Background Noise

I love new shoes

I’ve been having problems with my back lately.  It’s been just since I started working, and it’s probably because I don’t wear the right kind of shoes to work.  The rules I have for footwear are a little complicated, as I found out when I tried to explain the problem to someone the other night.  I have a perfectly good pair of Nike runners, but they’re grey and purple.  Grey shoes should NEVER be worn with khaki or brown pants.  They clash.  The only thing they really go with are jeans, but I can’t wear jeans to work and mostly wear pants in shades of brown.  So whenever I wear earth colors, I wear my brown or red mary janes that have no support.  I won’t even talk about my black pants that also don’t look right with my sneakers and so when I wear black pants I wear a variety of different shoes, all cute, but definitely not comfortable. 

On Friday, after limping to my car after work I decided I needed to go shoe shopping.  Happily enough, Joey needs new shoes too so I could justify a trip to the shoe store when I'm so broke I have no business being in a shoe store.

Joey went shoeless for almost the entire first year of his life.  He wasn’t walking and I couldn’t see putting him in shoes merely for decorative purposes.  So I put socks on his feet and waited.  And then once he started to walk I went to Stride Rite, got him measured and picked out a beautiful pair of brown baby walkers that looked like tiny little hiking shoes.  And cost FIFTY DOLLARS.  Once I found out the price, I was tempted to buy them a few sizes too big so that they would last longer, but I didn’t want to be judged by the salesgirl so  I bought the appropriate size and prayed his feet would grow slowly.  They didn’t, and so this weekend it was time for another shoe expedition. 

I had no idea what size his feet were so I took him to Stride Rite, had him measured again, and then tried a few pairs of shoes for show before telling the salesgirl that I couldn’t make up my mind so I’d think about it and come back later.  Then I went to Bob’s and bought a pair of baby skechers in the right size for only fifteen bucks. I cannot justify spending fifty dollars on baby kicks that look like orthopedic granddaddy shoes.  Sorry Stride Rite, but this is how we’re livin’.

And while I was shopping, my sick shoe addiction kicked in and before I knew what was happening I found myself holding a pair of clogs in one hand and sparkly pointy flats in another and then I remembered my sore back and forced myself to stay on task. I put the pretty shoes back and found some comfortable, work-appropriate shoes.

Rocket Dogs!  They're very cute but when you turn them over they look like the shoes my grandma used to wear after she broke her hip.  But since the sole is on the bottom and the cute is on the top, I bought them anyway.  They are the most comfortable shoes I think I've ever owned.

And ahh pretty, pretty Vans.  The minute I saw them I knew they had to be mine.  Especially since they were on the clearance rack because there was a pull in one of the laces. Also insanely comfortable and they will look good with black pants.

In case you're worried that Eli is the only one walking around with old broken down shoes while the rest of us are stylin in our new footwear, you should know that he also got new shoes during our shoe shopping extravaganza.  They're big hiking boots that I can wear on my own feet without even taking off my own shoes first as I demonstrated for him in the living room last night. Then I stepped on his sock foot with them to show him how much it hurts when he carelessly tramples my feet with his big treads.  After I almost broke his foot (and my own ankle) Eli took his shoes away and hid them from me because they are not toys.

I love new shoes.  The end.

things I've learned this week (and it's only Tuesday!)

1. When my therapist tells me (on the topic of trying to find a balance between household chores and outside work): Don’t expect your husband to be able to read your mind.  He is not trying to hurt you with ambivalence, it’s just that men sometimes don’t know what needs to be done around the house.  Make him a list.  Just make the fucking list but don’t tell my husband that my therapist thinks he is clueless.  Especially right after he breaks out the cleaning supplies and spends the morning cleaning and organizing the stereo and entertainment center all on his own without having to consult a list.

2. Babies don’t like asparagus and couscous for lunch.  Accept that and give him the bagel he craves right away.  Otherwise you will spend 30 minutes after lunch cleaning little couscous bits off the wall and asparagus slime out of the child’s hair.  Same for eggs.  He hates them, stop trying.

3. Don’t assume the shield of patience that medication affords is impenetrable, especially when it comes to daffy shit like baby showers.

I lost my fucking mind last night out of aggravation over planning a baby shower.  My pills have been like a shield for me from the stupidity that comes as a normal part of living in the world.  Instead of getting furious, I am able to easily brush things off and waste no energy fuming.  But this baby shower business is penetrating my shield.

Someone close to me is having a baby.  And I’m so happy for her and for him, and I talked to her about what kind of shower she wants.  She wants a co-ed cookout.  A laid-back party with grill food and beer and no opening presents (but of course receiving presents because that’s the whole point of a shower in the first place).  But new mom’s mother lives far away and since she will be visiting in March, she wants us to have the shower then.  I don’t know about where you live, but New England in March is not the time to be having a cookout.  So now we’re stuck with a doubled guest list (co-ed party, remember) and trying to find somewhere to have the ball.  Um, I mean shower. 

I spoke with one of new mom’s friends last night, the girl in charge of coordinating and planning everything, and this shower is turning into the event of the year.  What does that mean for me?  Well, loads of money.  Buckets of money that I do not have.

This is why I did not have a shower.  It makes me cringe that people would roll their eyes at the prospect of yet another shower because EVERYBODY HATES THEM, and besides, I don’t have the patience to sit in a room full of women for an afternoon delighting over baby socks and little outfits and debating which brand of diaper is best. 

Everyone thought I was crazy to not have a shower.  I have a huge family and lots of friends who were just waiting to shower me with gifts for my new baby.  My mom was concerned that I would miss out on all the loot.  Yeah, way to go grandma, thanks for recognizing that this is an important, special, life-changing event and not some fucking FUNDRAISER.  I’m going to tell you for the last fucking time, my son is not your ticket to recouping all the money you’ve invested in other people’s children over the years.  I know this is how society works--you shower me, I shower you--but if you’re so gung-fucking-ho about recovering your losses, YOU have the shower and leave me the fuck out of it.  (Sadly, she almost did exactly that)

Anyway, for about a month following my son’s birth, UPS was at my door almost every day with packages from the people who truly did want to shower the little one with gifts.  We received so much stuff and I didn’t ask for any of it, which was what made it so special.  I spent a lot of time sitting at my kitchen table opening boxes packed full of handmade blankets and clothes and rattles and bibs…it was overwhelming and every gift made me cry because everyone was off the hook.  No one needed to do a thing, but they still did.  In my eyes, that’s the way to have a baby shower.

Why do important life events like other people’s weddings and babies suck the life out of me?  Oh that’s right, because the months leading up to them are so painfully NOT about the beautiful thing that’s about to happen and instead are full of organized stress and the desperate feeling that I am BLEEDING MONEY.

4. My job is wonderful.  The best part is being able to talk to different people all the time and the relaxing feeling of going home and not taking work with me.  I will never isolate myself in a lab for ten hours a day, and I will never sell my soul for a paycheck ever again.

5. Very small children need to be supervised while playing with Play-Doh, even if it’s non-toxic.  This means not turning your eyes away for a minute to find a movie on Tivo because that’s exactly how long it takes for him to pick tiny little pieces off the big ball of green doh and mash them into the carpet.

new teeth, bad attitude

I need a break.  Eli and I only have one day each week when we’re home together so it sucks when we spent that day doing errands and nothing fun.  We had planned to go to the mall to just walk around and window shop and let Joey ride the carousel, but we were out of groceries and diapers and toilet paper so we did the responsible (boring) shopping instead.  And Joey had his first ever total public meltdown. 

We were in Target for a long time, probably 90 minutes.  And by the time we made it to the register Joey was fidgeting in the carriage and beginning a series of shrieks that are so disturbingly high pitched that every person in the front of the store immediately stopped what they were doing to look around and see who was murdering their baby.  I took him out of the carriage and let him walk around in the front of the store while holding my hand.  I thought if he just got out to stretch his legs a little he’d be fine.  He wasn’t fine.  He kept trying to run from me and when I grabbed his hand to lead him away from danger, he would stop, yank his hand back and fall down on the floor screaming.  And then he would make a break for it by trying to crawl away from me in the other direction.  After he almost got walked on and run down by a carriage, I pulled him to his feet and tried to guide him gently back to the register where Eli was checking out.  But he resisted my efforts and then threw himself at some woman’s feet in a desperate attempt to get away from me as we were walking by.  When he hit the back of her legs she turned around and looked very concerned and asked if he was hurt.  I told her no because he hadn’t fallen over, he had thrown himself on the floor voluntarily like a little shit. 

Finally my patience collapsed so I got the keys from Eli and headed out to the car with my screeching child.  He was still screaming when I strapped him into his car seat and he didn’t stop until I gave him an old fruit wheel I found on the floor in the backseat and cranked the radio up real loud.  He probably figured he couldn’t compete with The Clash so he concentrated on using his mouth to annihilate his stale fruit wheel.  And before you think I’m a bad mother for giving my child old food off the floor of the car, know that he eats out of the trash every day and enjoys it.  We don’t have a lid on our kitchen trash can so he just reaches in and eats whatever he can pull out.  Sometimes it’s a banana peel, sometimes it’s a handful of coffee grinds and sometimes it’s a big fistful of chicken chow mein ripped from the bowels of a discarded styrofoam China Wok container.  It used to bother me a lot, this eating out of the trash that he does, but I figure maybe if I don’t make a big deal out of it, he’ll eventually realize it’s gross on his own and stop.  Until then I guess I will continue to pry broken egg shells and dirty paper towels out of his hands after each trash dive.  At least I don’t have to worry about him if he ever ends up living on the street.  His trashpickin’ skills would rival those of even the most skilled raccoon.

I think Joey might be heading for more teething, judging from the whining and lack of naps and just general unpleasantness around here today.  It has been a long day of baby crying and overtiredness and hours of playing. Eli and I have been edgy with each other today and getting into little stupid fights like the one a few minutes ago when we had a heated argument in the living room about the best way to draw a three-dimensional cube on the Magna Doodle. 

We also had a fight about the order of dinner and bath.  To me it seemed logical to give Joey his dinner after the bath since he spends his whole time in the bath bouncing and sliding and flopping around in the tub in a frenzy of joyous water celebration.  I get seasick just watching him but he has a wonderful time swimming and trying to crawl and then standing and falling down and sliding from one end to the other down the slight incline toward the drain and then flipping over onto his stomach to claw and splash his way back to the other end so he can do it again.  But Eli thought he should eat dinner first because he’s a slob and there’s no point in bathing him if he’s just going to smear meatballs all over himself immediately after his bath.  And if he pukes up a little meat in the tub, no problem!  He’ll be sitting in water and it’ll clean right up!

I decided to leave the house and just let Eli do whatever he wanted with the kid while I shopped for shoes.  I got a smokin’ deal on a pair of very cute mules and I wasn’t even sure I was going to buy them until a woman walked up to me as I was trying them on and asked me where I found them.  I pointed to the rack and told her I thought they might be the last pair.  She looked over at the empty rack and then back at my feet mournfully and told me they were really pretty shoes and she loved the color.  “Are they comfortable?” she asked.  “Like fluffy clouds on my feet,” I replied.

After that she kept hovering around me as I looked at shoes, obviously waiting for me to get distracted and put down the pretty mules so she could swoop in and grab them up for herself.  At one point when she was still desperately shadowing me after ten minutes I thought she might go all Oz Witch and try to steal them right out of my hands, so I headed to the register and bought them before she could get clever.

When I got back home the baby was sparkly clean and full of dinner and I didn’t even ask which order things happened in.  And now I’m going to bed to sleep the memory of this day away and tomorrow I will wake up very early, put on my new shoes, and leave the house for the whole day.  I’ve never been so happy that I have to go to work.

use your words

I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve been neglecting my journal again.  I don’t know where all my time is going, because I only work three days a week.  But those three days are exhausting me.  I can’t believe there was a time when I regularly worked over 50 hours a week and I wonder how it didn’t kill me, until I realize that I had my good buddies anxiety and insomnia to help me out. 

Last night I was so tired I went to bed at 8.  That doesn’t sound too bad except that I really wanted to go to bed at 6 but I forced myself to stay up a little longer.  And even after a full night’s sleep, and a nap this afternoon, I’m still exhausted. Maybe my antidepressants are working so well that my body is trying to catch up from a decade’s worth of sleep deprivation all at once.

Anyway, time is passing quickly and each day I am more amazed at how smart Joey is getting.  It’s like someone hooked up his brain when I wasn’t paying attention and now he knows all this stuff.  Last week I made a spider for him out of colored pipe cleaners, and he plays with it every so often, but mostly it just sits there on the floor and we don’t talk about it much.  Then one morning I didn’t see it anywhere, so I asked Joey “Where’s your spider?” and he stood up, looked around the room, located it behind his musical table, went over and picked it up to show it to me.  I told him to bring it to me and he walked over and put it in my lap.  I was shocked that he understood what I was saying and so I praised him for being smart by hugging him and telling him GOOD BOY!  And I realized then that I am treating him like a puppy. Maybe I should adjust my expectations because he’s going to get a lot smarter than a pet.

I remember looking into his face for some sign of intelligence when he first came home, and watching as his eyes swirled and rolled around aimlessly in their sockets.  He couldn’t hold his own head up, he couldn’t move any of his body parts voluntarily and he was so helpless that a blanket left too close to his face could end his life.  I remember developing a new appreciation for the cats because suddenly they seemed so smart.  Especially when compared with a newborn human.  They could run and jump and move about gracefully and they at least acknowledged my existence with a meow or by brushing their bodies up against my legs and purring.  Meanwhile my son, my flesh and blood, a person I grew and nurtured inside my own body for forty weeks, had a stronger attachment to the lamp in the living room that he would gaze at endlessly throughout the day than he did to me.  The rest of his time was spent reminding me (through his blood chilling screams) that I had no business trying to be a mother to him because I obviously had no clue what I was doing and I am not nearly as interesting as a lamp.

But slowly the lights started to come on.  He began smiling and communicating with us more and then one day it hit me that he was growing out of the baby self-absorption I’d been taking for granted.  I was lying next to him on the floor crying and he looked over at me and at first he stared at me trying to figure out what I was doing, and then he started crying right along with me.  I made sure to stop crying in front of him after that and then eventually, with the help of medication, the crying ended completely.  And it wasn’t until recently that I realized how much time each day I devoted to misery and how many hours I spent crying in those early months of Joey’s life.  How did I ever think that was normal?  I haven’t shed a single tear in months and maybe I’m dead inside now but I feel a hell of a lot better and I’m probably more hydrated now that my body doesn’t have to make all that extra liquid.

So Joey’s growing up and learning new stuff and sometimes he’s really in the zone and he will parrot everything we do.  He will blow kisses, repeat funny noises, and the newest thing he has learned is how to do ETs.  If you hold our your index finger to him he will touch it with his index finger and once both fingers are touching he laughs hysterically like it’s the greatest thing in the world.  Now I’m trying to teach him to say “Wonder twin powers, ACTIVATE! when he touches fingers, but it’s not going so well.  The words he likes to say are mama, baby and a random assortment of nonsense words that he will string together into long sentences and then look expectantly at me as though he’s waiting for a response.  What’s a good response to “Gooley-ooh gool ma ma ooley!” ?  Aren’t mothers supposed to be able to decipher their child’s early language?  I think that might be a lie, just like the one about day-old babies having different cries depending on what they need.  Anyway, maybe I’m just not perceptive enough and so I usually ask him to repeat it for me in English.

I’m trying to remind myself to soak up these days and appreciate them because before long he’s going to be a smart-mouthed teenager and I will regret him ever learning English because he will use it to say things to me like, “Ma, you’re so lame.”

it's tricky

A man rolls into the room in his wheelchair.  I haven’t looked at his chart because I’m not working with him today, but his therapist is not in yet so I go over and talk to him.  I help him sit on the table and he shows me his new shoes, the ones he bought last night because they’re wide enough for his braces to fit into them.  I watch him struggle to lace the shoes up and I tell him they’re very Run DMC.  He gives me a puzzled look, like, what?  So I say, “You know, the 80s? Run DMC?"  And then, even though I'm a white girl, I start to rap, "It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's Trickay! It's tricky tricky tricky tricky…” and he stares at me like I have a head injury but another person in the room knows what I’m talking about and raps along with me.

I look at his feet that are jammed so tight into his shoes that it can’t be good for his circulation and I tell him I think they’re too tight.  He says he thinks they’re tight too.  Then I say the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever said in my life.  I said, “How do your feet feel, are they pinching?” and he pauses for a second and then he looks up and says, “I can’t feel my feet.  That’s why I’m in a wheelchair.”

I met this little girly
Her hair was kind of curly
She’s dumb as rock
I cannot walk
Why’d I have to come here early?

the rice incident

Bad mama update

I spend a lot of time thinking about the many ways I am an imperfect mother.  But last night I really topped myself with a moment of horrible parenting.  Joey has a favorite thing he likes to do at the dinner table that frustrates the living shit out of me.  He likes to throw his food off the side of his tray.  He’ll be eating happily and then he will pick up a piece of meatball or a noodle covered in sauce and just fling it off the side and onto the floor.  He also cannot bear to have his milk cup on his tray for even a moment after he finishes drinking from it.  He will set it on the tray in front of himself, wind up and take a huge swing at it, sending it hurtling across the room.

I’ve been patient with him.  I’ve tried ending his meal when he starts tossing shit around but this only makes him stand at our feet, clawing and whining while we’re trying to finish our meal.  I’ve tried ignoring him but it’s hard to do that when pasta covered in tomato sauce is being flung around the room.  I’ve tried instructing him to put the food in his mouth and not on the floor and this works well if I’m not also trying to eat and I have the time to sit right in front of his face and watch his every bite.  The minute I look away the flinging continues.

This started when he was very young and he didn’t know what he was doing.  He was messy and stuff just ended up going off the side of his tray and he would watch it fall to the floor in amazement. But now he knows exactly what he’s doing.  Sometimes he will hold his food out to the side and then look at me and Eli almost as if he’s goading us to see what we’ll do.  Sometimes all it takes is a gentle reminder to put his food in his mouth and he does it and we all continue to eat.  Other times he has plans, and he waits until he has our full attention before he opens his hand and releases the food.  And after he drops the food, he smiles at us like, “What’re you gonna do, I’m a baby, now clean up my mess and DANCE FOR ME, PUPPETS!”

Last night I was tired and hungry and I didn’t want to deal with it.  We were eating jambalaya with chicken and rolls and it was so good I just wanted to sit there and eat and eat and eat and have some peace.  But then Joey started flinging rice and peaches around the room.  I tried to stay patient and do the right thing.  I instructed him to stop several times, but when he kept flinging and smiling and totally ignoring me, I decided to get his attention the easiest way I could think of in the moment.  I scooped a big handful of Cajun seasoned rice off my plate and threw it at him.  It hit him in the side of the face and stuck.  He looked shocked at first, like, what the fuck was that?  But then after a few seconds of us staring at each other in disbelief he broke out into a huge grin and started laughing.  Like rice in the face was the best thing to ever happen to him.  And his laughing made me laugh because I felt like I narrowly dodged some kind of emotionally scarring event. 

After we picked the rice off his face and washed him up for bed, Eli and I had a talk.  I thought he was going to rip into me about what I did to our baby.    Or at least point out that I am an evil monster of a person who shouldn’t be allowed to parent a child.  He surprised me, though.  He told me what I did was fucked up but he thought about doing the  same thing.  The difference between me and Eli is that he has impulse control and doesn’t automatically do every little thing that flash through his mind.

So I didn’t scar the kid or make him feel bad.  But I also didn’t teach him a very good lesson about how I expect him to behave at the dinner table.  And I have a terrible feeling that last night’s lesson is going to come back and bite me in the ass the next time we’re at Chili’s because I’m craving a big salad.  And I will have to sit there and suck it up as my child lobs dinner rolls at my neck and throws sticky handfuls of fruit in my eyes, because that’s what I taught him to do with food.  I don’t know the first thing about how to make this child respect his food, but I suspect the solution is a little more complex than just throwing his dinner in his face.

golden girl superpower

I am now officially old.  And this is different from the old I felt when I went through the Golden Girls rerun phase, or the times I’ve found gray strands in my hair.  It happened unexpectedly with a new prescription this week and forgetting to take my medicine one day before going to work and that’s when I decided I needed to buy the thing that makes me an official Golden Girl.

This is my new pill case.  It has a slot for each day of the week and I can set it up on Sunday and leave it on the counter so I remember to take everything each morning. 

How did I go from a single multivitamin in the morning to needing an organizer to keep all my pills straight?  I didn’t think I was taking this much stuff until I got it all into the pill organizer and realized that it’s not as empty as I thought it would be. 

If one more thing goes wrong I might need to upgrade to the super deluxe model or set up a whole drawer in the kitchen with dividers for each day of the week.  But I really only take two medicines a day. 

One is my antidepressant and the other is the new high blood pressure medication I have to be on because of my antidepressant.  The other pills are vitamins and a super B pill I take for stress.  Which is kind of a joke because wouldn’t you think a person on antidepressants and blood pressure lowering medication would have so little emotional and physiological stress they’d walk around blissed out all the time and have to be scraped up off the kitchen floor every day?  Not me.  Even with all that, I still need additional help in calming the fuck down.

Oh I almost forgot the patch I stick to my arm every morning that makes me not crave cigarettes.  I can’t believe how well the patch works, but I think I’ve found its one fatal flaw.  It may be waterproof against water that comes from the outside, but is powerless against the water comes from inside your body.  You can shower with it on and it remains stuck tight, but if you sweat even a little it slips right off. 

I was at work on Friday and after lunch I started feeling warm.  I spend my days working with people on exercise programs, and part of that is showing the proper form by doing the exercises for them so they can watch.  A few hours in the gym doing squats and steps and weight machines will make a person sweaty, especially if it’s a warm day.  On Friday afternoon I touched my forehead and it was wet, my hair was damp and stuck to my neck underneath, and then I started craving a smoke.  I thought I was just having a weak moment because it happens all the time.  I’ll be fine all day and then out of the blue I’ll get a mad craving that lasts for a few minutes and then goes away.  But Friday it didn’t go away.  It wasn’t until I was driving home from work when I went to rub my patch that I realized it wasn’t on my arm.  I couldn’t imagine where it fell off but when I glanced down my shirt, I saw that it had peeled off of my arm, traveled through the sleeve of my shirt, and adhered to the front of my bra.  No fucking wonder.

I wish there was a patch you could take in pill form.  I could just add it to my pill case with all the rest and forget about it.

But I love not smoking.  I can smell things now and I can sniff a smoker out from twenty feet away.  I’m always amazed by my sense of smell when I quit smoking. Suddenly I can tell things about people just by their smells.  I can tell what kind of fabric softener someone uses, their soap or perfume, what they ate for lunch (especially if it had garlic in it) and I can always identify a smoker by that burnt garbage aroma they wear like an aura.

And then there was the peculiar smell I came across the other day that may mean I am going beyond normal and developing supersmell powers.  I’m not sure if I understand pheromones.  It’s a subconscious thing and you’re not supposed to be able to smell them, right?  If that’s true then what is it called when you stand near a guy and he smells so good you want to fold yourself into his arms and bury your head in his chest and cling to his body until the cops pry you off?  I want to say that this phenomenon is pheromones because it’s stronger than cologne.

Eli has this effect on me.  When I get close to him, he smells so good that I want to pull open his chest and climb inside him.  That probably sounds a little gross, but it’s the only way I can think of to be close to Eli without him being bothered by my hair.  I hug him and he’s assaulted by my hair.  I’ve tried sleeping with my face pressed into his neck but he can’t stand the hair wisp tickles for very long and ends up moving me so that my head is far enough away from his face that my hair can’t choke him or tickle his face or get in his eyes.   

I don’t know how this ended up about Eli because he doesn’t really count.  I’m in love with him and there are other forces at work.  I’m talking about the raw attraction to a stranger who maybe sits next to you in a meeting or walks next to you and he smells so good it’s distracting.  And I don’t know whether it is pheromone-based, or if I’m just rediscovering my lost sense of smell, but it doesn't happen with everyone.  Is it the delightful scent of someone with great body chemistry or soap?   I like to think it's my new superpower at work. 

great tone

It's always a good day when you get a compliment on your body during a medical exam.

My nurse midwife is very sweet.  Actually, my whole ob-gyn team is wonderful.  My doctor kissed my forehead when he walked in and saw me desperately fighting through the worst of the contractions when I was in labor.  He told me I was doing a great job, and even though I was in so much pain I thought I would die, I was touched by his warmth.  When I was pregnant my nurse midwife told me I had really firm boobs and great nipples.  It was in the context of future nursing, but I was pregnant at the time and feeling a little down about the state of my body so I took it as a wonderful compliment.  And then today during my annual exam she asked me in a puzzled voice if I'd had a vaginal birth.  I said yes and then she told me she would have never known if I didn’t tell her. "Everything has gone back into place perfectly and you have excellent tone.  Good job on the exercises."

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I neglect my kegels always. 

She's not the first person to compliment me on my tone.  A couple of months ago Eli told me the same thing.  He sort of put his foot in his mouth though because his compliment went something like this:

Remember after you had the baby and you asked me if you felt the same?
Yeah...
And I said you did?
Yeah...
Well, I gotta be honest, you didn't then, but now!  Now you're completely back to normal.  It's amazing.

Hmm.  Then we had a discussion about how we shouldn’t tell each other body lies. 

I wish someone had told me that it would take my hips and other parts at least six months to go back into place.  I remember standing in front of the mirror about three months after Joey was born and staring at my hips trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  Everything else was back to normal except that when my eye moved down my body, past my waist and stomach, there were these hip bones jutting out so far that I looked like two different bodies stitched together at the waist.  So if you’re out there, and you’ve given birth to your first child and you’re wondering what the christ is going on with your strange new hips, know that you just need to be patient.  It won’t stay that way forever, and your body will continue to fix itself for about a year. 

And don’t ask your husband for a critique until it has been at least 12 months.  He’ll only lie. (because he loves you)

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If you were here earlier and saw a different post for today, sorry. Technical difficulties.  It had to go.  And also, it's national de-lurking week but since I don't have comments open here you should send me an email and introduce yourself.  You really should. Despite what you may think from reading here, I'm friendly and very nice.

growth spurt

Joey is going through a growth spurt.  And we weren’t paying attention because one day we had defined limits and suddenly he was able to reach things we always thought were safely contained outside the baby zone.  I was making dinner the other night and it’s a recipe where you have to stir constantly at the beginning.  So I was standing at the stove, talking on the phone while constantly stirring, and I thought Joey was playing trucks in the living room.  But then I heard a noise behind me that sounded like cardboard against tile.  When I turned around I found out that’s exactly what it was.  Joey is now tall enough to pull stuff off the counter, and so to exercise his new special skill, he slid a carton of eggs off the counter and dropped it onto the kitchen floor.  But the drop to the floor only cracked all the eggs.  Joey had to then manually smash them by picking each one up out of the carton and throwing it against the floor. 

I had enough time to wrestle a dripping egg out of his hand, put him in his high chair with a handful of cheerios and then I had to be back at the stove, constantly stirring.  Eli got home five minutes later and walked in to me standing in the middle of ten broken eggs cooking dinner.  The whole floor was covered with eggs.  There were yolks oozing into the grout and pieces of gooey shell leaking under the fridge, and a big yellow lake of egg right in the middle of the floor.  He had to mop my feet while I stood there still stirring because I was sticking to the tile.

Later on Joey slid my library book off the table and ripped a page out of the middle.  When I saw what he did, I was tempted to tape all his fingers together into a giant paw.  At least until he can understand the concept of “other people’s stuff” and that even if we trash our own shit, we show the library books some fucking respect.

Every time I turn around lately, something is being ruined.  And it happens so fast.  It’s not that eggs are irreplaceable; it’s just such a pain in the ass to clean ten eggs off the kitchen floor.  In one day last week a cat knocked my bamboo planter (with its hundreds of little rocks) into the garbage disposal, the baby pulled a whole bowl of mandarin oranges off the counter, and my favorite coffee mug got smashed to bits on the kitchen floor (my fault for thinking that I could give the child a ceramic mug to play with in a carpeted room and he wouldn’t walk into the room with the tile and throw it down)

I’m trying to take my mind off the appointment I have to go to this afternoon by focusing on things that don’t matter.  I’m going to the doctor to discuss my blood pressure and my boobs.  And while I know the blood pressure thing is a definite problem, I also know it can be fixed.  The other, I’m not so sure.  I have needed more medical help over the past two years than in the whole rest of my life combined.  But I’ve also never felt so protective about my health.  I need everything to be okay.

side effect blues

No cigarettes since Sunday and I’m doing okay.  The thing I hate is when I forget and do something I always associate with cigarettes, like drink coffee or finish eating, and for a second I feel like I forgot to do something until I remember.  And then I feel disappointed. 

But I have no excuses this time.  I’m on enough medication to calm a classroom of hyperactive first-graders after a sugar party, and I wear the patch.  I was wearing the patch 24 hours a day but after one very scary round of nightmares, I will be removing the patch before bed from now on. 

I think I mentioned that my medicine gives me terrible nightmares.  Well, the patch does the same thing.  Combine them both and my dream world is the most hard-core, fucked up scary place you can imagine.  The night before last, I had a dream that I was still in the Army and we were doing a training exercise at an amusement park.  By mistake we shot down part of a rollercoaster track with an anti-tank weapon.  It was funny until we realized that no one told the people running the rollercoaster, and we all stood there as coaster after coaster flew down the track and then plunged off the spot we’d shot out, maiming and killing the passengers in the cars.  It seemed like it went on forever, the cars just flying off the track into the air, turning upside down and crashing and skidding into the ground or other rides.  And there was screaming and broken bodies and blood just fucking everywhere. 

I woke up scared to death but when I realized it was only a dream, I calmed down and fell back asleep.  And went back to the same dream, only this time, the Others (thanks, Lost), a society of people who are not human and live in caves underneath the amusement park decided to blow up the rollercoaster by shooting up explosives at every point where the track met the ground.  They were relentless and again with the screaming and blood and dead people and body parts scattered everywhere, and when it became clear that we had to get away to safety, I looked back and saw a little girl dangling from her seatbelt in an overturned rollercoaster car still on a piece of the track.  She was crying and scared and completely unharmed.  I tried to go to her, but my master sergeant told me we had to leave her because moving her would set off another round of explosions.

The thing I hate about dreams is how haunting they are when they’re happening, and that residue of terror they leave behind on your mind, but when you try to explain them, no matter how you try to convey the intensity, they always seem so fucking stupid.

I had an employee physical yesterday for my new job and it turns out I have a pretty scary case of hypertension.  The nurse took my blood pressure five times, on different equipment each time, and she kept looking at me funny like she couldn’t understand.  I’m not fat, I’m not old, I don’t smoke, and I look like a pretty healthy person.  Finally she accepted that the numbers she kept getting were my true numbers and so she made me a printout and sat me down for a talk.  My blood pressure reading was 174/103.  If you’re not familiar with the numbers, normal is 120/80, and the bottom number is the one that’s most dangerous.  My blood pressure is higher now than when I developed hypertension at the end of my pregnancy and had to go to the hospital every day to be monitored. 

I asked the nurse if I was going to stroke out, and she said no.  I asked her if I should go to the emergency room, and she said no.  She told me to refrain from doing anything strenuous this weekend and go see my doctor right away next week. I didn’t tell her that I know the reason for my hypertension because I don’t think my employer needs to know about that part of my medical history, but I’m not surprised at what’s happening.  One of the side effects of my antidepressant medication is hypertension and I guess that’s what I’m experiencing. I have an appointment for my annual checkup on Tuesday so I will talk to my doctor then, but I don’t know how I am going to convince him to put me on hypertension drugs rather than discontinue the medicine that’s causing the hypertension.

Man, I feel like a senior citizen here, with all my medical problems.  You’d never think I was in my early 30s from reading this.  Anyway, I am more worried about what could happen if I go off the medication than about what could happen to my heart if I continue to have this blood pressure.  It’s a testament to how bad things got around here that I would rather be dead than depressed.