The New Girl

Beginning. Again.

After the birth of my second child, my body is, um, changed.  Not in the best way possible, you know. I'm looking to reestablish some semblance of self-control in the eating department, now that the sleep deprivation is lessening (ThankYouOhGoodGoodBabyThankYou) and get back to a fitness program. Namely yoga, weights and aerobic exercise.

I've been doing all right.  I've set some goals for myself.  I started posting at Balancing the Scales again (if it's not your cup of tea, I totally understand. If you ARE into health kicks and meatless meal talk, though, I'd be happy to have you visit.) 

I'm trying to [get out of shopping and buying new but big and expensive clothes] get back into my pre-maternity clothes.  I'm trying to work out the stiffness and the aching that comes (for me) from too little activity and zero stretching, plus the repeated movements and fookact body posture that comes from hanging out with little kids all day and looking into the cute, cute nurser's eyeballs. (I think they may be turning brown! Whoop Whoop!)

I also decided to run a 5k.  I am not a huge runner or a fan of running mile after mile [without the motivation of someone, say a knife-wielder, chasing me.] But I think a 5k is cool.  I'm going to try the Couch to 5k program. (I only have 7 weeks, though, so we'll see.)

Plus, there's this: The Man is going to do it.  And since having kids, especially the second baby, still being so small, there is very little we do together.  We even put them down separately now.  He said something casually and offhand, in the middle of a regular old conversation, that stuck with me and has been festering a little inside me.  He said this:

'We basically are living separate lives now.'

You know? That shit is kind of right. But it gives me the Hobby Jobbies* to hear it, out loud and matter of fact like that. 

And so, I'm going to train and we're going to run it together.  I'll be running and there won't be a knife-wielding maniac behind me. 

It'll be The Man.

'Cause I'm gonna smoke him.

*Hobbie Jobbies (heebie jeebies) are what The Nephew gets, as he explained, 'when something is Spokey' (spooky.) Oh, how I LOVE toddler-speak.

Mean.

"GET UP!" I screamed at her.

We were in the bathroom of a big (and kind of nasty) toy store.  I was hugely pregnant and had difficulty lugging her around in my condition. And she was laying and rolling on the floor (omg.)  She was hugely two and a quarter at the time. She was whining and screaming and tantruming and wouldn't pee (just because) and then she flung herself onto the floor to roll around with the pubic hairs and the mold spores and who knows what else and I lost it.

Not even the caps lock and the exclamation point can accurately convey the scary tone I took. It was savage.

It was so harsh and awful sounding that I kind of floated up and outside my own body. I astrally projected myself into the hallway and into the body of a potential stander-by and imagined what it would have sounded like from the other side of the door.  What a person coming into the restroom would have thought about me, about my relationship with my daughter.

***

I was 5 or 6 years old and I can't remember why my mother was yelling at me but she was so close to my face that she filled up my entire view of the world. Her expression was distorted with anger and rage.  It was a regular occurrence for her to lose her shit with anger.  She was in her mid-twenties, with a pre-schooler and a baby and a past that made her broken in some ways.

Although I don't remember why she was screaming at me, I remember everything else as if it happened yesterday.  I was sitting at the kitchen table (in my dad's seat,) waiting for the yelling to be done.  (That's how it usually ended.  The yelling just stopped and I would be raw and shaky for a while and then we would just keep on going like nothing happened.)  Her screaming was so loud and so close to my face. Her voice was aggressive, so severe and anxiety provoking that my brain conjured the only defense it could.

I smiled. (The budding Nervous-slash-Inappropriate Laugh? PERHAPS.)

This enraged her and she screamed, 'Don't you look at me like I'm crazy!'

***

After I lose my shit with my kid, I feel mean and small. I feel guilt and remorse.  I apologize and try to explain it as best I can.  It's a hard thing to understand.  For both of us.

When she was a little smaller, she confused her pronouns.  After an episode of yelling and apologizing, her level of world-rock would show itself in her language, in a way that would break my heart:

'I'm sorry I yelled at you, Mommy.  I'm sorry I yelled at you.'  

Now that she's older, with a better command of the language, she explores more.  Looking for the cause, the igniting incident.  After we've gone over what happened, she'll ask:

'What did I say to you, Mommy?' 'Why didn't I listen to you?' or, 'Why did I run away?'

She asks me these things like the answers are in my head.  It's hard for me to pin-point the reason that I whipped out the napalm for a run-of-the-mill infraction this time, when most other times it's just a stern-voice-time-out situation.  I try to separate what she did from my disproportionate response.  It isn't fair, in my mind, to make her responsible for my feelings in general, especially a temper tantrum.

I do my best (and am successful, mostly) to let go of any guilt I feel and try to move forward with a renewed sense of purpose, as relates to increasing my frustration tolerance.

***

When my mother was a little younger than I am now, she went into therapy.  She learned a lot about herself and her past.  She did some healing and putting-back-together.  She gained insight into the workings of her own mind and she unloaded years of festering guilt and shame.

And then, she apologized for emotionally abusing me.

It was a watershed moment in my life.  I still had a lot of my own shit to work through in therapy, to be sure, but it's hard to overestimate the effect of having your parent change.  And own up to her past fucked up behavior.

***

I used to frequently discuss my ambivalence about having children with my therapist.  As odd or as natural as it may sound to you (depending, I suppose, on what kind of childhood you had) a portion of my ambivalence was about my fear of potentially hurting my own kids.  Not physically, really, but emotionally.  I was afraid that I would replicate my upbringing, despite my wishes and efforts to do the contrary.

My therapist told me this: 'If you do ten good things for every one bad thing, you're doing great. Hell, if you do FIVE good things, you'll be fine.'  This advice has stuck with me and I know it to be true in my case.  Even in my own upbringing, the good greatly outweighed the bad.  As unsettling as the screaming was, I always knew that my mother loved me with the same intensity that made her anger burn so bright.

The Little Sister put it this way, (after which we both howled with laughter):

'Well, we took a reaming, like, every day and we turned out all right.'

Which, if you can appreciate some dark humor, is hilarious.

And very, very true.

I Agree. Totally.

My friend, Swistle sent me a care package a while ago (mmmmfudgemmmm) and in it was an apron/hat set for TLNG.  It was the cutest thing going and I was going to give it to her for a special treat.  When I was *so-called* organizing, I put it into her dresser and [forgot to give it to her] saved it for a rainy day.

Tonight, she found it and brought it to me, asking, 'Can I wear this when I bake with you?' And I'm all, 'huuuuuh?' because we HAVE started baking together* but I've never, ever worn an apron.  So, uh, hmmm.  I'm thiiiiinking? It may be Mr. Fluffy.  He wears an apron and hat.

Go Kai Lan!

Anyway.

She was beyond thrilled.  And I? Cracked right the hell up.

Here's the 32 seconds of hilariousness.  She doesn't say 'Daddy' like that all the time, she was trying to impress, I think. I also don't know what's going on with the 'Taking a Bow' but she's been doing that for the last few days.

Sorry it's so dark, it was close to baby's bedtime and most of the lights were out. She was looking at herself in the hall mirror while she performed. 

And you can ignore that pipi dipe in the hallway. It was on its way to the trash when I had the urgent need to film.

*At this point, 'Baking Together' consists of her standing on a chair and continually touching all the ingredients (with her just washed hands, but STILL) as I reprimand and try to measure things and give her what to do so she'll TAKE HER HANDS OUT OF THE FUCKING BOWL OF FLOUR ALREADY.

...

Unconditional Acceptance.

I had an encounter with a patient today that shook something loose in me. This happens sometimes. And while you're not privy to her issues or our discussion, you are privy to my reactions, if I choose to share them.  And the reaction that I had to this patient was the urge to be an Accepting Kind of Mother.

It was as if the center of my chest opened up like a vault and I felt my heart inside, grow. Inflate. Become bigger, Bigger, BIGGER still. I wished for it to be big enough to make room for whatever and whoever my daughter* is becoming. Whoever or whatever she wants to be or discovers that she is, through the unfolding of her life.

I want my mother heart to be roomy enough for my kids to be comfortable, to make a cozy home in my chest, enfolded and protected there, knowing that no matter who they are, no matter their interests, their predilections, their beliefs, their choices--that I will accept them as people.  That I will respect them as individuals who can and must choose for themselves what to make of their lives, even as they are living them.

It might surprise no one to hear that I believe myself to be a pretty accepting person.  If my daughter came home with black nail polish and blue hair, or facial piercings and Secular Humanist literature, or a Chihuahua and a girlfriend, I can imagine clear and easy acceptance of all those things, despite the broader societal-norm bending. 

On my car ride home, though, as I was congratulating myself for my own yet-to-be-tested flexibility in mothering, I had this thought:

But, what if she came home with a kid who was a bigot?  Or if she found some strong and fervent religious beliefs? Or she wanted Midwestern Hair?

For me, personally, those would all be tougher pills to swallow, really.  Harder tests for my flexible acceptance of her person-hood and her choices. Taking myself out of the equation would be much more challenging in some situations, many of which I cannot even yet imagine.

I have very little to no doubt that my children will be secure in the fact that I LOVE them no matter what. But I also want them to understand that I will also do my best to ACCEPT them unconditionally.  That I will try to always stand by them, to support them and assist them to become who they are and who they are meant to be.

Because that is what I truly believe most kids and young adults want and need from their parents.

I just really, really hope it doesn't include Midwestern Hair**.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*All this goes for my son, too, obviously. He's just so..UNDIFFERENTIATED still.
**My apologies to Mom101 for lifting that with my sticky fingers but THAT was some funny shit.

Tomorrow.

You know, I've tried to write this post about five times. It goes like this:

I write.

I read.

I hate.

I delete.

Then, I feel frustrated and blocked and I walk away.  As is my custom, I have lots to say. There are lots of posts in the queue behind this one.  Seems like they can't get by.  This one has to get its ass out of the way.  Did you ever have that feeling?

So, I'm up at five o'clock in the AM, VOLUNTARILY for fuck's sake (everyone! is sleeping! but me!) and here I sit, trying to tell you what's going on in my head.  Maybe trying to explain it to myself.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday.

It [snuck] sneaked up on me this year.

I wish that her birthday was at another time of year, maybe.  But as it is, it is the kickoff for the Season of Dark.  It marks the beginning of the end for her.  And for us. 

Five years ago, The Little Sister and I went to see her for a surprise Birthday Visit.  It was highly unusual and she was super excited.  During our time home, she complained of back pain, thinking that she pulled a muscle in her water aerobics class.  She felt good otherwise, though, and we had a great visit.  She was upbeat and happy for the most part.

But the retrospect is hard to get over, see.  As grateful as I am that we were there, that we got to celebrate what turned out to be her last birthday, it's so difficult to shake the realization that she had already begun the process of dying and none of us knew it.

The pain in her back, treated with muscle relaxers and some physical therapy, turned out to be small cell lung cancer that had spread to her spine.  The weight loss that she attributed to faithfulness to the gym was also probably partially due to cancer. (BTW, FYI, PSA: not a great form of weight control no matter how effective.) I have gone over and over and over those last few days that we spent together, finding and remembering 'clues' that no one picked up.

Soon after I got home, the process started in earnest.  Things began unfolding rapidly and she was hospitalized, still without awareness of the thing that was going so terribly wrong in her body.  The next time I saw her, she was hospitalized and psychotic from kidney failure.  And as a lot of you know (or could guess) it went rapidly downhill from there. 

It's not that I would have wanted to know any earlier but thinking back to that visit is like watching a movie.  A movie in which the main character is blithely enjoying herself while you, the viewer, know that the car accident or the man around the corner with a knife or the earthquake or the shipwreck is coming.

So, I'm kinda wishing that her birthday was in August, is what I'm saying.  Wishing that it wasn't so directly connected to the sick and dying time.  I'm wishing, too, that there wasn't such a memorable beginning of the Season of Dark. 

I'm thinking that the memory of my own shipwreck may be more easily set on a current if it wasn't attached to such a huge fucking anchor.

Because I'm A Dork And Possibly A Losah.

You know what I'd love to do? Get your minds out of the gutter, people, I'm [celibate] not making a dirty joke.

I'd love to start a Tasting Club.

I know. I KNOW.

I was driving home from work one day and I heard Dina Cheney on NPR talking about her book.

It sounded so fun to me, getting together with a small group of women to try different things and discuss them, etc.  The only problem is [I am a total old lady weirdo] that my friends are far-flung.  I wouldn't be able to form a small group of women in my immediate area.  Maybe one [my sister, who would be OBLIGATED to come] or two but I don't make friends in-real-life all that easily, it would seem.  Even the moms of TLNG's friends, with whom I am friendly, I would still be uncomfortable asking over for such a purpose.

If I could do a virtual Tasting Club, though, THEN I'd be in business. There are MANY women that I've met online that I would LOVE to have come to my house and have a little [gathering where you eat and fill in a survey card afterward, like a crazy chain restaurant] tasting party.

These are some things I'd like to try, if it didn't involve long distance costs &/or risk of shorted-out keyboard from possible spillage to get a group together:

-Chocolate (no brainer, there.)

-Cheeses (NOTHING with um, BLUE in it, even if you spell it Bleu. Just saying.)

-Apples

-Pears

-Teas

-Coffees

Snowday Baking!

So, it's snowing. A for real snowstorm. And while The Man was busy checking out the windows last night, I was snoozing (thank you, baby!) and so I woke up refreshed. At, uh, 4:30am. [Insert easy but bad joke about Murphy's Law, or how it is for a mother, etc. here]

Anyway.

While snowstorms make The Man [and the Philadelphia Area in general] want to watch the news, they apparently make me want to BAKE. At least in my old age. I don't know. It's cold in my kitchen. I want to have the oven on and have the whole place smell like cinnamon, I guess. So, I got up and started to bake. I baked this super easy Cinnamon Teacake.  I [bastardize] adjust the recipe so much that perhaps, I should just write it for you. 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour (you can use whole wheat pastry flour but I use just plain old whole wheat.)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
5 Tbsp Butter (I use 50-50 blend butter/smart balance)*
2 Tbsp Applesauce (or the baby food carrots I found in the cupboard b/c I was out of applesauce)**
1/3 cup milk (plus a little extra, I always need)

Topping: (optional)

1 Tbsp butter
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp sugar

Cinnamon sugar for sprinkling

*Ima just going to call it butter for ease and convenience.
**I'm trying to cut back on the ASSLOAD of butter that this recipe calls for.  I might try 1/2 butter and 1/2 applesauce next time. (When I have apple sauce, you know.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 6in round cake pan (if you HAVE one. Who HAS one of these? I just used a loaf pan.)

2. Melt the butter. In a medium sized bowl mix together the melted butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, flour, baking powder and salt, to form a soft dough. Add the milk and mix again till smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.(The batter is thickish and you have to scrape it in and even it out.)

3. Bake for 30-40 minutes, testing to see if it's done. (It takes exactly 40min in my oven but I have a dark pan and I bake at 325.)

4. If you want to top it, melt 1 Tbsp of butter in a little bowl and add tsp of sugar and 1/4 tsp cinnamon, mix and spread over the cake.  Sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top.

It's a little crumbly but that doesn't bother me.  It's tasty. And good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, I added a cup of mini-chocolate chips to the Chocolate Oil Cake with no deleterious, only yummy, effects!

Happy weekend!

Fun Fact Friday: Let It Effing SNOW Already.

*So today there's supposed to be a [great big cluster fuck of snow] a snow storm and just now, before AH FLAKE of snow has fallen, a SALT TRUCK just rode by my house. Ahhh, Philadelphia area, you KILL me with the Pre-Snowstorm Hysteria. Not to mention the Snowstorm News Reporting Boner.

*When I was a kid, there was a WICKED HUGE (actual) snowstorm in my hometown. It dumped SO MUCH snow that my mother took MULTIPLE pictures of The Little Sister and me in it.  I think that she used us For Scale, because there we were, all snow-suited, booted and bescarved: on TOP of the snow mound, in FRONT of the snow mound, NEXT to the snow mound, ON THE OTHER SIDE of the snow mound.  Oh, if only I could locate those photos. I'd do it up like my girl, BOSSY.

*When I lived in center city, there was a gigantic, for real snowstorm that dropped 30-some inches in only a few hours. The Man drove in the storm to be snowed in WITH me, instead of WITHOUT me (aw) and he was in a Hooptie (Hoopdie? Hoopty?) and thankfully, he made it. Downtown Philadelphia was a ghost town.  The Man, The Kid and I walked down the middle of Walnut St. and EVERYTHING was closed.  Strangers talked to each other. It was SUPER SURREAL.

*On the night we walked down the middle of the street, I SHIT YOU NOT, we saw a Chinese guy, DELIVERING FOOD. Dudes. On his FUCKING BICYCLE. On. His. BICYCLE. In 30in of snow. Slipping and sliding like a mofo.  omfg.

*One kid I know watches the weather channel. He loves storms of all kinds. He put it this way and it's one of my favorite lines ever, 'I love big weather events.'

*When I first came here from the land of It Snows A Whole Fucking Lot All The Time So Everyone Is Used To It, I could not BELIEVE the 'Snow Coverage' in this area. (You know this was a long time ago because I was still watching the news.) Anyway. The news would cover The Snow. And then? The Snow. And then, hmmm, The SNOW. And then THE FUCKING SNOW. I would keep thinking that in the next segment, we were for SURE going to get back to the arsons and rapes and murders, but no. They would go to another reporter in a DIFFERENT part of town to report about the snow that was falling THERE, 2.5 miles away from where we JUST SAW THE SAME FUCKING SNOW FALLING. omfg. They had RULERS (still do, I imagine) and they would measure. Neighborhood by neighborhood. They stopped motorists in cars! Q:'How is it out there?' A: 'SLIPPERY.'  omfg. AHAHAHAHAAAAA!!

*I would call my mother and hold up the phone as they went from reporter, to reporter, to reporter and we would LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH our Snow-Experienced HEADS OFF. Don't get me started on the lines at the grocery store. Don't.

*The Man, who has lived in this area his whole life, is accustomed not to the snow, but to The Coverage. And when it snows, he WATCHES the coverage and actually ENJOYS it, in earnest.

*We have this interaction every single storm:

TNG: [after two hours of constant news snowstorm boner coverage] 'Can we turn off the tv now?'

TM: 'NO WAY! I want to see the coverage. I have to know what's going on with the storm!'

TNG: 'Welp. How 'bout you just look out THE FUCKING WINDOW, then?'

Seriously.

*I, too, like big weather events and I'm looking forward to the storm.  I just won't be watching the news.  (If I can help it.)

Maybe One Of The Funniest Things I've Ever Seen. But Then, I Tend To Laugh At The Inappropriate.

Years and years ago, The Man, my friend (The Kid) and I went to a concert at an outdoor music center.  It is a great venue (if the weather's good) and people fill up a hillside with blankets or beach chairs and watch live music in the open night air.  It's a pretty cool place. And a pretty steep hillside.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the band that we were seeing.  I do remember feeling vaguely uncool going to it, so, The Sundays?  Something?  I don't remember.  What I DO remember was the insanely, hugely, incredibly fucked-up guy who was sitting near us.  To the left and down the hill a bit.  He was a tall, scraggly, lanky, guy, wearing head to toe denim.  (So, John Cougar Mellencamp?) He was WHOOPING! and HOLLERING! and YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH MANNING! louder and longer than anyone around him and to this he was OBLIVIOUS.  His friends, the fuckers, knew that he was too wasted to be there but they were too wasted to care a whole lot and so they turned away from him in his hour of need[ing someone to yank him out of there and drive his sorry, drunk ass home.]

Friends don't let friends make TOTAL drunk asses of themselves.

Anyway.

We (along with most people in his vicinity) watched him for a better part of the opening act, sitting in his spot, making a huge scene.  The highlight was when he pulled out his concealed bottle of whiskey (a fifth,) took the lid off and sat it on the grass, promptly knocked it over, and watched as it glug-glug-glugged out onto the ground. He responded so slowly, reflexes almost nil, that other onlookers were shouting cat-calls at him to up-end his bottle.

And then, he went MOBILE.

At some point, he grew weary of sitting near his so-called friends and began to meander.  His gait was reminiscent of someone on a small watercraft, say, or a crowded moon-bounce.  As he tried his best to negotiate the challenging task of defying gravity, he also had to contend with the GRADE.  It was like something out of a slap-stick movie, I shit you not.  Where someone is stumbling or threatening to fall or drop a 30-tier cake or whatever and there's the WwwhhhhooOooaaaaAAAAHHHH!! WwwhhhhooOOooaaaaAAAAHHHH!!! soundtrack.  Just like that.  On and on it went, with lots of restless standers-by.  People getting irritated by him and his close brushes with their personal belongings/space.

'Hey BUDDY!'

'Watch it, guy!'

'Yooooo, DUUUUDE.' (That one might've been us.  He came close a number of times.)

So, there he was, pinging around the joint like a goddam pinball and we all (like, EVERYONE THERE) know it's only a matter of time before something really fucked up happens. 

You know it's coming, right?  You can FEEL it.

So, there he goes, careening around and he trips and he falls on this woman directly in front of us and knocks her clean out of her chair. Only?  She's in one of those crazy camping chairs that have no legs, really, so at the time he takes her out, she's about 6inches off the ground.  If you can picture it, he is coming in almost parallel to mother Earth, right? And so, when he knocks her out of the chair, she kind of goes flat and he's, well...he's right on top of her.  On the ground. And she's screaming and cursing and wriggling around, trying to get up but she's tangled in the chair and the guy and he's so fucked up he has NO IDEA what the hell just happened and who is that doing all the screaming anyway? And he looks up, confused as hell, to the woman's husband who had gotten back from the bar and just sat down in his chair with no legs (still holding both big paper cups of beer) when the drunk guy out of nowhere fell onto his wife, somewhat like the House in the Wizard of Oz and the wife is still shrieking and the man and the husband are eyeball to eyeball and just as a reflex (I imagine) the husband flicks his hand out, super fast and tosses the whole beer he's holding into the face of the drunken man who is on top of his still-cursing wife, soaking them both.

Yes. Yes-yes. Let that picture sink in.

And although I LAUGHED and LAUGHED and LAAAAUGHED, I felt bad for the wife, having a strange, drunken man fall atop her.  And I felt bad for the drunk guy who picked the WRONG people to party with.  And I felt the worst, probably for the husband. Because how BAD would it suck to have a drunk-ass guy fall on your wife and then to realize that, not only did you bring the wrong chairs but that in your anger, you also dashed your brand new, never-been-sipped, $13. beer into his face?

RIGHT?