Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Stress Related Narcolepsy

At the end of last week I pretty much fell asleep. All the time. I'd be thinking about, say, the pay cut Logan took last week and suddenly my eyes couldn't stay open anymore. Or maybe I'd think about the pending litigation with the landlord and then I'm out. I think I slept approximately 86 hours last week.

This is not the most effective way of handling stress but it surely beats having a public anxiety attack. Of course, then again maybe I'm not harnessing the power of worry very well.

Let's see what happens this week, maybe I can sleep for 100 hours!

Remember how I started my year over at the beginning of February?

I think I'm scrapping the do-over and maybe we'll just go with this as our 2009 mantra. There are only what? Nine more months anyway.

Turns out my body isn't just Not-Bionic it's super lame too.

Maybe you had a tonsillectomy last week and you're hell bent on recovering, only your body is all, "Fuck Off, I'm Tired." Maybe you've given up eating because everything, everything, hurts going down. Even the easiest things, like broth and noodles that I forced myself to eat last week because I read that swallowing will help the recovery process, hurt and you eat them with your head turned in different directions trying to make the pain stay to one side or something.

But this is week two you think to yourself, week two is when you should be able to get up in the morning and put lunches into lunch boxes and empty trash cans and put away dishes. Turns out, I can't. Turns out a shower is like running a marathon and my God that is depressing in week two. In week one it was 'expected'. In week two it feels like a personal failure. It's not a failure for my mind though, my mind is the only part of me that's ready to be normal again. It's my stupid body who's all, "What? I'm 35. I'm too old. You don't take good enough care for me. How about a multivitamin or some calcium every once in a while. Enjoy this process dummy!"

Hey, here's a great idea, decide to invite 20-ish people over to eat some food exactly 7 days after your surgery when even taking a shower feels like a marathon event. Around 2pm as I laid on the ground in the family room trying to will myself to wash a couple of dishes I realized that was not my best move. At 10pm last night I thought there was no way, no possible way I would still feel like hell today.

My mind, my mind is ready to eat food and talk to people and enjoy life that is outside of my bedroom. I thought I could force my body into shape, I assumed my body wanted the same things my mind does. But it turns out my body is a huge pain in the ass and would rather suck.

I had the bright idea to invite people over to taste test my Velveeta recipe because voting ends very soon (11/23) and I thought it would be a pleasant way to remind you all to vote for me and my delicious dish. But my body said, "No, let's sleep and lay in bed and feel like shit for a little while longer instead!"

Oh Boy!

The weekend before surgery we packed in every social event we could come up with because we knew I wouldn't be feeling well for a period of two weeks to three years (according to some estimates). So that Friday night we hosted Maddie's first big sleepover party where 12 ten-year-old girls took over our family room and screamed a lot from 6pm until 11:30am the next morning.

Then Saturday we had 16 adults over for cards and though they didn't scream they did drink significantly more than the guests from the night before. On Sunday we went to a one year old's birthday party and later to my friend Laura's house to brainstorm for her new business (exciting stuff!).

We were tired after that weekend but after 7 full days of being in my house without any social activities, it turns out I really like social activities a lot. Too bad my body is all lame and is ruining my life.

I see the doctor tomorrow and Logan's all excited. He's hoping to hear "good news". Don't tell him, but there will be no good news. The doctor will look at my (really gross looking) throat and he'll say, "Yep. That's what it's supposed to do." And I'll tell him about how I'm so tired and he'll say, "Yep. You're no spring chicken!" I'll tell him how I'm going to go totally crazy if I can't take a shower and function in a normal way very soon and he'll say, "Have a nice day."

And then I'll come home and eat another ice chip and take another stupid nap.

Stupid body.

My Body Is Not Bionic.

I should have bought myself a silk robe with a matching silk eye mask for this period of recovery I'm going through. What with Logan bringing me food and medication on a tray all last week I could have really lived the part of Joan Crawford. The refried beans my friend Laura brought over and the slurpees my friend Jodi brought me along with the milkshake my friend Leslie brought me would have been a little incongruous with the glamorous convalescing but still.

Here's what I think about my tonsillectomy. I think you all had me (rightfully) scared shitless about the recovery. If you're here because you googled "Tonsillectomy How Bad Can It Be?" I think you should go and read the comments on this post. If you're still willing to get them removed, that means they've overstayed their welcome and should come out.

Words like "The worst pain...." "Months of recovery...." "Lost 20 pounds...." came up over and over and I still couldn't face another month of waking up and fearing the strep was back. Or that I was going to be down for the count yet again with a terrible sore throat.

I would not call this the worst pain I've ever been in. Then again my delivery and recovery from Madison's birth was particularly hellish. So hellish that even my c-section with Max was a walk in a field of daisies. I took the pain medication after that for just 3 days and was fine (with small annoying things like not being able to get out of bed without rolling off the side and then standing up).

I will say this probably the most annoying pain I've been in.

When I came home after the event and didn't feel like writhing and moaning, all before I'd even taken any pain medication, I thought it would only get better from there. It didn't really get worse, as some predicted it would. (If you don't count the first night where I laid on the bathroom floor alternately throwing up, sweating and praying for death) (This is a reaction I have to anesthesia...I did the same thing after my c-section). Aside from this, it never got worse. It just remained the same.

Usually when I get one of my many sore throats, the first day is intolerable, the second and third day feels like someone's punched me in the throat and by the fourth day I'm like new.

This surgery left me feeling punched in the throat, so I thought I'd feel punched in the throat for a day or two and then be getting slowly better. Instead I feel like I'm still being punched in the throat even six days later and I'm more than tired of it.

I'm also a little disappointed in myself. You see, I consider myself a Champion Sleeper, a Professional if you will. I thought if I just stayed in bed and didn't push myself too hard and slept 12-18 hours a day, my body would show it's Bionic Capabilities and fix me.

My body is not bionic. I have to accept that. But maybe if I just take one more nap I'll wake up and be better.

The Reign Of Terror Is Over. Sort Of.

After a very long weekend of fitting in everything we might want to do in the next 2 weeks to 3 years (the various amounts of recovery time I've been told I'll need), I went to the doctor at 5:50am to end the reign of terror my tonsils have held me in for my entire life.

It's funny when people tell me they're afraid of Barack Obama as a president. I've had something far worse lingering in the back of my throat for my entire life. A tonsil that swells and gets infected at an alarming rate making it next to impossible to live a normal life. Nothing could be worse. Just ask my family who has endured all these strep infections with me.

Yesterday I got home and thought to myself, "Wow, this is nothing compared to the last glass swallowing strep infection I had!"

And there was the internet to burst my bubble, "Oh no no no.....it will get worse on day 2,3 and 4. That's when you'll want to hang yourself in a fit of desperation. Also, locusts."

I did feel good almost the entire day yesterday. I sucked on ice cubes, worked a little, napped, took my pain medication.

Then at 5pm all hell broke loose and there was throwing up and other kinds of unimaginable pain. My tonsils just weren't ready to give it up. So I laid on the bathroom floor in a pool of sweat and tried to will myself to lose conciousness. Throwing up just after your throat's been sliced up, well, it's not on the list of pleasant ways to spend an evening.

Or, if you're wondering, not a nice way to spend the entire night.

But now it's day time and I'm up and typing this and have only a mild stomach ache. So for now, Tonsils, I am beating you. And I will continue to beat you. Because you suck.

Does anyone have any good dvd recommendations? Because this is going to be a long three year recovery.

Random Political Weekend Post.

While instilling fear about Obama into their rallies ("Palling around with Terrorists"? Charming.) McCain and Palin have managed to drive their supporters into a racist frenzy. My street is littered with McCain/Palin signs, and I'm just praying they are as horrified by this angry mob as I am.

The problem as I see it is McCain and Palin want Americans to be afraid of Barack Obama enough not to vote for him, but not enough to want to kill him. Though some of Palin's words make me wonder if she doesn't love frothing up the crowd.

Unfortunately there are a lot of stupid assholes in the world and the line between not agreeing with someone's fundamental world view and creating a false sense of terror and fear is difficult to draw for people without brains.

I believe John McCain is an honorable man who wants the best for this country. I disagree with the foundation of what he believes will make this country better. I have nothing terribly kind to say about Sarah Palin so I won't. I believe John McCain is being forced to play to this lowest common denominator of mouth breathers ("I've heard Obama is an Arab..." WHAT THE HELL AMERICA!?), they're the only way he's going to be elected.

I'm trying not to lump all McCain supporters into this mass of stupidity. Still, I'm horrified at this turn in the election. I hope you are too. I don't want this kind of culture to rule our country for another four years.

This is a first draft.

I know very little about who my father was before he became my father. My sister has spent a lot of time collecting information about him. She's looked through all his personal belongings which were sent to my mother after he died. She's looked through all the photos he took while in Vietnam, and has even found some of the other soldiers in those pictures. Through those men she's found out tidbits about the Vietnamese woman in many of the pictures. She's looked at his death certificate and knows exactly where he shot himself to end his life. She's spent time asking my mother about him, about the way he grew up and she's learned a lot about the man he became through those stories.

I know very vague things about my father. I know he shot himself in a motel room on a road not far from where we lived when I was 16. I know he went to Vietnam but never saw actual combat, though post traumatic stress might lead you to believe otherwise. I know he was married before he married my mother at just 20 years old. He lived in a nice house in a nice part of the town I also grew up in and he attended a good Catholic high school. He was from a large family and they all had a tenuous connection which usually involved a lot of alcohol, a lot of reminiscing almost always ending in loud angry arguments over nothing I could understand. His mother died many years before I was born, in some way no one really ever talks about, and I'm not asking.

My sister has always wanted to understand our father, she was 12 when he died and 9 when my parents finally divorced and he was forcibly removed from the house. I have spent the 19 years since he died trying to forget everything about him.

My father read books to us and taught me to ride a bike. He made the very best root beer floats because he once drove an ice cream truck. Which, when you're 6, is just about the best job you could ever imagine. In fact I spent many hours wishing he hadn't given up that line of work for his career in computer technology something-or-other.

But then there was his temper he couldn't seem to control. God knows I understand how annoying the bickering of little kids can be, but I've never thought it a good idea to hurl my kids onto their beds because of it. The fact that he hated our bickering would be less surprising except for the fact that he often had screaming matches with my mother over things like the Little Debbie snack cakes she brought home from the market. That wasn't just bickering even, snack cakes were thrown, along with the contents of the refrigerator for emphasis. We didn't hurl him onto his bed. Though, we wanted to.

My father was also a little prickly because he liked to drink a lot. He had a refrigerator filled with beer in our dining room, where normal people might think to put a buffet or perhaps a china cabinet. Instead my father kept his beer in his special fridge and from Friday night to Sunday night he emptied this fridge. As he emptied this fridge the desire to argue about snack cakes was heightened. His desire to listen to very loud music at 2 o'clock in the morning was also heightened.

That's the difficult thing about getting to know my father: he wasn't all bad, but he wasn't very good either.

My family likes to reminisce about my father, often viewing him as an affable sitcom dad. If Lucille Ball starred in a movie of my life, she'd play my mother and call out, "Pete-errrr" (ala "Rick-eeee") as he threw snack cakes at her head.

Our sitcom dad was manic about the condition of his lawn and would, when planes flew overhead, have flashbacks to 'Nam and begin screaming "Incoming!!!" We laugh about the night he drove our family home from dinner with his family while drunk, stopping at Quarton Lake to show us his favorite little bridge. When drunkenly jumping on a rock to cross a small river, (cue the laugh track), he landed wrong and sprained his ankle resulting in 6 weeks of crutches. Hysterical!

I have an uncle on my mother's side of the family who loves to spend a reasonable portion of our Christmas Eve gatherings discussing my father and his uncanny ability to bring the room to tears at every family gathering. Not tears of laughter rather tears of sadness, confusion or perhaps rage. And we all laugh, "Remember that Christmas I cried myself to sleep! What a riot!!!" Then we collectively sigh, our spouses feel uncomfortable and we play a game of charades to change the topic.

I think we laugh because it's easier to remember it that way.

Some memories even I can't muster the strength to laugh at. In those memories, my father is something worse than a bumbling drunken blow hard carefully mowing his lawn in perfect rows. In those memories my father is bringing me cough medicine in my dark bedroom for a cough I never had and he won't leave. Or I am left alone with him on Friday nights while my mother works, my brother is away at college and my sister spends the night with those people one calls "friends". Friends are something, by that point, I don't have any more.

It went on for as many years as I can remember. In first grade I would eat dinner and spend the rest of the night crying and clutching my stomach. The doctor sent us to the hospital for tests. For a week I couldn't eat anything but jello after breakfast until the next morning when they'd take more pictures of my insides. One day I snuck a handful of Trix cereal before we left for the test and the nurse could see it in my stomach as she took the pictures. As she ran the test, viewing my insides, I held my breath praying she couldn't also see the badness inside of me.

Later there were nightmares, my mother would sit on the sofa in the middle of the night annoyed, tired and unsure what to do with me. After weeks of this she took me to a psychiatrist where I drew pictures, talked about my nightmares and carefully avoided telling the truth. The best part of seeing the psychiatrist were the small gifts she'd give me, a barbie, a pack of crayons and my favorite candy bar at the end of the session.

Years later, just before my parents were divorced, I told my father I was going to tell and I was going to go live with someone else. Though I didn't know who.

Only I don't think I would have told, I just wanted him to leave our lives and I knew my mother was close to the end of her tolerance for him in general. That night he shut himself in his bedroom at the back of the house and shot himself while my sister, mother and I watched television in the front of the house.

Don't worry though, he didn't kill himself, he only shot himself in the shoulder like an asshole. Was this action meant to buy more time before my mother divorced him, to keep me silent or was it an act of desperate sadness?

I'm not really sure, but those two weeks he spent at an alcohol treatment facility were a tiny taste of what my life would be without him. I faked illness many times during those weeks he was away and my mother let me stay home probably because she felt badly about the trauma of one's father attempting suicide practically in front of you. I wasn't traumatized, I was angry he didn't die and I was mostly happy to be in the house alone. I could eat what I wanted, watch whatever shows I wanted and I wasn't afraid.

Of course then he came back and that feeling was almost worse than if he'd never left at all. Every day when I walked into that house after he came back it felt exactly like dying. When he finally left for good, escorted by the police, the nightmares came back and that horrible feeling of the freedom being taken away felt as real in my dreams as it had in real life. In the dreams, I would come home from school and he would be back. My mother would shrug saying, "Sorry, I can't do anything about it" and that sinking feeling in my stomach would start to choke me.

I think my sister tries to heal her sadness about who our father was by looking for answers about why he was the way he was. I've tried to heal by pretending he was only a nightmare or simply a monster because somehow that makes it easier to understand. My brain can't seem to reconcile my father as a drunken idiosyncratic dad and the night time father who tormented me for as long as I can remember.

I spent a lot of time studying the fathers I knew while growing up. I studied some really good ones so hard I'm sure their wives started to wonder if this 10 year old had a crush on their husbands. I knew I didn't want to marry someone like my father, but then since that was the relationship modeled for me my whole life I thought I might be doomed to a life of dodging snack cakes thrown at my head.

My daughter happens to have the father I always wanted.

Watching my husband and daughter develop a relationship has been incredibly healing for me, it's also opened up so many deep wounds in my soul I've gone rolling back to therapy in a heap of sadness more than once since becoming her mother. I've spent time back on the couch because motherhood is really kind of hard a lot of the time.

Other times I've been on the couch grieving from the darkest part of myself. This deep pit of sadness I mostly keep covered by not thinking much about how I grew up with my father.

The last time I was in therapy my husband and I stayed up late one night talking about the pain. The next day he left me a note before he left for work reading, "No child deserves to be betrayed by their father in such a profound way. I can't imagine destroying my own child."

Of course, that's why I married him and that's the part of watching my daughter grow up that heals the little girl I was. When Maddie was a baby, Logan always explained to me in serious tones that she was gifted. At three months old he said, "She holds her head up like a six month old! That's double her age, she's twice as good at it as other three month olds!" As a two year old when her talking started and didn't really ever stop he listened intently and reminded me she was talking as well as a four year old. "She's twice as brilliant as other two year olds."

Now Madison is nine and has the sensibility of an independence loving thirteen year old. She makes me literally insane and we often butt heads so hard I spend days massaging my temples and wondering how I ended up with this daughter I am not so good at mothering. Logan looks at our daughter and admires her maturity and complexity. He thinks she's twice as mature as other nine year olds. He thinks she's absolutely perfect.

When Maddie was three years old she had some gross motor delays the doctors were attempting to diagnose. We had to take her to the hospital for an MRI. Because the MRI machine is very loud, has a very small chamber and requires complete stillness, we also had to have her sedated for it. I voted Logan into the position of holding our daughter while they put a mask over her mouth to breathe in the gas that put her to sleep, I couldn't even be in the room.

She struggled against the doctor trying to put the mask over her mouth and Logan held onto her arms and tried to keep her head from moving so she could breathe in the gas. All Maddie saw was a scary man trying to hurt her while her father held her down.

We thought she would forget about it, she was only three, but for months afterward she would ask Logan, "Why did you hold me down while that man put that thing on my face Daddy?" Even better, she'd say, "Remember when they took a picture of my brain and Daddy held me down so the doctor could cover my face?"

One night after the MRI, I found Logan standing over Maddie's crib crying. He couldn't believe she thought he'd been trying to help someone hurt her. He'd explained to her over and over that the doctor wasn't trying to hurt her but he couldn't get over the betrayal she'd felt toward him in those moments.

I'm so happy my daughter has a father who loves every bit of who she is, I'm so happy she knows he would never betray her trust, I'm so happy she can feel safe and loved by the most important man in her life.

I like to think watching my daughter and my husband grow up together is helping to heal that little girl I was. Watching my daughter, it's easy to see how none of what happened to me was my fault, that my insides weren't bad, that I was betrayed by someone who was mentally ill. I was betrayed by my father.

Sometimes it does heal me, watching my daughter grow up having what I needed and deserved.

Still, it seems the older she gets the more aware I am of all I missed out on. As I watch her grow up, I continually grieve for the little girl I was and the father I wasn't given.

Common Sense Flu

Why yes, I'm still sick! I'm so glad you asked. I've been analyzing why it is that when I'm sick I want to explain how sick I am. How badly I want everyone to know how terrible it is. How they couldn't possibly have ever been this sick because, this is the sickest anyone has ever been in the history of illness. More or less.

I think there is only one conclusion to draw, one I think we all already knew. I am a huge baby.

Three tiles fell off the bathroom wall recently. When we let the landlord know about this issue and asked how he'd like to address it we received a pleasant email in return. This email stated that we needed to use "Common Sense" and that we should dry the tiles around the bathtub after we shower.

You all do this right? Take a shower, and then promptly dry the tile so the tile doesn't fall off the wall?

"Common Sense"

He went on to explain how this same "Common Sense" could be applied to the 2-3 inches of water we get in the basement off and on from February to April. You see, according to our landlord, this flooding is caused by snow piled up against the house. If there is snow against the house, you have to get it away from the house.

You all do this right? Shovel the grass surrounding the foundation of your home?

"Common Sense"

Logan has forbid me from responding to the landlord and has requested I keep my contact with this person limited to signing our rent checks. (Without any helpful "Common Sense!" tips written into the Memo section).

I'm good at a few things. I'm good at keeping things organized. I'm good at cutting clutter. I'm really good at empathizing. I am very not good at keeping my mouth shut.

It's probably the thing I'm worst at.

So it's a good thing I don't talk to the landlord about his idea of Common Sense, because that's a conversation that can't end well.

Still last night my fever came back and I slept for 10 hours.

I've got a Politeness Infection.

Snooze Fest and Not A Snooze Fest.

Well Hello. Being sick is Incredibly Boring. Boring to read about and even more boring to live. I hope this isn't a preview of the long winter ahead.

Still, have you checked out daytime television lately? Apparently people who watch TV during the day need to work out more, eat better and like to hear about people who are already doing all that. Is this news to anyone else?  It's not news to me but I've never seen a demographic so clearly played out.

Stay away from the news channels though because they, with their politicians and close races and flailing stock market and crashing mutual funds.....make your fever rise. Deep Breath. In. Out.

Instead of trying to put some words together, because, as we can see that's not going very well let's say it the weekend.

I'm calling this a free ad. Please ignore if it's going to make you want to punch me in the face. (via Blurb)

Swelling

This is the seventh day Maddie has had a fever. She has a rash that comes and goes with a dose of medicine. We've seen the doctor twice and are assured this is something "Viral" and we should wait it out.

I love my daughter but right now she's staring at me as I type and is also trying to tap random keys because she's bored. 

Seven days is a lot of days to be stuck on the sofa with your mom.

Seven days is a lot of days to be stuck on the sofa with your kid.

School has been in session for 10 days.
Maddie has been at school for 5 of those days.

These are not terrific odds for an Ivy League future. Also not terrific odds for the various plans I have for my child-free days. Like eating frosting out of the jar in my pajamas.

In other news my birthday was Friday and the day started out, you know, not good. I walked Max to school, since Maddie was staying home again, and the crossing guard suggested we'd woken up late. I thought because of my crazy morning pre-workout/shower hair, but no, she cheerfully told me it was because of my swollen eyes.

Oh-HO! No, I wanted to tell her, my eyes are not swollen because I just woke up. They're swollen because I went to bed crying and woke up crying and pretty much right now? You're making me want to cry. My birthday was preceded by some (unspoken) unpleasantness.

So I walked home with my swollen eyes, and as I came up the driveway I found three dead mice Gary appeared to have left me as a little birthday surprise. Isn't that nice? Too bad I didn't notice the fourth one until after I'd run it over with the car later in the day. Because that was a pretty unique way to say "Happy Birthday!"

But then I went to pick up Logan at the airport from his 9/11 overnight trip into hurricane country. The trip, given my bad day on Thursday, I was really convinced could only end in some unimaginable tragedy...just so my eyes would never stop being swollen.

But instead his flight got in on time and he'd set up a surprise sitter and slowly I realized all my favorite friends didn't just happen to be in a bar in downtown Detroit.

It was a good night, and exactly what I needed.
And when it was over, my eyes weren't swollen anymore.

Overwhelmed, by nothing.

I just realized I haven't taken my crazy medicine in three weeks.

Also just realized going to the grocery store should not require three days of mental preparation.

First stop: Pharmacy.

Still Sick.

I haven't written because I didn't want to admit a few things. The biggest thing I didn't want to admit is:

I get sick a lot.

This whole house is sick a lot.

Holy Shit I am sick. Last week it was mainly mild exhaustion, I thought I was just recovering from my weekend of convalescing at Alice's house. I didn't fill a prescription for antibiotic because I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I'd teach my immune system to SUCK IT UP already and get on with the process of living a life which is not in my bedroom.

This is what I thought. I also may have gloated to Logan that my cough was going away all on it's own and I didn't even need antibiotics like he did. "Poor Little Bunny".

My immune system appears to be a gigantic baby however and is currently cowering and whimpering in the corner while whatever this monstrous thing in my body is beats it about the head and neck.

So yes, that's all that's happening in my world. Mucous and a careful minute by minute cataloging of my current symptoms. I know you're interested, as interested as Logan is.

Swollen glands.
Pain in neck (likely caused by the enormous weight of my head).
Plugged up left ear.
Mild rattily cough.
Low grade fever.
Blood pouring from my eyes
Slow liquifying of my vital organs.

When I wasn't cataloging my symptoms I was writing about Earth Day over at The Buzz Off. I've also been putting up some items at Mighty Junior and tomorrow marks the beginning of the Heirloom Baby Gift Guide.  Also Max learned to ride his bike (without training wheels) and Maddie completed her first school science fair project titled, "Attention: Messy Windows"

Look out Messy Windows, Madison has got your number!

I picked the wrong week to give up drinking.

I've been trying to write more often because, you know, I enjoy it. But then this thing happens where something is physically painful to me and I can't stop talking about how painful it is. I want to describe the pain. The depth, the searing, my inability to remember ever feeling good. I want to come up with metaphors for the pain just so you really understand what is going on. I need you to know. (Please See: Every Time I've Ever Gotten Sick In My Entire Life)

The thing is, I think we all agree this is kind of, I don't know, boring to read? But guess what? OUCH. It's the only thing on my mind right now.

On Sunday we went for a walk to the grocery store, it wasn't a particularly long walk. But after as we prepared Easter dinner for my family I began to limp because this spot on the bottom of my foot began to hurt.

By the end of the night my jaw was radiating with the pain, which I at first attributed to some slightly strained relationships I have with some members of my family. But then they left and my foot began developing it's own gravitational pull. I went to bed at 9:30 and in bed attempted, lamaze breathing and visualized myself as an amputee.

This did not work and instead my dreams consisted of flashing colors which represented the pain. When I wasn't sleeping that night I was waking Logan up to give him status reports on the pain in my foot. "Babe, it's making me drool it hurts so badly. I'm salivating with pain. DON'T YOU EVEN CARE????"

Up until last night I had convinced myself this was not a wart (Ugly word. Ugly thing.) and was instead a splinter of unknown origin since I have to wear shoes every second of every day or risk frostbite. Or it was cancer. A lump of cancer on the ball of my foot. This was a soothing thought when faced with a wart, not that I'm pro cancer or anything. But I'd rather say "I have cancer on the ball of my foot." Than say, "I've got the world's most disgusting wart on the ball of my foot."

But last night as the entire world rotated around the pain in my foot and I read up on things that happen on people's feet, I'd come to accept that I had a wart and I was probably going to have to deal with it for 3 months to 5 years.

I finally saw the doctor and she decided it was not a wart. It was "something" foreign, like tabbouleh, in my foot.

Remember a few years ago when I got a pedicure and my feet were so ticklish (ugh....foot fetishists....) I nearly killed a man with my over-reactive foot. Having my foot shot up with searing lidocaine did not go very well because I have over-reactive feet and also? It hurts like a mother fucker.

After some (still painful on my only partially numbed foot, but please don't stick that needle in my foot again) cutting and poking around the doctor didn't find anything in my foot. So now I have not just a painful section on the ball of my foot, I also have a hole in my foot and potentially some sort of alien surveillance equipment and maybe even a stealthy blob of cancer.

I don't know.

All I know is it still hurts, it's spring break and every word that comes out of my mouth is directly tied to the pain in my foot. In fact, soon the hole in the bottom of my foot will take over the speech portion of my brain.

If you see me hobbling around town and in greeting I scream, "GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKER". It wasn't me. It was the hole in my foot.

Melissa Summers Home For Convalescents

Sunday night Max wrapped himself in a blanket and laid down on the sofa in a ball. When I made our little bacon snacks I talked about earlier this week, he ate a bite and said he was done. It was then I noticed the smoke steaming from his head and thought to take his temperature.

He has been sick ever since.

Maddie was hit on Monday night, when I noticed her walking around looking like the burn outs from high school.

I can count on one hand the number of times my kids have had fevers. They never get fevers. Which is good because one time Maddie had a febrile seizure and Logan and I, in that horrible set of moments when her eyes were in the back of her head and drool was coming out of her mouth and she was shaking uncontrollably and the EMTs took her to their ambulance, believed with absolutely no uncertainty she was dying.

Fevers make me a bit jumpy.

So for this entire week we've had dueling fevers, one kid loses theirs, the other gets it. I get that one down and the other's goes up.

I really wasn't going to complain (very much...sorry Twitter) because no one's puking. It's really just a fever for the most part and that's really not all that bad. It could be worse! I could have sick kids and be an armless potato farmer. But really, the sickness(es) could be worse.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love that my kids go to school every day?

When Logan and I got married we went on our honeymoon, as often happens after a wedding. I love Logan. I could gaze lovingly into his eyes for hours. Sure, there are some things I don't love, like the compulsion to run 26.2 miles, but overall I love the shit out of that guy.

On our honeymoon I was probably even more gooey for the guy since you know we'd just tied the knot and the world was our oyster and he didn't even know about running yet. Still, by day five of our trip we'd sit at dinner and think, "Wow, we can't really even talk about our day because....we've done EXACTLY the same thing for the last five days."

I'm a person, no matter how much I love you, I'm going to need some time away from you every once in a while. I want you to do some things, and I want to do some things and then when we're done doing our things I want to gaze lovingly into your eyes for hours.

I love my kids. If I had to go back to the baby store and pick out new kids, I'd pick these exact same ones. Yes, I wish Maddie liked to eat....anything I cook. And yes, I would love it if getting Max to take a shower didn't involve screaming wails of displeasure. But overall, I love the shit out of these guys too and I'd want them even if I could choose from all the kids in all the land.

And yet, I haven't left the house in 5 days and I've been surrounded by kids that entire time. I'd like to miss them, just a teeny tiny bit.

Also I would love to go to the grocery store and buy real food to put in my cupboards because I'm tired of eating mustard for lunch.

I did leave them alone this morning so I could buy some milk, bread and more children's motrin....at the gas station at the end of my street. I didn't really think I'd be doing my grocery shopping at the gas station and I have to tell you, I don't like spending $10 on a four ounce bottle of children's motrin and $5 on a half gallon of milk.

But really, it can only get better. I mean, get better before next week when spring break starts and we're home together for another 10 excruciating days.

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.

The post I truly didn't believe I'd end up writing today.

We had the inspection yesterday.

The buyer is also a realtor, she got a price from us which is almost 25K less than our original asking price. Her final price is $6000 less than any other area comparables. We agreed to this price because we know this house, even though the interior is lovely, still needs a new roof, new furnace and some major help with curb appeal.

All things we didn't do because we were drowning in financial ruin and then spending all our extra pennies on fixing the problems with our interior. You might be familiar with that work because I've spent the last year crying about it.

We assumed/hoped (stupid stupid hope) that this person was familiar with this market and capable of viewing a house with a critical eye enough to realize "If I get a house at a price which is $6000 less than area comps, perhaps I'm going to have reinvest some money into the property to ensure my investment."

Apparently this wasn't entirely the case because when the inspector mentioned the issue with the roof this threw our deal into a tailspin. So that last night, at a party in the dream neighborhood, I got the call which was incredibly like the call I got four weeks ago telling me that the buyers were "overwhelmed" and needed to "think it over". And like the last call I'd expected to hear my realtor's voice bright and chipper telling me the inspection went as expected and we were ready to move forward.

I had fantasies of Logan making toasts to our new life and me laughing at nothing all night long like a psychotic person because after this long year and all this waiting I'd endured, laughing like a psychotic is really the only response I could possibly have. I'd learned that hard work and patience while working toward a goal could work. We'd made it. We'd accept the extra invitation to the annual block party and go home content and happy.

Because in spite of myself I am one of these stupid "Positive Thinkers". Instead we went home at 8:30 fighting about what our next move is, both of us feeling exhausted, tired, frustrated and trapped. Then I took a sleeping pill and slept for 16 hours.

This time I let the ball of anxiety hang out with me, just so I felt like I was doing my part to make things happen. Last time I didn't worry a bit, because I figured anyone with EYEBALLS IN THEIR HEAD can see that this house would be worth another 10K-20K if it had a new roof and furnace. I figured anyone who would buy this house would realize all the work inside had been done but the outside had not and that is why it's such an incredible bargain.

Even after we got the call last time that our buyers were thinking about it, I believed my realtor when she said it wasn't unusual and lots of first time buyers get anxious. I held onto that string for a few hours until we got the call saying they wanted out of the deal.

This time my realtor assures me this is normal, that the buyers are probably pricing out the mechanicals which need replacing. Even though when we got this deal the buyer said she understood the house needed updating and was having an inspection to rule out any structural issues.

Suddenly now the roof is some unforeseen issue? I just don't understand.

But still I say I'm a pessimist, I'm sitting here depressed as all hell but I'm still full of hope. I'm sitting here on the sofa in my pajamas at 3:30 hoping my realtor is right and the buyer will come back and say yes. Yes, I want this amazing deal on this house in a neighborhood where new construction on similar sized lots are selling for over twice the amount this house is going for. Where homes this size with newer roofs, central air and curb appeal are selling in 24 days for 30K more than I'm spending on this one. 

I hoped this buyer was savvy enough to know what new roofs and furnaces cost. I hoped this buyer understood why we were giving this house away. I said I knew real estate deals could crumble twice, but the truth is I have an inner Pollyanna and she was screaming out, "No! It won't happen twice! There's no way it will happen twice. It can't possibly go bad twice. This is the right buyer! The last guys weren't the right buyers!"

That Pollyanna sent us to the U-Haul store to get packing paper and drove us past the house we were once again so close to moving to, it allowed us to start pricing new bikes for the kids to be stored in a real garage and a trampoline to be played with in the backyard, out of the view of the entire neighborhood and any homeless men walking by and allowed us to accept moving boxes from someone we thought would soon be our new neighbor.

Pollyanna is sitting inside my head right now counter balancing the hysterical side of me who fears we're never getting out of here resulting in me feeling numb and half dead.

And like an idiot I'm still hoping tomorrow I'm celebrating moving forward with our lives instead of plummeting into another layer of despair.

Because I'm a moron.

Once again, sobriety is seriously overrated.

Last night as Logan and I went to bed I checked the Weather Channel just one more time. I looked online for any school closing announcements. My biggest fear last night as I went to bed was there would be a snow day today prolonging the torture that is Midwinter Break.

And I woke up at 7am, checked the school cancellation site and said a little word of thanks to God for saving me from another day of torture. By 8am, I was wishing we'd just had a simple, cost-free, pain-free snow day.

At 7:30 this morning Max wanted to eat something called a 'Breakfast Cookie'. Since there was only one I told him no, not right now. Because I was thinking he could eat it after Maddie went to school and no one would have a fit about how unfair life is. I wouldn't have to tell them, life isn't unfair until you've spent 7 days locked in a house with a couple of people who think stuffing toys in their pants and singing 'I like big butts' is big fun. Until you do that, you can't tell me life isn't fair.

Max didn't like my 'Not Now' answer and wanted to make sure I knew how unhappy he was. So he marched into the kitchen and yanked the snack drawer so hard it came flying off it's track and landed directly on his big toe. When I came into the kitchen to see what stupid thing had happened while Max was angry because he couldn't have the stupid breakfast cookie this minute, I wasn't wearing my glasses so it took me a moment to see that he was bleeding.

A lot.

I suspect if I'd had a little something to drink I may have handled the next 2 hours while we waited for the doctor's office to open a little better. During that time I mainly fumbled around spilling blood on every surface and every towel in the entire house.

He wasn't in a lot of pain but I could not get the bleeding to stop. There was no way to put pressure on it and as you might imagine when a drawer falls directly on your toenail, it involves a lot of blood.

Thankfully our sofa is red.

We made it to the hospital where Max was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to him. It's at times like these I realize how different my kids are. Madison would have walked into the hospital and immediately gone into 'Worst Case Scenario' mode. She wouldn't see a simple x-ray machine, she would see something she was pretty sure could kill her. (I just can't imagine how she got that trait.....)

Max on the other hand, just takes it as it comes. He was nervous but never crying. We went in for the x rays and when they took his bandages off, I expected him to pretty much freak out because his bloody and battered toe is pretty difficult to look at. But he could have cared less. He stared at it as they got his foot into position and seemed entirely unaware of it's absolute disgusting-ness.

Things were a little more intense once we actually had to surgically remove his entire toenail. The shot to numb his foot caused the most angry sounds to come out of my son's mouth. I kept waiting for a string of "MOTHER FUCKERS" to come out of his mouth. It was that kind of rage. It took 4 separate shots to finally numb his foot enough.

Then he laid quietly waiting for it to be over, every once in a while glancing down at his foot as the doctor put several stiches into his now nail-less toe. Everything around his foot was covered in blood and yet, he looked at the scene with quiet detachment.

As the doctor finished up she told us she would be making a little 'shield' out of a sterile piece of foil to protect the sensitive skin on Max's toe. She sewed it on and unveiled it to Max.

If I looked down and saw a piece of foil sewn onto my toe I would probably pass out or vomit. Max looked down at his new silver toenail and announced, "I'm like a superhero! Super Silver Toenail Man. I fight crime with my silver toenail!"

Super Silver Toenail Man! Saving the world one toenail at a time.

We're home now and Logan and I have a lot less money than we did this morning.

I told Logan Max probably learned a big lesson today. Something about not letting your temper get away from you.

Logan asked if I'd learned anything today. I said, "Like what? Don't say no to Max?"

"No, never ever buy those stupid breakfast cookies."

And I won't. Never again.

My final post about this stupid thing.

When Alicia Ybarbo from The Today Show contacted me about the Cosmopolitan Mommies piece in the New York Times she told me the show was interested in doing a piece about this supposed 'trend'. We talked at length about my own playgroup, about the response to the piece and about how it isn't a 'new trend' it's something women have been doing since the 60's.

In the beginning they wanted to come and film my playgroup for the piece. Since our kids are now all in school full time, we don't have a weekly playgroup anymore so this was problematic. I suggested a more 'happy hour' gathering where we'd meet after school and our husband's would swing by after work for our usual family pizza night. Alicia said the mixing of dads would 'taint' the story (Read: "Make the subject more palatable because men keep their women in line and they have an auxilary liver in their penises.") So I told Alicia it just wasn't going to work out. My friends are busy with young kids and active schedules, so sorry.

After seeing how they twisted 3 hours of filming into a wine bottle orgy when those women (one who's commented here) had a glass each, except for her because she'd found out she was pregnant. How they chose quotes which made it sound as if the author believes sober mothers are not very good mothers. With the way my mouth goes and goes and goes, they could easily have pulled a very unpleasant quote from 3 hours of my yapping. Not only that, if my friends were embarassed by their portrayal I would be about 1000 times more angry at this point.

A month or two later Alicia contacted me again. She said she had loved what I had to say on the topic and they'd like me to come to New York City to be on the show. At that point I wet my pants. I wet my pants not because I was so excited to go on television but because I knew this was an opportunity I could not refuse. Even though I hate talking on the phone and am far better in writing than I am in person. Even though I would like to weight 20 pounds less to appear on television. I knew that, for me personally this would be a huge step toward being the person I want to be.

Alicia said it would be a live segment in the studio and there would be a psychologist, Dr Janet Taylor, there with me. Here is where the lies begin and this is a huge part of why I am so angry about the experience and am using this platform I have to explain it.

The psychologist is 'on board' with the whole thing. She's a mother herself and understands. She's just there to set limits and to explain what may be 'a problem'. Which makes a lot of sense to me. Once we define problem drinking and how to know when you might be crossing over into that realm, we can have a light hearted conversation about moms getting together to be social while their children play. Just like Regular Grown Ups.

As time went on ramping up to my appearance. The psychologist bit seemed to be changing a little. Alicia informed me the psychologist was now feeling like she had to say mother's of very young babies shouldn't be drinking (something I still disagreed with, but okay....), "...you know things like that."

Right before Alicia left town (she was not on set for my appearance....hmm....surprising) she said, (something like, I'm starting to realize why she always wanted to talk on the phone, not via email) "Now, Dr Janet Taylor's position has changed a bit. She's feeling like as a professional she has a responsibility to make sure women understand the risks."

Which still, I was okay with because in my world there is a difference between drinking and drinking to get drunk.

In the end I showed up on a show with Dr Janet Taylor, well trained media machine who was not discussing drinking in moderation but was instead talking about women as children who have no clue how to drink in moderation and can not be trusted.

I was told this was going to be a 'lighthearted' discussion. I pictured talking about how no one is talking about 'Kids And Keggers!', I pictured discussing drinking as a social activity many adults do, I pictured discussing how my husband and I often drink as a social activity at kid centered activities and not a single reporter or television has ever called to ask my husband "what that glass of beer means to him".  I wanted to emphasize how silly it is to call this a trend. I wanted to emphasize how mothers are raising children, they are not children themselves.

I was not at all prepared for a debate between "Melissa Summers, blogger!" and "Dr Janet Taylor, psychologist with impressive resume and four kids." I was especially not prepared for a debate which involved Dr Janet Taylor repeating the same thing over and over like a very tall robot.

"Mothers must find healthy ways to relieve stress." Really Dr Janet Taylor? Like doing Yoga, meeting friends for dinner, going out with my husband, spending a few alone hours at the coffee shop or the bookstore browsing? Like that? Oh, good because those are things I do as well and I just pointed them out and I may as well have been talking to my hand because you heard none of it.

Dear Alicia Ybarbo, If I had known this would be some sort of faux debate I would not have agreed to appear with a fucking psychologist with plenty of television experience as my opponent. This was unfair and you know it and that is why I was never informed this was a debate.

Would I have had the same discussion with another blogger who thinks it's not a good idea to drink at playgroups? Yes absolutely. We may have been on equal footing in that way. A blogger may have been able to actually say something of value or entertainment because we are not trained in the ways of traditional media. Which for Dr Janet Taylor means saying the same thing over and over without ever really saying anything of value.

Things like, "We underestimate...." the effects of even one drink on our ability to parent. Dr Taylor? Did you know our bodies have something called a liver and our liver can process alcohol? It's funny how people all over America routinely operate a car going 30-80 miles per hour and are considered legally able after one drink. But you're right Dr Janet Taylor, after one drink I can't change a diaper or push a kid on a swing or wipe somebody's butt.

Jennifer Ramsey from Stay At Home Motherdom was quoted in the New York Times piece and has a personal story of alcoholism which sprouted out of the loneliness of early motherhood.

Any social drinking can develop into alcoholism. Your husband's beers over football could as easily become alcoholism as a drink over the swingset could. But it's true, it's always a risk and it's something worth discussing especially as a network which doesn't want to be blamed when a mother says, "Well Meredith Viera says I can drink whatever I want whenever I want!" and then drives drunk killing herself and her children. Yes, I can see that.

I'm trying to keep this organized but as I explained at someone's birthday party yesterday (with Siobahn!) the longer I let this simmer the less able to sum it up I feel. I'm used to writing in 10 minutes off the top of my head with barely an edit. I've written this post 12 times, starting on the plane on my way home from the debacle.

After Alice headed back to New Jersey to get Henry from school I went back to the hotel to watch the video of the appearance and the more angry I felt. A combination of exhaustion and intense anger left me crying in the lobby of my hotel trying to get NBC to get me a flight home ASAP. When Isabel, from Alpha Mom, arrived to take me out for a drink she was greeted with my sobbing face.

I don't like being lied to. I don't like being called a babysitter. And I don't like being pitted against a psychologist unexpectedly on national television.

NBC called me at 3 o'clock (the process had started at 1pm) to tell me they'd gotten me a flight at 3:50. Wow, thank you NBC. You've given me 30 minutes to make it through Manhattan to Laguardia...to check my bag and get through security. You rule!

That's actually when the crying started and Isabel arrived. I ended up calling back my contact, telling her to forget it I clearly don't have enough time to make it. In 5 minutes I'd booked my own flight and paid for it myself.  All I wanted was to be home where I could tell Logan how intensely pissed I was.

In the meantime I told Isabel, who, as we all know, is very familiar with the dark side of media, all about it until I inhaled all the air out of the lounge we sat in. It was exactly what I needed and Isabel had great input I definitely wouldn't have gotten from Logan. God love him, but remember he's got a second liver in his penis and so a free pass to do as he pleases.

Let's talk about what happened behind the scenes. Alice chatted with Dr. Janet Taylor in the green room while I had my makeup finished. Alice asked, "Well what's the difference between a family at a backyard bar-b-que drinking a few beers while the kids play?"

Dr. Janet Taylor replied, "I think there's a difference between a bar-b-que and a playdate."

Alice asked, "What?"

And they were interrupted and Dr Janet Taylor had no answer except, I assume, "Mothers must find healthy ways to relieve stress. Mothers must find healthy ways to relieve stress. Mothers must find healthy ways to relieve stress."

Do fathers need to find healthy ways to relieve stress? And healthy ways to support one another? These are questions we'd all like to know but Meredith Viera is more concerned about the difference between a mother and a hired caregiver. Way to go Club Mom co-founder! Name change: "Club Glorified Babysitters!"

Is the difference between a backyard bar-b-que with families the fact that there are penises around to keep the mommies from over doing it? We underestimate the effects of even one drink after all. Is the difference the fact that there's alcohol combined with an open flame and children? I'm dying to know Dr. Janet Taylor.

Right before we went on air, Dr Janet Taylor and I were standing waiting to be mic'd. At this point I was thinking we were still on reasonably the same team. I was excited. I asked her if she'd done television before and she said yes, several times. Oh? Awesome for me! I'll follow your lead (except that her lead was robotic and said nothing of value to anyone). She also brought up two stories of mothers who had been drinking during the day, one had killed people at the elementary school during after school pick up and another had killed her children driving drunk.

I said, "Well, obviously these are people who were not aware of their limits and over did it. There have to be limits."

Dr Janet Taylor said something like, "Well maybe there are no limits." (I don't remember what she said exactly but her answer gave me an unsettled feeling about what was about to happen.)

And then we got onto our stools and Meredith Viera called me Marissa when she met me and that really boded well.

Things I wish you could have seen: Meredith Viera choking on a monster sized turd when I suggested sometimes my children make me think about ridiculous things, like selling him on ebay. (Thank God I didn't mention that summer where I wanted to eat the children dipped in chocolate. Lighten up Meredith!)

I wish you could have seen me roll my eyes in frustration when Dr Janet Taylor was given the last chance to speak and said absolutely nothing but a bunch of 'healthy ways! Not judging your alcoholism and inept parenting!' Oh wait, you did see that...and I thought I'd hidden it so well.

Logan said, "When you looked down and sighed at the end? Anyone who knows you knows that's your 'I'm trying not to punch you' look."

Things I wish had gone differently:

When Meredith asked me what the difference between me and a babysitter is."[Hearty Laugh With Incredulous Head Shake] Meredith? Did you seriously just ask me what makes me as a mother different than someone I pay to give care to my children? The co-founder of Club Mom just asked me that?" I also wished I'd said, "Well since my role as mother is 24/7, I often have anal sex with my husband while 'on duty'.  I don't really want my babysitter having anal sex with my husband."

Just imagine the turd which would fill Meredith Viera's mouth with that comment. It makes me giddy. Absolutely giddy. Dr Janet Taylor's head would have popped off and rolled away calling, "Mothers need to find healthy ways! HEALTHY WAYS!!!! HEALTHY!!!!!"

I wish Meredith would have been prepared to ask some more pointed questions of Dr. Janet Taylor. Things like, "Why is it not okay for mother's to be social as adults, while their children are social as children?"

Or

"Is it okay for fathers and mothers to have a few drinks at a bar-b-que?"

"Is it fine for families to socialize together with adult beverages? What makes that different?"

But no, let's just let Dr Janet Taylor spout her same ridiculous message over and over without ever asking her for clarification of her position.

I wish that the author in the green shirt had not said her ridiculous comment about sober mothers not being good mothers. I hope this was a misrepresentation of what she meant. Because I hardly think a sober mother is not a good one. Also, I think it's probably wise to generally keep your drinking within the legal limits of sobriety when drinking with or without children (or you could ask your husband to help keep you sober...God knows women don't know how to control themselves). I wish though, she'd said something more like:

"Show me a mother who never drinks and you'll be showing me a mother just like myself who is still a woman, is a human being who makes the choices she thinks are best and who is making dozens of mistakes every single day with her kids and almost none of those mistakes will ever matter in the big picture. So everyone chill the fuck out."

I wish I'd brought up the socializing with alcohol my husband and I do together and questioned why my husband has never been brought to New York to be shamed for having a drink in front of his children. No one has ever asked him "What that drink represents to him...." No one has questioned his ability to be a parent after having a glass of wine.

I like to picture Dr Janet Taylor replying, "Well, men have a penis." and Meredith Viera shaking her head in agreement, "Yes, yes....a penis!"

Most amusingly, at the end of the segment when the cameras went off Meredith Viera said, "In Europe this wouldn't even be an issue." Right Meredith and NBC. Thanks for helping out the cause you moron.

Let's see if I can put into list form the things which have upset me. I am not at all upset with how I was portrayed. I think NBC came across pretty clear. They invited a media savvy psychologist to go up against a mother with a blog. They asked no real questions and the psychologist said nothing but a premade sound bite, "Women must find healthy ways.....to be martyrs!"

I came across as I'd wanted to. As a normal woman who likes to combine her roles as a mother and an adult. I came across nervous, but reasonably well spoken (especially for someone who is afraid of the phone) and I interrupted where I needed to and challenged Dr Janet Taylor in a way someone, like a journalist (Hey Meredith!), should have.

What made me unhappy were these three things:

I do not like being lied to and set up for something I was not expecting and was not prepared for at all.

I did not like the overall stench of misogyny. I don't like crying SEXISM, I find it annoying as all hell. Both sexes have to deal with stereotypes and negative attitudes, but something about this idea that drinking is okay if husbands are around infuriates a very deep rooted anger in me.

I also do not like the lack of questioning of what fathers drinking around children implies. It feeds into the mothers as martyrs thing I mentioned falling into last year and which I've been trying my damndest not to fall into again. That somehow mothers have more of an obligation to be 'appropriate' or 'not concerned' with their own needs than fathers do. It's bull shit and the media messages only perpetuate it, so much so that I found myself mired in it without really realizing it or intending to do it.

Finally it bothers me, The Today Show had yet another chance to bridge the Mommy Wars and instead they laid out a stupid black and white message with the power of a psychologist suggesting mothers who have even one glass of wine are being irresponsible parents. NBC and The Today Show have sent out another wave to fan the flame of the Mommy Wars and I'm fed up with it.

And before I get another round of 'But you're judging mothers who don't drink!' let me reiterate: I am judging mothers who judge *me* for having a glass of wine in front of my kids without my husband's penis in attendance. I don't care if you drink or not and if you don't care if I drink or not, then we'll get a long just great. Unless you're a baby eating presbyterian or if you are incredibly negative and every other word that comes out of your mouth is a complaint or if you're my in laws (who do drink!).

This is terribly long and I'm not even sure if I'm getting across everything I wanted to.

But let's link to other people who are talking about this in a more detached way because I am about to tell you that someone who was on that stage with me had pants which were cut so low her thong rose above the waistband by about 4 inches. Professional! Talking about setting examples for our kids. Tsk tsk. But see that's a really bitchy personal attack so I'm not really going to do it. Except that I did. I'm a blogger, we're like live wires.

The Zero Boss talks about it here.
Karen at Home on the Fringe here.
Stefania at CityMama here.
Eden at Fussy here.
Izzy at Izzy Mom here.
SupaMB here.
CalistaWolf at LilacPixels here.
Chris at Notes from the trenches here.
Mysternyc here.
The Bean Blog here.
A Mommy Story here.
Get Sheila here.
Laid off dad here.
Kristin at Imperfect Mommy here.
(The newly pregnant!) Mihow here.
At MayasMom here.
VenturaMom here.
Jessica at Kerflop here.
Alice at Finslippy, who spooned me the night before, here.
Karli at Mom on a Wire here.
Kris at Wonder Mom here.
Mamaloo, the doula at momcast, here.
Amy at BlissfullyBitchy here.
Danielle at Foodmomiac here.
Grace at State of Grace here.
Nancy at Mom, Ma'am, Me here.
Susan at Friday Playdate here.
Jen at Jen Dude-ist here.
B.V. at I Had A Thought here.
The Silicon Valley Moms here.
Karen at Troll Baby makes it short and sweet here.
SoloMom at Sanity and the Solo Mom (at NBC owned iVillage! Hee!) here.
Suburban Turmoil here.
Erika at The Daily Camera here.

There are of course lots of places discussing how very wrong I am and how right Dr Janet Taylor is. But I don't feel a responsiblity as a blogger to search out those links for you. You may call it what you will. But a lot of the personal attacks out there are being written simply (including a 7 paragraph long comment/discussion of my personality disorder, my need for dental work, my horrid haircut and payless shoes!)(WOW!) to attract links, hits and readers. You can find those on your own.

My purpose is to share my thoughts and show the producer at NBC what other people are saying about how they handled this topic.

I have not deleted a single comment on this thread and I've left several thoughtful opposing viewpoints remain in my comments, including one which calls me an alcoholic. I've responded to some negative comments because I found them so irritating. So please give me a break here. If you want to make personal attacks or have your opinion mostly left unchallenged then you'll have to do it at someone else's site or your own.

My final thought is this: I don't need Meredith Viera to tell me to have a drink. I don't need Janet Taylor to tell me I'm a good mother. I do want the way we look at motherhood to change. The drink is symbolic of a bunch of other issues related to being a mother.

That's my bigger picture.

No, it's not world peace, but the mommy wars certainly aren't creating world peace are they?

[Edit: Please see my update about the follow up piece at The Today Show here.]

....and then I went through a dark tunnel.....

Things have been a little awkward for the last few days and it's been a little difficult to write because of it. Last week my sister and I had some words, ironically started with a flippant Flickr comment, which exploded into a full blown deep family secret revealing, soul sucking conversation.

Flickr: Sharing pictures, sharing skeletons.

Today I decided to get out of the house (and my head) and work at the coffee shop where I'd feel a little more self concious about numbing my brain with hours and hours of Solitaire. When I walked in I ran into a friend who I decided to create new boundaries with earlier this winter. Though I hold no ill will toward her, she seems to be very angry about the new boundaries making our inevitable bumps into one another exceedingly awkward.

But it gets better. Remember my old banner referring to the Baby Eating Presbyterians?

The friend with new boundaries is friends with a woman who is a Presbyterian and apparently has a rabid hunger for the hearts of babies because when she came across my post referring to the Presbyterians and their baby eating ways, she pretty much freaked out to the point of mildly shaking when she tried to talk to me. Of course I had no idea how angry she was, I just thought she liked shaking when she talked, until our mutual friend (who now has new boundaries with me) explained it all to me. I don't typically talk to other people about their friends in unflattering terms because in general that makes a friend unhappy and/or defensive of their friendship....but then I'm not a presbyterian. They do things differently.

The Blood Thirsty Presbyterian told the Friend With New Boundaries, how evil I was and how it's a good thing we're done sending our kids to that preschool because she would make sure we weren't welcome anymore. (uh....how christian of you?) 

When it was suggested I was using sarcasm she replied that this was not sarcasm. She's right, no, it wasn't. I really do believe she eats babies. Absolutely.

So today in an effort to get away from the awkward discussion with my sister late last week, I came to the coffee shop to get some work done. I walked into Angry With The New Boundaries Friend and at her table was.....you'll never guess!?

Blood Thirsty Presbyterian!

You know what would make this story so much better? How about if my mother-in-law was at the table, with my sister-in-law and maybe Joleen and Karen were all sharing a latte at that same table. Let's see who else would make me feel awkward? How about my gynecologist?

When I wrote to a friend to incredulously tell her what was happening, she replied. "Take your shirt off if you haven't already."

Yes. That would make it more awkward. Not awkward enough? How about if I take my shirt off and walk over to hug everyone!? Awkward!

I didn't come to the coffee shop to talk about all of this. I was going to tell you all about how  I can't write anything because I'm not feeling all that creative after the awkward Skeletons In The Closet conversation with my sister.

I was also going to tell you that even my dreams are boring and uncreative lately. For the last three nights I've had the most transparent dreams, even my subconcious is feeling a little shell shocked it seems.

The first dream involved our house and neighbors who were keeping ferocious wild animals in their screened in porch. Animals like a rhinocerous and a huge lion. I was afraid to leave the house or let the kids out to play because of these wild animals threatening to eat them like the presbyterians.

In the next dream there was a mammoth snake in a tree in front of the house. It was wound all through the tree and was at least 20 feet long. Since it was 20 feet long it threatened to enter our house through any opening. I spent the dream running to the car every time we had to go anywhere, dodging the man-eating snake (it must have been presbyterian as well) and filling every opening in our house with foam and nailing windows shut.

Last night I don't remember the dream but I do remember this part very clearly. I was walking along and someone with me found a small green snake, picked it up and handed it to me. At that point the snake stuck to my hand and no amount of shaking to get it off would dislodge it. It wasn't wrapped around me or biting me, it was just plain sticky.

Holy shit Subconcious, could you be just a little more creative? Is my brain really so vacant you have to be so ridiculously obvious with the dream symbols?

These dreams seem to refer to my fear of living here, being stuck in this neighborhood, hating where we live. The snakes and man eating animals may also refer to my desire to protect my children from harm. They also may be representing the Skeleton Revealing conversation with my sister and my inability to see the conclusion of that situation at this time.

Or they could just be my mind's way of telling me to stay away from baby eating presbyterians. Which will be easy since we're not welcome.

The last part of my dream involved a pretty funny scenario where I watched the show Cops and saw my neighbor, the loud guy with the boat bigger than his house and the wife who's voice could cut tile, being arrested. He was thrown on the ground and beaten by the police while Tile Cutter tried to hold onto his leg.

Still a kind of boring dream but it was nice watching him getting beaten because I sort of want to do that myself as I listen to him revving the engine on his truck for 3 hours straight all afternoon. (Does he work? Ever?)

So there you have it, family secrets, gossip and simplistic dreams. Big fun over here.

I have no planning skills.

I am not good at planning things. I planned a therapy session for the same day as my anniversary (and that didn't go well) and then another for my birthday (which didn't go very well either).

Logan took the week between Christmas and New Year's off and on Sunday, in three days, we're hosting 3 families for New Year's Eve. Since I'm mostly done with therapy (for now), I decided to keep the fun going and I scheduled a surgical wisdom tooth extraction for today at 1pm.

I rule at planning.

Please God, don't let it be hellish.

I'm sure it was Gary's massive girth which knocked it down.

Since we got the cats three years ago, I've had a fleeting thought each time we put up the Christmas tree.

"Maybe we should wire the tree to the wall so it doesn't get knocked over by a cat."

Well, gee that seems like a lot of trouble.

After this happened, while we were gone today, Logan drilled a small eye hook into the wall, wired the tree to it and the process took a total of 5 minutes.

Picking up the 20 or so broken ornaments, the fallen tree and attempting to rearrange the paper garland and lights took about 45 minutes.

So you can clearly see why we didn't just wire the stupid tree to the wall to begin with.

Maybe I should have married "Always Leaves The Seat Up"

Last night on the way to see friends, Logan is driving and telling me about this commercial.

You should go watch it. Go ahead.

As he's telling me about the commercial he turns left to get on the freeway where there are about 8 signs saying things like, "Your wife always tells you not to go this way and you do it anyway."

So, once again I say, "You know, you're not allowed to get on the freeway from here."

And he ignores me, continuing to tell me about the commercial and the customer named, "Never Listens To Women Ever".

Oh we laughed!

I said, "That could be your name! Or at least your nickname! See how you just turned there and I suggested for the 1000th time not doing that since it's illegal! And you ignored me all those times!"

"I know! Isn't that funny?" he said, shaking his head. "Wait, why is that police man staring at us? Why is he turning around? Why is he getting behind us? Why is he turning on his lights?"

It's all so very "funny". Except not at all funny because this is the month with that big holiday at the end? And we already got hosed by the plumber! And another unexpected expense! I love money so much.

Lessons.

You know what's better than spending half your monthly salary on the plumbing in a house you just want out of?

Waiting for 7 hours for the plumber to show up to plunder your checkbook.

Maybe a delicious cookie will helped me pass the time. Or a liter of bourbon.  And I don't even like bourbon.

We all know what a whiner I am. How I enjoy torturing myself with the worst case scenarios.

You see the problem is, for the last 4 months I've been on edge knowing things could go wrong. Things could go wrong and all the hopes I have for the next year would crumble. I knew I could be sitting on the sofa debating a bourbon (I don't even like it!) at 2:22pm on a Tuesday while waiting for the proverbial plumber to come take our money. I knew that scenario would make me very unhappy and so it kept me awake because I didn't want it to happen.

And now it's happened and you'd think I may be thinking to myself: "Wow, I spent all that time worrying this would happen and now it has and I wasted all that energy worrying about it. Because did worrying about it stop it from happening? Did it prepare me for this? Did I make sure the bourbon was stocked in the house?"

No. Not at all.

Will this stop me from wasting time worrying about all these things in the future? No.

Because I never learn.

Besides, when the furnace dies I am absolutely certain there aren't enough baked goods and alcohol to carry me through. I better start worrying about it now.

Eight is great.

As a child, everything that ailed you could be soothed with a salt water gargle.

"Mom! I tore my arm off!"

"Gargle with a little salt water."

As a child I also suffered through thousands of sore throats. At the time, the doctors had gone all 'natural' and decided that if the tonsils are there, there's a reason for them being there. And now, that I'm an adult and it's clear my tonsils are nefarious, it's "too risky" to remove them without a clear reason. (I have a reason: "They're trying to kill me.")

Every time I complained about my throat, my mother would reply, "Gargle with a little salt water!"

And I wanted to kill her every single time, because it didn't work when I tore my arm off and it never worked when I had a sore throat.

Just so you know, every time you write or comment telling me to "Gargle with a little salt water," my mother snuggles back into her sofa and feels just a little more smug than ever before.

And I can't stand for that.

No gargle. No work.

I am feeling much better. The first two doses have been almost as good as an anti-depressant. Except, not at all like an anti-depressant. At least I can swallow my own saliva now, not being able to was actually pretty depressing.

This evening in a mad dash, I was also able to make cupcakes for a certain little girl who is turning eight today.

God willing I can make her birthday memorable. If not, let's just tell her about the shards of glass in my throat that ruined her birthday.

I think eight is going to be the best year yet.

I need titanium tonsils...that sounds like a bad porn name.

Yesterday when I woke up with a face morphed into a pelican*, I began to cry. I cried because I have a hard time managing my life when I feel about 95% well. When I feel unwell? My management skills drop to about a 10 percent.

The thought of getting up to get the kids to school made my tonsils sucker punch me. The thought of trying to get all the girls invited out to dinner on Thursday for Madison's birthday made me whimper. Oh and there was that concert Maddie needed 'something patriotic' to wear, and before you get smart I think the music teacher was thinking red, white and blue wear. Oh and it's Max's week to be superstar student which means I needed to help him make a poster about himself.

I often forget how much I do, because I make deliberate choices on a daily basis to be not busy. I don't like how busy people are always grinding their gears and feeling overwhelmed and like they never get anything done and sometimes it just seems like all the things we need to do and all the things we like to do are just controlling us and making us unhappy. I'm unhappy all on my own! Well, that wasn't my original point but, okay.

I'm not even a busy person and still, when my tonsils* grow 20 sizes overnight, the house sort of falls apart. Logan took Maddie to school and helped Max with his Superstar Student poster and then came home so I could go to the doctor and went to the store on the way home and found something patriotic for Maddie to wear. And made all the birthday invitation calls. You know, you can't even win with robots because you start to complain and then you realize they do a bunch of stuff and you're not really being very grateful.

But yesterday morning while I cried, my robotic husband could not compute the data coming at him. Because robots do not get sick. They do not have tonsils which continually betray them. Not only do robots never get sick, they also have no application available to them allowing them to be empathetic in the face of another's pelican-faced suffering*.

For example, as I sat on the bed yesterday morning crying and holding my pelican face*, he said, "So you're okay right?"

And then he tapped my back.

Through the searing pain of my raging tonsils* I wanted to infect him in that moment. But you can't infect a robot with strep* you can only give him a virus which makes him send out thousands of emails titled, "Check out this funny attachment" and my mother is the only one who opens them because she really wants to know what's so funny in this email from the robot.

I haven't eaten in 72 hours now (except one desperate peanut butter and jelly sandwich I choked down Monday, it was a bad idea) and I thought to myself, "Gee, since food is just now starting to sound delicious and your tonsils* are still beating the crap out of your ability to swallow, let's read a bunch of food blogs so we're all clear on what food you are not going to be eating for the next 2 days."

*Strep! That's what I have! I've never gotten strep in my entire life! I am incredulous! And tired and still swollen. Strep!!!!

NPR Keeps Me Awake At Night.

Gee, I just don't know why I lay awake at night wondering if we're going to be trapped in this neighborhood for the rest of our lives.

Hmmm....I wonder.

"Researchers at the University of Michigan expect an additional 23,000 jobs to disappear next year, and they say problems in the auto industry will keep the economy down until fall 2008."

Or this:

"There are so many houses on the market in Dearborn [1,570 in smaller Royal Oak!], it would take at least a year to sell them all."

Do you play the worst case scenario game with yourself? I like to calm myself when I'm anxious by thinking, "Okay, but let's say the worst thing happens. How will we handle that?"

And when I look at trying to sell our home and face articles like this one, I realize the worst thing is that there is no buyer for our house, not even if we take a loss on this property. The worst thing is that the only buyer will come if we cut our price back to 1998 prices and then we're owing money on the house. Which means we can't take on a new mortgage, which means we can't leave and that is a worst case scenario I can't even put myself through.

Because the kids can't go to the Mega-Elementary school slated to open next fall. It's housed in a building that resembles a juvenile hall and will hold around 900 elementary school students. Our school currently hold 309 students.

I can't keep going across the street at least once a week to tell my neighbor that sound does travel and why did he buy a stereo with speakers that fill his entire tiny front room?

I can't keep living here. The thought of staying until the spring is too long. Once the house is ready to list, there is the very real possibility that there simply isn't a buyer for this property. When this house dropped to $159K (they did find a renter for it), I felt sick to my stomach. Because our house is bigger than that one and has a lot of the same charm in the details, but it's not totally remodeled, it's mechancials will need upgrading and it's curb appeal is definitely lacking. How could there not be a buyer for that house, even at just $170K?

I know housing is slowing all over the country and I can accept that we'll make much less than we would have had we sold three years ago. I'm willing to "cut and run" just to get a fresh start, even starting from scratch. This was the right house for the first 4 years we lived here. The last five years have been a nightmare. But still, starting behind? We can't do that. But then, we can't stay here (she says as the throbbing bass booms from across the street at 9:03am) (Does this man ever go to work?).

And that's what gets my depression riled up every time: facing two options I can't live with.

We'll keep painting trim and tearing out wallpaper and we'll bury a saint in our yard. And I'll stay awake each night hoping there's a buyer at a price we can live with. Hoping when we're ready to buy there's a house we can buy in the right neighborhood, with the right school.

And Logan will beg for mercy from now until then facing email after email titled: "Maybe we should just bid on this house." Or, "Why don't we just call a halt to all freelance work and just work on the house for 8 hours a day and get it ready to sell by the end of the month?" Or, "Guess what? I've decided we're never moving. We're going to live here until we're old. You, Me and Ed. Pretty soon I'll probably love Willie Nelson."

It's hard to be Logan.

.....

I think the world just needs to shut up for the most part because while I don't actually want to keep my head buried in the sand like a moron, I also can't keep idly thinking about what makes men hurt little girls (and boys) over and over and over because I just can not take it. The issues which have brought us to a time when men break into schools (twice in a couple of weeks) to kill young girls, are far too huge for me, with my very small brain, to really comprehend or theorize about or even understand.

I don't want to believe that the issue goes beyond a few very disturbed individuals with very disturbed upbringings. But it gets harder and harder for me to believe that, since not only are there a number of random attacks there's also a much more horrifying number of bad things happening to children who know, love and trust their abusers. And still, I take in all this information and all these theories and none of it really matters in a day to day sense.

I don't understand what's happened or how we've ended up here.

I realize how little control I have, I've realized a long time ago how I can't protect my children from bad things happening. I can follow my gut and I can teach them about being safe and owning their bodies and I can listen to them and protect them at all costs when I know they're being hurt and I can make them secure in the truth of the protection I will give them at all costs. I can't make bad things not happen, but I can make them strong and sure of themselves and make them certain of my willingness and ability to speak for them when they can not.

That's the only control I really have. That's the only thing I know for sure.

And still it bothers me because sometimes I feel like it's inevitable that something bad will happen to my children. Probably not a milk man who storms into their amish schoolhouse, since I'm not amish and have no plans to become amish, but there will be other people who could hurt them.

That really nice coach or the really personable dad of a friend everyone loves, are probably the worries I would serve myself better with. I'm not complacent but among my close group of 5 friends, 2 of us made it into adulthood unscathed by someone else's sexuality but then 3 of us were abused in some way by men we looked up to/trusted/loved as little girls. And, it's important to note: none of us told anyone. Then, when you look at my extended group of Internet Peers, we're looking at even larger numbers.

I don't know how else to take in this newest information. As a mother, I can't think very much about the reason men use girls for their sexual satisfaction, because my brain explodes with the societal implications of that.

I will not take my children to the park at the end of my street and spend the hour we're there fearing the predators who might cast their eyes on my children's incredible beauty and be compelled to snatch and abuse them. I won't stop putting their pictures on the internet because someone may view their beautiful cheeks and want to do horrible things to them. I still believe those types of attacks on children are the exception and not the rule.

People have always done horrible things. There have always been murders and rapes and molestations. Sometimes though, I worry that something has blurred the line in how we look at girls. My brain is not capable of making sense of it all, I'm only able to cry about all of this. It's complex and no one knows how to fix it and maybe there isn't a way to fix it.

I want to simplify that statement with all kinds of societal blame but I can't because it's not simple. And that scares the shit out of a lot of people. Including me.

At least I'm not dressed in a fur suit.

I have a nice morning with Max. I think how I'm not feeling bad about myself and I'm looking forward to meeting Logan for lunch. I'm thinking how the day is going well and how I'm going to focus on how the day is going well and not think about anything else (as recommended by my therapist who is getting positively exasperated with me. Just like the Internet does.) I get dressed in my flattering sweater and pants and new necklace and I'm thinking, this is good. I am having a good day. (See, therapist? I'm listening. Self talk!)

I email Logan, "What time for lunch?"

He replies, "I forgot something. Lunch isn't going to work."

"Why?" I ask.

"You don't want to know," he cringes through the computer. "I have a hair appointment."

Considering my post earlier this week, this, this is annoying.

Okay, fine, Max and I will go to lunch before I take him to school. I'm not going to let this bother me.

We have a nice lunch and Max dazzles me with his missing front tooth and the way he rubs the top of his head and his hair while he talks.

I drop him off for school and decide to work at the coffee shop, where there are less distractions. At home the dishes, the laundry, the sofa call my name and suck my will to think.

At the coffee shop I sit down at the only open 'comfortable' chair, I slowly sit because every muscle in my body aches from pilates. Sitting down in that particular chair proves fatal.

A mother has brought her son to this coffee shop to 'play'. This woman is the reason non-breeders hate breeders. I am a breeder and I hated her.

While watching this woman ignoring (or conversely saying, 'no no nononoooonononoono' but never moving to follow up on the 'noononononononoo') her son dumping: a bottle of apple juice, three card games, a board game and a bagel my headache takes over so I decide to go home and take a rest before I pick up the kids.

On the drive home, someone makes a sharp, slow and unexpected right hand turn near some road construction. I have to brake hard to avoid hitting him. I'm rear ended, sending my computer hurtling through the air, my ashtray/change jar shooting out, my neck whipping into my head rest and hey! There's that case from Finding Nemo we never found after our trip to Indy.

I'm shaking, loud sounds like this always freak me out. Just like the window explosion scared me last week. I pull over and a very large man gets out of his car. He's a close talker and he starts to swear about the asshole who was turning so slowly. Who turns that slowly? What the fuck was he doing? And all the sudden I feel 13 and I don't want him to be upset. I'm shaking.

He tells me he'll give me his number and we don't need to call the police do we? Why don't you ask your boyfriend if we need to turn this into our insurance companies. I'm shaking. I'm agreeable and I don't know why I'm agreeing with this. It's just a small dent but I am keeping this car for, forever. I don't want it to be dented. But no, it's fine we don't need to call the police.

My head is pounding, I drive home and as I pull in the driveway I feel so incredibly stupid I can barely walk. I'm thinking I should just stay home on Thursdays.

The best thing is, at 5:30 we're going to a birthday party for one of our favorite little girls at one of our (my) least favorite places on earth: Chuck E. Cheese. My head is still pounding and this is the Chuck E. Cheese which does not serve beer. When we pull into the parking lot it looks awfully crowded for a Thursday evening. It's a school fundraiser night! Which means it's even more like Hell On Earth than normal. Like HOE210: Advanced Hell (prerequisite: HOE101).

To say I was in a bad mood was an understatement. I'm sure my friends love when they see me and the first thing out of my mouth is, "BLAH BLAH BLAH MY LIFE SUCKS!!!!" (I know my therapist loves it.)

But then something happened.

As I sat having epileptic seizures from all the flashing lights and the music and the screaming children: I saw the guy dressed as Chuck E Cheese.

There he was, crouched down to greet all the kids, all the wired, hyper children coated in pizza grease. It must be hot in that full fur outfit, I thought, because it's kind of warm not in a full fur suit what with all the manic energy in this room.

And I watched him crouched down with kids lurching themselves at him and he almost fell over. Then I watched my friend's little girl trying to shove her tickets in Chuck E Cheese's mouth, thinking he was a ride? And the arms on his costume were too short so he couldn't block the tickets from being rammed into his mouth.

I watched him struggle and I thought, with a sinister laugh, "That guy hates his life way more than I will ever hate mine."

And for a moment, I felt a lot better.

Why are W and Q so close on the keyboard?

I promised myself this would be a better week than the last one. We spent the weekend seeing fun people, some of them we even saw twice. We put our house back together and generally got organized. I wanted to wait until the bathroom was entirely finished to even attempt to reassemble the house, but since we used TrafficMaster Stainproof Grout, I'm starting to think the bathroom will never really be done.

Last week a huge part of my lacklustre mood was specifically caused by the thin coating of dust covering my house and my soul. So it felt good to clear things out and put furniture back in place and get rid of the mammoth hairballs tumbling across the floor. Nothing says, "Today is going to be a good day" like hairballs passing you in the morning.

Logan also put the bathroom door back up so that one might use the bathroom without the constant threat of uninvited and often unintended spectators. "Oh, I didn't know you were in here. Sorry."

The biggest reason we got the house clean though were our dinner plans with friends and I've decided this is likely the best way to keep a fire lit under Logan to complete this project: Invite friends over at two week intervals. We can live with filth and our toiletries on the kitchen counter and barely even notice it after a while, but your filth looks a lot different through outsider's eyes. We've got another dinner planned for the last weekend in September and then we'll host Family Pizza Night with my playgroup (which is now not to so much a playgroup but a warm and comfortable hug to run to as I face the prospect of being more involved at the elementary school). So that puts us at the last weekend in October. Do you want to come for dinner? Maybe we'll even have an exhaust fan by then!

So yes, Sunday saw me optimistic and hopeful for a good week. A better week than the last one with the bad birthday and follow-up self image crisis and the shattered rear view mirror and the sick kid home from school. For about 12 hours, it all looked so promising.

Then I woke up at 3, 4 and 6 am with a runny nose and burning painful throat and I spent all morning willing the throbbing headache to go away. I managed to get Max to school and myself to the coffee shop.

I sat at the coffee shop uploading all the hat pictures you sent me and trying to be sure I didn't miss anyone's hats. Then, as I finished, I hit ctrl+q instead of ctrl+w to shut an upload image window and voila! Over half my post was gone.

All the joy drained from my life.

But now it's 9:03pm and I just took a glorious dose of Nyquil and tomorrow will be better.

Tomorrow will be better.

PS: This has been bothering me for a while but I didn't know how to bring it up. It's just that I took this picture of Max back in July that makes him look a little, I don't know, full of 'wonderment' let's say. And so I added this note and Logan and I laughed about it for almost an hour. To this day, Logan will call out, (with a British accent) "I want to touch the fairy daddy!", from the other room and it sends me into at the very least a hearty giggle every time.

And people have looked at this picture but no one thought it was funny. So maybe it's not funny but I'd really like it if you looked again and read the little note with a British accent and see if that makes it any funnier.

If anything happens to me...talk to Home Depot.

I had a bad day yesterday. A day where I exchanged lots of emails with friends and through those emails things got clearer. I'm feeling a lot better but still not perfect and still under a bit of pressure. I didn't realize how much pressure until I was driving to the gym and the rear window my car exploded. 

I'd just dropped Max off and was on my way to the gym, because part of my plan to feel better and release this pressure is to make more time for myself. On the way my phone rang but I didn't pick it up in time. When I heard there was a message I called my voice mail and passed by the street 'The House' is on. I thought it might perk my spirits to drive by and make sure it's still waiting for us.

As I turned onto the street, I heard the secretary at Maddie's school telling me Madison wasn't feeling well and wanted to come home. Before I could even react to the annoyingness which is my daughter faking illness so she doesn't have to stay at school, I heard this horrible explosion and my rear window shattered.

So maybe I exploded the window with my irritation a la Carrie. Look at the pictures, doesn't it look like the glass is bowing out?

I mean, I'm annoyed that Maddie's sitting next to me on the sofa letting out well-placed faux moans, but I wasn't so mad I wanted the window of my car to explode all over the street.

I didn't really know what to do so I called the police, I have the non-emergency number programmed in my phone thanks to my loud neighbor Ed and his shrill girlfriend. He came and commented on the way all the glass is missing around the edge and we don't really know what happened.

There was no branch or stone we could find. I dropped a lot of glass on the street when it happened. There's a lot in the car as well. We didn't thoroughly search the car, for fear of dropping more glass, but since there was glass sprayed as far as the middle of the car, the officer suggested I take everything out when we clean it and look for a BB. I don't remember if anyone was behind me or who was passing me when it happened because I was on the phone getting ready to say, "What the hell Madison!"

When I called Logan to tell him what happened I said, "The policeman asked me if I had any enemies and so I told him, 'Well, TrafficMaster Stainproof Grout is pretty pissed off at me.'"

And Logan said, "Seriously? He asked you if you have any enemies? What the fuck?"

And I said, "No, not really. But I wish he did."

So either I've become Carrie or God is trying to tell me not to move to The House or TrafficMaster is out for vengeance. These are the only possible answers. Okay, or maybe it's the Presbyterians.
 

Still Bershon after all these years...

About a couple years ago Sarah Brown wrote about Bershon, which you've heard about at this point because Heather's hair demonstrated Bershon earlier this week. Sarah started a Bershon pool at Flickr and I resisted looking for pictures to contribute because it seems every time I venture into our attic I end up really sad.

This is because even though there are pictures from my childhood in the attic which would lead you to believe my life was pretty normal, I know better.

You think, look at that cute smiling baby! And I think, "She has no idea how totally screwed over by life she's going to be."

You think, 'Look at that little girl with her dad, how sweet.' And I think, "I think he's drunk here."

We both look at this picture and want to pinch my little cheeks. But then I want to grab this little girl and save her from what's coming.

Which is pretty much a totally depressing way to look at your history and not just because you become your very own Debbie Downer. It's also depressing because it would be nice to look back with a little more happiness in your heart.

I looked though because I remembered this one picture of my friend Molly and I, who is also pictured above, when we were 12 and 13-ish. Her parents invited me on a trip down the east coast and her father was really annoying. Not really but it seemed that way.

He seemed so annoying that I actually secretly flipped him off while he took my picture. And in my book, there's nothing more Bershon than that. Also, if you were wondering what Madison will look like when she's all Bershon at 13, here you go:

At the same time, some of the pictures in my attic make me really happy.

Eating babies is voluntary

Therapy has drained me of my will to write. But you may find it interesting to note that even though I'm taking out long put away issues and examining them again and that I'm sad a lot of the time when I think about these issues: I still feel like looking at all of this again is part of the puzzle.

But enough about that. Let's talk about how summer is going. Last year I talked about how much I hated my children as early as June 30. In 2004 we made it to July 30 without me wanting to tear them limb from limb.

What made the difference? It's not medication because this year I'm not on medication. It's also not as much Heavenly Playgroup because everyone's been running in 20 different directions this summer.

It might be the fact that I've spent nearly $500 (so far) on summer activities for the kids. Plus I've found a young babysitter (not a nanny) to come over once or twice a week.

When I mention she might be coming over Max says, "WOO Hooo!" and, since she's a little shy, I ask Max, "What do you like about Sarah*?" He says, "Uhm, I like how she wears braces." One for the baby book: 'Baby's First Fetish!'
*Sarah's not her name.

Last year I sent the kids to a camp at the Detroit Zoo. This year I tried but they refused to charge and enroll the kids. I faxed my registration and they never charged me. So I called....SIX times....to see if they'd missed us or didn't charge until the class started. The ONE SINGLE person who knew how to handle this question was ALWAYS not there. I was transferred across the entire zoo phone network to figure this simple issue out. After the last call I said, 'Forget it.'

Dear Detroit Zoo, I know you're struggling but I wanted to give you $250 and you refused to take it. I'm not a business type, but refusing to take money from patrons seems like bad business. I mean, at least it does to me. Maybe I don't understand these things.

Last year I also sent the kids to Vacation Bible School. Vacation Bible School marked the only time in my life of evil (just ask my in-laws) where I appreciated what God could give. God gives quiet time. God is good. God wants my kids to spend the hours of 9 to noon learning about His greatness while I do other things.

This year the Presbyterians aren't so much showing me God's love. They've decided you have to volunteer if you want to send your children to be indoctrinated in their religion. Isn't it enough I give them impressionable brains to mold in their ideals? Can't they just eat their babies by the light of the moon and call it a day?

It's not even the volunteering which bothers me. It's the fact that it's a requirement for attendance only the Presbyterians are too polite to come out and say, "If you want to use our church for the free time you stand to gain, you're going to have to volunteer to make it happen."

They say things like, "How Will You Volunteer?" Instead of "Can you volunteer?" and think that's 'clear' enough.

Even the letter we got in the mail says, "There will be one table for families who have already registered their children and have expressed their volunteer preference. The other table is for families who need to register."

None of this screams: "Volunteer or don't come."

Do they realize this is America? Subtlety is for Europeans.

I only know volunteering is an attendance requirement because of an inside source.

I'm happy to volunteer but I've got a plane heading to California and I intend to be on it and no Presbyterian is going to keep me away.

As an aside, do you want a Vox invite? Unless we share a last name, then don't even ask. Gone!

Projection

Father's Day is always a little hard for me and this year, with the Quivering Lip Syndrome, it's even harder. But a margarita, a really inappropriate t-shirt and a family outing fixed that up pretty well.

Until we heard some very loud shouting.

At first I thought it must be a vagrant screaming, because this often happens in Royal Oak, so I ignored it. But then he started screaming again and I looked across the street and saw a man yelling at a girl who looked about 12 or 13.

She'd just come out of the Pita Stop or whatever it's called and this man was berating her. At first it looked as if she wasn't listening to him, or was trying to avoid eye contact. I started to worry it wasn't her father or anyone she knew.

Soon everyone on the street and in our little street side eating area was watching this man screaming at the top of his lungs at the girl and I could now see her face was wet and red and she was sobbing.

I couldn't help it, I started to cry and to shake and I said a little too loudly, "That fucking asshole."

Then he was done screaming and stormed off and the girl chased behind him, trying to keep up.

We talked about what happened at the table because I was visibly upset by the whole thing. I told Maddie I was angry, that no one, even a grown up, has a right to treat another person like that.

She said, "We should tell the mayor."

I wish that would help.

All afternoon I kept thinking of all the great fathers I know. I can think of 32 people off the top of my head who I'd be thrilled to call 'dad' and how unfair it is so many of us get the shittiest fathers one could imagine. I kept thinking about that girl being humiliated on the sidewalk with her asshole of a father screaming at her for some offense which could not possibly have been worth shaming her so cruelly.

I kept thinking how if he's willing to treat her like that in public, can you imagine what it's like at home? I can't because I've already spent the last 8 hours feeling nauseated about it.

I wish I'd said something. I wish there was something to say.

I wish everyone could have a happy father's day.

"But we were bored."

Direct quote from Madison and Max at 8:31am on the very first day of summer vacation.

No jury will convict me.

Here's the 'funny' you've requested:

My inbox this morning:
"Melissa, go fuck yourself, get some therapy and stop polluting the world with your blogging."

This does not sting as being told I'm fat and ugly has in the past, nonetheless it contributes to my foul attitude.

Please don't write me to tell my blog sucks and all I am is angry and why don't I write funny things?

I'll tell you why I don't write funny things: because things just aren't all that funny to me right now.

Once you spend 4-7 hours a day scanning news feed after news feed while trying to write 5.6 posts a day, let me know how funny you feel. Because I feel funny, just not funny in a 'ha-ha' type of way. In a more "Wow, this is wearing me out" kind of way. Funny!

I don't need anyone to tell me how angry my site is and how it's fallen apart because I actually know, I'm trying to come up with ways to remedy that, but for now I'm working hard to contribute to my family's finances and things aren't funny so you'll just have to go to one of the many other funny places on the internet.

You don't even have to let me know you're gone.

Conversely, you can see our pictures from our outing to Rochester, Michigan. I grew up in a town called Birmingham, Michigan. Birmingham is about 20 minutes from Rochester. I did not know Rochester existed until my 20's when Logan sublet an apartment there.

That is the phenomenon I like to call 'The Bubble' and it is the ability of many Birminghamites to live within their town and completely forget there are other nice places outside the bubble they may like almost as much as Birmingham.

 

The Suburban Hootenanny.

I hate living here.

Have I made that clear? I have a very long post in progress about different neighborhoods I've lived in and what I hated about them. (Here's a preview: "The Heavy Walkers in 13D".)

What I hate the most about spring is the music my neighbors seem to think I've been missing all winter. They think it's appropriate, since it's spring and the windows are open, to play their music for me. I've talked about them before here.

You might think I'm a huge fan of throbbing bass.
Or flute concertos.
Or rag time piano.

But I'm not. And even if I was, I'm never a fan of being forced to listen to anyone else's musical stylings.

Today, my neighbors started with their strolling guitar garbage and then the other neighbor came home and began playing the piano.

And so I put our iPod into the window facing their homes and began blaring my favorite music. I wish I'd had this cd. Oh God I need it.

All of that I know was amusing enough for you, but it gets better.

The music I chose to play was very loud. I thought it was loud when I went outside with the kids, but once I got out there I could barely hear it. Which should give you an indication of how loud my neighbors insist on 'Rocking Out' with their clarinets/throbbing basses/flutes/drums/acoustic guitars.

I had my music so loud the flute neighbor came over, utterly shocked at how loud the music was. He could barely hear his flute.

I almost started to cry with laughter, maniacal laughter.

I replied, "Oh, I'm sorry is it bothering you? I find it so soothing." (which is what he said to me when I asked him to turn down his flute music or shut his house up at 11pm last summer. I then explained, I thought it was 'Music Sharing Time'.

I mean since I was being forced to "enjoy" his music, I thought maybe he wanted to be forced to enjoy mine? Makes sense, no?

In other news: Tonight I'm going to celebrate a friend's birthday and the timing could not be better. I need this night out. Badly. Tomorrow I have other plans in the afternoon, which one of you are responsible for and I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

Instead of being happy I feel like crying because I continue to fall behind my monthly quota at the Flog.

Anxiety is not our friend.

Halt

If you have anymore bad news for me (I'm looking squarely at you, house/Internet/Gary/checkbook) please save it for at least another week. I'm at my limit and at least two weeks from PMS and didn't the full moon just happen? Enough.

Thank you so much.

Going Forward

Before we all (read = before I) go crazy: The plumber said other things which will make us all feel better. (Guys, paypal was for last year, this year we can take on these things with a tiny bit of grace.)

The plumber told us that to bypass the broken spot underneath our addition, it would cost $6,000.00. After that we'd see if there were more broken spots in our pipes. At that point, it would cost $12,000. Oh sweet Jesus.

But he also said, "I don't know when the broken pipe will actually collapse. Could be tomorrow, could be 10 years from now."

He suggested we have the $80 drain snake each year. The problem is, if we want to sell this house we have to tell the new potential owners about this problem. Which, in essence, means we're never leaving this shit hole.

Remind me to tell you what exactly I don't like about living here.

Also Logan leaves for Portland, Oregon tomorrow. If you are in possession of Man Saving Panties I suggest you don them in preparation for his arrival.

May God be with you Panty Wearing Women Of Portland.

Wow. Just Wow.

A pipe under the addition appears to be the problem.

$6,000 - $12,000

My life is so fucking awesome.

The only thing that could make this better is if I found out our house has anal glands in need of expression.

Canada, oh, Canada.

Last month, God proved he loves me and I went to Antsterdam. (Those are related items.)

Before I could go to Hamsterdam I had to stop in Canada.

I have a long history of anthromorphizing Canada. It's not just me it's my sister too. She's the one who said during the big black out of 2003, when some fireworks went off in a northernly direction: "Oh God, they blew up Canada. Oh our gentle brother to the north....no, not Canada!!!!!"

This outburst may have involved herbs, or maybe not, I'm not sure. All I know is it wasn't the first time I spoke to Canada as if it was an entity and not just a country full of many specific people. I don't just pick on Canada either, I've also admonished Ohio for throwing all those beer bottles into Lake Eerie and making a mess for Canada to pick up.

I like to think of Canada as a little brother I give a wedgie to every once in a while.

On my way to AntsAreInTheJam, bad things happened to me in Toronto. At Pearson specifically.

I may have known Canada was not on my side when I boarded a very small plane on the actual tarmack in Detroit, this just didn't seem safe. But was that Canada's fault? Maybe Canada wanted me to board the plane from a normal tunnel from the exit in the airport and Canada just couldn't work that out. I was willing to give Canada the benefit of the doubt.

The flight was fine but there were 30 empty seats in our 60 seat plane and the man sitting next to me refused to move. Yes, I know I could have moved but I was in the window seat and had my huge bags, I was a sherpa honestly, with me to pummel the people around me. Still, the guy next to me wouldn't move to any of the other 18 entirely free rows in the plane, I counted them all.

This was my first impression of Canada, and I wondered, does Canada think I'll be insulted if someone gets up and moves away from me during a flight? Is this what Canada does? Likes to stick to the rules? I never knew this about Canada, but okay fine, we can snuggle up in this tiny plane when there's lots of room to stretch out all over.

Once I arrived in Toronto I realized quickly: these people aren't Canadian....they're French. The french are rude. Everyone was speaking english, but I felt confused, disoriented by all the french signs around. I honestly felt mentally disabled and having to catch a bus from the tiniest airport terminal ever to the regular terminal didn't help. This never happened to me in America.

I had a very long layover in this place they call "Canada" but thought I would get myself checked in for my KLM flight so that I could spend the rest of the afternoon reading, writing and soaking in Canada in the terminal.

In Detroit no matter when you arrive for a flight you just walk up to the counter and you check in. At KLM you walk up and no one's there and they don't arrive for another hour for work. Canada was starting to seem really odd to me.

While waiting for the check-in counter to open, I cleared out my purse. I grabbed the envelope my first ticket had been in and thought, "I don't need this! I'm here and I'm going to Amsterdam!" So I threw it away.

What I forgot is that on the back of that envelope was my luggage claim ticket. This is important because for the next 4.5 hours, Canada made me travel to all three terminals several times each to try and find the missing luggage claim number.

Oh Canada how I grew to hate you in those 4.5 hours. You might say, 'But Melissa, you were the asshole who threw away your luggage claim number. Not Canada."

Or maybe you'll say, "But Melissa, Canada didn't send you on a wild goose chase, very specific people did."

I wasn't angry with Canada for the first two hours of the wild goose chase. I wasn't angry in hour three, I was just angry at myself for being so stupid. In fact I wasn't even that angry until the last half hour of the ordeal. At that point I wanted to choke and punch Canada.

I waited in, I am not exaggerating, 18 different lines in 4.5 hours. I waited in lines for shuttles to different terminals. I waited in lines which were wrong lines but I didn't know. I was told I needed to go to terminal 3. At terminal 3, they said go to terminal 2. At terminal 2 they couldn't believe terminal 3 would tell me to go to 2, you have to go to terminal 3. No, they couldn't just call that desk and ask them for the number for me. I guess the phones in Canada are different, in that they don't connect to each other.

Each time I explained my predicament Canada acted like it didn't speak English and had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

"I threw away my luggage claim ticket accidentally. I need the claim number so KLM will be able to track my luggage."

Canada? Why does that confuse you?

The precise moment I wanted to murder Canada came at the United counter, in hour 4 of this ordeal. You see I'd taken an Air Canada flight but duh! It originated in Detroit and United runs those flights so obviously that's where I needed to go all along. Okay fine Canada, these are the types of things you may have mentioned the first time I was at terminal 2 or maybe when I was at the first, second or fifth Air Canada desk. But okay, you're Canada maybe I don't know how you work.

I wait in line for another 17 minutes and finally get my turn. I explain my situation to a snarling man with fangs and excessive facial hair (he was actually a fairly well groomed gay man) and I hadn't even started crying yet, though the panic was starting to rise in my throat.

He looked confused and said, "Oh no, I can't print that number for you. No. No I can't do it." (I think he may have said 'No' four more times just to be sure I heard how serious he was about not helping me. No.)

I have never wanted to bite a human being before. I've wanted to spank someone, I've wanted to choke someone. I've wanted to slap someone across the face. I control those urges of course, but never before have I wanted to actually put my teeth on another person's flesh.

I wanted to bite that man. I wanted to bite him right through his bones and when he asked me to stop I wanted to say, "Oh no. No nononononono I can't do that for you! No. No. No."

I started to cry at that point because when I asked him where I needed to go to get the number he pointed to another Air Canada line which was winding around and would take me at least another 30 minutes to get through.

At that point I decided to speak to someone at the first class desk even though I was clearly not a first class passenger, because first class passengers have nothing to cry about. They don't even need luggage claim tickets, they get a midget who carries their luggage gingerly from plane to plane.

I told her my story and she was mostly kind but also annoyed and she made some calls and looked some things up and then, would you like to know what she did?

She stood up, walked back over to the snarling fanged gay man and GOT THE GOD DAMNED NUMBER FROM HIM. Let that soak in for a minute, okay?

So after 4.5 hours I have the stupid number and am checked into my flight. I get through security and decide to buy a magazine to read while I wait for my flight. But it got better because then Canada stole my money.

I didn't think I had exact change when she gave me the total so I handed over a ten. She reminded me that I'd get back Canadian money. I said, "Oh, okay." and looked at my wallet a little closer. Surprise! There was the exact change I needed. So I said .5 seconds after she reminded me about the change issue, "Wait, I have the exact change."

Keep in mind she's handed nothing to me and hasn't even put my ten in her register yet.

She then turned into a snarling medusa-like creature with snakes all over her head and said, "Sorry. In Canada we steal your money too," and refused to give me back my money. So I wouldn't be stuck with a bunch of Canadian money I'd have to pay to have transferred back to US funds.

Fine. Thank you Canada. It's now 5pm and I have so far had a Luna bar to eat all day. I go find a place to have a very unsatisfying burger and a mildly satisfying beer. I open my laptop thinking at least I can now check my email, thinking I'll pay whatever it costs to connect to the internet in Canada. I don't care.

But Canada, it was then that you pushed just one step too far. There is no wireless internet access at your airport and that is unforgiveable.

Canada, I know you didn't do all this to me, I know. It's just that I always thought it was national law that everyone in Canada be as nice as this Canadian? I feel disillusioned.

I'm sure in time I'll be able to move on. I'm sure I'll once again remember all the things I love about Canada. But right now, I still kind of want to bite you.

Hard.

When I arrived in Amsterdam I kissed Alice on the lips and said, "I'm so happy you aren't Canadian."

Updated to add: Hey hey hey....I don't really hate Canada (but I do hate Pearson Airport) and I don't want my comments to turn into a serious Canada bash-fest. So tread lightly guys.

Something different.

Why is it every time I go shopping I tell myself, 'This time you're not going to buy the same old boring things."

Then I walk out of the store with a zip up cardigan and a long sleeve t-shirt.

These are not the same old boring things though. These are new boring things.

I wanted to go shopping because tonight we're going out to celebrate our friend Joe's birthday. I've mentioned Joe and Cari before and you may remember they're stylish. Very, very stylish. In fact Cari is so stylish, she writes about it for Lucky Magazine and has a syndicated column too. She also works as a stylist which means she makes sure people look nice when they have their picture taken.

Of course, Cari is dealing with models who are already beautiful, they don't need her help. I do.

I've been trying to figure out what it is I want to wear, which I can also afford and looks good on my expanded figure. One of the problems is I have zero imagination when it comes to dressing myself. I tried looking at some of the pictures Cari's styled, but I don't know, this seems like a bit much for dinner out with friends.

So I head into Nordstrom with enthusiasm and hope and I walk out with a cardigan sweater and a long sleeve t shirt and a sense of impending doom as I face my sparse and boring closet to get ready to go out tonight.

I don't want to be a frumpy stay at home mother, but it seems I'm doomed.

Nothing says Christmas like a new sofa and medication withdrawal

I know Logan's really sensitive and well groomed. I know he's good at cooking and really great with the laundry.

But I'm just not sure I can deal with Lifetime Movies being introduced into our marriage. Tonight he's bound and determined to watch this horrifying movie. No matter how many times I ask him why? No matter how many times I question his sexuality.

It's as if he's living in another world. A world where movies where a disfigured man and Janine Turner go ice skating giggling like a pair of turds is perfectly normal. Not just normal...it's compelling.

This is not helping my attempt to get off Lexapro. Yes, it's been a long run, longer than I'd intended. But it's time to try to go it alone. When I began taking the medication I was anxious and depressed.

I was anxious about specific issues, I'm not allowed to discuss. (No not them.) I was depressed so badly by the end of that one summer. Those issues I can't speak of have been resolved and summer is far off and besides that, last summer was not nearly as painful as the one where I nearly ate my children alive. So why have I stayed on it? I've been afraid I'll end up depressed again. I've been afraid  of the withdrawal. But there are side effects I'm not willing to live with anymore.

The biggest being the weight. The God Damned weight. The weight has led me to being so much more depressed than the depression. I can't bear to look at myself anymore. I can barely stand to put clothes on in the morning because I hate how they look on me.

For many years I had an eating disorder and one of the weirdest parts about being fat is how when I was thin as a rail I felt fat. Now that I really am fat, I find myself trying to use the old self talk I had to use to keep myself from starving myself.

"You're fine. You are not fat, you just see yourself fat. If you don't eat it will only get worse. You'll look fatter and fatter in your head."

So now I find myself loathing my body and pretty much everything about myself and I try to calm that hateful voice by telling myself it isn't that bad. You just see yourself as fat.

But you know what? I really am fat. Maybe not by your standards but I keep gaining and gaining at an incredibly rapid pace. It makes no sense. So I need to try to go off the drugs. I need to take better care of my body.

I'm torn because this is really hard. Much harder than I had ever imagined. Harder even than watching my husband intently watching a gaybo Lifetime movie.

It makes me question my strong belief in chemicals. I'm not going to turn Tom Cruise, but after my Christmas Eve afternoon where I wanted to throw up and die. Where the shocks were pounding through my head and out my arms. I started to doubt the value of medication which does this to people so that they can never get off it.

But then I truly did need it. I had tried running to avoid the medication. I'd tried to eat healthier and get enough sleep but I couldn't shake the anxiety and the depression on my own.

But I guess that's what I've taken from this withdrawal and the advice I'd share since the internet loves advice!

Try all available options before taking SSRI's. They did help me through, and probably will help me in other rough times, but there's something not quite right when the withdrawal is so difficult.

So keep me in mind as I split my pills and drink lots of water and take my magnesium. Also pray for Logan. It can't be good for him to watch Lifetime movies.

Death takes odd forms.

You may not be aware of this but the gates of hell are actually located inside the Wal-Mart in Troy across from the Troy Motor Mall.

I was unaware of this as well until Thursday night, on our way out to dinner with friends, we stopped there to find a specific toy Madison requested which is sold out in many stores (even Wal-Mart).

Sometimes Logan and I like to relay our nightmares to each other. "Last night I had this dream a plane crashed into our house."

At Wal-Mart on Thursday night as we faced masses of the most base humanity, the LCD's of the world (Lowest Common Denominator), I said, "I had a dream we were at this one store three days before Christmas and there were people every where and they were pushing and shoving and taking 40 items to the self scan line. Wait......we're living my nightmare."

Wal-Mart three days before Christmas is death.

As of yesterday at 11:43am, I was finished with my shopping. At 12:47am in the wee hours of December 24th, I'd completed my wrapping.

As much as I'd like to recommend shoving all your holidays into a 5 day period of shopping, baking (cookies at 9:45pm last night), cleaning, decorating....I'd say you probably want to spread things out and avoid Wal-Mart all together.

Plan accordingly.

Analyzing my shitty mood:

Two years ago, when Maddie was nearly five and Max was two and a half years old, Halloween didn't go very well.

We went to three houses and at the third, you won't believe what happened. There were people actual people...SITTING ON THEIR PORCH handing out candy. For some reason these people, who were not wearing costumes btw, were really scary. So trick or treating ended in tears and we went back home.

Last year, we trick or treated again and it was big fun. The kids were thrilled and brave in the face of people sitting on their porches! We thought we'd crossed the line and now our kids were normal and enjoyed things kids enjoy. Like Trick or Fucking Treating.

What is not to like about trick or treating?

This is what I would like to know. My kids can't seem to tell me but last night we made it to four houses and half those houses found Max crying and Madison hiding behind me at the end of the walkways to homes where people were handing out candy.

I am a fairly empathetic soul when it comes to dealing with my children and their various neurosis. I'm neurotic, I have a rather large catalog of all my neurosis on this website, so I understand. But sometimes the things that freak my kids out, make me want to shake them.

Yes, I know that's so mean....but last night after tears in the walkways of houses because people were actually handing out candy....I really wanted to shake my kids. I walked home in silence, gritting my teeth and holding back tears.

Every kid has wierd things they do which drive parents crazy right? It seems though, my kids have so many things. They're so incredibly sensitive and sometimes those sensitivities translate into a form of psychosis which makes it impossible for me to be patient and loving and empathetic.

I hate when I am not patient and loving. I hate who I am as a mother and I wonder if my lack of patience and love has created these bizarre neurosis in my children. What have I done wrong? How do I have children who are afraid of people?

The next question is, "Who the hell cares if my kids go trick or treating?"

As I sobbed last night I asked myself that. I just want to be normal I guess? I want to go trick or treating with my kids and my husband and see them be happy and excited.

It's also not about trick or treating really. I guess I wonder why my kids are so afraid of people. What did I do to make them so afraid and timid in their world?

It upsets me that I hate this neighborhood so much. As a child I knew every person on my block, there was nothing to be afraid of since I knew all the people I got my candy from. We've lived here for 7.5 years and we know nearly no one and frankly, have no desire to know anyone.

So maybe that's why I woke up in such a foul mood.

Bad Things Keep Happening.

Last night when I picked up the pizza for the kids I dropped my extra change in their 'Hurricane Katrina Relief" jar.

The manager said, "We're going to have to change the label to the next tragedy..."

That made me cry in the car, because it's true, the bad things keep happening.

Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight. Eight plus eight is death.

I have some really big issues to work through lately. I've been thinking a lot about why the restrictions on my own photos sends me careening with anger and a suffocating and often out of proportion need to protect my right to do as I please.

I'm also debating pulling Madison out of her school because I'm not sure it's the best place for her but rather the closest place. There are 28 students in her class right now and even though that sounds like a lot, to actually be in the classroom it's just overwhelming. Madison is much like me in that she is easily overstimulated. I was in the class for less than 10 minutes and felt stressed with the talking 28 children can do. The issue of taking her to a school in a more affluent neighborhood (we have schools of choice around us) brings out several other issues of money and class and the insecurities which come from growing up poor surrounded by awe inspiring privilege in Birmingham.

I've talked before about my weight issues. I feel so tired of thinking about it and I try to tell myself that everytime I sink this low into a self loathing place about my body I pull myself out and get to an okay place. I've done it before, and I know I'll do it again. I keep ballooning higher and higher each time I let myself off the exercise wagon though. I don't want to do this anymore and I really don't want to care anymore.

I've never been happy with my body. When I was a size 4, I wanted to be a 2. When I was a size 8, I wanted to be a 6 and so on meaning I've never ever been happy where I am. I've always realized after the fact, that a size 8 was actually a good weight to be. Why was I hurting myself? Why couldn't I ever be happy? Why is it I can look at the women in my life and not even register their body size as anything more than a passing glance. But for me, my body size is who I am. I really don't have any answer to those questions. Other than it's how I've always felt about my body and sometimes that is so incredibly depressing.

My husband, who is wonderfully loving in so many ways, has not been exactly supportive of me and the changes my body has faced in the last 12 years since we met, married and had two children. He thought I was "letting myself go" when I was a size 8, rather than the size 4 or 6 I was at twenty. When that happened there were other problems in our marriage and I've mentioned them in vague terms before because although I tend to believe talking about things gives away their power, Logan does not believe that same thing. So it's not just my story to tell.

But when he told me I was letting myself go because I wore a size 8, it stung so much I thought I might collapse with the weight of it. It made me so angry I knew I was deliberately not watching what I ate and not working out as a giant fuck you. But then a year or so later I got uncomfortable in my own skin and had gained 10-15 pounds more than I was comfortable with.

What I've realized this last week is that I am not uncomfortable in my body because Logan says asshat things like, "Oh honey, you're not ugly." Leaving out the 'fat' part of my heartache. I'm simply uncomfortable in my skin when I am this weight. There is nothing Logan could say to change that, my body is making me unhappy and I don't know how to gain control again. He can't make me feel better about being fat, he could however, not make me feel worse. He could do that by loving me no matter what my size. By truly not caring if I have 20 extra pounds on me. It seems, he's not able to do that. And I am not able to respect his spending four hours on a Saturday running until his toenails fall off. Maybe we're even. I don't know.

He offered to be my 'coach' in my weight loss effort and I nearly shot him in the face. There could be nothing worse than him having an excuse to tell me what to do and what not to do to regain control over this body I can't seem to live with.

I find myself recently facing a kind of body dysmorphic issue I had in high school when I believed, in spite of what the scale said, I was fat. So I ate sticks of chewing gum all day and brussle sprouts with Molly Mc Butter on them for an after school snack.

I truly don't know what I look like. I live in Michigan where a lot of people are overweight, so when we're out I try to compare myself to other overweight people. To see where I fit, what I look like from the outside because I feel absolutely mammoth and disgusting on the inside. I meet someone, usually another mother, and I think 'She has a couple extra pounds on her and she look absolutely fine. I wonder what size she wears.' I want to grab her pants and peek at the tag, just so I have a reference point. I stand in line at Old Navy, buying the next bigger size in jeans, because the jeans which fit me in June when I put them away for the season, no longer fit. I try to spy the sizes the people around me are buying....so I'll know if I look like her or maybe her.

I find myself not wanting to get dressed in the morning because when you've gained weight you lose a lot of clothes and you don't want to see how horrible you look in things. I find myself avoiding actually moving because I hate to feel my body around me. I try not to look down at myself when I'm sitting. I sit on a chair rather than my bed to write because I hate feeling my skin touching itself in odd places I'm not used to.

I don't know how to dress this body I have now. I'm stuffing myself into clothes which used to fit just right and now only accentuate how fat I am. I'm sitting at the library across from a very skinny woman and I'm thinking about how fat I am.

I used to think about money all the time. I still think about money a lot. I go to playgroup with my girlfriends and I talk about money and then I talk about weight and how I don't want to exercise and I want to drink and I want to eat what I want. I'm becoming exceedingly tiresome, even for myself.

A friend said to me that she just never wants to be 'that mom'. The mom who is overweight but even worse doesn't care for herself. She wears unflattering jeans which accentuate her mom shaped ass and she wears kitty sweatshirts from 20 years ago because, why bother buying nice things for herself?

When she said that I flashed to the pair of pants I bought last month to fit around my expanding body. I cried when I bought them and I cry every morning when I put them on because they give me Mom Ass and there's no way around it: I have Mom Ass and I don't seem willing to do what it takes to not have Mom Ass.

That's the self loathing I suppose. I know what I need to do and I just can not seem to control myself. Maybe that's the problem.....

When I was young I struggled with eating disorders. I felt hunger as power and thinness as beauty. I didn't feel beautiful and I felt powerless. So food, and denying myself, became both those things I needed. I fear, now that I'm huger than I ever believed possible, that I am never going to be able to get control of myself again.

I tried to run. I ran a 5K and I felt powerful for struggling through and making it happen. But I never enjoyed running. I enjoyed punishing myself for being so weak. For being so fat. I ran because I didn't want to change much of the way I ate or drank and I didn't want to do a lot of exercising. 30 minutes, three times a week was the only goal that seemed palatable to me. It still does. Unfortunately, I eat and drink too much to get weight loss results from walking three times a week for thirty minutes.

At some point it just stopped being worth it to run until I spent the rest of the day with intestinal unrest. Maybe I started to like my body after I lost 15 pounds and I didn't hate myself so much that I had to hurt myself 3 times a week running. I stopped punishing myself.

Logan has said he takes that as an insult in a way. That having a healthy and sexy body isn't worth it to me anymore. Why wouldn't I want to be the best I could be? Why don't I want to bring my best self to our relationship?

Why don't I? I guess because I don't think it should matter all that much. I know we live in a world where beauty and body image go together. But I'm still the person he loves, the person who emotionally grows and changes over the years and who grows with him. Why does it matter to him if I'm a size 6 or a size 12?

Unfortunately it's still not as simple as that because he is not the only reason I am upset with myself. I'm upset at myself for letting things plummet this low and whining about it incessantly but never being able to get control over myself. Why the hell does it matter to me if I'm a size 6 or a 12? Why does it matter this much that I end up hating myself so deeply?

I hate writing with questions because it opens me to advice I don't want. It opens me to often painful judgement.

And here's another secret: Sometimes I think I lay my soul out here because the nasty things people say to me ease the nasty voices in my own head. If other people are cruel to me I can ease up on myself.

I don't know how true this is, it's just a theory I'm playing with right now.

[**Update: It's important to note that Logan has apologized to me and understands that his feelings about my weight are more his issues than mine. I wrote about them because it still hurts and isn't helpful, but it's not entirely fair for me to continue to pummel him with his mistake.]

Secrets

This is a secret:

Sometimes I hope I'll run hard enough to break my ankle so that I never have to run again.

Even worse, sometimes I hope Logan breaks his ankle, even though running is the one thing he has control over in his life. Even though training for the marathon has filled the last 8 weeks and having to stop would kill him.

Even so, I still sometimes hope he breaks his ankle so that running is no longer something which rules our family life. So that maybe he would stop judging me because I don't have the same interest in running and keeping my body in the same condition is was before we were married.

If I had the energy to send a post card to Post Secret I would. Instead I'm just laying it here.

Things to not say to me, guess why!

"It's just that I'm feeling so fat and ugly, I can't shake it and it's incredibly depressing."

"Babe, you're not ugly."

In the end what I really want to say is, I'm in love with Barack Obama

I'm not allowing comments on this post and I'm turning off comments on the one before it. I really don't want this to be a political debate because I do understand my view of the world is not 'the right' one but it is mine and there is nothing you can say to change my mind. I don't want to argue about Bush's fitness as a president or a world leader. I don't want to argue about our government. I realize there are several ways to interpret the things which have happened and will continue to happen. I don't want to argue with you about it.

I'm pointing you in the direction of a couple of things which have me fired up today. I promise I will ease up on the politics. I am smart enough to know I don't know anything. I'm smart enough to understand one man does not have the power to destroy a country. I'm smart enough to realize there are one million ways of looking at things.

I've lost friendships dear to me over politics in the past and I don't intend to lose anymore.

The truth is, I do not understand what the hell went wrong in New Orleans. I don't understand exactly how the local government failed it's people. I don't know how exactly the government was supposed to respond differently. Things failed at all levels in this catastrophe. But I think we can all agree something different needs to be done in the future because I never want to beg my own country to help me in a massive natural or man made disaster.

The part which is giving me massive heartburn right now is the fact that I simply loathe George Bush and there is no nice way for me to say it. His insensitive Trent Lott comment was the first thing which made my head explode. There is nothing you could say to make me love him....or his mother. Or his administration and for that reason: I don't want to hear how much you love him or why I should support him and stop whining and understand that "sh*t happens". Shit happens, yes. But some leaders are better equipped to be sensitive to the suffering of others (like this man* maybe?) and other leaders are not.

Barbara appears to be in the throes of senility. This comment makes that clear.

Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of
scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Oh yes, it's a veritable orgy of lovely living! Perhaps Barbara would like to try living in the Astrodome for a few weeks and see how well it works out for her.

I like to imagine Barbara in a large communal shower room naked, trying to be modest but not having much luck. I like to imagine her walking down to the donation tables in nothing but a towel to collect new clothing when hers is stolen from the hooks outside the showers.

Someone give her her medication, stat. She is clearly spiraling quickly.

In closing, the Times-Picayune is pissed and frankly I'm pissed right along with them.

An open letter to the President from the Times-Picayune.

I do understand President Bush did not create this disaster. I also understand the devastation occured on many levels. I also understand I can not stand George Bush as a leader and I don't want him leading my country.

Obviously over half of America does not see things the way I do. At least four of the people I love and respect dearly disagree with me. So yes, yes I understand I am not seeing things as they are, but rather as I see them through my own reading, feelings and interpretations of what I read. But there it is. How I see it.

I haven't posted links to various charities because I assumed everyone knows where to go. And if you didn't know where to go, Dooce came to your rescue. If I have to tell you where to find Dooce then you're my mother. Call me.

*You should really read the article I linked above.

Obama is "offering nuanced, but tough, criticism of the federal response, but is not taking direct aim at President Bush."

Someday I would like to be nuanced. Nuanced is something you could never really call this verbal vomit I call my website.

Also from that article: "What I think is that we as a society and this administration in particular have not been willing to make sacrifices or shape an agenda to help low-income people," he said."

Also, you should just read the piece: "He warned against using a "false dichotomy" to analyze the situation -- an incorrect assumption that there are only two answers to a question -- whereby the answer to what went on in New Orleans gets boiled down to either a failure of personal responsibility or of mutual, or societal, responsibility."

Amen. (or A-fucking-men as I like to say.)

==========================================
Update: Since this is my last political post I'm adding two things.
This photo from Boing Boing. Bush is SO AWESOME!

Also Keith Olbermann tells it like he sees it and gosh, it's a lot like how I see it. The "City of Louisiana....." says Chertoff. Wooo HOoo! [Thanks Karen.]

Update #2: Okay Karen says it's really better to watch the video, so go here. Awesome.

I wasn't sure how to do this.

When the hurricane hit I thought, "Things will be fine, they have been before."

When I began reading about the rising water in New Orleans I thought, the water is rising slowly. It's not the same as the tsunami. We're in the U.S, things will be fine. On day three I began to feel angry. Last night I went to bed after reading news websites and emitting horrible squeals and gasps. I read the news because with sensitive kids you can not watch television news because you will live with those horrifying images for the next 5 years. Those horrifying images (image from The Washington Post, from James Nielson of Getty Images, AFP) on the television will appear at the most unlikely times from my children's mouths. They will remember the images they see for at least five years.

Currently my head is exploding and I tend to avoid writing about things which make my head explode because I am not intelligent enought to speak about politics or the suffering of others in any profound way.

When the Tsunami struck in December, I felt guiltily removed from that suffering. Logan and I donated money to the relief effort but I was haunted by the fact that if it had happened in my own country, I would have been moved in an overwhelming way. I calmed myself thinking that in my own country there would be the help, money and resources to save people. I thought things would never be as dire as they were overseas because we are America! We don't let our people suffer as if it's the third world. But then I saw the images and read the tales of suffering of the people left behind, they have been treated as if they are a third world country. They have not been treated as Americans. Shouldn't it have been different?

I want to point all of my anger at Bush and his stupid fucking comments, I mean, Thank God Trent Lott's house will be rebuilt! I want George to have a place to drink his lemonade. It's not that he made that comment, it's that he's saying that as at least 5,000 people are still at the Superdome living with shit and piss and shootings and rapes and no water or food. You stupid Fuck. How dare you. You are the president. You're not some fucking blogger who can say whatever they feel appropriate. You are our leader, you are required to be....to at least pretend to be sensitive to the suffering of people who don't look like you but are Americans all the same.

But no, it's not just Bush who has failed. It's also the city of New Orleans who's failed to perform in a crisis. Just like Chicago failed in 1995. I've been reading about the politics of the city, and if Detroit were under sea level and in the path of a hurricane, it would also be lost. The politics are the same. The lack of effective leadership is the same.

My heart is bleeding and it's true, is now the time to point fingers and cast blame? Shouldn't we be helping?

I'm in Michigan, there is not much I can do. I've donated and the company I work for has promised to match all donations made to the Red Cross by it's bloggers. I started donating a relatively small amount. Today I emailed again asking that one third of my monthly paycheck be donated. Logan was aggravated because we are currently waiting to purchase a misfiring gas range and a dishwasher which hasn't been working for a month. When I thought further, realizing Weblogs Inc. would be matching my contribution, I wanted to donate more because I can wash dishes for a few more months, I can use the microwave for a few more months, but I can not pull that type of cash donation out of my checking account.

My guilt at being white and middle class has gotten the better of me. I'm so sorry for New Orleans. I'm so sorry for the gap between the middle class and the lower class. I'm sorry we didn't take care of you and help you out of a drowning city. I'm questioning my government because people have died needlessly and I hope the questioning will help prevent this type of crisis in America in the future.

I am sorry.

My heart is breaking.

It's the second full day of freedom for me, so why am I in a foul mood? You would think with the mass destruction of New Orleans I might be able to step out of my own minor heartbreaks and life upsets and feel so incredibly lucky for what I have. Instead I feel my own minor problems and the accompanying emotions involved in those minor heartbreaks being combined into a big fat pile of shitty feelings about the overwhelming tragedy in the south. All I want to do is cry.

I hate when I leave cryptic posts. Im sorry but it's all that will come out of my fingers today and it's all I am able to give right now.