a car dealership with 3 kids all day. I need to get Ruby her school supplies. I need to make phone calls for Link, to get a new script for his new OT, to be home for his OT appointment!

The screaming didn't feel very good. It was freaky and loud but that didn't stop me. I wanted my throat to come out of my mouth, for my insides to come outside and look as twisted as I feel right now. I wanted physical evidence besides my dark circles, grey hair and sagging gut that I feel BAD.

Link is crying up in his bed and I've told the girls to leave me alone. Nice. I can't scream in the house and I can't break anything and for now, my insides are still in.

Cape Cod. Part II

2010-08-20T12:33:00.000-04:00

Despite the raggedy-bitch-episode, the ice cream was so nice, we had it twice.

We shopped for toys, touristy sweatshirts and ate lobster quesadilla. Lincoln ate sand, barked at seagulls and guzzled salt water. He stood for 4 seconds on his own, smiled for the camera (on command) and fell in love with Roxy the dog.

Penelope fell into the deep-end of the pool, fully clothed and did not freak out. I repeat: DID NOT FREAK OUT. She laid down in the waves and filled her bathing suit with the ocean floor. She hugged her cousins with abandon and rocked out with Maggie to Taylor Swift.

Ruby took the lead, swam like a fish and snuck cookies like a 10 year old should. She tanned her face, walked on the beach at night and saw shooting stars.

And I got to enjoy the sturdy, easy comforts of my cousins and their amazing & beautiful children.

New but not improved

2010-08-20T09:07:00.000-04:00

I'm changing. While Lincoln inspires restraint and calm and patience in me, the rest of the world is driving me insane.

I'm angry, uncooperative and quick to rile. Stress at work has finally given me my second panic attack (at least I recognized it early this time, locked myself in the bathroom, cried and got some texting therapy from the hot husband).

I find myself looking for ways out all day long. It's hard and getting harder.

Last night, a pompous prick of a baby-daddy started a fight with me and I fought back. I was yelling in my patient's room telling him he was rude and disrespectful and embarrassing himself. My pulse went up, but I never felt afraid. If another nurse hadn't heard the exchange, I probably wouldn't have said anything to anyone. This is not familiar behavior for me.

We keep losing babies at work. We almost lost a mother. Going there so much is not helping. It's not good there. NOT GOOD.

I want to sleep for a thousand years and then wake up, have a pee, and go back to sleep for another thousand.

Cape Cod. Part I

2010-08-17T20:56:00.000-04:00

Lincoln shrieks now. SHRIIIIEEEEEKS. Mostly when he's tired. Sometimes when he's overwhelmed. Occasionally when he's hot or hungry. Hard telling, though. Kid can't talk, so we guess.

Anyway, when the very pregnant woman walked into the very crowded ice cream shop to "get away from a kid who was screaming its head off"; I knew she had experienced my sweet guy, my sweet screamy guy.

Little bit later when we were sitting on a bench outside the shop and baby boy was eschewing PJ's red-raspberry-swirl-yogurt-with-rainbow-sprinkles for my triple-chocolate-with-jimmies, preggo lady walks by. Yup. Universe gave me a shot and I took it. Hit the fucker out of the park, too.

It my nice-y, nicest I say "good luck with you baby!" She turns, smiles, sees Link in my lap. Turns away as her mother (mother in law? Aunt? I dunno) goes "make that BABIES!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, the richness.

The Sweetest Thing

2010-08-12T21:07:00.001-04:00

Link had a great, fun, happy day. At one point (while she was watching "30 Minute Meals"), Penelope was putting on her own cooking show starring Lincoln as "the chicken"; like he was the food. He was laughing so hard tears were streaking into his ears as she salted him, cut him with a VERY SHARP KNIFE and transferred him from pot to pot (couch to couch).

We love him. Desperately. He's so much like us but also that tiny bit different (just the teensy, wobbly leg on his "x" chromosome) that makes him so fascinating and wonderful to us.

How lucky to have this baby.

Cult of Personality

2010-08-10T21:53:00.000-04:00

I've been lucky enough to have spoken to two Fragile X "Royal Family" members this week. I fucking love them. I love hearing about their children, their passion for their children and how they believe their Fragile X child has made them better people. They are devoid of self pity and rich with appreciation.

They fight. And I'm going to fight with them.

So this is what Ole Bill W. was talking about

2010-07-26T21:00:00.000-04:00

Today I feel that my mother made things much easier for me. I am confident that I will not invite her to holiday celebrations or birthday parties this year. There has been no twinge of guilt today. And no anger.

We may come together again at some point but the chasm is so wide now that it feels (today) easy.

No Vacancy

2010-07-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

It is estimated that %3 of the population of the United States is affected by Fragile X Syndrome (it's an estimate because there is the assumption that some people who are affected have yet to be diagnosed). So about 100,000 people. And one of them is a child of mine.

It is estimated that %3 of the population of the United States can be considered geniuses due to their IQ scores (it's an estimate because IQ tests are ridiculous and most intelligent & rational people don't take them). So about 100,000 people. And one of them is a child of mine.

For sure, I think too much. Way too much. And this little statistic has been taking up quite a few rooms in my brain hotel.

Anyway

2010-07-22T22:06:00.000-04:00

So. I love facebook. LOVE IT. What I hate about facebook (because there's always something, isn't there?) are those bizarre, non-specific, mysterious, juvenile status updates that go a little something like this:

Some people really don't know how to treat some other people, SHEESH!

Don't you wish some people would stop acting like CHILDREN!?

Hmmmm, I thought FRIEND meant FRIEND!

In the event I stop being such a snob about such things, here's what I'll post:

Really?! Really?! Do you REALLY not know that when you use the word RETARD I want to punch you in the face?

Out of the mouths...

2010-07-21T19:07:00.002-04:00

Today, Lincoln responded to a question with a gesture, and a word. A WORD, BITCHES!

I guess I can kiss those political aspirations good-bye

2010-07-20T21:01:00.007-04:00

By the time I get to the garage at work, I am so filled up with rage and hopelessness... Getting up at 5 am is not my favorite. And it's really not my favorite after an unpredictable night of sleeping by my sweet babe. I get in the car half asleep with not nearly enough coffee coursing through my veins and the gerbil starts runnin'.

It starts running and I start thinking about the folks I will invariably encounter at work who I now refer to as "assholes with perfect babies". If I were Mel Gibson, I'd scream into these motherfucker's telephones to SUCK IT. Oh, God. This business with Link has shaken my foundations.

My instinct at work is no longer to help selflessly. It's to play defense. I catch myself and move on... mostly. The other day I called a Dr. a prick in front of his patient and I told family members to GET OUT OF THE ROOM!

Right now, I hate going there. My car basically pulls itself into a parking space and I haul my disgruntled, depressed ass out of it and into the building. I put my scrubs on and i spend the day trying not to cry.

It's hard to change your dreams. It's hard to re-write the stories we imagine our children can create. Closing chapters, erasing endings, middles, beginnings. It's hard.

And it is made especially hard when I get driven into my fucking face on a daily basis seemingly typical babies born to heavy smokers, drug addicts, 15 year olds with families who couldn't care less... It's just, sad. I'm sad there almost all the time.

So, anyway, these assholes. All puffed up and ignorant playing a revolting game of "Whoever Makes the Most Drama Wins". Wins what? Certainly not the baby. They're not there for their perfect babies, they're there for the spectacle, to be able to tell the story. And. I . Can't. Take. It.

Pity the nice, loving, devoted-to-the-new-life-about-to-emerge families. This bleeding heart is just about packed up and moved out.

Icky Bits

2010-07-05T20:32:00.002-04:00

I got into it again at work today with people who for purely cosmetic reasons, think it's cool to cut baby boy's penises. Today it wasn't even close to funny and I'm sure I've earned myself a new label.

Here's the newly minted worldview of mine at work, though (and hey, world wide web, this is a big, hardcore, only said it to myself piece of thought torture. So feel privileged): I was fighting the whole time, the whole time these compassionate, committed healthcare professionals were flippantly discussing slicing off parts of babies... I was fighting the gut wrenching, nagging bitch of a notion that if we had circumcised Lincoln, he wouldn't be different in yet another way than all the "normal" boys in the world.

Family Matters

2010-07-03T13:17:00.003-04:00

So, I hate it when she lies. That's the worst. It's so fucking 1979 and my grandmother being Matriarchal Manipulator all over again. I mean, who the fuck cares ?!?!?! And the lies are dumb, dumb. Lies of exclusion; like she's fucking protecting someone/something but only actually ends up giving her this maddening sense of know-it-all-ness that is so incredibly ridiculous because, hey! Guess what? I ALREADY KNOW.

Yeah, that part of the conversation didn't go very well. Neither did the part where she said she'll try to come over and see the kids now that she knows her grandson has a genetic disorder. REALLY!?! Will you?!?

The part that wasn't so bad? The part where she didn't make it about herself (she did, however, try to make it about my husband... but that's another story). And that's as good as I was hoping it would be. But... it still feels like shit.

Vegas, baby

2010-07-01T17:16:00.002-04:00

On our way to Las Vegas (and during the 36 hours the hot husband and I were there) last week, I was struck by many, many things. Here are a few (in no particular order):

1. People who own iPads and use them while eating chicken wings are bad, bad people
2. Nominees for an Emmy Award in the "Best Actor" in a drama category shouldn't be flying in row 22 of Jet Blue
3. Bloody Mary's taste mighty fucking good at 11am
4. It is possible to not eat for 24 hours and drink like a fish instead and NOT puke, pass out OR have a hangover
5. Watching your husband in a smokin hot tuxedo run on-stage to win his third Emmy is still spine-tingling
6. Having sex three times (oooo! it IS a lucky number) in one day, really goddamn good sex, mind you, is still on the table
7. Making small talk is impossible these days. IMPOSSIBLE. I used to be great in a crowd...
8. Unlimited champagne for $5 doesn't suck
9. Being 6000 miles away from Lincoln was suffocating at times
10. Tony Orlando and that friggin song made me cry like a baby

Thank you sir, may I have another. NOT!

2010-06-24T17:06:00.003-04:00

Went out shopping today for PJ's birthday party and at one point, I told the husband I was going to return some hats that were gifted to Lincoln that don't fit. He's so sweet, and he says what he says all the time: No, don't go. Stay here. Or: Come home soon, OK? Almost always, I acquiesce. If it's important to him, why not?

Not today. Today I was all tough guy and all: It's OK, I'll be right back. Just going up to Old Navy. I'll be right back. I promise. I kissed his neck and went off on my side mission: Return hats, join husband.

So, I'm in the store and I remember we need shoes for the girls. And socks. And a bathing suit for me (this we *really, really* need). I'm focused. I hunt AND I gather. And I get on line. That's when it starts, internet-people! MY VERY FIRST PANIC ATTACK.

There were two women in front of me on line and a guy behind me... The woman checking out first had a fucking mountain of shit to pay for. I couldn't fathom it. And the woman right in front of me was rifling through receipts in one hand, and clutching a wrinkled shirt in the other.

I started to shake. My pulse went up and it was all I could do not to start bawling on the spot. I also couldn't move from where I was standing. Bitch was glued to the floor. And I'm such a fucking geek; I recognized right away what was happening and I STILL COULDN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. The tears were coming, fast... I turned my head to the dude behind me as I placed all of my stuff on the shelf where the keep all those hip dog toys at Old Navy, know where I'm talking about? So, I put my stuff there and say to the poor guy: I'm sorry! I have to go! Like. He. Cared. And I pretty much ran out and started texting my husband to find out exactly where he was.

When I found him, the tears were at the gate... but he was there and he was sweet. And he was there and I didn't cry. This time.

The Real Deal

2010-06-22T16:03:00.002-04:00

Go HERE if you want the best, most up to date and non-alarmist information on Fragile X.

At least I wasn't wearing a scrub cap this time... Or eating

2010-06-21T21:38:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry, hot husband, you may want to stop reading so I don't embarrass myself...

But the ridonc-u-lous-ly smokin' neonatologist spent quite a bit of time at the nurse's station today. And it wasn't my birthday. Or even my half birthday. And he showed me a picture of his Weimaraner.

FINE. He showed it to everyone (but I saw it first).

Firstborn

2010-06-20T17:56:00.004-04:00

I know how lucky I am that I have Ruby loving me. And she LOVES me. A gift of the brilliant and articulate child is that they can trot out their fancy words and imaginings and complicated thoughts and share them with you.

Today she laid some pretty heavy helpings of deliciousness on me and it felt so good to be alone with her in the car, stroking the back of her neck hearing how happy she is that I'm her mama.

After a bit she says: "you know, Penelope is special. Really special. You go and see her in her kindergarten class and she *seems* like a regular five year old... but she isn't. And Lincoln, that Lincoln! He's going to make the best old man & his grandkids (if he has any) are going to just love him."

A few minutes after that, she goes: "I think I'm going to adopt. I mean, you make childbirth sound pretty incredible, I just don't think it's for me".

She's 10 and I so want to be her when I grow up.

Priorities

2010-06-19T11:11:00.003-04:00

Another thing I never really understood, because I never really lived it: The grief diet. Hunger is so...unimportant.

Irony Part I

2010-06-18T13:32:00.001-04:00

And to think that all this time I was worried about passing along the male-pattern-baldness gene to my kids.

Day 4

2010-06-16T21:40:00.003-04:00

Something I'd rather not hear right now? That my son has not changed, that he is the same baby he was before diagnosis. NO FUCKING KIDDING. Thank you for pointing that out. So he still can't walk, talk, wave, use a spoon? Great.

I don't want to hear about your cousin's friend who has a child with Down Syndrome who works for the MTA. I don't want to know that you knew someone who had a kid who had something *really bad* and they have their own apartment now.

The problem with opening up & sharing; asking for words and emotions and reactions is that you often get hit in the face with a frozen pile of shit that stings and smells and makes you want to vomit all at the same time.

The good thing about it is that you sometimes hear things like this: Lincoln doesn't know he has a diagnosis. Lincoln will always believe he is Lincoln. Yes. YES! YES!! This made me believe that someday the grief will subside.

Ton. Of. Bricks. I get it...

2010-06-16T13:00:00.002-04:00

lincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndromelincolnhasfragilexsyndrome...

This is my brain on diagnosis. Our family has been told that the first few months are the worst. That this is when we will grieve.

I've never been swayed by people who have written things like "I couldn't type the words" or "It was too much for me to bear".
Oh, the taste is bitter now that I truly, deeply know what that feels like.

There are scenarios in my head that are so crushingly sad. I get caught off guard every second of the day by words, phrases, images and sounds that remind me what my baby boy may never get to be. To do. To have.

The things he may be? May have? I don't give a shit right now. Right now he's my baby.

Certainly won't be her last

2010-05-26T11:15:00.002-04:00

Took Ruby to her first rock and roll show the other night. 'Twas the band Flyleaf and, if my 40 year old self may say, they kicked major ass.

The lead singer, Lacey, looks drawn from a Tim Burton sketch book. All straight black hair draped over one eye, the size of an Olsen twin and sporting a icy-red crinoline prom-dress (Yes, I love her. No, I will never tell Penelope.). Heavy, meaty guitars and a driving zombie fueled groove that captivated the house. And it was LOUD. Mother fucker. I didn't remember how loud clubs got. Or how hot. HOT and LOUD. Mama loved it. Ruby? Hmmmm, not so much. Not at first.

Enter guardian angel of 10 year olds at their first show. Dude came out of nowhere while we were sitting out of the main venue area, made conversation about his first show and gave her some earplugs. Then, protector of most excellent premiere concert experiences, chauffeured us up to the VIP section, parted the velvet rope and gave Ruby a stool to stand on. And then he was gone.

Yes, I was crying. Shut up.

Aunt Bunny

2010-05-25T23:00:00.003-04:00

If I ever get to have my chance at master control, I'ma make damn sure that we all get to do the jobs we can hit out of the park. I see it every day at work: Cool washcloths? Dad. Soothing voice? Best friend. Push an 8 pound baby out of a vagina? mom.

I need a lot these days. To quote a rather hot husband: It's like we're running a multi national corporation around here. And like most women, asking for help is akin to willingly gargling each morning with the leftovers in the coffee cups that litter the sink from the day before. But I'm getting better! And people help! They do!

My god, do they help. I have been so overwhelmed with how much people not only *say* they want to help, but who follow through with gusto.

The bleeding heart I give a warm and happy home to has been strutting around like Mick Jagger AND Steven Tyler over the loveliness of my friends. And my not so friends; my acquaintances? I guess what I'm saying is that the outpouring has been huge and I am thrilled to be providing an outlet for so much good.

A note on the title of this post: Remember Eddie Murphy's first comedy special? The one where he wore that insane red leather suit? And he talked about his, ahem, zaftig Aunt Bunny who had a mis-hap on the stairs? She was all HELP ME LORD JESUS CHRIST! I'M FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS! THUMP DA BUMP BUMP DUMPTA DA DUMP DUM THUMP DA DUMP BA BUMP BUMP BUMP. OOOOOOOOO! I'M HALF WAY DOWN NOW!

I'm Aunt Bunny. Get it?

Eye of the beholder

2010-05-23T10:25:00.002-04:00

Somebody at work yesterday said that uncircumcised penises look like aardvarks. Aardvarks! After I wiped off the yogurt that I had spit out all over my face, I asked her what she thought circumcised penises looked like. Her answer: ACORNS on a SAUSAGE.

Good gawd, I said. Leave the poor aardvarks alone.

Hi, my name is Michele and...

2010-05-22T10:21:00.002-04:00

I have an 18 month old baby boy who is unable to walk. Or talk. Today, this is killing me.

You can't always get what you want

2010-05-20T14:25:00.005-04:00

Hit the ground running, I did. In the OR and delivered by 0741AM. No time to think just move, move, MOVE! I loved it. I needed it. If they had told me I was going to be in the back all muthahumpin' day, I would have been all: BRING IT ON. 'Twas a day I didn't want to think, 'twas a day I needed to just do.

Handling losses is a part of my job that I embrace fully and totally. I ask for the patients who are losing their babies and willingly assist my co-workers when the job is theirs that shift. I want to be the caregiver because I care. No horn tooting or back slapping. I just feel very, very confident in my ability to help the patients & families who find themselves in the worst set of circumstances possible.

So, no pause, no hesitation: I leave the recovery room and my c-section and I take the patient waiting in triage.
The 19 year old about to lose her baby. She's quiet (understandably), she's pensive (of course), she will not make eye contact (totally expected). And she's alone; oh, sweet suffering souls of the planet do I wish she had stayed that way. Stayed alone. That her awful, sad, scary, damaged family had stayed away. There was no way in to any one of them. Closed, angry and insulated. It was like having 4 separate families in that room. No one spoke, no one made eye contact they all wanted what they wanted and not one of them asked the patient what she wanted. She's 19 years old! She already has 2 children! You are her lover, her mother, the baby's grandmother! Someone be gentle with her!

When the sweet babe finally delivered; delivered through much bleeding, I scooped him (yes, a boy) up in a warm blanket and whisked him to the warmer. The little one's hands were up by his face, his legs and big, beautiful feet were curled up tight. He was perfect. And I told him he was. I also told him that I believed he had made the right choice; that he was a smart, smart boy.

Beam me up

2010-05-06T11:50:00.005-04:00

So yesterday, I told my husband (with a hearty amount of sincerity) that I wanted to go live in a yurt. A yurt with a roof garden. HA!

We had just endured the most humorless wireless phone salesperson in all of the whole wide world for about 20 minutes of just the worst mind-melitng script of red-taped-the-COMPANY-knows-best BULLSHITTEDNESS. The smarmy-ness could have greased the engine of my 2001 Chevy Tahoe. My husband left first because the baby was tearing apart ACCESSORIES for the CELLPHONES and gettin' a bit crunky from the aforementioned humorless episode that just kept going on and on and on and on and on..... and on. I finished the transaction alone. This may have not been the best idea.

I didn't say anything mean. I mean I didn't use mean words. You know what I mean? (If you've been paying attention, obviously my previous post has been blown to bits).

I walked out of that store so fucking annoyed and Yurt loving. Yurt yearning. Instead, I got a new data plan.

Mirror, mirror

2010-05-04T20:42:00.003-04:00

I do a lot of reflecting now. But maybe not in the way you thinks, ole internets. Here's an example: When I see the extraordinarily buffed out dude at T-ball, I no longer jump to the conclusion that he's a meathead-ed Marlboroite. I wait till he SCREAMS and spews SALIVA through the fence for little Timmy to "RUUUUN! RUN IT OOUUT!" and then I judge.

I'm not sniffin' my drawers reflecting. I'm stealing little moments in the day to make sure I don't say/think an ugly/stupid thing reflecting. This new habit is likely to help me in my new life ON THE DAY SHIFT. The place where I get to spend far too many hours with "Puerto Rican Republican", the "Squirrelly-eyed Conservative", and the " Mayor of I-don't-care-how-slowly-I-walk-I- am-still-not-coming-to-open-a-delivery-table-for-you Town".

Ah, perhaps I *am* still the same old me I see.

Final Whine of '09

2009-12-30T16:07:00.002-05:00

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.

Counting it down, chapter one

2009-12-23T21:37:00.003-05:00

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.

Round 1

2009-11-23T10:54:00.003-05:00

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.

One more time

2009-11-22T21:30:00.003-05:00

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.

Dusting off the keys

2009-10-01T17:21:00.004-04:00

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.

Happy Anniversary, babe

2009-07-02T09:30:00.002-04:00

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.

Can I just eat my soup? Please?

2009-06-30T17:22:00.003-04:00

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?

I wanna be... so high

2009-06-09T15:40:00.003-04:00

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...

Random Part 1

2009-06-05T16:03:00.002-04:00

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.

Who's your (grand) Daddy?

2009-05-08T08:44:00.004-04:00

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.

Stress can aggrevate your condition...

2009-04-07T12:25:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-07T08:34:00.002-04:00

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*).

Newsflash

2009-03-25T16:05:00.002-04:00

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.

We Never Close

2009-03-24T19:26:00.002-04:00

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...

Three, my magic number

2009-02-13T12:15:00.004-05:00

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?

Whooo are you? Who, who?

2009-02-04T08:20:00.004-05:00

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...

Words to live by

2009-01-31T09:03:00.002-05:00

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.

Little ole me

2009-01-30T11:41:00.003-05:00

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.

Cry Baby

2009-01-29T12:58:00.002-05:00

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!

The Wise One Strikes Again

2009-01-26T18:18:00.001-05:00

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

Hey Lincoln!

2009-01-25T09:59:00.001-05:00

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.

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

2009-01-21T10:36:00.002-05:00

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.

A departure

2009-01-15T08:30:00.004-05:00

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.

The Understudy

2009-01-12T20:17:00.003-05:00

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.

say whaaaat?

2009-01-09T21:34:00.002-05:00

"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?

Shock it to me

2009-01-08T14:02:00.001-05:00

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.

Mr. Lincoln

2008-11-24T08:13:00.000-05:00

Arrived with a lot of pushing a bit of pulling and a magnitude of pain @ 12:17AM on 11/16.

A week and a bit later, the pain lingers, but the heart strings are proving much stronger a pull on my body, my soul.

He's asleep on me now, so the story will have to wait till I can type margainally better than Daniel Day Lewis cicra 1989

Coupla things

2008-11-14T08:44:00.001-05:00

Hand not numb. Note to self: MORE TETRIS

The pregnancy book that needs to be written, a brief table of contents:

~Varicosities: Extremeties, rectal, vulval, vaginal

~Impacted stool

~Acid reflux: To aspirate or not?

~Vaginal discharge and ratio of clean underwear

~Moles & skintags

What she said:

2008-11-14T01:13:00.000-05:00

"Write through it"

Yup. OK. Here I go. Writing.

I'm in NY and it's 1 in the morning. Everyone is sleeping. Some are snoring and I actually think I hear one of them whimpering. I've been playing Tetris for 2 hours and if my hand isn't numb tomorrow (today?) I'll eat the ratty bra I've been wearing for a week.

Waiting for this baby has become VERY IMPORTANT IN MY LIFE. I can't get away from it. I can't cook it away, errand it off, clean it to the wayside and even, apparently, Tetris it to my subconscious for more than, oh, 7 seconds.

Being one who births at home (more on that later), it's a big deal for me to be in my home for a good long while before labor starts. Well, BABY, I've not worked since October 27th or something! I'm fucking home. HOME!
I have a bead on every dust bunny, know down to the sheet how much toilet paper is in the house, washed the three toilets I could potentially be puking in any minute about nine thousand times.

Can I just say: I'm ready? And can you oblige?

Dream a little dream of me...

2008-11-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

Sorry, baby: Not. Even. One.

Last night I dreamt of Joe the Plumber, er, I mean "fucker".
I dreamt I shared a whiskey with Obama post victory.
There was the one about work when all those moms died.
Many (too many, really, for fucks sake) about Chris leaving me.

But not a single slumber-fueled-film about the baby. It feels odd to me, bad even. Odder and badder than I have been able to admit, in fact.

So, kid, do your mom a solid AND COME OUT ALREADY! Show me that you're alright and the reason I don't need to dream about you is because there's nothing to worry about, k?

ok, ok, ok... getting closer

2008-11-11T18:24:00.000-05:00

I feel guilty being proud of our first African American president because I'm not black.

I'm proud of the man and his intellectual capacity, his sense of calm & rationality, his refusal to back-bite. I'm proud of his politics and projected policies-- and these things I can own simply as a person.

The other bit, though, that first sentence up there? That's what I'm having quite a tussle about

another 24 hours

2008-11-09T11:23:00.001-05:00

There is no harmony in my house today. The baby will not be coming. FUCK.

Obama

2008-11-08T16:24:00.000-05:00

What is it (my hidden prejudices, my humanity?)that will not let me stop crying these past few days. I am whitey, white, white and I am reduced to a sopping mess every time I hear a person of color explain why they love this man and what he's done.

My privilege is being torn down and it feels. Good. Someone on the radio the other day said she was overjoyed not because Barack Obama is black, but because he comes without a pedigree. That that speaks more to her than sharing the color of their skin. That they share a common history is far more poignant.

And then there are John Lewis and Jesse Jackson; mother-fuckin Alice Walker, too. I can't relate in the slightest how this must feel to them. I know I feel good, but I don't really know why.

I mean I know I loathe hate. That I want every human condition recognized, validated and embraced. I know that I CAN NOT WAIT to see Sasha and Melia jumping on the beds of the White House. I know that I can't stop crying. I know that I hear him speak and I feel proud. I know that it is an earth-shattering event in our sometimes not so FCC approved airing of history that this brilliant, composed, accomplished, loved and loving man is now the President of the United States. But I don't really know why I am so affected.

Obviously, I will never understand it fully, this emotional waterfall Barack Obama has caused for me and a lot of other white people and I'm going to have to learn to live with that.

I'm digging here, people. I'm looking for something in all of this. I want to feel good, be a good person. There is something here so deep that I can't even see it in myself, let alone touch it & try to figure it out, mold into a thing that do recognize.

In the meantime, I will rejoice in the fact that Barack Obama and all he means is indeed here and things will be different; that I do know

A little room, please

2008-10-18T17:42:00.000-04:00

I can't breathe. Sleep. Eat. Walk. Bend. Or even git it on properly at this point.

The gift of gestation is a mysterious one indeed. It blows, my man. It's fucking hard. Even the most blessedly blissed out mamas wake up with a mouth full of almost digested food every once in a while. But we keep. On. Doing. It. Did I mention that it hurts to push the thing out, too? It does. Can't leave that part out.

But here I sit; swoled up like a bloated kaiser roll languishing in a still puddle, and I'm happy.

That is, until I leave my house, my haven, my family and go out into the world and see OTHER PEOPLE.

Here's a tip humanity: I KNOW I'M BIG. I know I look like I'm about to "drop that thing". I know my boobs are huge and my smile is infrequent. I know. Your reminders make me want to put on some lipstick and go pit-bull on your ass, k?

Oh, and no you can't touch. Peace.

Twisted

2008-10-17T16:44:00.000-04:00

So, the other night, when John McCain for the upteenth time put his maniacal, pudgy fingers in the air in the form of quotation marks and openly mocked "the health of the mother" when it comes to late term & partial birth abortions; I screamed.

Next time I have a septic mother carrying a 22 week old fetus who is growing more ill by the minute, I'd like for Mr. McCain to come and explain to her that it's for the best that she and her child die. Together. Miserably. Oh, and he can tell this to her partner, her parents, her friends and her family members.

Out of touch doesn't even begin to describe him and his tantrum fueled rants regarding what is so very clearly not a black and white issue.

May he and the dumb-fuckery that is Sarah Palin, rot in obscurity.