Background Noise

Eli is a great mom

I’d always wondered about what kind of mother I’d be. It was one of the scariest parts about being pregnant, right up there with giving birth. And it turns out, just as I’d suspected, I’m not the greatest mother in the world.

Because I commute and Eli works a mile from our house, he drops Joey off and picks him up from school. And because Eli’s job is a little more flexible than mine, he is usually the one to go pick Joey up when he is sick at school or stay home with him when he has a fever. He has taken Joey for shots and blood draws and x-rays. He knows the kids in Joey’s class by name, and some of the parents too. He signs us up to bring things to school parties and even knows when the parties are going to happen. He knows who the biters are.

Meanwhile, I am constantly surprised by how much I don’t know. Like when we’re in a store or at the park and some adult or kid I’ve never met before comes up and asks me if I am Joey’s mom, and starts talking to my son because they know him. Or when I pack his lunch in the morning and am scolded by Eli for including goldfish crackers because those are for “snack” only. One time when Eli had an early meeting I had to do the whole morning routine by myself, and I dressed Joey for school in his blue tee shirt with the alligator on the front. When we got to school another little boy had the same tee shirt on and when I told Eli about it later he said, “Yeah, I know. Zachary always wears that shirt which is why I never put Joey in that one for school.” I also had to ask Joey where to put his lunch bag once we got to school, but I whispered it so as not to advertise my ignorance.

I forget to pack a swim diaper on Wet and Wild Wednesday’s in the summer, I send whole grapes and apples in Joey’s lunch and get notes back from his teachers reminding me to cut them up. He had to wear socks on his hands one day during recess when I forgot to send his mittens to school. I go places without bringing juice boxes and extra diapers and changes of clothes and only think of it when Joey throws up all over himself or suddenly begins dying of thirst. Once I was scheduled to go into work late so I kept Joey home with me in the morning as a treat and when I dropped him off at ten I was spoken to by the director about how dropping children off late is disruptive to the morning classroom routine.

I set bad examples like tossing pieces of broccoli at Eli during dinner, or filling my mouth with as much corn off the cob as I can hold and then pretend-sneezing it across the table. I teach Joey to recognize music by bands like Weezer, Foo Fighters and The Chili Peppers and then am surprised when he sings along to lyrics that are completely inappropriate for a toddler’s mouth in the car in front of my parents. I pray that he will never learn to spell because then I won’t be able to communicate with Eli or other adults. I haven’t found a different way to speak, I’ve simply begun spelling the inappropriate words.

I feel stupid whenever I try to help out with the things that Eli usually does for Joey or when I fuck up and forget to do laundry when he has peed through all of his pants and he has to go to school in the light blue girly sweatpants that are strictly last resort clothing, and never to be worn in public. I occasionally have days of self loathing when I judge myself and decide that I suck as a mother and I feel guilty that I am not actively trying to find ways to stay home with Joey anymore because I love my job. But I figure that as long as one of us is a good mom, Joey will be fine. So what if his good mom is his dad?  

gluesticks, glitter and grief

Last night I bought a Foamies snowglobe for Joey and I to put together today. The kit comes with all of his favorite things like glue and stickers and glitter so I figured it would be a fun project for us to do.

And it was, except that by the time we got to it we’d already spent the morning at a kids craft fair where the kids get to go around to different stations, manned by middle-schoolers, and make Christmas decorations. By the time we left the fair we were both covered in glitter and little clumps of glue, but we had a bunch of ornaments that I will be able to embarrass Joey with when I show them to his high school girlfriend one day. Like the rage angel ornament with the body of a pinecone and a face of scribbled fury. Joey wouldn’t put a bow on his angel, nor a halo, and he has been walking around the house with it all day making it growl.

I thought the craft fair might exhaust his creative energy for the day and I could save the Foamies Snowglobe for another time, and we could spend some quality time watching Christmas cartoons this afternoon instead.  But he is three, and three year-olds never forget. So when we got home he wanted to do the Foamies project and I couldn’t say no because I’ve been using the project as a bribe all morning to get him to do the things I want him to do like brush his teeth, put his clothes on and stop screaming at me from the backseat to “LOOK, MAMA!” while I am trying to drive the car.

I let Joey work on the tree, while I assembled the snowman. I rolled it in glitter, which was a big mistake because after that the head wouldn’t stick to the body, the hat wouldn’t stick to the head, and the fucking scarf kept falling off no matter how much glue and pressure I used to get the damn things to stay together. After ten minutes of picking glitter covered snowman pieces up off the floor, I took a knife to it and rigged the whole thing together with toothpicks. And then Joey touched it and the whole thing fell apart again. So the snowman has been kicked out of the project for not cooperating.

My parents came over during the snowglobe project to visit with Joey and it was pretty interesting to watch my mom fuss all over Joey while at the same time maintaining her vow of silence against me. We had a fight this week, and I am now on her Do Not Talk list. This happens every once in a while and I used to get angry about it, but I’ve finally come to accept that she is insane and her moods and fits have nothing to do with me.

You’re probably wondering what I did to piss her off. Okay, here goes, but this is a horrible story so feel free to skip this part.

My mom called me at work on Wednesday to tell me that a close friend of the family’s two and a half year-old grandson had choked on a piece of candy and was in the hospital. There was very little brain activity and he would probably not make it. The grandmother of the baby had a heart attack when she heard the news and was also in the hospital, and the father of the baby, who was with him when it happened, was in the hospital under sedation because he couldn’t handle it and was a suicide risk.

She shocked me good and I couldn’t speak for a moment because that’s a lot of horrible news to hear in one minute. And I was at work, the last place I would want to receive news like this.  I am not close to the family this happened to, but I have known them my whole life. And I am a parent of a young child myself, and this automatically makes me more sensitive and empathetic to the things that happen to other children, especially if the thing is a freak accident that could just as easily happen to my own child.

When I was able to speak again I asked her what the hell was wrong with her that she needed to call me at work to tell me something like that. I told her she was insensitive, reckless with people’s feelings, unthinking, selfish and inappropriate. I said a lot of mean things to her, but most of it didn’t have anything to do with her calling me that day. It had more to do with the fact that I’ve been biting my tongue for so long when it comes to her that all I needed was a really good jolt for it to all come flying out. 

I hurt her feelings and upset her but I can’t apologize. Maybe now she’ll stop calling me every time she hears about another child abducted or abused or murdered to share the horrible details of the story with me and remind me to keep my own baby safe. As though I wouldn’t think of protecting Joey without her constant reminders. As though I don’t know about all the horrible things that can happen to a child in this world.

It's just that sometimes ignorance can be bliss and rather than focusing on misery, most days I'm just trying to find some fucking peace.

talking about my uterus at work. again

I need you Dear Diary, because I’m doing it again. One of the best uses for this journal is that it is a place where I can dump all the idiotic shit that rattles around inside my head constantly without finding myself one bright Monday morning sitting in a meeting about capillary electrophoresis and slipping into a conversation with my boss that ends up with me describing what a contraction feels like. To my MALE boss. We were talking about donuts and of course that made me remember how I would eat a donut every day for lunch when I was pregnant and how for the next hour it would feel like Joey was going to rip out of my stomach straight through my belly button, only to find out when I gave birth that I was not actually hosting an alien fetus, but instead having perfectly normal Braxton hicks contractions.

I share those things with you.

Everything is fine with me. Everything is the same since I last wrote except that I am no longer the new girl at work, and Joey is talking in full sentences like a real person.

So it’s hard to start working in a new place, especially if the environment is ultra-conservative like the one I work in. It took months but I am finally at a point where I can work independently once again and schedule my own time and workload without everyone freaking out and hoping I’m not some kind of loose cannon who could bring the entire corporation crashing to its knees. I know how it works. Everyone wonders what the hell the new girl is doing with all her filthy new ideas and experiments. What if she uses one of them and ruins everything!!! She’s new! She doesn’t know how we do things! What will the FDA think????

A lot of my time at work is spent pondering the question, WWTFDAD (What Would The FDA Do). When I scribble a comment in my lab notebook, I try to imagine how an auditor would interpret my message and I end up clarifying so much that I run out of room for all my explaining. I actually had to attach a formal memo to a data sheet about a simple instrument calibration when my comments went too long and I ran out of space. When I have to recalculate an area because I decided to move my baseline slightly to the left, I write an entire paragraph into the audit trail in my computer explaining why. My motto has become No Red Flags, and so I am always thinking: WWTFDAD?

I have a recurring nightmare that I am not following correct protocol for doing normal things that I don’t even do at work like taking a shower or eating dinner or setting my alarm, and I get busted in an audit and they take away all my patents. It’s absurd but then sometimes so is my job.

At least I don’t have to worry about Joey ever having work-related stress. At school today they traced an outline of each of the children’s bodies onto a huge piece of art paper and hung it on the wall. And at the top of each child’s body outline they listed the occupation that the child hopes to someday pursue. One kid wants to be a truck driver. Another kid wants to be a mailman. One of the little freaks wants to grow up to be a princess. But they’re two and three years old, so it all makes perfect sense. So when I look to my child’s outline to see which occupation he thinks would make a great career, I half expect to see something like garbage man or guy who drives a plow. Imagine my surprise when I look at the words above my child’s outline and it says: “The letter O”.

I guess from watching Eli and I run around here high on work stress all week long, we've ruined engineering and science for him. I guess I'd want to grow up to be a vowel too.

 

a history of violence

I’ll admit, I didn’t take it very seriously the first time it happened. But that’s because I thought it was an isolated incident that would never happen again. But when Joey bit me again last night, I had to come to terms with the fact that maybe this is not a phase and perhaps my child is on his way to becoming a sociopath. Though I think true sociopaths start with torturing animals first, before moving on to humans. And Joey is extremely gentle with the cats. We started teaching him very early that you are gentle with the kitties, you do not poke at their eyes and you never pull tails. Now when he pats the cats he says, “Nice kitty, gentle,” and mimics the way we’ve shown him how to treat the animals very gently, softly patting. And I’m really happy that he’s so kind to the pets, but if it’s them or me, I’d happily offer up a cat as a chew toy. At least they have their fur for protection. And if he was busy chewing on the cats he would not be working so hard to cannibalize his mother.

I was leading him over to the couch to change his diaper before going out last night, and in front of Eli and the babysitter, he latched his teeth into my arm and tried to tear my muscle from the bone. He only had his mouth on my arm for two seconds, but the damage is pretty outrageous. It doesn’t look as bad as it could because my skin is tan right now, but there is the shadow of a nasty bruise under the tan, and if I run my hand along my arm, there is a huge knotted welt under the skin. I don’t know what to do short of wearing body armor to protect myself from this kid and his fucking teeth. And why is it only me he bites? Is everyone else not delicious?

If there was some kind of hotline for this shit, I’d be on it because I want answers. Why is my child biting me? And even worse, what if he eventually finds it so satisfying that he does it to someone else who isn’t me? Someone who could press charges? Or Eli, who would probably handle it by ripping out his baby teeth and making him gum everything until he can handle the responsibility of owning teeth.

The worst part about getting bit is that he growls as he’s doing it and that makes it all the more savage.  I should call the pediatrician to get professional advice on how to handle this, because I'm afraid if I go with my own homemade solutions I will scar the child for life. And I don't want to do that. I just need to make this stop.

Joey's World

I woke up this morning feeling like maybe yesterday was just a really great dream. But judging by the way I slept I figured it was real. I haven’t woken up feeling this rested since the doctor put me on tranquilizers and I spent three days in my bed, unable to pry my drugged head from the pillow. But when I was out in the front yard this morning (having coffee with my neighbor while our children played on the lawn in their diapers AND NOTHING ELSE—white trashin’ it like it’s 1972 and children can go around barefoot and free! I fully expect one of the neighbors to mention my practically naked child outside playing, in some context or another, in the next few days) the FedEx truck arrived with a package for me. And it was confirmed.

So I was leisurely reading through the offer packet this morning, and some thoughts I had were at first hmm, which medical program should I pick? And then wow, I never knew there were so many ways a person could get fired AND be brought up on criminal charges at the same time. And finally my mind shifted to a detail infinitely more important than proper medical coverage and legally binding confidentiality agreements. The one detail that I’d overlooked in this whole thing. I don’t own a bag good enough for my new fancy job!

I have an assortment of handbags and cute purses in all different colors and sizes, and if I need to carry something bigger I have my favorite Nike backpack (school bus yellow) and my Patagonia messenger bag (fluorescent green). And lately I’ve been using the most perfect bag in all creation, the Kate Spade diaper bag that Eli got me for Mother’s day that doesn’t look like a diaper bag at all except for the insulated pouches and changing pad inside. You’d think with my collection I’d have it covered, right? Wrong. I need a business bag. Not a briefcase, but something that looks nice and will hold all my work stuff and a laptop. So I’ve decided I can delay the Grand Week of Big Fun I have planned for Joey by one afternoon. Anyway, bag shopping is about him too since he needs an insulated lunch box for school, and I’m thinking something…Elmo. Or Builder Bob. Dark, masculine colors. With washable material. Something fashionable, yet boyish. (GWoF is a concept I came up with yesterday after receiving the job offer and realizing that I’ve been spending a lot of time frantically worrying and obsessively waiting for phone calls and sitting in front of my online banking program trying to figure out how to play around with the bills creatively enough so that no one will realize that we’re not paying them, and in general just not being very much fun. Joey will probably forget he even has a mama after I’m back at work for a few days. So I’m planning on counteracting this unavoidable side-effect of employment by making next week the best week of his life. Though I suppose it could backfire and make him miss me even more once I’m not around all the time)

One thing I’ve noticed over the last couple of days is that it is impossible to get a big head or feel like some kind of fancypants with Joey around to remind me that I am, at the core of my being, first before anything else, from now until I die, his mother. And as such I will be subject to his daily abuse and I will just put up with it because this is Joey’s World and in Joey’s World you cannot write someone up for harassment or fire them for insubordination. And this is what happens when I forget that.

 

 
Check it. That's where I got bit on the leg. Hard. Broke the skin and everything and left a huge ugly bruise (about the size of a silver dollar) that looks like what would happen to your skin after a bite involving a serpent and necrotic venom. I’ve shown my mark to a lot of people and it is so base in its ugliness that every single person immediately asked me what I did to Joey after he attacked me. As though I’d be like, Yeah, so I fucking kicked his ass and told him: son, you best be keepin those baby teeth off my AUTHORITAY! What the fuck do you think I did? I was startled and pulled my leg away in shock, then after inspecting the damage, scooped the child up, walked upstairs with his body hanging over my forearm like a sack of potatoes, and without a word deposited him into his crib where he would be safe. I mean, he had to be sleepy, right? Because what kind of person would do something so deranged to another person, especially when that other person gave you fucking LIFE, unless they were literally de-fucking-lirious with exhaustion. Right?

Joey knew I was angry by the way I picked him up and by the lack of pre-naptime sweet talk and singing I usually indulge him in. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t even be able to speak English, as my rage would overwhelm my vocabulary and leave me sputtering the devil’s latin.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve forgiven him and unless I have to go to the hospital to be treated for a bacterial infection (he broke the skin with his razor sharp baby teeth, providing a direct passage into my bloodstream for anything gross that may be living in his mouth) we will put the whole thing behind us and move on. But this serves as a reminder that like the human mouth, Joey’s World can be a dark and dangerous place. And just because something is small and cute doesn't mean it can't fuck your shit up. I live with a Gremlin.

daycare part 3-now with video!

Eli, Joey and I went out this morning to tour a daycare. Actually, it’s hard to think of it as a daycare, because they don’t use that word. Every reference to the facility uses the word school, and Eli and I had a good time joking around about this one before the tour. We talked about toddler school and how it’s a hilarious concept, imagining Joey at a little desk learning shit and getting educated all the live long day when really what he will be doing is climbing the walls and giving the teachers a reason to reconsider their career choices. All that stopped after we visited the school and were handed a folder with an actual toddler curriculum. Obviously the curriculum is mostly play, but each month has a theme and a focus. For example, September is the letters A, B and C, and the season Autumn. October is D, E, F and the five senses. It’s hard for even the most cynical of parents (me and Eli) to remain unimpressed. 

I left feeling like this place is better than home for Joey. He would only be going there 2-3 days each week, but the place is so excellent that it makes me feel like a bad mother for keeping him home with me when he could be playing and thriving and experiencing new stuff every day. And believe it or not, this is a good thing. It’s better than before when we were looking into daycare for Joey when he was an infant and trying to find a place that would take care of him as well as we would at home. We never found our infant care utopia, never even came close, really. And that’s probably because there is no scenario in my mind where sticking a bunch of babies in a little room to be watched over by strangers is better than home.

I realize that the school is a little crunchy, but the more I think about it I realize that Eli and I are, as parents, a little crunchy ourselves. By crunchy I mean…hmm, I’m not sure how to describe our parenting philosophy. Actually, I didn’t even realize we had one until we were forced to think about it. We don't have it down in writing, it's more of a loose concept that we just make up and revise as we go along.

We’re huge fans of creativity, play, letting our child be a kid by getting messy and not being perfectly pristine all the time. We favor old-fashioned toys and books over modern funky toys that surprise and delight kids through volume and flashing lights, even though Joey has a few stupid, completely-void-of-educational-value toys because fun is important too. (One of these toys is the Sesame Street Rock guitar we got for him that lights up and plays a guitar solo of the sesame street theme in rock style, and is basically the most fucking annoying toy ever) We let him eat junk food sometimes but we try to limit it and give him healthy stuff most of the time even though the junky stuff is tempting because it’s so easy. We believe in discipline and providing boundaries because Joey is a toddler and does not get to make the rules for himself. The rules cover specific things like bedtime, bath time, biting, hitting and snacks. He has had a routine since he was three months old, and even though it has varied according to his age and when there are special occasions, his overall daily life is very consistent. We encourage him to be independent and to discover and learn things on his own, but watch over him in the background where he can’t see because he is our baby cub.

I loved everything about the school we visited today. I love it so much that if I don’t get the job and we don’t get to enroll him there, I will feel bad about it. This is a very different feeling and I’ve never had it before when it came to leaving Joey somewhere. That has to mean that it’s right.

Update: because of all the explaining I did above about our grand parenting philosophy, I feel like I should show the other side, too. THE REALITY OF DAILY LIFE WITH A DEFIANT TODDLER. Because no matter how organized you are in your mind about your parenting philosophy, they're still gonna do whatever the hell they want.

daycare part 2

First entry of the saga can be found here. Yeah, here I go again. I should probably give daycare its own category here because I have a feeling I am going to have a lot to say about it in the coming months.

I have to mention that this is a horrible time to be looking at daycares. A newspaper in a large city nearby just did an expose on local daycares, and what it revealed is frightening. Also, a man has been in the news lately for committing TWENTY-ONE counts of molestation during naptime at a local daycare.

I have to say this about it because it’s what I know in my heart: Daycare is risky. Trusting complete strangers to care for your infant or baby or child is a crapshoot. There are many factors that contribute to this truth, (terrible wages, immature and/or uneducated staff) but bottom line: Kids are a pain in the ass. They just are. They are difficult and demanding and they’re just learning about how the world works and unfortunately things like walking and talking come before good etiquette. But when they’re your children, you just put up with it. You nurture them, you teach them, you cringe when they try to bite your hand away when all you’re doing is trying to keep them from throwing their body into the street to be run down by fucking assholes driving around oblivious talking on their cell phones!

Reading through all the violations for various daycare centers, there were the usual citations for things like leaving medicines or toxic materials in unlatched cabinets, play structures that are not equipped with padded mats underneath to limit broken bones, unsecured doors, and even the one place that was storing COMET CLEANER in a cabinet with the toys. And then there are the less common ones, like the incident where  two year old child was lifted from the ground by one arm so that his feet were dangling like a rag doll when a daycare provider probably got fed up with being gentle and decided to move him like he was furniture. I’m not naive. I know these incidents don’t happen in isolation and I doubt little Sammy Sunshine was quietly playing and not causing any trouble when his daycare teacher tried to rip his arm out of the socket. I’m sure he bit her or smacked her or said something lippy to cause her to lose her patience with him, but guess what? When someone is paying you to have patience, you need to show some fucking restraint and HAVE PATIENCE.

Last on the list of unbelievable shit I read (I am not even counting molestation because that is in a category all its own) were the citations for shaming or humiliating a child. One child was made fun of by his daycare provider for wetting his pants, another was told her hair looked stupid and she was an ugly mess after playing outside. That kind of shit is just not cool. What kind of asshole chooses a child as a target for that kind of bullshit? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me considering how many maladjusted adults there are in the world. And I realize they’re just continuing the cycle. But if you’re a fucking pig who can’t act right to a child, why put up with the stress of working at a daycare? You could work at Walmart and probably make better money. Though try acting out on your customers there and you’re likely to find yourself on the wrong end of an ass kicking because unlike children adults can defend themselves.

Anyway, this probably sounds weird, but I would rather my child fall off a jungle gym and break a bone in daycare than be treated like shit by a caregiver. I am a huge fan of discipline, but I like the kind that helps a child grow into a mature adult who can handle himself in the world. The kind of discipline where you use emotional abuse to get a child to bend to your will and obey is just a great way to create a neurotic headcase who will eventually need lots of therapy. I know what I’m talking about here.

Anyway, after scaring the shit out of myself I am ready to start making some calls. Next week is going to be full of daycare touring fun and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it then.

Here’s a fun site I spent a lot of time at last year, making myself feel like shit. I actually sat and cried about the sad cartoon baby up in the corner because all I could think was that would be Joey in is crib, staring up and crying because he wanted his mama (uneccesary drama: A side-effect of not being medicated--I am better now) It’s like a crazy PETA organization for children. PETC. Can you imagine putting this shit on your car? And then driving around a business park? HAHA. Why not just wear a big sign around your neck begging people to kick your ass?

fucking high

Someone was cool enough to send me the James Blunt CD after I talked about it in a previous entry. Thank you so much kind person!

I had no idea flying high was really fucking high and that's the problem with listening to music on the radio. It’s like when I first listened to that Radiohead song on CD and learned that the girl Creep is talking about is not so very special, she is so fucking special. And it makes more sense. Censorship ruins everything.

I ended up posting an ad on craigslist whoring myself out and as of 24 hours later I have received exactly ZERO responses. Excellent. And because of how these things always go, Eli, who is gainfully employed and is contacted at least once a month with offers of employment from people who want to steal him away from his current business, just got a sweet gig teaching a college class this fall. It’s a two hour lecture with a two hour lab, and he will be able to do it in addition to his regular job. And I’m happy for him of course, but it’s like he’s some kind of fucking money magnet. He doesn’t even try. While I sit here trying to figure out how to sell my body parts for cash and hating myself. I never wanted a sugar daddy, and even if Eli was pulling down a seven figure salary, I would still want something of my own.

But I have weird luck. Like yesterday, when I woke up and decided I could either work on the employment thing or give it a rest for a bit and go to the beach for a nice relaxing day in the surf. Since it was almost 100 degrees here in the city, and I was sweating my head off even before 9am, I decided to go to the beach. And lo, while I was there I got a phone call from the original company who didn’t give me the job I wanted, telling me that there is another opening for the job I wanted, and they want me to have it! Me! It makes me feel a little silly for all the self-loathing I did last week. I did indeed rock the interview after all.

So the beach. It was absolutely divine and the first time in a week where I was outside and not sweating at all. I lost at least a gallon of sweat at a cookout on Sunday from chasing Joey around in the ridiculous heat all afternoon. The kid exhausts me. But at the beach he’s in his element. He plays in the sand and swims and doesn’t run away like he does everywhere else in public, and the only bad habit he has is that he likes to grab my sunglasses off my face, pull my bathing suit down and visit with people who are sitting near us on the beach. Oh yeah, and he bit my toe once while we were swimming.

Joey makes friends everywhere he goes because he is bold and unafraid. He made friends with an old lady under an umbrella sitting near us who gave him cookies and talked to him for a long time. Then he made friends with another lady who gave him sunblock for his scalp and his own bottle of cold water to drink.

He also made friends with a little girl who belonged to a couple that Eli and I both agreed are the most beautiful couple we have ever seen. Eli and I sat there in our chairs at the edge of the water, staring at these people who cannot possibly be human, while our children played in the sand at our feet. As I stared at them, and then down at myself, I wondered how it is possible that they could look so collected and beautiful while spending a day with a toddler at the beach. I took my sunglasses off and stared at myself in the reflection to see if I was also rockin the beach with my own beauty, and I was sad to discover I was not. My hair was a mess of dreds collected around my head and reaching for the sun like some kind of gravity-defying, ocean-salt-based medusa wig. My skin and bathing suit were covered in a crust of sand, the result of being the human canvas for the sand-flinging toddler at my feet. And I looked more like something that got washed up on the beach than something that stepped out of the white sands in a glossy mag.

When I got home and took off my bathing suit, I realized that sitting prettily on the beach all day on a blanket with a book and my suntan lotion is very different from spending the day swimming, letting the waves drag me up to shore and dragging around in the shallow water with a toddler. I looked like I was wearing a sand bikini on my skin and when I brushed my hair a delicate sprinkling of sand gathered below me on the floor.

I had to wash my hair three times to get the sand out, and my highlights are looking a little brassy from all the sun and salt, but I don’t care because it was a wonderful day. And when I got home to the news that I may be working again very soon, my decision to ditch responsibility and hit the beach made even more sense. In a few weeks things like the sun and swimming and having a tan will all just be fond memories, as I begin spending my days indoors and taking on the sallow appearance of a lab drudge once again.

But at least I’ll have more cash.

dirty lake, happy child

We went to the park this morning to let Joey run off some of his energy in the enclosed playground while we sat on a bench and had coffee. And after a little while we had to return to the car to “freshen up” because if there is one truth about life with a toddler it is that as soon as mom gets lazy and decides to leave the diaper bag in the car rather than lugging it all over the playground, the child will crap the diaper. The timing of toddler diaper blowouts can be predicted mathematically as an inverse proportion to how far away the car is parked and how high the temperature is that day. As the distance from the car and temperature of the air increases, time on the playground before a blowout decreases. Though there is a limit to the equation with zero being the moment one steps onto the playground (a toddler will never soil a diaper in the car or at home where it is convenient).

But this time returning to the car was the best thing that could’ve happened because while we were there I overheard a woman who was loading her kids up in the car next to us promising her children that she would take them to the “park with water” that afternoon. Intrigued, I started listening closely for more detail about this “park with water”, but after a couple minutes when it became clear she would not mention the location I had to confess to eavesdropping.

“Hi, um, I just heard you say something about a water park. Do you know of one around here?” 

“Oh yeah, well we have a pool at home but our vacuum is broken, it’s been broken for three days as you can tell by how I look right now, can you believe this (motions to messy hair) I look like this from trying to vacuum…we’re going crazy, oh yeah, so my boys were taking swimming lessons and ….”

On she went, giving me a brief rundown of her entire life for fifteen minutes and just as I was getting ready to grab her by the shoulders and shake the directions to the park out of her mouth she finally told us where to go. When we got back into the car Eli was like, “Hey, you think she’s a stay at home mom?” sarcastically, because the woman seemed starved for conversation in an obviously I’ve-been-stuck-at-home-with-my-children-for-too-many-months-now way. I felt bad for her because I went through a rough spot like that the winter after Joey was born when I became so isolated and cut off from reality that I would stand and chat with the cashiers at Babies R Us for as long as they would talk to me and I looked forward to and prepared for pediatrician visits as excitedly as a night out clubbing.

So we went to the park with water, and it was really just a lake that has a slide on the beach. I went swimming at lakes a lot as a child and I don’t remember anything except that it was fun and sometimes there were fish. But now that I am older I notice that lakes are pretty disgusting and spending the afternoon at one will make you feel filthy.

Joey loved the lake and didn’t even notice the murky reddish-brown water as he ran in and walked all the way out to the dock where the water was up to his chest. Why do I see small children of all ages clinging to their parents for dear life at every beach I’m at, while at the mere site of water at the edge of sand, my own son takes off like a bullet away from me and I have to trip over myself trailing after him and trying to keep up? The child is 20 months old and has fear of nothing, including bugs, thunder, strangers and especially water.

We played in the water for a while until Joey discovered the pure joy of scooping handfuls of sludgy sand off the bottom of the lake and first rubbing it all over my legs and then flinging it up toward my face. Eli hung out on the dock since he had conveniently forgotten to bring his swimsuit and I had to stay in the lake with Joey to make sure he didn’t drown himself. 

And even though I came home smelling like the inside of a dirty sock, it was worth it because the boy had a blast and standing around in the dirty lake all afternoon really helped even out my tan since my back was to the sun most of the time. Because of all this outdoor activity lately I am achieving better tan than I’ve had in years. To help things along I bought some Hemp lotion with a “touch of sunless tanner” and I’ve been smoothing it on my skin at night and going to bed smelling like candy. But this morning when Eli saw the bottle in the bathroom he told me I should lay off the Hemp lotion because it might skew my upcoming drug tests. I laughed and told him he was a moron. And I busted out a little science on his ass to show him I wasn’t scared. But that isn’t going to keep me from googling Hemp Lotion tonight to make sure I know what I’m talking about. The only drug test I would fail is one designed to check for caffeine and antidepressants.

Speaking of antidepressants, the drugs have been giving me problems lately. I don’t know if it’s because of the stress in my life right now or if I’m tipping out of balance again. It is not helping that Joey and Eli have become very cliquish lately since Eli has been around so much during his vacation. Anyway, my next shrink appointment should be interesting when I tell her my theory that there is no amount of medicine to save me from myself.

the circus

Something strange happened to my laptop a few days ago. I was writing and suddenly I lost the “g” “h” and backspace keys. Nothing I tried would bring them back, though my highly technical troubleshooting methods included gently lifting the keys to see if something was stuck under the keyboard, and then begging the computer to work while alternately losing my patience and demanding, “What the FUCK?” I couldn’t write, I couldn’t check my gmail, and I couldn’t search google.  I finally decided to turn the computer off and leave it alone for a couple of days to rest, which is a huge leap in emotional maturity for me. Pre-medication me would’ve smashed the thing to tiny pieces and then spent the rest of the weekend defending my actions to those around here who think I have issues with controlling my rage. Anyway, I left it alone and when I came back to it tonight, it was working fine again. I hope what happened was a fluke and not a death rattle because I need my computer. I’ve picked up some freelance writing jobs and my bank account is getting higher into the black than it has in months. I need this laptop to stay healthy until I can afford to cover its replacement.

My favorite aunt died this week. And I was going to write about the screwed up shit that led to this being an even bigger tragedy than death, but this isn’t really the place to air the family laundry. I can talk about it generally, though. My mom has a large family and if you’re part of a family of any size you know the kind of dysfunctional shit that can go on. Multiply that by way more people than should ever be related to one another and you get a level of dysfunction that starts to resemble a small society of people who, even though they were born of the same womb, cannot fucking get along without acting like idiots. For as long as I can remember there have been situations where this aunt isn’t talking to that one, everyone is upset at an uncle because of something he said at some random event, there are cliques and bullies and secrets and lies, all in a family of people who are not extended but rather full siblings. It’s like being a part of a multi-generational high school.

Dealing with my family is hard. They’ve been such a huge part of my life that I can’t imagine things without them, but when they act up and get crazy on each other I have to just sit back and let my heart ache because if there’s one thing worse than sitting on the sidelines and watching the family dysfunction explode in front of you, it is experiencing the wrath visited upon the well-meaning neice/cousin/daughter who gets in the middle and tries to intervene and work shit out. Come to think of it, in a metaphorical way, my family is missing its “g” “h” and backspace key and that is why we all have such a difficult time communicating.

There are good things about being a part of a large family. There are so many of us, that the sheer numbers predict that there will be some interesting shit in the family. I have two aunts who are nuns. One is the normal mean nun like the kind you think of if you’ve ever have any experience with the catholic church, and one is the less common peaceful kind who is cloistered and does not have contact with the public. There are teachers, gays, doctors, nurses, real estate moguls, business owners, computer engineers, a prodigy, a presidential secretary (former president), artists, cops, and an FBI agent. My family is a big stew of weirdos, not unlike a circus. No one can vouch for this better than the outlaws like Eli and my brother’s wife who stare on in amazement at family functions.

Anyway, that’s my family. And this week the circus lost one of its best freaks.

Open casket wakes are horrible. Talk about stating the obvious, right? Eli thought it was the right thing to say goodbye to my aunt and see her for the last time and he gently urged me away from my circle of cousins and into the casket room to deal with the reason we were there. I preferred to stay in my own special land of denial, in a room far away from the casket, catching up with my relatives like we were at a cookout and not standing there in black mourning clothes. The air went out of my lungs in the doorway when I realized that it was really her in the box and she looked exactly like she did when she was alive. When I got closer I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth, the mouth that has said so many words to me over the years, kissed me so many times, and I wanted to shake her and wake her up and tell her to stop it.

The funeral was horribly sad. The priest knew my aunt for many years and he talked about how she handled her final days and some of the things she shared with him during that time. He said her family was very important to her and she talked about us all the time. I was hoping he would stop right there, but he continued on, saying that even though she never had children of her own, her nieces and nephews were like her children and she loved them so much. My cousin, who was sitting in front of me, turned around and looked at me with tears in her eyes because we knew that he was talking about us. The two of us had a special relationship with my aunt, probably because of the close relationship she had with her sisters who were our mothers. It was us who she invited to her condo for weeks in the summer when we were teenagers so that we could get away from our parents and enjoy some time being spoiled. It was us she gave special gifts to over the years with promises not to tell the other cousins because there were so many and feelings would be hurt. It was us whose husbands she got to know and love like they were part of the family and treated them no differently from us, the ones she’d known our whole lives.

I couldn’t breathe and I was dangerously close to being one of those people who lose their fucking shit with grief and make a scene in the middle of the funeral. And since I prefer to avoid public situations that break my heart into pieces, I left the church. I went outside to join my sister-in-law who was loitering on the steps with her newborn who wouldn’t stop crying. We went and sat in the grass at the side of the church and she gave me a tissue and we talked about our babies because it was easier.

My aunt was my mentor, and the topic of many essays I was required to write in high school and college English classes because she led a fascinating life. She is the person I admired, who inspired me to study science and to be proud that I am good at math. She loved me no matter what I did. She called me a hot shit and would delight in the silly things I did that made my mom upset like wearing ripped clothes or punk jewelry in public. She would take my side and remind my mom that she wasn’t perfect growing up. She bought me cool presents for Christmas like a big box of Paul Mitchell hair stuff one year and she even gave me my first car. She paid me money for eating my vegetables when I was little and sent me cash every time I made the honor roll in school. Education was the most important thing to her because you can be pretty, but you also have to be smart in the world. She celebrated every academic success I ever had from completing kindergarten to graduating college.

I feel sick that she’s gone and I can’t get my mind around the fact that I’m not going to see her or talk to her ever again. I’m glad that Eli forced me to say goodbye but right now I am haunted by the image of her in the casket, looking so lifelike even in death. And I am starting to understand that I am going to have to go through this many more times in the coming years as my family ages. And I have to find a way to sort it out so that it makes more sense and doesn't leave me feeling like my guts got sucked out each time. Is that even logical? Should I even be searching for a way to handle death or is it  just one of those things that you can't?

My mom seems to have it figured out. She didn’t shed a single tear all day. I think she’s a sociopath. Or robot.