Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

The only thing not to like is that it's not paid off.

A couple months ago some nice people from Chrysler's web agency asked me if I'd like to drive a new Town & Country mini van for three months. They also asked if they could pretty please give me gas money and if I would pretty please take my family on a couple road trips.

I said yes and celebrated by ramming my van into the side of the garage.

When they first (as an aside Logan used to work for Chrysler's print agency) contacted me I said no because I knew I'd like it. I knew I'd love it. It's like asking me if I want to fly first class for half the trip and then head back to coach just before the meal is served. It's more painful to know what you're missing.

I drive an older model minivan we paid off last year. I don't really care about cars, which is against the law in Detroit, I also drive only about 20 miles a week generally within a five mile radius. In a circle really, maybe you've seen me.

When they added the free gas, I thought to myself, "Oh what the hell! Sure sign me up and then I'll ram my car into the garage and cost my family thousands of dollars in car repairs!"

Woooo! I wonder if the body shop will accept gas cards as payment.

When they dropped the car off in December I climbed in and felt a giant pit in my stomach. The pit said, "March is going to suck for you."

I proceeded to sit in the car saying as a mantra, "I love everything about this car, except it's not paid for."

Because that's pretty much the only thing there isn't to love about the car in contrast to the minivan sitting scraped up and bent in my garage. Well that and the fact that the Town and Country hasn't been rammed into the side of my garage.

Yet.

Just kidding Chrysler!

Things I specifically love about the car (which aren't exactly specific to this car):

The Remote Starter is probably my favorite invention ever and when they pry the van from my cold dead hands, I will go out and get one installed on my van (you know once I pay to have the thousands of dollars in damage repaired.) Since I drive for about two minutes, two or three times a day, the car never gets warm. Not seeing the sun for 5 months a year is enough suffering for me, I don't need to be freezing my ass off every time I leave the house.

The automatic rear hatch is incredibly convenient, though nothing new to the minivan crowd.

The Stow and Go thing (the rear seats fold into the floor of the van) is also so nice. I rarely use it since I'm not typically hauling large pieces of furniture around for my two minute drives, but if I wanted to I could and I wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes sweating, swearing and hauling the chairs out of my van to make similar space.

We've never had a sunroof in our cars, except the 1973 BMW 2002 we owned right before we got married. It was a super cute car, it made you happy to look at it. The sun roof was so large and the glass around the sides of the car stretched so far, it felt almost like a convertible. The cutest part about that car was how Logan brought it home and then mentioned the fact that it had no brakes. While I drove it down the street. SUPER CUTE! The sun roof is really nice to have, sometimes it feels almost like there's sun because there's so much more light in the car than we're used to.

Things which are nice about the new design:

I like boxier cars, see the 2002 and 1985 Jetta as examples of cars I have loved before. So the boxier shape of the new Caravan is pleasant to me.

The swiveling seats are a novelty for the kids. Driving home from school the carpool kids are filled with anticipation waiting to see which way the seats will be facing. You can tell we're in Detroit because one of the little girls said when we first got the van, "I hope Santa Claus brings my family this van!" One of these days I'll put the table in place and really blow their little minds.

The table is an interesting feature, the kids liked it well enough on our trip to Chicago but for our general travel, it's more trouble than it's worth. I know a lot of families who are super busy with kid's activities so their kids eat in the car and do homework there as well. The table would be really convenient for that. In my family we are not that busy, which means my kids will never get into a good school and will be homeless because they aren't in five extra curricular activities in elementary school.

I'm okay with that as long as it means we don't have to eat dinner in our car 2-4 times a week.

My kids love the television in the car, but we only use it on trips which are longer than 45 minutes. I love television for kids and its incredible brain sucking power. But we get enough of that at home, we don't need it in the car for our quick circle trips around town. If we drove further or had kids in a bunch of different activities after school we'd probably use the televisions more.

This model comes with Sirius satellite radio, I'm not much of a fan of radio in the car, I mostly just try not to fall asleep when I drive. (Just Kidding Chrysler!) But through Sirius we've been introduced to Radio Disney and Madison has developed a deep and binding love of Hannah Montana. I blame her peers and her preadolescent need to fit in. This is the same reason I listen to Radiohead, truth be told, so I can't blame her. At least until the 60th time I've heard that one song while driving 1.4 miles and then I have it stuck in my head. Kids like repetition, I learned that from the Teletubbies years ago but this is a new level of hell.

My few complaints:

The navigation system makes me feel like my mother trying to maneuver Call Waiting. Why can't it be a little more like Google maps? I'm reasonably intuitive about these types of things but this system has left me screaming more than once and made me late for an appointment when it refused to find the address I needed. It turned out my destination was in a different neighboring city than the one I specified. It might have been nice if Marge, our navigator, had just said "I can't find that address in this city. Did you mean [neighboring city]....?"  Instead she tried to fake it endlessly looking for the address while I called Logan and had him look up the address for me. Frustrating, but probably not specific to the van.

I do like to make it tell me how to get home. Especially when I'm just three blocks away picking the kids up from school. It kind of feels like the car is celebrating where we live with us. Like, "Wooo! I'll guide you home! And it won't be to that hell hole you used to live in. Look at where you live! Awesome! Put me in the garage and YOU ARE HOME!"

The part of the rear consoles which holds the televisions and the heat controls rattles and it makes me crawl out of my skin. For $45,000 a car shouldn't rattle. Logan assures me this is probably a car-specific issue which could easily be fixed but I don't want to give up the van long enough to do that since I only have three months with it.

It's a really nice car, but it's still a minivan. Once you're driving a minivan a little part of you has to die with it. For the first few days I had this van I drove around with that excited new car feeling, maybe even feeling a little sexy in this expensive car. And then I realized, "Wait, I'm still driving around in a minivan."

I'm still not cool, I'm a mom, in a minivan, in suburban Michigan.

But now I'm a mom, in a minivan, in the suburbs with a warm butt (four heated seats) and a really nice car. Maybe that's as good as it gets.

Where I've been.

I've been terrible about updating this website and I apologize. I don't know what my problem is exactly, I guess my problem is mainly I have nothing to say.

So I've been writing over at The Buzz Off and every day at Mighty Junior.

I'm also ridiculously enthralled with the Mayor's scandal. I could care less who the mayor of Detroit sleeps with, in fact I think there are worse ways to work off the stress of a high powered position. Like say, spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on your personal entertainment. Oh...wait....he did that too.

But really, having an extra marital affair with your Chief of Staff or whoever else doesn't make you a good person or really all that original. But really it's the least of Detroit's problems.

The introduction to a previously published piece (from 2004) in the Metro Times sums up what's been eating at me about all this.

And that gets to the core of what has always made this an important story — not allegations of philandering, but rather the actions of a mayor willing to ruin the careers of two police officers in order to protect his public image.

Luckily I leave Michigan for the San Francisco on Friday. Where the mayor is....oh wait.

Detroit, come on.

Someone educate me.

Why did Dennis Archer have to leave to make way for Kwame Kilpatrick?

Detroit, you confuse me.

Why isn't 14 hours of sleep enough?

A couple years ago I went to my doctor wondering why I could sleep 12 hours and still be ready for bed at 5pm the very same day. We wondered if it was my thyroid or depression or an iron deficiency.

It was none of those things so my doctor suggested I see a sleep specialist. I didn't actually go because I didn't want to find out I needed to wear that big awful machine every night to bed.

But still three years later, I'm stress free and still exhausted all the time. It's 7:30, and I'm in bed counting down the minutes before I can turn out the lights and go to sleep.

We checked my iron and my thyroid again and still there's nothing wrong with me besides the fact that I can barely drag myself from bed every morning. Although we did find I had a vitamin D deficiency, which makes sense since I haven't seen the sun in twelve weeks or so.

I finally saw a sleep specialist last week and I'm going to the sleep clinic to spend the night in February.

The sleep specialist gave me this helpful brochure about sleep problems. It kind of offended me.

I guess it's not enough that I'm exhausted all the time. My sleep doctor wants me to know I look like a beached whale while I sleep. You see, there's me in the red pajamas sleeping like shit while my spouse (Logan in a nightie) is kept awake.

I keep the booklet on my nightstand though because I like to make the long suffering spouse talk to Logan before we go to bed at night. She looks so absolutely disgusted by her snoring spouse doesn't she?

It looks like she's debating suffocating him or perhaps she's contemplating the value of remaining a virgin until marriage.

Maybe her thoughts are simpler: "I hate you."

Or maybe she's thinking, "Happy Valentine's Day, Asshole."

He can hear me now.

Everything went exactly as it was supposed to.

His adenoids were "surprisingly large" and the incredible amount of fluid in his ears was hiding a double ear infection. Which could explain the random fevers and total emotional breakdowns over the most benign issues.

When I walked in after a school field trip he said, "It's like someone put microphones in my ears!"

I felt like crying.

Poor dude has been feeling like crap and didn't even know it wasn't normal....maybe he thought everyone was supposed to sound as if they were talking under water.

Can you hear me now?

We attended the Surgical Safari on Saturday. Everything put Max (and us) at ease. Logan and I chuckled during the presentation as very worried parents asked dozens of questions.

We're old pros, we thought. This is no big deal! We've done both these things before with our kids.

Now it's 10:30 the night before Max gets tubes and his adenoids out. I'm a little surprised my heart keeps beating a little faster than normal whenever I think of him heading off to the operating room.

I know everything will be fine, I'm not afraid for him.

I just wish I could make him less afraid.

I am the worst sick person you know.

*My sinuses staged a coup last night, they attempted to declare their independence from my face. During the night Nyquil appears to have worked out a peace treaty because so far today my eyes are not watering and my head is not exploding.

I'm about to go to the gym where I am going to take everything very slow. This embarrasses me, so I'm going to staple a sign to my shirt, "Delicate Peace Treaty Between Me And My Sinuses: Low Impact Workout Today. (I'm not just lazy.)"

***

*Max is having tubes put in his ears (again) and his adenoids out on Tuesday. I've been fielding a lot of questions and some I've handled better than others.

"So do they cut off the part of my ears that shows and put a tube there instead?"
"No it's just a teeny tiny tube. No one will see it, they put it right inside your ear. No cuts or anything."
(This would be effective I'm guessing, though not aesthetically pleasing.)

Him: "How do they take my adenoids out? With knives?"
(Uh oh....let's take the focus off knives and cutting!)
Me: "Oh no! No! Not with knives, they use....lasers which aren't like knives at all really."
Him (eyes huge): "You have got to be shitting me. They're putting mother fucking lasers in my mouth? You don't love me at all do you? The last 6 years have been a farce."

So I blew the pre-op pep talk. Hopefully the nice people who do the hospital tour Saturday can help us. This tour is called a Surgical Safari. When I told Max about it he asked if there were monkeys. I said, "Probably not, they might get in the way of surgery." Then he asked if he could at least swing onto the operating table on a vine like Tarzan.

I told him, "Yes".

They give him some sort of pre-anesthesia 'cocktail' that makes him loopy before going under. I'll tell him he just doesn't remember swinging into the OR.

***

*Maddie saw the orthodontist yesterday, an appointment I had long put off because I knew the outcome. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

I was not wrong. She pretty much needs every single orthodontic device ever invented, plus a few I think he just made up. This news gave me a tiny feeling of pity for my parents, something I never, ever allow myself to feel.

As a seven year old, I had to tag along to the orthodontist for my brother. The orthodontist saw me and my teeth (which have been known to shoot out of my face....) and said, "Those are the shittiest teeth I've ever seen! What a mess! I think I could build a career out of those teeth!"

So he told my mother he would do my orthodontic work free of charge provided I could be a case study. So once a month I went in and had my picture taken to show the improvement. I wore about 40 different retainers over the next four years, each one bigger than the last. I think I wore everything on this page at one point.

In fifth grade I threw out my retainer, (the obnoxiously huge Frankel) with my lunch about four times. Twice I found it by digging through the trash cans after lunch. Pleasant! Another time my parents had to pay to replace it. Finally the last time my parents said they weren't buying me another one.

And so, now I have these annoying teeth and a hefty bill for the next two years. The orthodontist said this process should take two years and Maddie keeps saying, "The next two years are going to be pretty hard." I don't have the heart to tell her that my brother's work took all the way through high school graduation. And I wasn't even close to the final step of braces when I threw out my retainer one final time four years into the process.

I'll just leave that part of the story to myself I suppose.

Ill

I spent the day yesterday wondering why this stupid cold is sucking the life out of me.

Why I'm laying in bed and moaning and why my face just exploded on the pillow beside me.

Then I realized, I haven't got a cold, I've got a man cold.

Fair Warning.

Guitar Hero Expert.

If Logan commits the time necessary to do this, it means there's a practically new Guitar Hero game on Craigslist going for free.

(Thanks for the link, Jill.)

Suburban Bash: The Kind Of Lazy But Still Fun New Year's Eve Party

I meant to share our New Year's Eve party with you. This was the party that broke my back so to speak. There was the Holiday Progressive which left me invigorated and then all the last minute Christmas preparations I did, then Christmas dinner with my extended family, our trip to Chicago, followed by frantic de-Christmasing and preparations for 12 adults and 17 kids under nine to ring in the New Year. I was exhausted. I wanted it to be fun for the kids but to be honest I sort of wanted to throw a bunch of confetti at them and call it the New Year.

Still, it's not often kids get to stay up until midnight (or later if no one's killing each other) and I don't get to spend the first minutes with my best friends all the time so I wanted it to be reasonably special.

I made this event potluck-ish, emailing the guests while still in Chicago asking them to bring their own drinks and an appetizer to pass. I made just a vegetable tray with two dips, these really yummy Brussel Sprout, Bacon and Cheddar skewers (huge, huge hit both times I've made them).

Did they eat it?
Max and Maddie didn't try it.
Logan did and said, "I love these. Come to think of it, I've never tried a brussel sprout in my life!"

I just don't know where Maddie gets her inhibited taste buds from.

The Robot Is Sick!

I almost can't believe it. In the 15 years we've been together I've known Logan to get sick, bed bound sick, under five times. This does not include the times he's been stricken with the Irish Flu because earlier models of the Logan Robot did not have a shut off valve on the Drinking Good Time. At one time the Irish Flu was a major program failure and one which involved moaning in bed about wanting to die.

No no, I don't count those as illness.

Because Logan is never sick he thinks illness is a personal weakness. One you may have let happen to you because your mind is too weak and feeble to overcome such a ridiculous thing as a 'virus'. He doesn't feel empathy, he feels contempt in the face of this kind of suffering.

Here's what happens when I'm sick.

Me: "Oh my God, I feel like I'm dying. If I throw up one more time I think my whole body is going to turn inside out."

Him: "Mind over matter baby! Believe it achieve it! You are stronger than your sickness! Dig Deep!!!!"

Or my personal favorite from the catalog of my illnesses:

Me: Sobbing, hysterically with my throat so swollen it hangs in my lap. "Something is really wrong. It's like knives in my throat. I can't make it through another day of feeling this."

Him: "Uh.....Okay! I'm going to work, see you later!"

With all this in mind you'll understand why this morning I just can't help but view the groaning and swollen throat complaints of my spouse with a certain amount of....amusement.

You'll also understand that one part of my yearly goals to have an office space....because this morning as he groaned in bed while I got the kids fed and off to school I could have rather said, "Okay, well I hope you feel better. I'm going to work!"

2007, I miss you already.

This has been a weird start to the new year for me. It's like I'm not ready to let go of 2007 and I'm kind of mourning it in a way. Isn't that odd? Every other year I've made it to the end and been happy to let it go and start fresh.

2007 was wonderful in so many ways. It was my best year yet, even with all the countless hours of house prep and the stress of selling that house in a terrifying market. The resolutions I made last year went reasonably well. I displayed more pictures (though I still stink at having them printed), got a little better at hugging, entertained a lot, was nice to myself and sold the Mother Fucking House. Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus and your earthly surrogate father.

I did not run a 5K and the thought of it makes me want to hurl myself into traffic. I didn't really take pictures of Choppable and we did not wire our Christmas tree to the wall even though we should have because if it had fallen man we'd have been really pissed and also really stupid.

Ever since we sold the house and got into this lovely lovely home, I've been wondering where to put all my energy. For almost a full year I focused all my energy on selling the house and getting to this place. I'm the type of person who doesn't really know how to just let things happen.

All through the beginning of 2007 I kept saying to myself, "This is going to be a good year. My best year!" And when I watched homes not selling and sat on mine for longer than I wanted I kept telling myself, "But this is my best year ever! This has to work!"

Then it did and since that time I've been rolling around in the happiness of it all. Every time I start to get mad about something or something nags at me, like a certain runner and our failure of a 'getaway', I hear a voice in myself saying, "But I'm not ready to not be content yet!" Because this is my best year yet and it's been refreshing to be optimistic and happy most of the time. That's something I haven't been in a very long time.

With 2008 I fear I'm leaving my best year yet behind. I am afraid all the good luck I've had can't last and this is Classic Melissa, the one who worries and is anxious and a little sad a lot of the time.

The Classic Melissa I've been happy to leave behind. I'm not exactly sure how to keep her at bay so I can keep looking at the bright side and not fall into the pattern of adding up Things Which Are Not How I Want Them To Be.

I actually feel a little like crying as I type this post. I truly am going to miss 2007 and I guess I'll just have to hope 2008 can bring it.

Here are my goals and wishes for this year. Where I want an amount of energy similar to the amount of energy that went into willing my house to sell to go. With less crying possibly.

Things I want to move toward:
1) I need to take what I'm doing more seriously. Now that the kids are growing up and more self sufficient, I need to do career-wise what I was supposed to do when I was newly married and knocked up (while on the pill) before I had a chance to really build any sort of career.

I'm not exactly sure what this means in action, but I am willing to let it muddle around in my brain for a while and see what comes out of that overriding goal.   

2) I would (eventually) like to earn enough money to support our family so Logan can build his freelance work into something larger and more fulfilling. Again I am not exactly sure what that will look like, but I believe having the goal will bring the opportunities to me.

3) For the last six or so months I've had a needling thought in the back of my head that I am going to have to take much better care of my body very soon. I have friends who are physically greatly affected by how much sleep they get or how much water they drink and what kind of food they choose to put in their bodies. I've never been terribly affected by those things.

I'm actually mostly okay with being a little overweight, I've begun to understand this body a little more and how to dress it in a flattering way. I like having boobs I never really had before and my butt, well, I'm just not very offended by it anymore.

When I treat my body poorly, not eating well, not drinking water, drinking way too much diet soda, not making time for exercise and not getting enough sleep, I hear a voice in my head that says, "I know you won't do this forever. At some point it will feel better to drink more water and exercise and eat energy food than it does not to. Then you will change it."

I believe that about myself. I don't know if this is the year I truly start to do these things for myself, but there it is rattling around waiting for me to be ready.

4) Look into a part time office space. I love the flexibility of working from home, today I am not feeling well and have been writing in my bed in my pajamas. If there's a snow day or a sick kid, it's easy for me to work around it. I don't see myself handling any other situation very well. (I don't like surprises.)

However, since September I've realized how much I actually enjoy occasional interaction with other humans. The cats are wonderful of course but intensely lazy and nap inspiring. Also they don't get my jokes.

It's also good to have other like minded people to chat with during the day. When Maggie was here visiting I felt so inspired and writing up goods for Mighty Junior was great because I could throw out a half formed joke, get another half formed joke back and ta-da it's funnier than if I did it myself. 

Plus my social life is way out of balance in comparison to my spouses and it's largely due to the fact that I do not work with 14 year olds. Actually forget all the other stuff about creativity and social interaction, I really want an office space for the happy hours.

Things I will do right now.

1) Hire a housekeeper. 
I should be able to keep up with it but frankly I'm not very good at it and I can't function when the house is dirty. Especially since I work here and am here a lot of the day. This could also go under the heading of "Not being afraid to buy time for our family." Logan is very busy and wants to do a lot of stuff, if we have a day together as a family I don't want to spend it shoveling the walk and cleaning the bathrooms.

2) Go to bed at 10pm to read.

3) Work out three days a week. To facilitate this I am renting a locker at the gym and stocking it with doubles of all the toiletries I use to get ready in the morning. I will also head out immediately after the kids picked up in the morning.

4) Find a sitter we can hire for long weekend stays. Logan and I need to travel without kids at least once a year. The meltdown I had after New York showed me that quite clearly.

I hope 2008 is your best year yet and I hope at this time next year I'm saying, "Holy Crap! I thought 2007 was awesome but 2008 was the best! 2009 can't possibly be good. Ho Hum."

****Coming Next: Find out why kids aren't invited to parties! 12 adults and 17 kids for New Year's Eve is more chaotic and messy than it even sounds.