The New Girl

While My Blog Gently Exsanguinates.

That was a whole play on the "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," but I'm not too sure it came through. Remember when I used to blog ALL THE TIME? When, maybe, in the days before readers, you came here and there was New! Content! and you could spend some time reading and maybe laughing? Yeah. Me too.

Anyway.

I am in a mix and mush of time and space.  Whatever time I have is going to chasing my smaller child around, while he attempts to scale EVERY-SINGLE-SURFACE available.  He's mostly successful in the scaling but not entire successful in the descending and so, here I am, trying to prevent the [inevitable] konker-bonkers and the goose-eggs and the visits to the ER.

Sigh.

I didn't have this EXACT hell with my girl, as she was late to walking and even LATER to climbing (like, just this past year she's started wanting to go on the *big* slides) and so, I am WOEFULLY UNPREPARED to turn around after four seconds to this:

It is everyone's favorite thing to say that this is due to gender difference, and who am I to argue, really, what with the N = 2 and all? And while that may be so, I also think my two kids have different areas of relative strength and I'm seeing his. RELATIVELY SPEAKING (As I think DISMOUNTING is probably, you know, IMPORTANT.)

This post is going absolutely nowhere, obviously, and if you want to jump ship, I won't try to stop you.  I'm trying to figure out a balance, I suppose, and I'm finding that means that the house work gets done, my kids get taken care of, things stay clean and folded and generally running smoothly, I can get to the gym and can read some fiction or whatever but there isn't enough time for me to do all that and generate a decent post.

Or, at least that's how it feels right now.

It's easier, this second time around, to keep in mind the 'It's a phase' mentality. So, maybe when he's done with the 'What Goes Up Can't Exactly Come Down All That Well' phase, I'll have a second to get back to it.

Until then, there's this:

 

Hope you're having a great holiday season.

Turns Out, It Does.

The knife makes a nice sound as it goes through the frosting to the bottom and then up the side of the bowl.  A kind of muted Click and Swoop as I scoop some out to dollop onto my Orange Cookies.  It's repetitive and relaxing and I'm calm in the quiet kitchen, working alone, after the kids have gone to bed. Frosting and setting aside each cookie, wondering if the icing sets or not.  I can't remember.  The fleeting urge to call my mother to check flares up a stinging behind my eyes and then vanishes.

The recipe was my great-grandmother's and as far back as I can remember, we had these orange cookies around the holidays.  The recipe card came from one of the two boxes that I brought back from my father's house, when we cleaned it out.  One box was full of my mother's recipes and the other box belonged to my grandmother.  The recipe for the orange cookies was in my mother's handwriting and for whatever reason, it still strikes me as crazy that these things survive, even when she does not.  There it is, though.  Her writing.  As familiar to me as the sight of her making some of the recipes that are now in my possession.

This year I have both boxes of recipes and I've decided to bake the cookies of my growing up years.  I rooted around in my gram's recipes and found the recipe for the Magic Cookie Bars that she made.  I layered the ingredients for her specific recipe and I thought about her.  I thought about how many times she'd used the stained, faded card.  How many times she'd done exactly as I did.  How things always change and nothing stays the same and how, as I'm baking now, off the exact card she used--we are still connected.  Through the years, through the baking, through the ether.

In my experience, it is the women of a family who weave the tapestry of memory and history.  It is the lineage of the women in my family who are the carriers of the knowledge of nurturing.  My great-grandmother died the year I got married when she was 95.  A few years after that, my grandmother developed dementia.  A few years after that, my mother died.  While my grandmother was still alive, she could no longer follow a simple recipe.  She died a couple years after my mother.  For so many years I had so many people to call for advice.  Women whose job it was to know and remember.  Women who crocheted the blankets and fixed the broken angel's wings and baked the cookies.  Women who knew if the damned icing sets or not.

They're all gone.  In a few short years, I lost them all.

Now, the women of my line start with me.  It's a big responsibility, in a way.  A little scary and a little lonely and more than a little sad, especially around the holidays.  The Sister and I are forging ahead, making new traditions for our children.  I'm doing my best to document what's happening now, in case my kids don't think to ask questions about themselves, about their childhoods until it's too late.

About the icing--there's no one to call. 

So, I'll just have to wait and see if it sets. 

 

 

Unintentional Sabbatical.

I have been on a kind of Unintentional Blogging Sabbatical, I'd say.  For months, now, I've faded into the background, losing touch with my friends in the blogosphere (are we still calling it that?) and watching my own blog slowly exsanguinate readers.  I've had mixed feelings about it.

About three and a half years ago, I started this blog.  I'd been reading my BFF's blog for a while and I literally woke up one morning with an idea for a blog.  The name and the tag line. I started blogging that morning, excited and giddy with the potential of it.  I would be, of course, anonymous--for the sake of any patients (or parents) who might Google my name.  Who wants to know about the friends, extended families, birth stories and broken assholes of their therapists, really? No one, that's who.  And so, I would stay anonymous and blog about my life and my perspective as a mother and a therapist and a human being from there.

A lot has changed in a little over three years.  Three years is, how long in internet time, do you think? (Remember memes?  Blog awards? Half-Nekkid Thursdays? Blogrolls?)

I swear, when I started, there were lots of other anonymous bloggers. LOTS!  Most of them have come out of the closet, I think.  There used to be debate about ads. ADS! And now, for many, blogging has become a business.  Or a launch pad.  Or a marketing tool.

Not that I mind.  I really don't.  I'm not Making a Statement or Giving Critique to the business of blogging.  None of it matters or influences the reason I write a blog or read blogs.  For me, it always, always comes down to content.  If I can relate to the content, if I am amused or moved or inspired by the content, then I read it.

But who cares about any of that, really?

The point is that I have slowly been Ebbing more than Flowing in the content department here at The New Girl.  I'm not sure why that is, really, given that I have lots to talk about and am never at a loss for words.  As I've written before, I think it might be time-energy related.  Having an almost walking, cute-as-hell-but-curious-as-in-into-every-fucking-thing baby puts a damper on my creativity.  I have some time when the kids nap but I find myself kicking back to read or scrambling around the house to get it [just passable] neat enough. 

So, instead of telling you about how my almost one-year-old's first word was, so help me, CHEESE, or how my big girl started preschool, or how my dad is settled in and doing better than I am, I just...don't.  I've dropped out, into the background, taken up my long-lost penchant to lurk.  I've become a mute observer. 

And, while I don't have the urge/compulsion to write to keep me sane, I have to say that I notice its absence.  Even though I wonder, sometimes, what this blogging is, I've never wanted to quit.  Even in these quiet times, I miss the connection, the opportunity to stretch the muscles required to write a post that has legs.  I miss the exercise itself. 

I miss you guys.

 

 

 

I Should Just Title This Post: Can't Skate On Any Of These Ponds Cause These Bitches Ain't Frozen Yet. Or, Alternately: If You Follow Me On Twitter, You Prolly Know All This Shit Already.

I feel wrung out. 

Like over the past two weeks, I've been full to bursting and then squeezed empty and then refilled and then squeezed again.  It's hard to imagine that only a short time ago, I was in NYC, staying at the Hilton and communing with some of the funniest, smartest, prettiest women (plus, like, two guys) on the planet.  There were lots of highlights for me, too many to link when I'm feeling so bleary-eyed and do you really want to read The Internet's Most-Delayed BlogHer Recap?  Honestly, in Internet Time, BlogHer was like, 10 years ago. So, it's like I'm sitting behind my word-processor, suited up in my Member's Only jacket, writing about something that happened before you were BORN.

I'll say that I got to see so many of my good friends and introduce myself and express my [writer's crushes] genuine affection for the work of most everyone on my 'I want to meet them and gush about their work' list.  I got to talk about things that really matter with a few awesome women.  I got to meet lots of people that I have wanted to meet. Plus, if you follow me on Twitter, you undoubtedly saw the CUPCAKE that I got to eat because I CRASHED the birthday celebration of a very sweet, tutu-making maven.

Of course there are 70 quadrillion people that I forgot to link and so, just know if it was you I forgot to link, I already understand that I suck. Prophylactically. 

And, if you are the ball-less motherfucker who stole the bag I got for [air-quote] running [air-quote] the Tutus-for-Tanner 5K? You know, the one with the autographed, sure-it's-awesome Dread Crew in it? YOU CAN SUCK IT. (I hope you liked the book, though, even though it WASN'T ADDRESSED TO YOU.)

Anyway.

I got home and it was official that The Boy was weaned.  Fully weaned at 10.5 months.  Hard to describe how I feel about it, really.  The fact that I went without nursing for 4 days and never ONCE leaked or felt full/tingly led me to believe that he hadn't been getting that much anyway.  My production was a challenge for months and months and man.  I really just don't want to totally get into it.

A couple days later, I had to turn around and leave my kids for ANOTHER four days to go to my childhood home to pack up my dad's stuff and move him close to The Little Sister and I.  It's hard for me to articulate what that experience was like but I'm sure that you can imagine it.  On Twitter I posted all the reeeeediculous things that we unearthed there (plus, the world's WORST EVER wallpaper which NO ONE commented on because by the time it made an appearance, they were all immersed in the crazy and didn't EVEN NOTICE,) partly because it was funny as hell and partly because I deal with the not-funny by turning it into the funny.

Then I came back to two kids who were crazy out of their minds, testing like motherfuckers, trying to adjust to Mommy being away-coming back-being away. Not to mention that they both had some bug that manifested in horrible napalm-poo explosions of the 'Requires A Morning Bath' kind.  When those cleared up, there came a baby who refused to sleep at all (AT ALL!) confusing the shit out of us before it became apparent that he was suffering from a cold, that he gave to his sister.

So, I had my first Total-Without-Sleep night since my son was 2 months old.  It was as sucky as I remember.

Anyway. So, now you're caught up.

Geezuz.

What's new with you?

It's Like A Bad Phil Collins Song. Or Great, You Know, If You Love Phil Collins.

He's said it only a couple of times, mostly lightly, even in passing, but it never fails to unnerve me nonetheless--in spite of or maybe because of the inherent truth in it.

"It's like we're two people who happen to live in the same house.  It's like we're living separate lives, together."

It's not meant to be hurtful.  It's not even really meant to convey a problem from his perspective.  It's meant merely as an observation that's been inserted into a couple of conversations we've had about other things.

But it kind of makes me shudder.

Because it's kind of true.

I get up super early with two small kids.  I spend the entire day, almost every day, corralling, feeding, cleaning, wiping, changing, and herding.  With a side of becoming an indoor jungle gym-slash-drool cloth.  He gets up early and goes to work, braving a long-ass, awful commute and a hectic never-sitting-down-lucky-to-get-lunch-day.  In the evening, I'm juggling kids, trying to make sure only the dog is eating the dog food and trying to prevent his water bowl from becoming a mini-water table while at the same time, making WHATEVERTHEFUCK for dinner.  He is braving the long-ass awful commute back home and walking into controlled chaos. (Sometimes it's controlled. We have cable.)

We eat together and I take The Boy, he takes The Girl and we do baths and bedtime. 

Then he goes downstairs to do more work and I spend some time arranging and cleaning and then [fucking around on Twitter for a while] reading before collapsing into bed.  He's a night owl and I don't even know what time he comes to bed.

Then, you know. Rinse and REPEAT.

He and I have been together forever. Well. You know. Like 15 years or something like that.  Our relationship, our marriage, is solid.  Built on bedrock.  Having been together for 12 years, married for 8, before having kids has given us a couple of incarnations of our relationship, really.  Dating for 4 years before getting married, we were students, then professionals.  Married for the 8 years, we were professionals, working and getting promoted and having expendable income.  We traveled some.  We remodeled some.  We went to dinner and movies and shit like that.

And then we had two small kids.

We went down to basically one income. We travel less. We go out with the kids but not a whole lot without them.  The day to day caring for children, leaves me with less Nice at the end of the day.  It probably leaves me with no Caring For Someone Else, if I'm honest about it.  His job is stressful and demanding.  It's not easy, I'm sure, to have the sole responsibility of maintaining and providing for a family.  And although he never complains about it, I would be wicked stressed if the situation was reversed.

And so, there it is.

I don't think that there's anything wrong in our relationship.  I think that having two small kids, who rightly need a ton of attention and care, siphon so much of our finite physical/emotional energy, that our focus has shifted temporarily.

Does that make sense?

I just don't think that we're alone.  As strong and as deeply rooted as our relationship is, it's just not an easy time for the Couple Maintenance, if you know what I'm saying.

But, I think the reason it makes me shudder is that those very sentences are spoken thousands upon thousands of times. To, like, divorce lawyers. Or Oprah.  You feel me?

I am as sure as I can be of anything that The Man and I are long-termers.  I think, though, if we're living separately together, there has to be a liiiiittle more overlap.  Maybe we get a sitter and go to dinner and a movie (or maybe just dinner because *YAWN* I might not be able to make it through both.) Or, maybe I go to more of his baseball games with the kids in tow.  Or maybe I turn off twitter and go down into the basement and sit with him.  Or give him a back rub or bring him some cut fruit before I go to bed.

I don't want years to go by, with the only increasing busyness that comes with kids--when the bounce-house play dates turn into weekend-long travel soccer--only to find that we have stumbled into some tired but still painful cliche.

Because I love The Man so.  I really, really do.

I mean, you know.  That's how we ended up these Little Cute-Ass Time-Slash-Attention Suckers, to begin with.

Experiment. Or, If You Like, Practice.

So, the feedback on the last post was Pleasant! And surprising! And Pleasant!

It's nice to have internet friends who don't judge you or get sick of you saying the same shit over and over (or so you say NOW, heh) and so I'm going to try an experiment.  I'm just going to...you know...write.

My usual method of writing posts (believe it or not) is (generally) to have a more or less, fully formed idea and then to sit at the computer and write it, shape it and polish it up before I hit publish.  If you read me in a reader [you're like, 'what is her fucking DEAL?'] you may often see multiple 'publishes' on a lot of my posts. That..happens to me.  Still shaping after it's published.  (The internet equivalent of re-re-re-FUCKINGRE-recording voice mails before I'm satisfied. It's a Mental Glitch of the first order.)

So.

Today, I figured, let's try something [crazy] new and do a [rambling post with no purpose] stream of consciousness writing.

....

..

?

Um.

//

\\

/\/\/\/\////\

Welp. Let's call me a beginner.

I am taking my dad to the doctor today. He's doing pretty well, actually. (My dad, you know, not the doctor.) (Well, the doctor's probably doing well too, but WHATEVER.) I think that he may have found a house that he likes (!!) The heaviness and difficulty that will accompany the readying and selling of my childhood home is balanced (at least right now, when the paint rollers and dumpsters and hours upon hours of back breaking work are only in my IMAGINATION) by the floaty feeling I get from thinking of my dad living so close by that he can come for dinner, or trick-or-treating, or Thanksgiving AND Christmas morning AND whenever [all without his dog] and then go back to his own house, where he will (eventually) be comfortable.

I'm optimistic, as he's starting to look around at the street signs and try to figure out where things are in relation to other things (and lo, I have discovered from whence my ABYSMAL sense of direction hails) and he said, 'Well, I can just come down here and go do my shopping at ACME, eh?'  And I'm like, 'Dad. I can come and get you. And we can go together. And then I can drop you off at home with your groceries.' And he nodded, kind of surprised. And said, 'Save me on gas.'

It's hard for him, and in a collective sense, all of us, sometimes, to imagine the good things that will come out of the difficulties, I suppose.  The harder things are more evident to him.  Partly because they are so, So, SO challenging. Big-Ass Life Changers.  But too, I think, because they are all up front.  On the front end is the buying and the cleaning and shedding and organizing and moving and all that.  It's only after he's here, I think, and a little more comfortable that it will dawn on him the amazing opportunity he has to engage and be a real part of this family for which he worked so, so hard for so, so long.

And I hope to remember this feeling that I have. The feeling of so badly wanting him to be close to us, knowing that no parent wants to be a *burden* to his children.  But for me, moving him closer isn't the burden.  The REAL burden is the worry that I feel when he's that far away, well outside the reach of my [evil clutches] loving care.  Or the uprooting, driving, uprooting, driving, uprooting that we have to do when the inevitable bad things start happening.

I understand how he feels, I do.  But I also hope to remember how *I* am feeling now--in case I'm lucky enough to live that long--because one day, my kids might feel this same way.  

And I don't ever want to be a burden to them.

So, I Should Title It: The Same, The Same, Everything Is The Fucking Same.

It seems that when things get hectic for me, I shut down. Isolate. Make like a turtle and fucking Shell-Up. If you've been reading here for any length of time at ALL, you are like, 'Yeah. News flash of the effing CENTURY, that.'

Anyway.

Part of the reason, I think, that I drop off of writing when things are stressful for me is that there is a certain lack of movement.  For me, much of my own self-inflicted frustration and angst comes from not having enough motivation to create the inertia that is necessary for me to affect (effect?) some actual change.  For some people, I imagine that wanting to change and then doing the things that are required to make the change, is a more or less linear process.  They kind of decide, (or whatever their equivalent process is) and then they go all Nike and you know...Just do it, already.

Oh, how I covet this kind of personality trait.  Seriously. COV.ET.

Whether or not it's a trait that they got by DNA transfer or an ability that they've honed and shaped over years of steady practice...I don't know. It ELUDES me.  Consistency in many areas just..doesn't come naturally to me.  It is one of my most hated Mental Glitches and the one that has caused me the most angst, long term.

I start. And stop. And start. And forget. And start. And get side-tracked by some major fucking life event. And start. And want to tear out my hair. Aaaaaand, you get the idea.  It's fucking frustrating as hell.  And also? I'm sure Wicked Boring to read about.

So, I don't write.

Because, seriously.

Do you want to read about how I have to start over AGAIN with paying attention to what the hell I'm putting in my mouth? Or how I've yet to figure out to make working out a consistent part of my routine? Or how my temper is STILL giving me a problem and making me doubt my ability to EVER be a half-way patient parent? Or how my dad is still here, feeling depressed and facing huge life-changing decisions? Or how I'm still taking remedies that get stuck in my throat so that I can keep my boobies juicy?

Maybe you do and I am underestimating your [motivation to avoid your work] [masochistic tendencies] ability to commiserate and identify with my [groundhog's day life] issues.  Either way, I fear that I am testing your patience.  And not that I write this blog SOLELY for the readers and what it is that they want from me, but part of what drives me to write here is the interaction.  The communication.  The connection.

And I am just SO not interested in being that one friend you have who complains about the same shit over and over.

Because, DAMN, she's annoying. Ain't it?

I'm Feeling A Little Like A Criminal. If Kidnapping Smallish, Post-Op, Half-Bald, Elderly, Italian Pirates Was A Crime.

Oh, HEY! Hey hey! How yoooooou doing? 

Things around here have been [tense] [fucking hectic] [stressful out the ass] since my dad got here.  After a trip there and back and the stress of leaving him in a rehabilitation center (the therapies are great but the atmosphere in the dining room made me want to HURL MYSELF OUT THE WINDOW) (pun intended,) The Little Sister went back to get him and bring him here.

You should see him. He's quite the sight. A shaved head! Black tape over one side of his glasses! (to get rid of the double vision, 'Don't cry, TLNG! It's like Papi is a PIRATE!') A giant, upside-down, U-shaped scar! ('Hey Look! It's the shape of a RAINBOW!!') (omfg.)  Physically, he's doing well. Pretty amazingly well, actually, for someone his age to whom this kind of surgery was done.  Mentally and emotionally is, as they say, another ball of wax.

He feels kidnapped, I suppose.  The turnaround time at his house was very short, as more time would have just been prolonging the inevitable, not to mention keeping my sister from her nursling.  And while he was being whisked through Pennsyltucky, I was busy making follow up appointments and transferring a lot of his care from there to here.

The visiting nurse came to see him yesterday.  She asked him a series of questions.  One of them was whether or not he'd had any issues with The Depression.  He said, 'No' at the very same time The Little Sister and I said, 'Yes.'  She asked him why he was, 'all the way over there when his whole family was here?'  And then she said, 'Are you going to move here now?' and he said, 'Maaaaaah. I guess I'm going to have to but I don't want to.'

It can't be easy to be wrenched from your life, (not to mention thrown under the bus) by even the most loving hand.  I understand this.  I really do.  But it doesn't change the fact that in order to care for him in the way that The Little Sister and I want, he has to be closer.  The truth is, bringing him here relieves a whole host of not only worries, but also massive inconveniences.  Roadblocks in the form of miles, that would make it impossible for us to be involved enough in his care to make a difference in its quality.  Or, more likely--because I can't see leaving him there in a time of great need--the repeated uprooting of my family and the upheaval of my entire life, which is just not okay right now.

But still.

It's like the title says.

Happy Makers

When I'm down and a little out of it, I sometimes think of really funny shit that's happened to me or to people I know.  For whatever reason, getting a laugh is a Happy Maker for me.  I'm going to share one of the stories that I think about from time to time.  I just thought of it today, in fact, and it's just as funny now as when I first heard it. 

When The Nephew was an infant, The Little Sister was bouncing him to sleep on the yoga ball.  He was in a mei tai wrap and he had just fallen asleep in there.  You should know that TLS was VERY, VERY protective of his sleep at that time (he was the first child, you know.)

Anyway.

You have to picture it in your head.  As she's bouncing the sleeping baby, her cat--for no discernible reason whatsoever--charges at the ball.  She jumps up onto it and turns and pushes off, like a fucking Feline Olympic Swimmer, puncturing the ball with her back claws.  The ball POPS!! (omfg) and DEFLATES!! INSTANTLY!! sending my sister straight to floor, almost breaking her ass bones in the process. (I find this hilarious. But I am the kind of asshole who laughs whenever ANYONE falls down, so--there's that.)

If that isn't enough to make you wish that someone videoed that shit, get this: Although she is in excruciating broken-ass-bone pain, she HOBBLES WITH THE QUICKNESS to her bedroom, so that she can put down the baby--so he STAYS ASLEEP.

Yes. Yes. Let that sink in for a second. 

The yoga ball exploded and she crashed to the floor and broke her ass bones and instead of cursing or crying or screaming from fright, she instantly concerned herself with SAVING THE NAP.

See? I'm happier already.

Stressed. And Sort Of Pissed.

You guys, I'm...stressed. STRESSED.  You know the kind of stressed that has you feeling like you're floating? Bobbing aimlessly along your ceiling? Having a hard time concentrating and forgetting what you were saying in the middle of a sen...

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. Stressed.

My father was admitted to the hospital after an outpatient CAT scan showed bleeding in the brain. Not a mini-stroke. Go figure.  He was seen by the neurosurgeon, who needs to operate to remove the clot, but who has to wait until the blood thinners are out of his system.  Which means surgery on Sunday (Happy Easter! We're going to crack an Egg, all right!) and an additional 3-5 days in the hospital after that.

My sister and her family are there right now, after driving through the night with their two small kids to get there.  She called me and told me that she was having The Merry Maids come to clean the house and then she said, 'I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I was writing the note about when the maids were coming and I wrote: 9:00-9:30 Merry Christmas, instead of Merry Maids.'  So, yeah. We're all stressed.

And Happy Fucking New Year, too.

There's is an additional element, which is so bizarre as to render me almost speechless, that is creating more/deeper stress.  I can't talk about it too much, but it involves my father being a victim of a crime and discussions with police. Police! And the fact that my father kept this huge secret from my sister and me makes me anxious, sad and furious, all at the same time.

And lastly, there's this: My father was admitted to the same hospital my mother was in while she died.  He was admitted, like, one day shy of her admission five years ago.

So, this leaves me in a gut-twistingly familiar place. Deciding whether or not to drag some or all of the members of my family 7 hours away to be there for my dad. Who needs me, for sure, but who--right this minute--is pissing me off more than you can imagine. 

Because, you know, if he lived here, he wouldn't have fallen victim to that particular crime, he'd be under better medical care 10 minutes from my house and I wouldn't have to miss seeing my friend, to care for my stubborn Old Goat of a father.  Which, believe me, is the fucking SALT for my wounds.