Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Good things are always happening.

Having that post up there is annoying me now. 

I have a lot on my mind, obviously. I know I'm not where I want to be. I'm trying so hard to avoid hurt so I don't have to feel angry. I'm so tired of being angry. I'm also tired of being sad. I feel like I'm doing all the things everyone is telling me to do and the grief just keeps washing over me. 

Not all the time but I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of that awful feeling every time I realize what else I've lost. You can imagine how much I'm looking forward to the holidays.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the good times in between the hard parts. I've said it before but this website has always been glimpses of my life. Often the hard parts because I mull things around. I think about them try to figure out the root of things so I can fix the problem. BUT...I'm also doing lovely things. Great things. Happy things....

You guys have been so great for me, thank you. You believe in me and I'm trying to believe in myself. This is hard, sometimes it feels crushing. But I keep moving forward and doing the things you have to do to move forward. That is a testament to: depression relieving medication, therapy, friends, my job and this website. 

Thank you. 

Things are about to get heavy. Image heavy.

A week after Logan told me he was leaving, I took the kids to Chicago. (I don't sugar coat things so yes, it was a rough trip. I hid in the bathroom and cried...but there were also lots of good times.)

This is us on a Chicago river boat tour. 

We went to the Shedd Aquarium and had our minds blown by jelly fish. (We also did the Science and Industry; Field; and drove by Obama's house in Hyde Park...)

I've been to Chicago a lot of times and never done a river tour, it was always "too touristy" but with kids? Yes...Let's be tourists! We went out onto Lake Michigan and I took this picture with my phone and it makes me happy.

Divorce has really brought the kids together...

About a week after that it was my birthday. I dreaded my birthday but friends took me in and I will never forget that act of kindness. 

Someone sent me flowers...I still don't know who...thank you.

I started getting more daring with my color combinations.

Maddie has entertained me with her favorite game with Lucy...Lucy doesn't look at all awkward. 

Max and I went to the Franklin Cider Mill and we ate all the donuts even though that's not particularly healthy.

This is not a halloween costume, why do you ask?
I went to a really fun halloween party at Ye Olde Saloon. Yes, that's the name.
Fake Roger Sterling followed me home. That's a story for another day.

Max was a Blues Brother for Halloween...he's cooler than you. 
(Blurry in the background is Maddie with her handmade R2D2 hat...yes, that's what she was)

Lucy LOVED Halloween...she was a banana, look at the joy in her eyes.

I took this picture after a really great night. Not telling you why it was great but it was.

I bought this purse from a Kate Spade pop up sample sale. It cost the same as a pair of running shoes; but I never ever would have bought this when I was married. I would have felt selfish.

Maddie turned THIRTEEN!!! And also posed for a picture. (This very rarely happens...she caught my photo adverse illness. Sorry Maddie!)
I have a TEENAGER!? (Ten years ago Maddie was 3.)

A after that we went to visit Jean in Texas for Thanksgiving. This is a "Christmas" tree being lit in front of the Alamo. I say "Christmas" because it was 83 degrees. Christmas is cold and preferably snowy. 

We hot tubbed it. In November. I just think I need to live in a place where a water feature is even plausible in November.

Then we pet dolphins. 

Sophie lives in Texas. She looks super sweet but really she's looking at me thinking "You idiot...why do you live in the tundra?"

We went to Fredricksburg and climbed enchanted rock. I climbed half...and then I held the water bottles. Jean said it was an "Easy Hike" I guess I pictured an "Easy Hike" like how you feel when you tour a city for a whole day...how hard could it be?
It wasn't hard I just needed to hold everyone's water bottles at the half way point.
(Max took that picture for me.)

Then we went to Sea World. Because it's 30 minutes away and Shamu wanted to show us his equivalent of Jazz Hands.

Swimming on Thanksgiving makes a lot of sense to me.
I'm just going to come back to Michigan for a couple weeks in December.
While I'm here I'll indulge this funny little "snow" thing.....and then I'll go home to a place where people don't own shovels or have an ice scraper in their car. 

We ate a feast. I made carrots, the carrots probably made the meal...Thanksgiving was emotionally really hard but we had such a great feast and even better stories at the table. 

We headed home on Black Friday. But before we left, we took a walk on the newish part of the river walk. Little known fact about Marketing At Airports: Airports don't give a crap about Black Friday because you're sort of forced to pay $3 for a bottle of water. 

When we got home I was...sad and struggling with the reality of a holiday season with this new reality. Luckily my commissioned painting from Paul Ferney's Commission Project arrived while I was away. Another thing that gives me joy I never would have bought while married.

I'm so glad I bought this.

I've been trying to wear (well applied) more make-up and one day I curled my hair and I felt pretty.
so I took a picture.

While shopping for Maddie's birthday present at Scout in Royal Oak [not a paid link!] I saw this sign. 

YES

This is my year of YES. 

Hey...should I get a mani-pedi? YES
Should I take all my clothes to the tailor to make them fit correctly? YES
Maybe I should go to that party with all new people? YES
Aren't highlights too expensive, am I really going to get my hair done every 6 weeks? YES

I'm okay. I'm mostly okay. 

 

But go ahead and keep thinking a lot of good thoughts for me.
Thank you.

I am okay

I have a lot to say. 

And keep wanting to say it all in one post. 

But I am not just okay. I am feeling like this is my new normal and my new normal is really kind of exciting and full of promise.

I wish I still had my marriage. I wish my husband still loved all the best parts of me. I wish my kids got to be raised by two people who still love each other. 

But. 

That's not the case and I feel like in the last two weeks I have finally accepted that I have a new life to live. With my kids. I get to make all the choices. Do what I want. 

It was scary before. It's not so scary anymore. 

*I have a really long post to share but it was just stupidly long and I wanted you to know I'm okay.

 

SHUN!

I was a part of a clique. I call it a clique, not because it is a group of people who like to social climb and compare notes about which party they were invited to and you weren't, though maybe you could define it like that.

No I consider it a clique because of the hard evidence of Kingpins (or "Highly Connected People") in the group. The core group of people who are so involved and so everywhere that by default when you're out of the group because you've offended them (because they offended you...but okay) you lose not just the clique but aquaintances of the clique now shun you socially to hang out with the clique. (Though solo time with me seems to still be okay for a few people.)

Logan is part of the clique. He spends at least one evening a week with them and more likely 3 or 4 nights a week with them. As I said I always felt like I could be kicked out at any minute. And so, I am shunned.

Most of the time I don't care. I'm seeing true colors and some of the things I suspected all along are being affirmed. I'm still surprised by the level of the BS, but for the most part I'm spending my time healing, not really crying very often (though I did Sunday night) and trying to find my new people.

Finding new people is pretty exhausting, and incredibly painful when you hear about the fun your old pool of possible new people are having with their people that were once your people.

It was my weekend, I was a little agitated when Max came home and Logan's BFF's son had told him we were going over there that night. Not agitated with the kid, agitated with this whole stupid situation and the resulting disappointment. 

Also perhaps feeling the continued sting of Logan spending every free moment with these people. Logan spends a lot of time with these people. I'm tempted to write a children's book, titled "The [Their Last Name] Family Has Two Daddies"

That night a couple of moms, who are mostly not a part of the clique or the extended part of the clique, had invited me out for a drink. It was me, two other women from the school and one of the women was inviting some other friends.

New people! New Circle! No SHUNNING! Perfect. Except that it was my weekend and I'm still feeling weird about Logan leaving the kids alone when it's his parenting time, so how is that fair? It isn't.

In my defense I'll say I trust myself to actually go for 2 hours, then return home, I have a difficult time (because of years of hard evidence otherwise, though not recently) trusting that Logan will be able to go and leave in a 2 or even 3 hour time frame. It's generally not how things go when Logan gets around fun people.

I weighed my options and decided I needed to go, this is how I'm going to rebuild my social life, something I enjoy. I enjoy it less than Logan who often sees the same friends 3 or 4 times in a week, but I still require some face time with fun people.

I asked the kids, they were fine…occupied with vegging out after the week of school and the nomad life they've been living flipping houses every day. So…off I went.

This was 8pm, at 9pm, I got a text from Logan. I won't give you the play by play of the texts because I've sent some doozies since this whole thing started. No need to write out the heated moments of rage in this thing, probably more from my side than his, he's a robot remember.

Ooph. I said last week on Friday I'd managed to only send 7 texts to Logan in the last week. Actually just 4, but 1 was so bad I counted it as 3. Ouch.

Let's say he was with his BFF's, likely sharing the situation with them and getting riled up even more. He was angry I was out and called me a hypocrite. There were other angry things sent across the text-line and though I knew I had weighed my options and decided it would be okay for me to have 2 hours and spend the next two entire days and three nights with the kids. I need to rebuild a social life from scratch.

Still the texts made me feel sick to my stomach. I thought maybe I had messed up. Maybe I am a jerk. So, I went home…made it home 15 minutes after the time I'd told the kids I'd be back, and then we watched a movie.

Here's the thing. Logan was angry because I've been furious about him and the parties that he goes to with the kids and without the kids. The street festivals. The chili cookoffs! The pizza nights and dinners with and without the kids. I do understand that really I've got no say anymore. When Logan's alone and when Logan's with the kids it's none of my G-D business.

I sit in therapy each week and we try to detach me from this hurt and this sadness and this anger. For 18 years Logan and I shared friends, we've made friends together and adopted each other's friends. All of this feels like a betrayal. And I can't seem to release it. I'm trying. I'm trying so so so hard.

But it isn't coming yet. I get heartburn when the kids tell me about the last night with our friends. My heart races a little when Logan texts me something inflammatory and then ignores me while hanging out with those friends. When I see that another party happened and no one asked me to come, I cry again.

These are all things I do not want to be doing, so I do understand how Logan would feel angry and like I was being a hypocrite. But I'm not. It's not that I don't want Logan to live his life, I'm hurt/sad/angry/anxious that he's living what used to be our life without me. And my life is getting a slow start in the rebuilding process.

So no, me meeting a group of new women who are not shunning me, was not me being a hypocrite. It was me taking advantage of the opportunities that come up for me right now.

Sure, I wish it had come up on my weekend off. 

Sure, I wish I had the luxury of socializing with the kids and without them with the same people.

Sure, I wish I could skip one night out because all my weekends are full of friends.

I wish none of this was happening. None of it.

Logan apologized for the harsh words in the morning. Of course he didn't respond when I explained the above to him. This is the pattern. As long as we don't talk about anything he's fine.

This is pretty much how those friendships work, don't make waves, quietly talk about each other behind each other's backs and for God's Sake BE POSITIVE.

This is also how my marriage has worked for many many years. There were always two choices: donl't make waves or bite your tongue. I'm not surprised really but it still makes me feel so incredibly powerless.

This entire site, I think, is born of years of not being heard or seen. I've been invisible to my parents, to my peers, to my teachers. When Logan ignores me it trips that wire, when my "friends" ignore me it trips that wire, and it's the same wire that has me off and on terrified of being alone.

I'm not talking about being physically alone, I still relish my alone time. When Logan has the kids I read books, I do yoga, I watch TV…I love the time alone.

I am terrified of the kind of alone I was in school. The kind of alone I was growing up. The kind of alone where entire days would go by and I would not speak a single word. The kind of alone that's so isolating you can't think of anyone you'd even like to call to have lunch or tell a secret to. The kind of alone that leaves you feeling like an alien among the normal people. That's the alone I am afraid of.

I know this isn't where I'm ending. I know this is still a journey. And the wires that tripped me then aren't entirely accurate now. I have to release that old trauma in order to full live life now. But some days that is easier than others. 

 

Learning to be kind to myself.

Well this has been a rough few weeks hasn't it? A rough few months. I know, I tend to be incredibly ill prepared for adversity...even still. This is rough.

Let's go through the timeline:

Painful indifference from my husband for many months. 
At the end of June things came to a head with a letter from one of our "friends" that wasn't wrong, but wasn't entirely kind either.
Logan agreed with the contents of that letter and I fell off the earth.

I wanted to die, and I went to the hospital.

I got out of the hospital on July 6th. 

On July 11th, I started my new job working full time for the first time, actually in my whole life. 

On August 11th, Logan announced he wanted a divorce.

On August 12th we put Gary The Cat to sleep.

On August 13th we sat on our deck and told our children that their worst fear was coming true.

On August 18th I asked for forgiveness from the friend who'd written the letter and he did not accept. On August 19th I accepted he's an a**hole.

On September 2nd Logan moved out of our house.
In between that time, the people I thought were friends ignored me and embraced my husband.
On September 7th one of those women took direct aim at my heart.

But there have also been some amazing lights in all this awful. 

I think this is a good time to interject some of the good that is going on at the same time as all this hurt and all this pain. Sometimes I don't think people know that good and awful can exist in the same space. That has always been my reality.

****

On September 12th, I was terrified of my birthday. I spent the weekend before dreading it, coupled with 9/11 sadness. September has always been hard for me, it's the end of summer and the beginning of the school year, I never liked school. My birthday has always been tied to the school year, and that was sad for me.

This year my birthday was overshadowed by the breakdown of my marriage. Come on September, just be nice.

This birthday, I was totally terrified of what my birthday without the people I thought were my friends, without the man I thought I would be with forever, would look like. 

My friend Jean sent me a new outfit, perfect for work. It arrived Friday but I didn't see it on the (enclosed) porch until my birthday. While I ate breakfast after the kids went to school, I opened my gift. Love started my day.

I arrived at work and found a Happy Birthday Banner at my desk. Double Love.

The Ladies I mentioned before as islands in a sea of awful, reached out to me to see what I wanted to do for my birthday. They were very kind.

But I was feeling sort of "blah" about celebrating without the kids. But also feeling sort of blah about staying home and having dinner with the kids and making my own cake. 

Thankfully one of our (shared) parent friends reached out to me (imagine that!) asking if I'd like to have dinner with them for my birthday. 

I may have sobbed when she asked me to come by for dinner. My friend Laura is a chef. Turns out, chefs do somthing really good. They make food taste really good.

We ate salmon and basil pesto with a little marscapone mixed in...and also gnocchi with bacon and pesto. Then yellow cake with a beautiful chocolate ganache on top.

I made three wishes on that cake. This was illegal wishing, I know. I wished I would forgive Logan and be friends with him eventually. I wished my finances would be okay. And I wished for something better, a better man, a better attitude, and a better set of friends that will not walk away.

Laura could have made me a frozen dinner and I'd still have sobbed.  

Aside from the delicious food, it felt so good to celebrate my birthday with my kids and good friends all around a table without feeling Logan's absence so acutely like we do every time we sit down for dinner at our dining room table. 

Thank you Laura & Tom. 

(Not a paid endorsement: My friend Laura is the dessert chef at Lockhart's in Royal Oak. If you're local, you should try the Dr Pepper Cake)

We came home from my birthday dinner and found a note tucked into the door that a surprise was waiting on my porch. On the porch I found a vase of flowers, a bottle of prosecco and a hand made tile. It was from two of the women from the "Dream Neighborhood". I miss that neighborhood. A lot.

****

I've heard for a long time that I am too hard on myself. Which is actually the opposite of what I heard from my father and mother while growing up and from my husband in the last 3 years.

But my therapist, my friends and various readers have pointed out to me that the way I talk about (and to) myself is...mean. This is also how I talk to other people when I am disappointed or angry with them. 

I made a decision when all this happened, not even after I was in the hospital, only when Logan decided he was leaving. 

I decided I'm going to lead with my heart, my friend Lisa gave me that piece of my puzzle. I have lived the last 38 years trying to bully myself into being a better person, I tried to bully myself into being stronger.

This has clearly not worked.

Now I've decided that no matter what I do or say, my self talk will be loving. It will be, "Yes, you can do this better, but for now this is what you can do." I decided when I talk to myself, I am going to channel all the people who have been kind and loving to me.

Mr Rozema from high school, Jean, Lisa, Emmy, Carrie, Kimberly, Laura, my friends when I hadn't ruined things, Andrea, Chrissy and Leslie.

"What you are doing is enough." "Melissa, you are doing this. You are more than okay"

When I feel I am failing I remind myself of everything I have done in the aftermath of all this pain. I thought I would die if my marriage ended. I thought I would collapse. 

But I haven't collapsed. I am kicking ass, sometimes I fail. I send Logan ridiculously long texts about "The Truth". Sometimes I want to punch old "shared" friends in the face.

Sometimes I sob at my desk hiding my face and I am horrified. Sometime I go to the Breastfeeding room, lock the door and ugly cry. Still...

Melissa, You are kicking ass. "You're Gonna Make It After All!" 

******

My friend Maggie said this to me years ago: "There is always someone to tell you how awful you are, you just plow through with your awesome-ness." (not a direct quote, but similar.)

When I tried to hurt myself, Maggie called me and kept saying on the phone, "Shhh, okay, shhhh, okay...Okay, okay..." She said, "I will come there, I want to make you soup and I want to pat your head...I want to wrap you up in a blanket" (Maggie, thank you so much. I hate that I've not been my best self but shhh...okay....okay....I was doing the best I could.)

That is how I've decided to talk to myself when I am so sad and I can't breathe. I just breathe and talk to myself, "Shhh, okay, okay...." Just like I would if my babies were overwhelmed and sad.

When I decided to treat myself with kindness I also decided to treat my friends and the people who send me less than nice mail with gentle kindness.

Even when I have to deal with conflict, I've decided to be gentle...instead of just lashing out and being angry. And sometimes, I am angry and that is okay too.

******

At night sometimes the sadness and frustration is so unbearable. So I lay in bed breathing in and out and telling myself I'm doing okay...it's okay...shhh...shhhh...it's okay. 

This is a Good Day. Relatively Speaking.

I really believed being divorced would be the worst thing to happen to me in my adult life. Back in the haze of depression, I honestly believed I would die from the pain. I believed it would kill me, and if it didn't kill me I wouldn't be able to keep living like a reasonably normal person.

I believed that because I love Logan, I believe there is (was?) a lot of good in our marriage and in our family. 

I also believed that because no one ever loved me. I mean, not in the best way. I believed that because I've always been abandoned in so many ways, this abandoning seemed too much to bear.

That's the part of my brain that needed this to happen to be whole.

But I mostly believed divorce would kill me because I have always thought of my marriage and my family as my reward for surviving the hideousness of my first sixteen years in the world. And that has always felt like too much to bear after everything else.

But life isn't fair. There's no scorekeeper.

Now that I've lived with the pain of this reality for 22 days, I am as shocked as anyone that I am still living. I am less depressed than I was even 8 months ago. I am shaky on my feet. I am sensitive. I am unable to hold all these feelings in like I'd planned to do when I came home from the hospital.

If you know me in real life, I'm probably going to freak out. Please pretend not to notice.

But I am upright. I am living life. I am going to work. I'm seeing friends & I'm loving my kids.  

I was beyond hurt when I found out this week that as soon as 2 weeks after I got out of the hospital, my husband was asking my therapist when it would be "safe" for him to leave. I was hurt because I still thought he was trying and I'd lost him long before that time. I felt foolish and pathetic and sad. I was also hurt because that is not the kind of man I've always known my husband to be.

But then, depression has a lot of victims.

The kids are okay. They're as good as they could be I think. They might be even better if I could stop crying every once in a while. (I have had almost two full days without crying!)(Five without crying in front of the kids.)

But, I am not going to beat myself up about crying in front of the kids. I've been careful to explain to them that I'm sad because this is really awful, but even in my darkest times I've been able to tell them, truthfully, that this is going to be okay. We are all going to be okay.

We just have to go through this pain.

I'm not going beat myself up for writing all this down.

It makes Logan very angry that I write the way I do. He's tried to get used to it, to accept it as part of who I am, what makes me who I am. But he's never liked it and now that I have no reason to temper my words, I'm sure he's worried about what I'll publish.

He's not wrong to worry about this, I know this. I do have a hard time controlling myself especially when I am in emotional distress. On the one hand I like to think, 'Oh well, this is a snapshot of my life right now' and on the other hand I realize how damaging words can be.

It's part of what I've been working on in therapy and this set back has made that difficult again. 

Logan is worried about me sharing the intimate details about our marriage, the places where I feel it fell apart. And though I know there is never any "truth" in these sorts of things, there's only ever what you think, what the other person thinks and then...maybe reality but no one will ever actually know reality.

I feel pretty strongly about my truth, at least most of it, some of it I know is only "truth" because I am hurting and afraid.

Of course I'm writing this on a Good Day. On a bad day I feel like Linda Blair spraying split pea soup around the room. 

I believe our marriage was salvagable, but now there are tiny peeks of things I've overlooked and lived with because I loved Logan and I loved our life. 

The other day I realized I had been looking at the best in Logan and dismissing everything else. That's the way I've written about him the majority of the time I've had this site, because he is a whole lot of good. He really is. I could never deny that truth.

But...but there have been times, many times he wasn't who I believed him to be. There have been many times he didn't live up to who he is supposed to be. I say "supposed" to be because I know he is all those beautiful things, even now, I know he was supposed to be more whole than he is right now. 

I know he's not supposed to be that with me.

I looked for the best in Logan and ignored the rest. I realized this week he hadn't returned the favor in a long time (though he did for quite some time) and that was very eye opening. 

My therapist said to me a few weeks ago, "Most people in marital trouble come in to my office pointing fingers at the other part of the relationship to define what's 'wrong'. You're the first one who came in believing the complete opposite. Everything is not your fault."

I realized then that believing you're the problem gives you an odd sense of power. If you're the problem, you are also the solution. The only problem is when you're working your ass off to fix the problem and everything keeps falling apart anyway. 

At that point you're the problem and you're too broken to even fix it. It's a heavy load.

Logan came into our recent round of therapy blaming me for what had gone wrong in our relationship. He lashed out and lashed out hard. Fat, lazy, turning into my mother...all my hot spots. After a few therapy sessions he changed his story saying no one was to blame, no one was at fault, we'd just grown apart. He was worn out by the life we have shared up to this point and couldn't go on.

This is mature, sure. But I also feel like it never acknowledges what he's done wrong.

I've been very open about what I did wrong in our marriage. I have depression, I have a hard time discerning blood and ketchup, I am quick to be defensive and angry. I've blown up friendships Logan held dear (that perhaps I should have held dear) as a result of these personality faults. My open filter has made Logan uncomfortable with family and sometimes friends. 

I am not fat and I am not lazy, but it would be impossible for me to argue my emotional shortcomings in all their various forms. I wish I could fix them but the truth is, while I keep working and changing and growing, I'll never be someone entirely different than I am. Perhaps if you checked in on me at 20 year intervals only, you'd see the growth that happens in that time. 

Logan, just doesn't seem able to see those sorts of things in himself. Or rather, he doesn't seem able to communicate his awareness of those sorts of things in himself...maybe both. I like to think it would make me feel better if Logan would stop saying no one is to blame for how things have turned out and would say instead, "Here's where I f-ed up."

But then maybe it wouldn't feel better because then I'd think, "Okay well you know that! NOW FIX IT!!!!"

There's really no winning at this point. There's no feeling better. 

The only thing you can do in this place is trust the future. Trust that everyone is right, that it will get better. That your kids will get used to this. That you'll find new friends to replace the ones you're losing. That you'll learn things about yourself you didn't know.

But most of all I'm hoping I realize that Logan came into my life when he was supposed to. We were better together for a long time. Now I have to trust that I've grown enough to be better all on my own.

Keep in mind you're reading this on a good day.
I reserve the right to tear Logan's innards out tomorrow. Figuratively, of course.

Logan is moving out on Saturday.
The kids are going to stay there Sunday and Monday, Logan will take them to their first day of school.

I've always loved time alone in my own house, it recharges me. But I have to tell you I am terrified of what it will feel like when I realize this is my new "normal", that my husband is gone, my kids are gone and I am alone.

I hope those days are "good" days too. 

******

Today I took my paycheck to my bank and deposited it into my own account. And I withdrew my rent from that deposit as a cashier's check and it wasn't all of my paycheck. There was still money left.

When I got home, my checks were in the mailbox.

MELISSA SUMMERS 

In big letters, just my name. On the first solo account I've had since the Standard Federal account I opened when I was 18.

******

It's so scary to be facing this new life only trusting everyone else that it will be okay eventually.

On the good days I realize this is supposed to be happening. That I have so much to learn. 

I met Logan when I was 20 and a very scared little girl. I am 37 years old now and I've learned so much in this lifetime. On the good days I know this is supposed to be happening.

On the bad days I can't accept this is my new life. I just want to hold onto all the good we had that I thought would sustain us forever. 

On the good days, I know it was supposed to end this way.

 

This is a really difficult Life Transition.

I was starting to feel better. 

I was starting to forgive myself. To ask for forgiveness of the people I've wronged. Some people accepted my apologies. Others did not. And I was forgiving myself for messing things up so badly.

At the same time, Logan hasn't been happy with me since around December, probably before that but he told me in December that he was feeling ambivalent about staying married. 

I've gone through this many times throughout our relationship. I've referred to it as "Jackassery" before, Periods of Jackassery. These are times when Logan is struggling and acts a little like an adolescent. These phases typically last for a few weeks and up to six months. I have only reached the point of wanting to leave once when I prepared to move to San Antonio. Logan always snapped out of these phases eventually.

I thought this was the same. But it wasn't.

The last 8 months have been rough. Logan essentially blamed me for everything wrong in our marriage. Some of it I took to heart. My problems with friendships had been troubling me too. But some of it was simply cruel and mean.

He told me my weight was disrespectful to him, or rather my position on not wanting to do the work it would take to be a size 4 again was disrespectful to him. He told me he worried I was becoming my mother, which given the history between my mother and I, was very hateful to me. 

So I went to therapy, not to work on my disrespectful weight or becoming my mother. I went to work on my problems with friendships, because I told myself even if I wasn't married to Logan I would still need to fix that part of what is wrong with me.

I went to therapy for a month or two but Logan was grouchy and unpleasant to live with. He didn't like me, everything I did annoyed him. And most painfully there was no affection. We would get along fine, good even, but he wasn't happy to see me anymore. He didn't light up when I walked into a room. He wasn't my biggest fan anymore. He didn't reach out to hold my hand anymore.

It hurt. So badly.

But I still thought we could fix it. Actually, I thought I could fix it.

I asked my therapist to start seeing us together because it was hard to focus on my own problems when my life at home was unhappy...for all of us.

One of the first things Logan described was how he likes to get up early on a Saturday and get moving. Doing stuff. And I like to sleep in, and sometimes I like to just sit on the sofa with the kids all day, just hanging out doing nothing.

He said, "Well, honestly? I think she's lazy and she's raising our kids to be lazy."

He said it with such contempt. Disgust. I knew things were much worse than I thought.

As we talked about our past, the history of our relationship, things I've known were a big deal all along, Logan seemed to only realize now they had been a big deal. And he felt the pain of all the hard times we'd been through acutely. 

We drove home after a session one night and I said, "Yes, that was stressful...how are we going to do it differently. I think a lot of the stuff with your family would have been better if we'd really been on the same team. Maybe we can do that going forward. And the stress of money, we need to really take control of our money now that I'm making a salary too. We can fix this."

But Logan never really seemed on board. It was too late.

The first time I started to think we had to let go of each other was after he took a trip to Argentina for a week. He came home on a Friday and had a long standing "Guys Weekend" planned for the weekend. He came home, rushed to repack and had lunch with us. In the 15 minutes he was home he blew up about something or other. We went to lunch and I wanted to cry the entire meal. 

We walked back home and Logan grabbed his bag and I said, "I feel like you can't be happy when you're here. I feel like you're always running away from me, from us. You were here for 15 minutes and lost your temper. I need you to try, we need to fix this. Please don't go up north. We need to fix this."

And he decided not to go up north that night. But I knew he didn't want to be there with me, I felt it acutely.

In the morning he told me he felt manipulated that he'd had this trip planned and he was going. Sorry. And he left. Keeping in mind I was not on medication at that point, I was furious, hurt and crushed. I told him not to come back to this house. If he couldn't put his desire to be with friends aside to be with our family during this really hard time, don't come home. 

That weekend was the worst I can remember in a long time. I cried for 3 days straight. I was terrified. But I knew we couldn't keep going like this. 

From that point my therapy changed. All along I'd been saying, "I'm afraid I'm losing him." Now I said, "I can't have him like this."

But he came home, because he was afraid to move out. I had faced losing him and it was awful so I kept trying. Many times I'd say, "I feel like I'm reaching out to you and you aren't reaching back" There was no answer. So we kept going, getting along most of the time. Me still thinking about what I needed to make this marriage work and Logan not really telling me what he needed. I don't think he knows.

I started my job and just tried to remain okay. To recover and not think too much. When I felt the panic about my marriage falling apart creep in I would lay in bed saying, "Breathe in the good, release the bad".

My therapy turned back to solo therapy because obviously I was in trouble. I urged Logan to see someone too but he put it off, for quite a while. I think he truly believed I was the problem. I'm not sure I'm not the problem. 

The weeks after the hospital were hard. I was getting better & stronger but I knew I was on borrowed time in my marriage and the threat of divorce hanging over my head all the time was incredibly stressful. 

I sat in therapy trying to explain why this couldn't happen. It wasn't fair. Logan wasn't angry with me, he was angry in general. My illness had triggered feelings in him he wasn't prepared to deal with. If he could just try, it would be okay. 

It's exhausting trying to control someone else. 

We  kept going. We went up north for a friends wedding and we had so much fun. We laughed and took care of each other and I felt so happy, content. Sure things would be okay. 

But at the ceremony they read something we'd read at our wedding. It was this.

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there will be no loneliness,
for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons,
but there is only one life before you.
May beauty surround you both in the
journey ahead and through all the years,
May happiness be your companion and
your days together be good and long upon the earth.

Now there will be no loneliness. 

It echoed in my ears and I started to cry. Not nice dainty happy wedding crying. Like, I was starting to really lose it. It was grief, more grief than I've ever felt in my life.

Because I remembered the day we were married. And how good those words felt to me. Like the answer I had looked for all 24 years of my life. Someone who loved me, completely, truly...who woouldn't leave me. When I was 20 I met Logan and there was no more loneliness.

I knew it was over. He didn't feel that anymore. I had broken him. Broken us.

It was over.

It hurts so badly. 

(to be continued)(No comments, it's too easy to make Logan the villain and that's just not the truth. I'll write more when I can.)

 

In kindergarten I thought I'd be an office worker or a babysitter. Done & Done, Kiddo.

Oh, hey. 

I'm still okay. My job is still amazing and keeping me okay even when it's not really all that okay.

Right now my sadness and anxiety is situational related to situations I can't talk about except in the privacy of my therapist's office. So pretty much back to where I was in April. Sigh.

The job though, people told me that I'd feel so good with a job. That it would allow me to not spend my day aimlessly trying to control things that are not in my control. The job would help build up my confidence. It would make me happier. And, back when I was afraid of getting a job, or afraid of no one wanting to give me a job, I didn't believe it.

But it's true. I freaking love this job. I love going to the office in the morning. I like the routine. I like creating routines and setting up organizational methods. I like the deadlines and the flexibility. And the nerf guns at my head and the picture of my kids on my little shelf and my lucky kitten there too. It's all just perfect. 

• On Friday we had a summer half day. I got into the office and wrote a post for the company blog that had been troubling me.
• Then I met with the legal department to discuss a web accessibility issue. (Me! Taking a meeting with lawyers!) 
• Then, when I got back to my desk I helped a team compose a Facebook message to soothe a community in their promotion. 
• Then, I got shot in the back of the head with a nerf dart (this means they like you).
• Next I helped my coworker find information about collecting her small claims judgement and it was good news (you can have someone's lisence suspended if they don't honor a small claims judgement against them due to a car accident).
• Then I advised an SVP on his twitter account.
• Finally I went to get a soda out of the machine and I got two icy cold beverages for the price of one. 

Boom! It was an awesome day and as I wrapped things up at my computer for the weekend, I felt exactly like this lady. 

(Can you believe I found that clip? I love YouTube. For some reason I loved it as a kid.) 

So what I'm trying to say is that everyone was right. My job is filling a need I sort of knew I had but didn't realize how deeply I did. 

So I'm okay for the most part. I'm keeping everything together and tonight at therapy I sobbed like a 5 year old when my therapist told me there's no scorekeeper in the game of life. Just because a lot of bad things have happened to you, it doesn't mean they're not going to happen anymore. Just because you're right, it doesn't mean things will turn out like you want. 

There's no accounting system for bad things, or for good things. You don't deserve good things or bad things. 

And you don't get to be in control of anything. 

I've always known that, and I do know that. 

Still sometimes like tonight that feels like a big open wound in my chest. When bad things happen, I wonder what I did wrong to make it happen. When good things happen I worry I don't deserve it. 

And, it doesn't take a doctorate degree to know why that is. 

But I am really sad about that tonight. Trying to accept that truth. Trying to learn to live with that truth. 

I'm breathing in & out, and doing peppy typing at the office and most of all trying not to let my anxiety about everything come out as anger.

I'm trying to be strong and vulnerable.
This is something new.  

 

Gratitude.

I've been saving your emails until I had time to really read them and respond and I just...I can't. You're far too kind and far too loving.

I used to spend all day looking at email and being unsure how to respond. Now I am in front of my email for 2-3 hours....and I still don't know how to respond.

It's hard to say thank you. It's hard not to feel embarrassed by your words of encouragement and admiration. It's hard to tell you you'll be okay. It's hard to tell you how much it helps to know there are people pulling for me. It's hard to tell you how many people love me in my every day life and I keep ruining those relationships too. 

So please know that I've read every email. Every word you've sent. And I've tried to put it all as much in my soul as I can. Because I love this community very very much. But its like there's a hard shell around me that doesn't let all this love really wash over me. 

Maybe I'm too broken. It's something I think about a lot when I'm feeling particularly broken as I often have over the last 8 years I've had this site. The broken feeling comes back, it always comes back. 

I hope therapy helps with that. In time. 

But I've read all the love you've sent me. And I've cried. I've imagined the pain of knowing someone who is depressed and not being able to fix it. The pain of being Logan. I've known your pain in depression. I understand and I don't know how to tell you that it will be okay though in my gut, without crisis, I know that to be the truth. 

I hope you can find that truth if you're struggling. I hope your loved ones can find that truth if they're struggling.  

Thank you.

 

where I've been.

I'm in the middle of doing something I thought wouldn't be possible for me. I'm trying to get a full time job in spite of this website. Long ago I thought, 'Well, let's hope this website works out because I'll never be able to get a job with this stuff floating around Google.'

This website is, in many ways, an HR person's catalog of "Why Not To Hire" someone. 

But here's hoping I'll find a company that understands transparency, vulnerability and the power of feeling one thing and sucking it up and doing it anyway. Because though I'd like to put this website back on the part-time side of things, I could never not write. 

Knowing the resumes I send out send eyeballs here has made me a little tongue tied. Also I'm sort of tired of writing about myself especially since who I am is not a glossy magazine with pretty pictures and quaint projects and lightness. I think in this space (I mean the wider scope of the parenting blog world) many of us have become afraid to be ourselves. Because of advertisers but also, and more importantly for me, I simply don't have the mental reserves to take in the hatred that comes from being honest and blunt about who you are. 

Crap, I don't even have the mental reserves to pretend to be a glossy happy magazine person with a life that never derails. And frankly, there's a different brand of hatred at you from that too. 

The problem is when you have trouble feeling like you're "normal" and "okay" at a very core level it's very difficult to be okay with piles of unpleasantness coming at you from even a minority of clearly unhappy and truly damaged people.

Then there's the problem where I'm pretty depressed and though I have reasons to be (and most of those I'm not allowed talk about...fun!) I've come to the conclusion that lots of people go through rough spots and don't find themselves in an epic emotional battle to go to the grocery store. 

And this is also embarassing. I mean, how many times in my life have I been depressed and tried to fight my way through it? So many times that it's comical to me that I even think it will ever be possible to live my life without the aid of medication to make my brain act the way other people's brains do when under stress.

In fairness I stopped taking my last depression medication because it gave me ferocious heartburn. I also started seeing a therapist again to look a little closer at the issues I'm having with friends. 

Interesting note, when I wrote that post I got so much email and feedback that was truly immensely helpful. Lots of commiseration and thoughts on what helped that person through such feelings, personal insights, many books to read and videos to watch. But, inevitably the Internet does that thing I can't stand. The thing where the email starts with,

"You know what's wrong with you?"

And everything goes downhill from there.

In contrast, I sat on my therapist's couch and she pretty much said the same thing to me and instead of replying with a tersely worded email I made another appointment for next week and wrote her another check that's sucking away the small savings account we created earlier this year.

Reader Lesson: You can only tell me what's wrong with me if I pay you (a lot of money) to do it. (Note: I will never write a check to the Internet.)

I do have an appointment to see a psychiatrist, something I haven't done since Maddie was born and I struggled with post partum depression. I've always seen my GP for medication. I'm hopeful that since the scope of a GP is so wide, seeing a true (AND EXPENSIVE) psychiatric expert will yield me different results and maybe I'll feel more normal than I ever have in my life.

Due to scheduling difficulties, she was out of town and I'm about to leave town for an extended period of time, I won't get in to see her until the second week of June. To manage these feelings until then I've done so much yoga I can't even see straight.

I realize Ferocious and Yoga don't usually fit together but I find myself just moving through the poses and trying so hard to feel normal. To feel okay. To feel like I can do this.

Not to worry about what pose will be next and if it will be hard.

And most importantly to breathe.

So that's where I've been, sitting here remembering to breathe and trying not to worry about what comes next. Going through each pose hoping it will help me through the next one.  Until it gets easier again. 

My whole being is feeling funky. Not the good kind.

Well an entire week went by and I didn't post. Oops! I always have a bunch of good excuses....only they're not really all that good. 

I wish I was better at making this website a magazine where I just throw up a couple funny quotes or some pictures of my family doing something you'd see in a, I don't know, Land's End catalog. Then you'd be inspired and I'd never have to vulnerably say, "Hey! Things are not going as I'd like over here."

Luckily I started seeing a therapist (again) this week and I've been doing anything I can think of that will make me feel better. Like yoga, running, manicure and pedicure, seeing a movie alone, spending the day reading a book...shopping all day. 

Yoga works, running doesn't (why? WHY? WHY do people do this activity????). The mani-pedi was wonderful. I had a shellac manicure and I'm excited to tell you it's still like new on Friday morning....I got it Monday evening. The claim is it will last for two weeks. But I'd be happy if it started chipping right now. My manicures usually last 1.5 days before my nails start peeling, I've already doubled my value. 

Additionally, and I'm really embarassed to tell you this. My house smells funky and I can not locate the source. So I'm spending a lot of my day walking around the house sniffing everything I come across and I'm embarassed to have people over.

Whoa, my smelly house is an unfortunate metaphor for my general state of being right now. 

*By the way, Liz and Elaine are happier than me.  They won the second Simply Potatoes giveaway winners. Congrats Ladies! I'd invite you over but my house smells like funk.

.....

 

Golden Girls Update: Book Recommendations

Thank you everyone for your wonderful input and suggestions. I only had one mildly "know it all" email, (you know an email isn't going to go well when it starts with "I know what your problem is."), and every other note was about how you've experienced something similar, how you decided to overcome it, how you're still struggling...what you've found helpful...all of the kind of lovely input I love to get when I'm wading my way through something that's proving difficult for me.

As a bit of an update of sorts. I think there is therapy for me again in my very near future.

In evaluating the relationships I've lost in the past couple of years, I think a large part of my problem is keeping healthy boundaries.

I am constantly unsure if I am allowing my insecurities control me and my reactions to people so that often I let people do and say things to me I find unpleasant but I tell myself, "You're kind of insecure...maybe it's not that big a deal. Let's not ruin another friendship." 

Until I'm so silently angry that person makes me crazy, everything they do and say make me angry. I wonder in those situations if it wouldn't be smarter to set the boundaries of our relationship up front. 

Okay, go ahead, think I'm "crazy" or "insecure" but if you want to be friends with me let's make it clear I don't want you to say (a)(b) or (c) to me. And in return, I'll be aware of the "soft" spots you make me aware of and I won't trample them either. 

That's not the whole story, the whole story is much more complicated and difficult to talk about without being potentially hateful and unfair. But I think it's helpful to know that boundaries may be one of my biggest issues with regards to relationships.

Here's the list of books recommended to me. I have yet to read most of them so I can't make any personal recomendations right now, but wanted to share the advice I got from many of you...

The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships

Jennifer reccomended this one. From the book description: "No matter how content or supported you feel with your current circle of girlfriends, Valen explains, each of us holds a stake in helping foster a more mindful civility. Calling for a new normal in our relationships, her provocative and illuminating book is sure to spark a much-needed, meaningful dialogue that will inspire us to live and behave authentically for the betterment of our selves, our daughters, and the next generation of women."

Elise suggested: Brene Brown on Vulnerability.

How We Love: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage

From Robin: "It talks about Attachment Theory... just like you said, the way we relate to others in adulthood was established back in childhood. There are 4 main styles: The Avoider, The Pleaser, The Vacillator, and The Chaotic (which can be expressed as The Controller or The Victim). I am actually in the midst of reading the book and I have weekly appointments with a close friend to discuss what we are learning. So far I am finding it very helpful in explaining how/why I act around others and the lack of connection I feel even though I desire it on a very deep level. There is a workbook too that has great reflection questions and suggestions. Although the book is geared for the marriage relationship, I have found it helpful in explaining patterns of relating that I have with my mom and my close friends."

Joel Osteen's Self Help Books

From Stacia: "I don't know what your belief system is and you might think this suggestion is hokey, but Joel Osteen's books really have helped me in this area.  He's very uplifting and a strong advocate of surrounding yourself with people who make you better and leaving the others behind.  It's helped me to alleviate some of my guilt about being wired this way."

Boundaries: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life

Amy suggested this book and says, "It is from a Christian perspective, but it was good enough that I was able to take what I needed from it without feeling overly preached at. The new book cover with the pencil is a bit cheesy, but is a LOT better than the previous cover. (I'm a book designer. I DO judge books by their cover.)"
Another suggestion from Amy: Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

Tracy sent along two books that could be useful in overcoming social anxiety and trouble making friends. Problems I think plenty of us have.

Shyness: A Bold New Approach

Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques

Kristin sent over two books: 
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book

I've read this one and found the tone a little new agey but did take the very helpful reminder that nothing that happens is about "you". This doesn't mean I'm obsolved of any responsibility but I do think when I can't tolerate a friendship anymore (or vice versa) it's not so much about "me" it's about how that person and I fit together in a relationship. 

Riding the Dragon: 10 Lessons for Inner Strength in Challenging Times 

From the book description: "Drawing on Easter and Western traditions, psychologist and best-selling author Robert Wicks offers help with life s difficulties the dragons that escape from the cave. In this book you ll find guidance and encouragement to engage your problems and grow through them, to ride those dragons rather than slay them or drive them back into the cave."

I thought they'd be my Golden Girls.

Hey, you know what's hard to write about?

My brother and now my sister no longer speaking to me! There are reasons for this obviously and almost all of them I understand and make sense to me. Other reasons for this split make absolutely no sense to me and leave me feeling with a really sort of dead feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's not sadness, it's not anger...it's sort of a feeling like, "Well, okay that didn't work out."

And that creates a whole other dialogue in my head about my lack of connection with people I've known my entire life (or at least most of it)....how is it possible to wash my hands of those relationships? And yet, here I am...hands washed. I wash my hands of people I feel are hateful and unsupportive of my family easily and make no apologies for that. In fact I think, considering everything, that was the healthiest move to make (re: my In Laws).

But in this situation with my siblings, one with deep political rifts and the other with a lack of closeness that felt hurtful to her, I'm confused about why it is so easy for me to become dead inside to them. 

That alone wouldn't even be so bad, but the last year has been very difficult for me in regards to all relationships in my life, outside my immediate family. 

I've lost several friendships and like the ones I've recently lost with my brother and my sister, I feel sort of discombobulated at first and then oddly at peace with my decision to not be close to a particular person anymore.

It's not as if I've ended up with a bunch of enemies, things are quite cordial. But when I decide in a year to step away from 4 different long term friendships (and also lose both my sibligns) and feel mostly numb/neutral about the whole thing...something isn't right.

I feel numb except when I'm spending time wondering how it is I can discard friendships with such relative ease. 

I'm starting to wonder if I have some sort of attachment disorder. It's possible I wasn't hugged much as a child....I can't say that I recall being hugged, though I must have been? By the time I could remember being hugged I didn't want to be touched. So maybe it's that? 

I value my relationship with Logan above all others. When that relationship isn't working, I feel unhappy and mildly broken. A couple summers ago I started to feel that dead feeling during a particularly trying time between us and was so terrified I immediately booked us some therapy to get us back on track.

With friendships I just don't want to cry about them, I don't want to give more than I get, I don't want to be treated in a way I wouldn't treat another person, I want to not feel the need to bitch about that person behind their back and I don't want them to bitch about me either...I don't want to book a therapy session or four to figure out how to make "us" work.. 

Sounds reasonable enough, yes? But then I'm not the kind of person who was blessed with the ability to believe every one else is wrong and I am right. Someday I'm going to master the art of deciding everyone else is crazy except me. 

So I'm spending a lot of time gazing at my naval wondering why I can't seem to keep the relationships outside of my immediate family reasonably healthy and happy.

I'm leaving comments closed because comments could turn into a big fat festival of bashing my siblings and former friends...which would be hurtful. Or a big fat festival of telling me how awful I am...which would also be hurtful. 

If you have some useful insight or maybe a book suggestion I would love to get it from you via email! The relationships section at the bookstore seems very centered on getting the love you want. I don't need love so much as I need to learn how to manage frienships without dismissing them once they get difficult. 

Thanks guys!

....and now she eats the furniture.

I was all excited to write a follow up post on Lucy My Neurotic Dog. We've seen two different trainers, had one over a couple of times for walks through town. We are back in obedience classes to help raise Lucy's self esteem. I'm also taking her to daycare at least once a week also to help build her confidence around strangers and other dogs.

YES I KNOW what kind of a person it makes me that I'm spending hundreds of dollars trying to raise my dog's self esteem. I know. I didn't know I would be this person a year ago and yet, here I am. 

She's still kind of nuts but I've learned to not really care what other people think. She doesn't like new people, if you want to stick your hand in her face, I'll block and intercept as best I can, but when you're horrified that she doesn't want you to pet her...I just. Frankly I don't care anymore.

Half of you think I'm right to feel that way. The other half of you think I'm a horrible person. And that's fine, I've accepted that I'm right and I'm wrong. 

I was going to tell you how our trainer told us that we need to make some very simple, but significant in dog language, changes in how we treat her. Things like making her sit at the top of the stairs while I go ahead of her, making her wait inside while I go out the door for our walks, not letting her sit on the sofa until she "earns" the right by doing a trick or is invited up.

I was going to tell you how much nicer things are with her and how I feel like she's still neurotic but I'm learning to manage her neurosis.

Then yesterday I left her alone for an hour and a half while I took Maddie to the doctor. 

We came home for 30 minutes and then ran out to pick Max up at his school. We were gone for 20 minutes, tops. In that amount of time Lucy decided that the bookcase Logan made with his own two hands, maybe the nicest piece of furniture we own...would make a delicious snack.

Last night I had several dreams about cooking Lucy in the crockpot. Maybe with a little tomato based sauce....maybe spread over noodles? Maybe wrapped in tortillas. Ole! 

You know what would be great? If walking, running, dog-parking, day caring, obedience training and loving the crap out of a dog would make her just a teeny less neurotic.

Apparently not. 
But crap I love her.  

Updates from the weekend

Let's start with the easy stuff. 

I met with a new trainer on Friday. We walked around town and of course no one tried to touch Lucy without asking. I think because they could see we were in training. So that's one of my new strategies: look like I've got a purpose. 

I also ordered a backpack for Lucy that I'm having embroidered with "DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME YOU IDIOT." (Or something nicer, but pointed.)

The trainer thinks I'm, to an extent, over reacting. Which I realize is unbelievable to all of you as I am not a person who ever over reacts to anything.

Stop laughing.

I'm not convinced I have our final answer with Lucy but I am convinced we're on the right track and that is calming for a person like myself who likes to have answers, now. 

Last week in addition to freaking out about my dog I went to the dentist for my regular cleaning. The dentist confirmed what I sort of knew already. When I had my accident, the impact killed the nerve in my tooth. So this week I get to put five hundred more dollars in my mouth and get a root canal in exchange! 

Oh and after that I get to be an usher for the dress rehearsal of the play my kid's have been working on where they think I'm a deranged mother already. This should really help my image with the youth theater group.

On Saturday Logan and I went to the Second Annual Detroit Fall Beer Festival at Eastern Market. It was a great event with lots of great Michigan beers to taste.

At one point I was standing in line to get chili, while one of our friends was in the line next to me getting a cheese plate. He was talking to someone he didn't know, but she was feeling very chatty. He said, "We're in line for cheese, what are you in line for?" And his new friend turned, looked at me and yelled, 

"Yeah! We're getting cheese plates bitch!"

And...I'm pretty sure she meant this in a sort of street slang happy greeting but seeing as how I don't really speak that I wasn't quite sure what to say in reply.

So I said, "I bet you are, uhm, Bitch!"

It was sort of awkward. Or would have been if she hadn't tasted a lot of beer before that moment.

[This post has been edited. Painfully, Painfully, Edited.]

 

My Goodness.

Hoo Boy! I forgot how fired up the Internet gets about pets. I wrote about letting my kids walk home less than a 10th of a mile alone and braced myself for anger. And....nothing. I write venting my frustration level with my dog being at level red, and JESUS CHRIST!!!! (!!!!!) (And again, to match the anger...!!!!!!!)

The problem with writing is sometimes there are gaps in a narrative. When you leave any gap, and believe me when I tell you there will always be gaps when writing about one's life, those gaps will be filled in with other people's perceptions and then....

Then the magic happens.

Lucy you see, just needs to be crated! (I didn't mention her intense fear of the crate and the urinating all over herself whenever left in it...even when we're home with her and she's in it.)

Lucy BIT SOMEONE AND I BLAMED THE VICTIM! (Lucy barked at a woman who tried to touch her, because dogs can't talk and Lucy doesn't want you to touch her. Lucy was wearing a Halty that won't let her open her mouth enough to bite anyone.)

I'll grant you though, reading your wild declarations, admonishments and helpful personal experiences has made me spend time thinking about what I do and don't expect from a dog in our family and what I am willing to deal with and what is a deal breaker. 

I was thinking about the times I've gone through struggles as a parent. I realized pretty early on what worked for one parent/child/family doesn't necessarily work for another. I read books that laid out the "right" way to raise a baby, to potty train, to get a baby to sleep through the night and almost all those books said or implied if you didn't follow this path your child would grow up to be broken or damaged in some way. 

One book I specifically remember reading when dealing with Maddie's sensitive temperament said, in essence, almost nothing is worth forcing the issue with your sensitive child. Make two meals if your kid doesn't like what you're eating, don't go to the mall if it overwhelms your child....

I was willing to accept that Maddie was a different child than say her cousin who is about the same age. At family gatherings Maddie's cousin at 3 years old would run to the door to greet new guests, "Hello Mr So and So! How are you? May I take your coat? Would you like something to eat?"

While Maddie would hide behind me and beg to just go home. 

I wasn't willing to just go home though. Instead I learned to accept Maddie was not like her cousin. I let her avoid saying hello to new people until she was comfortable. I tried to arrive at parties before they got too crowded so she had time to acclimate before a lot of chaos ensued. And now? Maddie is just fine talking to adults, better than me sometimes. She knows how to talk herself through her anxiety at new situations and she may offer to take your coat and get you a snack. 

I bring this up because some of you admonished me for "forcing" Lucy to be around people when she clearly doesn't like it. Our rescue agency admonished me for not bringing her around people enough. 

Advice is inevitably contradictory and confusing. 

I'll grant you all that leaving Lucy outside the store for 5 minutes was a well intentioned move (treating her like a regular dog and having her out in public as often as possible) but ill-advised choice on my part.

This is something we'll avoid doing in the future. Okay? Let's all take a valium and calm down. 

Here are the decisions I've made about our dog. 

Lucy chewing things because she's anxious is something a lot of dog owners deal with. It's certainly not something to write off a dog because of. Lucy ate my earrings because I left them on a counter accidentally. She's eaten my underwear because I can't seem to force myself to by a $50 lidded hamper for our dirty laundry. Dogs chew things, this is a fact about owning a dog, it's mostly on you to keep stuff they like to chew out of reach. 

Lucy having occasional rounds of insomnia...another thing that is annoying but not a deal breaker. It's something frustrating I chose to write about in a moment of feeling frustrated and overwhelmed but everyone can't sleep sometimes. We'll solve that problem a few ways, shutting our bedroom door is number one on that list. 

Ripping apart the lining of my sofa slipcover? Okay it's time to put a gate up on the kitchen doorway and leave her in there with her toys, her dog bed and the tv on and see what happens. 

The advice I've gotten up to now about Lucy's fear of strangers and people touching her too fast, is obviously not working. (Though I keep being told "You're doing okay! Just keep it up! It'll get better!")

So I've called another trainer in to walk around town with us and see if another approach can help. 

Here's where the deal breaker comes in. 

I was admonished yesterday for forcing my dog to walk around a city! With people! Around! I even got an email helpfully suggesting I walk my dog in a circle around my (tiny) back yard. But wait it wasn't a "suggestion" it was a demand because if I think that's not okay? Then I SHOULDN'T EVEN OWN A DOG.

I learned to accept the limits of Maddie's personality. Our niece was also the kind of kid who would see the high school mascot at a football game and run to dance with it! She had a carefree happy spirit.

Maddie, was terrified of the high school mascot and screamed until we removed her from the scene. In that moment I remember thinking, "Why can't she just relax! And have fun!" She just couldn't. We still went to these events but I didn't expect her to enjoy these things with the same joy as other kids. 

I have accepted, accepted very early on that Lucy is not the kind of dog that's particularly happy to see anyone but our immediate family. Other people, she accepts eventually, but please don't get in her face because she doesn't like it. We have kids over and she'll play with them and eventually sit with them but she's slow to warm up. During parties she walks around sniffing everyone and may let you touch her but mostly it's better if you just let her be.

My friends have dogs who love to see you! They want to jump in your arms and stick their tongues down your throat and love you long time. Do I wish Lucy was like that? Carefree? Happy? Yes. 

Have I accepted that that's not her personality? That it's not how the cards panned out considering whatever her life was like before becoming part of our family? Yes. 

However, I'm not willing to accept that we can never encounter people while giving our dog exercise. I'm not willing to accept that I can't have people in my home. I'm actually not willing to accept that Lucy can't be a part of our lives in public places, especially since she doesn't like to be apart from us either. 

We are an active family and we want, maybe even need, a dog that can experience a lot of life with us. I'm willing to adjust my expectations to a degree but the bottom line is if Lucy can't learn to be tolerant of strangers on the street looking at her and attempting to touch her (with me stopping them), we can't stay together. 

That is heartbreaking to write. Lucy is at the top quarter of my list of favorite things. The best decision I've made in a lot of years was to get a dog. And I'm pretty happy we ended up with Lucy. 

But....

But it's not fair to either of us if she isn't the kind of dog who can live in a city, who can live with an active and social family. 

Logan keeps reminding me not to get ahead of myself. That we have another trainer/behaviorist coming. That we haven't talked to our vet about this particular issue. That we haven't gone back to the rescue agency and asked their behaviorist to evaluate her. 

We still have steps to take before EUTHANIZING the dog (guys, seriously?) or giving her back. 

Now half of you are nodding saying "I totally get it." and the other half of you are heating your pitchforks ready to tell me what a terrible person I am for not doing WHATEVER it takes to live with Lucy as she is.

For that reason the comments are not opening and if you want to send me an email? Full Disclosure: I may get a little bristly in return. 

Your call. 

But thank you for making me think about my limits and my plan for Lucy a little more deeply. I appreciate it and I hope we can find a way to help Lucy live within our lives. 

Last Year I Couldn't Spend All My FSA Cash. This year? Not a problem!

There are a few unfortunate things about breaking your face on your birthday.

The cost of having your teeth replaced is a lot more than you want to spend on your teeth, given that you'd rather not spend any money on my teeth. You know since you're already spending thousands of dollars on your kid's teeth.

It's like paying ten thousand dollars for a new sewer line.
"Oh great! Now we can...flush...the...toilet..."

Additionally some of the things you'd earmarked money for...like a tax payment, a replacement camera, a television with a screen that shows the entire picture...are now in your face. (Sorry about the tax delay Obama!)

But maybe that's just me, maybe you'd enjoy paying to replace your teeth with porcelain. Everyone's different. 

The other unfortunate thing about breaking my face is that every time I venture out in public I feel it's a personal achievement when I make it back to the house with my entire body intact. Like there should be a little workplace ticker in my kitchen that reads, "It's been __ days since our last accident!" 

Or maybe, as a friend suggested, I should have a sticker chart...one star for each day I manage not to be hit by a car or bash my teeth in. After 10 stars I could get a Silly Band!
Or maybe a camera!
Or a TV!

Or....my porcelain replacement teeth. 

Meh.

Not Enjoying This Narrative.

Lucy couldn't sleep last night. She was up and down...roaming through the house. Her nails on the wood floors click-click-clicking. Up on the bed, off the bed. Up the stairs, down the stairs. She'd lay down, she'd get up, she'd jump off the bed. Over and over. We didn't sleep very much. 

They say dogs can sense when things are "off". 

You could say things are off around here. I'm frustrated to say this but it's just the truth. 

Logan woke up yesterday with a terrible throbbing pain in his foot. So bad he could barely walk and even worse, he couldn't run. Logan is the type of person who runs until his toenails fall off and thinks of it as "just part of the deal". If his foot hurts too much for running, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. 

He's at the doctor getting a shot in the joint of his toe. As you can imagine this is less than pleasant for a person with a foot that's already extremely painful.

Yesterday I got replies from three of the nine resumes I've sent out. They were all "No, thanks" notes. The timing was phenomenal. 

Sunday was my birthday. I was invited to brunch with some friends who are, for the most part, much younger than me but let me hang around anyway. Two of the girls were also celebrating birthdays. One her 26th and the other her 30th. When I celebrated my 26th birthday I was pregnant waiting to have Maddie. 

Wow. 

We had brunch at La Dolce Vita out in the courtyard. There was a band with a french man with braids and someone playing the bongo. They played happy birthday for us. I ate eggs benedict. Lisa had a bagel with lox. Carrie had a scrambled something with smoked salmon, Amy had french toast and so did Lauren. Kate was wearing a hat and spoke a little french to the frenchman with the tiny braids all over his head. It was lovely except for the bees. 

After brunch I left with a couple of the ladies to go shopping. At Kohls. I don't have anything against Kohls, but I never really go to Kohls. Everything was fine, I checked out the Vera Wang collection and the Dana Buchman things. Everything was fine. I sent Logan a few texts back and forth telling him I was having a great time. He pointed out I was going to miss the Dog Swim at four o'clock. It's okay, I said, why don't you guys go ahead.

We were in the parking lot, my friends in front of me, so they didn't see what exactly happened. I tripped and fell, breaking my teeth. Or perhaps I fainted, fell and then broke my teeth. I assume shock took over because I don't remember anything. 

Not until around 8 o'clock that night when I was suddenly in my bed, hysterical, wondering what happened to my mouth. 

The next day I hid from the mirror, terrified of seeing my face. I didn't see my face until around 4 o'clock Monday when the dentist unveiled my new temporary teeth. My shorter-than-before, more-crooked-than-before temporary teeth. 

Ironically, I've always hated my front teeth. I felt like they were jutting out of my face and were too huge in relation to my other teeth. And now I'm grieving losing them (and the $2000 out of pocket I'm going to pay to replace them).

Since this happened friends have been telling me about losing their own front teeth in various mishaps. Almost all of these tales involve a really great night that maybe turned ugly at the end. Things like, "Well..it was in Tijuana....." Or "The details are fuzzy but I do remember a girl named Exxxtasy, most of the x's were silent though." 

No one has a story about a lovely afternoon brunch and a quick jaunt through Kohl's, ending with a face plant and crushed teeth. 

So in that way, I'm an original!

I called a Do-Over birthday for Saturday. I'm going to celebrate by not breaking any of my teeth.

Oh I'm just typing....

Let's jump right back in here. Fresh! New! Exciting! 

I didn't get the job that's been dangled in front of me since I got the call for the phone interview in June. (I applied in May, phone interview in June, in person interview in July; one of five, .....and rejection in August. Long time, lots of hope....nuthin)

Oh it smarts. It hurts. It hurts because I have tiny feelings that are easily crushed. 

It also hurts because I have an innate belief that I'm not good enough for most anything. Where this feeling comes from is easily traceable, typical even. I am an embarrassing cliche. I feel certain of the truth of my unworthiness in the darkest times. In the brighter times, I can easily see how faulty this view of "me" is.  This is problematic because when I experience rejection I am prone to dive right back into a black hole of all the ways I am "Not Good Enough". 

I haven't written on this website very much this summer for a few reasons. In past summers I've felt pulled in 10 directions trying to keep content on this website (and other people's websites) while the kids are hanging out being bored and or trying to kill each other. This summer I sort of decided to just be present. I didn't want to think of the things we did as content for my site. I didn't want to think how this activity would look on my webpage. I just wanted to be present and enjoy this summer with the kids. 

I also didn't write a lot on this website because I was pretty sure I was going to get that job. I was pretty sure that when I finally got the offer, I'd be back to viewing my website as a fun hobby. That I'd come up with funny little things to tell you all about. And it would feel just right. But, as I said, I didn't get that job and wow....ouch. 

This is hard for me to say because almost everything I've gotten from this website over the last 7+ years has been positive. But....

But....

Sometimes I'm surprised by the feedback I get from this website and it makes me feel...I don't know, less inclined to write. This is my problem obviously, I point back to how I started this post. I tend to worry that I'm "wrong" so feedback that comes at me that says I'm wrong I'm wont to give more attention to than the average person.

Logan will read something that's bothering me and say, "That's not true so don't even think about it again" but, I tend to think, "Oh! That's wrong...here are all the ways that's wrong!" as though I'm convincing myself of this. (Which, I am.) Then I think, "Maybe that's the truth. It's true, I am a failure...." and then the downward spiral get going like a roller coaster. It's not the most pleasant way to spend an evening.

School is back in session in less than two weeks. I can't even believe it. 

Also, I'd like credit for how little I've complained this summer. I know I haven't written a lot this summer but you guys, even Logan and my best friends have said, "Wow, you really didn't complain this summer."

And I haven't. 

One of the reasons I've started to explore work outside of my home is the loneliness. It's finally gotten to me. It's reached the point that I miss the kids when they're not here to keep me company. This is a new feeling for me. I've always felt like the kids aren't away from me enough for me to miss them. My magic number for reaching "lonely" is apparently 9 (nearly 10) & 11 (almost 12). They've both been in school full time for at least 3 full years now....and I'm finally lonely.

Lucy has helped that but Lucy likes napping as much as me. She's not "motivational".

I want a team to be a part of. I'd like a schedule to be held to. 

Of course I realize I'd probably be tired of that in about 2 weeks. Not the team but having a schedule. 

Remind me to tell you about what I did on my summer vacation next time I write. 

It involves sobbing, terrified kids on tubes floating down a river. 

LIFE LIST!

Nothing says "I'm sorry" like calling an ambulance.

This summer I've started riding my bike to pick up the car from Logan's office. I attach Lucy to the side and off we go for a leisurely 1.5 mile ride up to the office where I load my bike into the car, drive home and start the day with the kids. 

It's been a pleasant way to start the day and make sure Lucy is tired out and stays out of trouble, mostly. She's become obsessed with my unmentionables and this is a distressing, and expensive, turn of events. It feels a little Single White Female. 

We like to drop our rent check at our landlord's house. I know there are things called stamps and a little service called the US Post Office but we choose not to use it because THAT'S A SOCIALIST ESTABLISHMENT and we love our country. 

I didn't really need the car that day, so Lucy and I were going to skip our bike ride and just go for a walk. Instead I decided to ride my bike with Lucy over to the landlord's house to drop off our check. 

I'm pretty careful about my bike routes. I avoid traffic and ride on the sidewalk. I go at a pretty slow pace, not much faster than a slow jog so I can watch for danger and/or other dogs. My friends often ask me to go out for rides with them and I have to decline, my bike is old, has no gears, it's pretty heavy and it goes slow. (I just untyped a joke about it being "Just like me!" it was a little Joy Behar.)

Getting to the landlords house involved a small amount of danger on a route not many pedestrians frequent. I stayed off the main road until I couldn't avoid it any more. 

All was well for about 40 feet.

I came up to the exit of a gym came to almost a complete stop because a woman had stopped at the stop sign waiting to exit when traffic cleared. She looked at me, or I thought she did because she, you know, looked at me. I started to go because pedestrians have the right of way. They count as "traffic" actually.

As soon as I started to go she did too. I yelled, "HEY HEY NO NO NO" and kicked at her (very nice Mercedes) with my foot trying to get her to stop. 

It's a surreal feeling being knocked off your bike with a car. 

I'm not mad at that lady for hitting me with her car, for coming way too close to injuring me and my dog, for being careless in a way that would impact a whole lot of people in my life. No, I know that's a risk when you ride a bike in a region known as "The Motor City".

What I'm mad about is how she treated me after she knocked me into the middle of a very busy road, breaking my bike and crushing my skittish and insecure dog underneath it...with her car.

She got out of her car right away and started yelling at me not to move. I had landed on my hands and was sitting upright, Lucy was struggling to get out from under the weight of me and the bike. I tried to lift my body up so Lucy could get out from under the bike. 

And the woman kept telling me "DON'T MOVE! DON'T MOVE!"

So I thought, Okay, I must be bleeding somewhere I don't see because she is freaking out. Remember I was moving from a stop and so was she. In essence I fell off my bike...because of a car...but still. So I touch my head look at my arms, at my legs....nothing. But she keeps yelling at me not to move. 

I finally say, "Okay but I really need to get my dog out from under my bike and make sure she's okay."

She tries to get Lucy detached from the leash but can't figure out how it works and as I try to help her she keeps saying, "DON'T MOVE I DON'T WANT YOU TO MOVE!!!!"

...okay...but I'm sitting here in the middle of a busy road...are you trying to finish us off? 

We get Lucy detached and as I try to touch her she jumps away from me, scared, but now I'm convinced she's hurt, a broken leg? Rib? And I know she's "just a dog" and all those people watching this scene probably thought me totally nuts. But the adrenaline kicked in and I started to cry and panic a little. 

But this lady doesn't want me to move. I'm sitting in the road and she asks if I want an ambulance. I don't need an ambulance, I tell her, but I need to make sure my dog is okay. Again she tells me not to move. 

Soon the bystanders start to ask if I need help to move out of the road. I say, "No, but this woman is terrified of me moving." 

She starts to tell everyone standing around, "I offered her an ambulance...she doesn't want one." 

Over and over and over and over. As though by saying this it doesn't matter that she just knocked me off my bike with her car. She's absolved! Have a nice day! 

Never once does she ask if I'm okay. Never once did she say "I'm sorry." 

Her concern seems to begin and end with me laying in the road not moving and whether or not she offered to call an ambulance. Calling an ambulance is very difficult you realize, she really put herself out there.

Suddenly it occurs to me, Lady? You aren't in charge of me. So I move to the sidewalk and get Lucy untangled from her harness and quickly realize she's okay probably just shaken up like me. 

Having never been hit by a car I don't really know what to do next. And no one is doing anything but standing there looking at me. Someone from the gym has come out to see what's happened and she also stands there looking at me as I sit on the ground, sort of crying.

Over and over and over the woman keeps saying, "Well I offered to call her an ambulance."

I want to punch her in the mouth at this point. So I call Logan at his office hoping to get someone to this scene who knows what to do. I'm calling his phones and, as usual, he doesn't answer. I joke that Logan is seretly the janitor at his office since he's NEVER at his desk when I call. I call a coworker's number...but he doesn't answer either. 

I say to the Gym lady and the Don't Move Lady, "Should we call the police?"

But they both say no, no...you'll just need to file a report at the station....

And you know? What the holy Hell Melissa? YOU DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THESE WOMEN. I don't know why I did. Weak or easily bossed around are not words anyone in my life would use to describe me. If anything you'd probably hear "A little hot under the collar" "Doesn't take shit." "Can be kind of a bitch."

And yet, I didn't call the police. 

I'm still on the phone and the whole time there's a running commentary from Don't Move Lady about how she offered to call an ambulance. She offered! HOLY HELL SHE OFFERED!!!!

Finally, the anger is rising in my voice and I say, "Look, I appreciate that you're a little shaken up that you've hit me with your car."

She interrupts, "I know you're angry with me."

I say, "I'm not angry because you hit me and my dog with your car. I'm angry because you won't stop talking about how you offered to call an ambulance. I don't need an ambulance it's great that you offered to call one but I don't need one. What i need right now is to know what I'm supposed to do now. I could use some help and you telling me you offered to call me an ambulance is not helping."

She stares at me, not saying anything so I say, "What would help me now is if you left. Leave me your name and number and just go."

She turns to Gym Lady and says, 'Okay, I'll go but I want you to be my witness that I OFFERED TO CALL HER AN AMBULANCE."

I don't need an ambulance. I need someone to fix my bike, I need someone to find my husband, I need a way to get home, I need someone to tell me my dog isn't bleeding internally.

We exchange names and numbers and she leaves.

I call the front desk at Logan's office and send someone to the meeting rooms to locate him. To keep the receptionist from being annoyed I may have told her I'd been hit by a car and needed to find my husband. Which was in essence true but made it sound like I'd been sprung across a car like a rag doll. 

Additionally Logan's a robot, if you want him to react you better make it sound good. You never know he may have a story about how he was hit by a car and got right back up and ran a marathon. 

So I get home, I call the vet, Lucy's fine. She spends a lot of the day hiding under the couch like she does when the kids argue. 

I'm fine too, just a little sore. The day after the bruises start to appear but even those aren't that bad. The thing that surprised me is how sore my biceps were. 

I'm sure it was from the adrenaline I felt through my body after it all happened. But I like to think it was from me resisting the very strong urge to punch Don't Move Lady.

Later in the day I file a police report, Logan calls Don't Move to make sure she gave me a real number. She doesn't answer. I trace her address via White Pages reverse phone look up. The listing has a different name attached to it. I'm concerned. 

Gym Lady calls to see how we're doing. I tell her we're fine, just a little sore. 

Nothing from Don't Move. 

I leave her another message giving her my police report number, asking her to verify her address and letting her know that my bike repair guy is seeing if he can repair my vintage bike. Oh, and by the way Lucy and I are okay. 

Nothing from Don't Move.

I leave another message letting her know that if I don't hear from her I'll have to approach this situation as a Hit and Run because I have no idea if this is her number. Please let me know if you have received these messages. 

She finally calls back and leaves a message. Telling me that she got our messages, to let her know what the bike repair shop says. And that she's glad everyone is okay.

If you ever hit someone with your car, promise me you'll say "I'm sorry"...a bunch of times. And treat the person you've hit with kindness. It's possible I could have sued her, I assume that's why she was so awful in the aftermath of the scene. 

Here's the thing, no one has ever been sued more for being kind.

Not again.

Well, I thought the best way to handle this latest round of moderate depression was to just ignore it. Because, as I'm told over and over, what you believe is what is. If I believe I'm not depressed, don't give it attention, I won't be depressed anymore. 

Unfortunately pretending to not be depressed has resulted in feeling a lot of shame for feeling depressed and being unable to face even my very favorite friends. 

It's been a not-so-lovely place to be. The frustrating part is how I really don't have anything to be upset about. I'm no dummy, I know short of winning the lottery I am pretty lucky. I have a very nice life. A life that almost anyone would be endlessly blessed to have. 

Maybe minus the incredible urinating cat. (Yes! We're still being held prisoner by urine!)

And yet for the last 4-6 weeks I've been laying in bed waiting for the evening to come so the kids and Logan would be home letting me pretend I'm normal. 

Logan is convinced that I do this, it's a pattern. I start to go through changes in my life, good changes, new things, personality break throughs....and something inside of me panics and sends me hurtling into a depression.

I think this has some credence given that the depression got almost unbearable recently. Unbearable in the "Check Into The Hospital - I'm Only Alive Because Max Would Be Devastated If I Didn't Exist Anymore" kind of way. 

This set of really awful thoughts started after I visited Texas, came home very relaxed and very encouraged that maybe I could go back to "normal" again. Then, when I sat down to work on the goals my Life Coach and I started to discuss, it's as if the smallish-damaged child Melissa who still lives deep within the grains of my entire self started to have a temper tantrum.

I don't feel like I'm back to 100%. There are moments of great panic and I spend a lot of time not realizing I'm gritting my teeth and that awful pain in between my eyes is from me staring off into space wondering what comes next.  

I'm trying to breathe, to remember that letting go of who I am is allowing who I am supposed to be to come forward. 

In the meantime school ended on Friday and I'm hopeful this summer with the kids will be good for all of us. This summer my time is my own without any freelance clients depending on me to maintain the same working schedule I had while the kids were in school full time. Except that in the summer they're home pretty much full time and terribly resistant to day camps. Babysitters often make more than I did in a month, making them troublesome to, you know, pay. 

This year I'm home with the kids with nothing but time to fill and luckily we like more of the same activities and they're pretty good company with minimal whining and almost none of the tasks that made parenting young kids so physically demanding and intellectually un-stimulating.

I'm planning on lots of friends, days at the pool, movies, parties and maybe a few craft projects. Most of all it's been nice not being alone all day allowing my brain to pummel me with anxious thoughts and faulty logic leading me to hate myself. 

It's hard to hate yourself with a kid like Max around. It's easier to hate yourself around Maddie but that's just her age...at least I hope so. 

I've also got a second interview for a full time job out of the house. I'll admit, the whole thought of that gives me some anxiety, but I am working very hard to prepare and not worry. So far, with a couple of weeks until the big day, that's going pretty well. 

Talk to me the morning of the interview and I'm sure this will no longer be true.

Ghost of a Dog.

This is Lucy asking why in a free world she isn't allowed to go with me....everywhere.

So two weeks ago I was at the vet concerned about Lucy and her urine. The next week I was at the vet with Gary who was peeing blood on Maddie's bed. This seems...like a pretty good indication your cat wants you to know he doesn't feel good.

He seemed very sick. Very sick. I have a couple of friends with cats who peed blood, ended up with crystals in their urine, ended up with a blockage. Ended up with surgery, a $2000 vet bill and a cat who died anyway.

The animal rescue where we got Lucy would frown and legally remove my dog from my home if they knew this but...there's no way I can spend $2000 on Gary's bladder. So as we know, I harnessed the power of worry into a giant ball of sobbing incoherence on the phone with the vet. When I arrived, Gary covered in urine, I was convinced he was going to die. 

Gary dying would be undeniably sad. He is Maddie's best friend and I'm pretty fond of him too. I mean he's no Lucy but still I love his easy going personality. But the thing that was giving me hives and "ugly cry" was the thought of having to tell the vet, "I can't spend my money on this."

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, Gary did not have a blockage. So I handed over all my money, and took my urine soaked cat home to convalesce in the bathroom. I've spent the 7 days since then shoving a syringe in Gary's throat a few times a day. 

He isn't entirely pleased by this and could also use a nail trim so I'm a human scratching post. 

I'm not exactly known for my positive attitude and this last few weeks is no exception. The lucky thing is I'm having a really great week this week because I'm almost done nursing a cat back to health and (so far) this week there has been no animal urine in my general vicinity. 

It's nice when your week is considered good because nothing's peeing on you. Here's to the best week ever!

I thought it was April showers and May FLOWERS

So far May is full of pee. Rivers of pee! Animal pee! Bloody PEE!

What May is not full of = Lots of Extra Cash.

I mentioned last week that Lucy had been peeing all over the house and acting a little...grouchy.

I took her to the vet and found out she did in fact have a urinary tract infection. Which was just about the best case scenario because my God she was being awful to live with. I mean, even aside from the urine she was being obstinate, picking fights with her furry siblings and generally not listening to us. Which aside from the urine is a lot like Maddie on a regular basis. 

So we got her fixed up and my week last week was joyously free of urine.

And then this morning I woke up to the cat peeing blood all over the house. Which works out well since we're pinching pennies this week after a car repair and some other unexpected expenses ate up our extra living cash for the pay period. 

Weeeeeee! 

Authenticity

Years ago I read this quote: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." It's been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but that's disputed as well.

I don't actually care who said it, I've always gone back to it.

It's not that I never talk about people, of course I do, but when I spend more of my time with friends talking about people I feel like I just ate a giant bag of cheetos and my fingers are dyed orange and I can't get the stains off my hands. I feel gross and even though I've stopped eating the cheetos, I've got the reminder of my binge on my hand and I feel like a shitty person.

I'm not a fan of that feeling.

I find my relationships with other people most satisfying when our Idea/Event/People is 40% Ideas, 40% events and 20% people.

There are two things that are deal breakers for friendships in my world. Feeling that I'm giving more than I'm getting and feeling like I am complaining about a friend more than I'm not.

When that happens, I just don't feel good about myself.

This last week I decided both those things were true about a friendship in my life. Over time our friendship had changed and I was okay with that given that our personalities didn't always match up very well and I was getting out of the relationship what I was putting into it. Not very much.

But then she had a project going on and I felt like I was supportive and excited for her to be trying her hand at what will hopefully become her career after being out of the work world for years and raising a family. I volunteered, my husband volunteered, I lamented the changing of expectations at home when you go back to work, I felt like a cheerleader telling her happy I was she'd found her talent and was using it to start a career. I celebrated her success.

Then a couple of weeks ago I had some excitement in my own life. A front page article in the Free Press and a local radio interview I think I handled pretty well, especially considering it was over the phone and at 7:30am (early wake up + talking on the phone = BOO!) I was also given the opportunity to speak at a local-ish conference.

These were exciting for me because I've had some career goals in mind and one of those things is to be more locally known as a blogger in this genre.

I didn't hear a word of "way to go" or "nice job" or "how exciting" from this friend and after many emails to both Logan and I about various aspects of her project and reminding me of my volunteer duties coming up, without a word about any of the exciting things going on in my life. I realized, "Ouch. I don't like this."

And so I told her I didn't like it and we agreed it would be best if we moved forward expecting nothing from one another. 

Sounds civil enough, yes? Clear enough? Not angry or catty? A friendship that grew apart and finally ended when I realized I couldn't be my best self while letting this person under my skin and that I couldn't give anything when I didn't feel I was getting anything in return. 

And yet, the rest of my friends are all worked up about what this means. They feel put in the middle or like I've ruined the group or like I'm too difficult. People look scared of me even, patting my back and saying, "I'm worried about you." 

And I'm left sitting around my house alone on a Saturday night wondering what the answer is. Logan still volunteered because he a) doesn't like conflict and b) enjoys working his ass off for free. He's got a tattoo, it's a heart with a banner across it reading, "FREElance".

Is the answer to pretend to be friends? Is the answer to bitch or "vent" about someone who pushes your buttons behind her back and play nice to her face? It just doesn't seem right to me, doesn't make me feel like a good person and makes me feel, like I said, like I just snorted the dust out of the bottom of a bag of cheetos.

Ideally the answer would be to feel neutral about a person you no longer want to be friends with and let it fade away. This is much easier when they're not a part of your social circle and perceived to be in your core group of friends. 

A few years ago a similar thing happened with a friend. I realized I was increasingly talking about her behind her back and so much of what she said and did was grating and it wasn't just me who felt that way so of course I had a group of friends who were spending more than the healthy (for me) portion of time talking about this other person. Eleanor Roosevelt would be stunned at how very very small our minds were.

Finally I'd had it. I realized it wasn't just one thing this person did that she could maybe stop doing and we could get along. It was that her entire outlook on the world was in direct opposition to what I wanted in a friend. I told this friend enough was enough we couldn't be close friends anymore but if I see you around, I certainly don't want to be enemies. 

And again my circle of friends bristled. A friend's husband even called me to tell me I needed to try harder. That I was being silly! Other friends felt put in the middle, Logan thought I was being a terrible person.

I felt like a terrible person for keeping a friend I felt compelled to bitch and vent about every time I was around my girlfriends. After I "broke up" with her our friends would start to tell me the latest vent and I had to stop them. Not only did I not care anymore, if they were going to keep being friends with her I needed them not to talk about her behind her back because guess what? If people are talking about one person to you? They're talking about you to other people. [Word Of Wisdom for Maddie #5]

I'll admit it's undeniably awkward when you say something out loud that most people just let happen over time. Honesty makes people bristle, I've got the email to prove it!

But I don't know what the answer is. I've felt like shit about myself ever since. I've felt isolated from my group of friends, unsure what my social life is going to look like now that I've cut a big personality in our circle out of my core group of friends, Logan is mad at me because he hates conflict (boy did he marry poorly in that realm) and I'm bowing out of the Girls weekend I've been looking forward to since last year. 

I don't believe in knowing everyone or making sure everyone knows my name. I don't believe in inviting everyone to the party so no one thinks you're a bitch and I don't believe in having aspirational friends.

Certainly I don't want all my relationships to be at the same level. I don't expect or want every friendship I have to be "best-pal" quality. 

But I really just need all the relationships in my life to be authentic.

I'm writing this because it's Sunday and no one will read it. Sorry.

No one really likes to hear about how sick you've been. But Holy Shit, we've been sick.

And I know posting about our ridiculous illness right after a week of posts about food is, kind of gross. But I have to get this out.

We've never experienced the stomach flu in this house, I actually started to believe it was a myth and was simply food poisoning. I believed that all through the night Monday as I slept with my head in the toilet.

In those hours I developed very harsh feelings toward the hummus I ate at around 10pm before going to bed.

But then Wednesday Maddie called from school after throwing up in a garbage can in the cafeteria. She came home and her illness was pretty mild, nothing like my 8 hours of snuggling with the toilet. 

Saturday morning Max complained of a stomach ache and I can't tell you why I thought this, but I thought, "Maybe he's just a little constipated". Yes I realize all evidence would point to my son having the same stomach virus Maddie and I had just lived through but I was TRYING TO BE POSITIVE.

I was trying to be positive right up until he climbed into bed with me, mentioned his stomach still hurt and Blam-O. If you know what I mean. 

I realize being a mother for 11 years and never having to clean up vomit and never having vomit on my person is a pretty lucky break. But it's one of those milestones I didn't feel like I'd missed out on.

Like maybe I sometimes look back on my kid's babyhood and think, "I wonder what a fulfilling breastfeeding relationship would have been like....." But I've never thought, "I wonder what it would be like to wake up just to be thrown up on?"

But now my catalog of experiences has that one on it. Take that, Life List!

Looks like we're all on the mend, though still contagious for 3 days and up to 2 weeks. So Sofa-Fest 2010 continues over here through the long weekend.

I would say we've got one more family member left to get it, but for some reason Logan will never get sick. Even though I repeatedly used his toothbrush and may or may not lick his lips while he sleeps.

I realize this sounds cruel but just ask me about Tuesday morning after a night with my head cradled in the toilet. You'd want a turn to be dismayed by his failure of an immune system.

Either this week will be healthy or I'll be happily reminding my husband that everyone gets sicks sometimes. Win-Win as far as I'm concerned.

(*Note the new banner. I may or may not have fallen AGAIN on the slush on my driveway Friday night. Yes, I was wearing the same shoes I've fallen wearing every other time. No, I don't have a death wish, I just hate shopping.)

Still not getting the answer I want

My doctor's office is insanely busy. I pulled in yesterday and it looked like a mall parking lot, with cars following people to their cars so they could have their spot. The waiting room is insane, the phones are ringing off the hook and I'm standing there thinking, 'I just want to know I don't have cancer and while we're at it can we get rid of this cough?'

If you want to have a health scare, I'm going to suggest you don't do it in the midst of a flu epidemic.

On Friday I had a skin test for tuberculosis. From what I understood, if I'd been exposed to TB in my life the injection would cause no reaction on my skin. So it didn't react, which I thought meant that I had had TB.

Now when I write that out I realize it makes no sense. Especially since they gave me a note telling (my employer) that my TB test was negative.

Because I am the smartest person in the world, I thought that meant I didn't have a current TB infection but since my body didn't attack the TB I thought that meant my immune system was used to it. After announcing to my family, my husband and a bunch of people on the internet that I did have TB, which could be the reason I have an opaque spot on my lungs.

After all that I realized that when the nurse gives you a note that says, "Negative" it means you don't have TB and you never did. I guess I misunderstood the doctor, she must have meant if I had TB in my lifetime, my body would try to fight it off when it was injected under my skin.

I'm not a fan of waiting but it looks like that's what I'm going to have to do. I kind of wish all this would stop being part of my life because it's unpleasant.

I'm pretty disappointed.

I'd never eat sushi again.

Iodine in your veins makes your nether regions really warm, in case you wanted to know. I was told this could happen but it was still awfully jarring, as though I'd just wet my pants during my CT Scan. (I'm sure there's a fetish for that.)

I wasn't sure I wanted Logan to come with me because I wasn't sure what would happen at this appointment. Would they, like they did at my follow up mammogram, look over the data and tell me, "Surprise! You've got a cat in your lung!" on the spot. And if they were going to tell me news on the spot, and the news was unpleasant I didn't really want to be there alone.

But alas, there was no news, only an assurance that my doctor would have a report in 3-5 business days. To which I say, "Bull Shit."

Instead I asked Logan to take the morning off of work to sit in a waiting room for 10 minutes while I laid on a table wondering if I'd wet my pants.

Logan deals with these things, these little moments of health scares in our family, with a lot of grace. I give him credit for that because I can't imagine I'd feel very good if he paniced and I couldn't devote all my energy to worrying.

On the other hand when he says patly, "Everything is fine."

I can't help but feel he doesn't fully embrace the power of worry. He doesn't know everything is fine and yet he claims it as truth. I feel this is begging the universe to clobber us over the head and still, he won't worry or even slightly fret.

I'd even give him a pass if he wasn't worrying because of some supernatural ability to see the future or even just a gut instinct. Instead he bases his total lack of worry on one simple fact. He doesn't want anything bad to happen so he simply believes it won't.

I know. I know I should just leave because he's fallen off the deep end. Unfortunately he's really good in bed, so I'm kind of stuck with him.

Luckily there's a bunch of you guys out there fretting. Some people turn to prayer but I like that you're worried so that when the results come in and it turns out I aspirated some Magnetix pieces I can feel like a real asshole putting you all through this kind of stupidity.

And Man! Some of you guys are really fucking good at worrying. Some of the possibilities you've dug up around the internet are just so awful. So heart stoppingly awful, you've really got me almost convinced the next time I cough my whole body is going to spontaneously combust. This is the kind of worrying I can get behind.

Yesterday I ran around after the appointment getting last minute stuff ready for Maddie's class camping trip. Then I did a lot of laundry and finally went to hang out with my two best girlfriends and a bottle of prosecco. I felt mildly exhausted and a little distracted yesterday but quite honestly each minute that goes by without a call from the Doctor makes me feel a little safer.

A little more like my luck isn't running out quite yet. 

But then that's sort of a slap in the face to my theory of worry. So today I've spent the day in bed covered in a rash over most of my upper body, what appears to be an iodine allergic reaction. The phone is right in my lap and I'm not sure if I should be happy it hasn't rang, it seems like if the spots in my lungs were something terrible I would have heard by now.

Or if I should be terribly worried something fantastical is happening and the doctors can't even identify it yet.

Like my transformation to Mermaid Lady has begun.

Don't get me wrong that sounds fantastic, I just don't know how we're going to afford a salt water pool in the basement. I guess I'll worry about that for a while.

Lucky

On Friday I finally made an appointment to see why the hell I've been coughing for the last 7+ months.

I know you're thinking to yourself, "You've been coughing for 7+ months and didn't think to get it checked out?"

And I know...it's like the time my mother let a golf ball grow in her breast and finally went to the doctor only because her bra strap wouldn't stay put. Boy did I think that was stupid.

And here I am. 

It just hasn't been a constant problem. I've been on trips and overnights with friends who never heard me cough in the night. So I'd think, "Oh maybe it's finally over."

I didn't go to the doctor because I hate when I go and they can't find anything wrong with me. Like all the times I went in because I was exhausted all the time and we did all these tests and there was nothing wrong. Well, except that my tonsils were slowly trying to kill me but no one figured that one out.

My cough was very dry and really only happened at night or if I was up late and happened to laugh too hard. Laughing too hard is one of the things I enjoy the most about my life, so this was more than a mild annoyance but still seemed like something a little silly to complain about.

"I like laughing really hard and this cough won't let me."

It's only been in the last month or three that the cough has made my husband secretly hate me. Loud sighs and dramatic roll overs have become the norm when a coughing jag takes over around 2am waking up the entire neighborhood.

He says he's only annoyed because he has been telling me to see a doctor since last June and I ignored him. But the truth is it's a really annoying cough and sometimes when I get going I can't stop for an hour. And worse than a constant coughing jag, I'll get it under control and everyone in the neighborhood will start to drift back to sleep and then, oops! There it is again and the cat is hanging by its claws from the ceiling. And so is Logan.

I finally went to the Doctor on Friday armed with a couple very logical explanations for my cough. In the comments Reflux Cough was mentioned and this made a lot of sense to me since the medication I take for Crazy gives me heartburn which I treat with antiacid medication. Also Max and I are sniffly a lot this season so I thought, perhaps I have some allergy issues that have been causing this cough.

I did not even turn to DrGoogle to search for life threatening ills you could possibly have. Because I'm smarter than that you see. I don't need to get all worked up about nothing. 

I walked into the doctor confident it was reflux cough or allergies causing this Laugh Suppressing Cough. I told the doctor this and she said, "Well let's try this allergy medicine to see if that helps. If it doesn't, we can try increasing your antiacid medicine but I don't think it's reflux. Before you go though, we should do a chest xray to make sure there's nothing going on in your lungs."

And I said, "But....the internet said I have reflux cough. And everything I read on the internet is true."

And she said, "We check out your lungs if you've had a cough for more than 4 weeks so I'd be very negligent if I didn't check yours after seven months."

I had the xray and saw the outline of my boobs and as I watched the xrays develop I thought to myself, "You know, they're just not as sexy when see through."

I went back to the exam room got dressed and tried to leave, but the nurse said the doctor was still looking over my xray. Probably debating how much less sexy my boobs look when transparent and placed against bones, I thought.

And then two doctors walked in with my x rays and that doesn't bode well does it.

They said, "3 small masses, two in one lung and one in the other."
I said, "Reflux cough."
They said, "Enlarged lymph nodes all over."
I said, "Reflux Cough?"

We parted with "You need to have a CT Scan so we can get a better look at what is happening in your lungs and around your lymph nodes."

I said, "So, it's reflux cough?"

They patted me on the back and said, "Maybe....let's just have another look, okay."

Then I stood in the lobby saying, 'Reflux cough?"

Tomorrow morning I'm having the scan and, listen, I've been through "Ruling Things Out" and "Getting a Better Look" about, oh, a thousand times.

We spent an entire year of Maddie's life ruling out: Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, Various Muscular Dystrophies, Cystic Fibrosis, etc and so on.

I made my way to each scan, MRI, x ray, blood test....calmly reminding myself that we were only ruling things out. Only getting a better look. Nothing was wrong. Nothing would be wrong.

But every time there was that tiny voice, there IS that tiny voice, that says, "Eventually they'll find something." 

The first 16 years of my life were horrible. People have lived and are living far more terrible lives than I did but still, it was a terrible life and occasionally I have nightmares that I'm still in the middle of it, clawing to survive.

When I was about 20 I started to feel my life getting better. I started to feel normal, with normal decisions to make and normal heartaches and normal annoyances.

I'm not the kind of person who blows rainbows out of my ass with gratitude and it's true I often have abnormal responses to normal things people every day have to deal with.

However, since my father died, my life has gotten richer and more beautiful. Everything I thought I didn't deserve has become part of my normal every day life. These things have become so much a part of my normal life I have the luxury of taking them for granted.

When we have to take a closer look, or rule something out...it brings up the fear that my life will not always be this good. That it's true, there is something wrong with me.

I am keenly aware I am a lucky person.

Eventually.....

my luck will run out.

At this point Swine Flu would be like a dream come true.

I have the world's most annoying cold. It refuses to develop into anything more than an energy sucking/sleep depriving annoying sniffly nose cough thing with occasional "Please I'd Like To Tear My Face Off To Relive The Sinus Pressure" moments.

The cough, I've had off and on for months.

When I went to Florida with my friends last June I was nervous about sharing a room with the friends I hadn't shared with before. I worried they'd be loud sleepers because I am a very light sleeper. I used to snore at times, because of my tonsils, but when I got rid of them I stopped snoring. I felt pretty confident about my fitness as a roomate for anyone.

It turns out my roomate is the world's quietest sleeper. Like I think she completely powers her body to "Off" because you can't hear anything. I held a mirror under her nose to see if she was even still alive. I don't even think she was breathing, that's how courteous a sleeper she is. Her breathing might be a bother, so she'll just stop for the night.

It turned out I was the annoying loud sleeper. I didn't snore but that annoying cough apparently kept my roomie awake the entire time we were there. Even worse I talked in my sleep demanding pizza in a very mean voice. (Saturday night I woke myself up laughing about a dish I read on a menu in my dream called Cob on the Coleslaw.)

Next year I'm going to have to sleep in the shed.

At this point it's pretty safe to say I have allergies but I can't seem to find the medicine that will reliably fix my symptoms. It's pretty obvious I'm allergic to Gary. Anyone want an enormous cat? 

Max is suffering from a similar malady, what I thought was the beginnings of swine flu has dragged on and on for two weeks. I kept him home yesterday just waiting for the fever to start, for something to happen. Instead we sat on the sofa watching movies and coughing on each other. With loving feelings in our hearts. This morning he didn't cough at all, and was only mildly sniffly....so I sent him to school.

....where he'll surely catch the flu so that's just wonderful.

=============================

I've started knitting again, something I haven't done in years. I did not teach myself before you ask, I took a class that sort of developed into a knitting circle where the teacher would show me how to do everything 50 times because I could never remember things like making increases.

I bought my yarn on Thursday afternoon and, thanks to the wonderful world of free knitting tutorial videos online, I've been able to refresh my memory without having to walk around the block to the knitting store every four rows to ask for help.

I knit furiously for 5 days, staying up until 3am one night because I created beautiful raglan yokes (for the sleeves) on this sweater and the triumph was like crack cocaine. I didn't think I'd ever sleep again. Finally, after knitting for 4 hours straight yesterday, (while coughing in Max's face), I put the knitting down.

When I went to sleep I began to dream about knitting the sleeves, because it's a technique I've never done before and I can't seem to wrap my brain around how it will work. I have a lot of lame dreams, I dream I forget to pay the babysitter, I dream about running the errands I have on my list for the next day, I dream about inexplicable menu items like Cob on the Coleslaw.

But this dream about knitting a sleeve was just intolerable. I kept waking up and trying to think of something else to dream about, something more exciting like how I was going to do laundry the next day, but inevitably my brain would go back to knitting. Which also happened when I first discovered that sudoku is an excellent mind numbing puzzle game. 

This concludes Explanation #1: Why Melissa Has Never Touched Illegal Drugs (I may have lightly grazed one briefly. But I don't even count that as illegal.)

Consequences.

I've hesitated to write about the current Roman Polansky "scandal" because I haven't been feeling very intelligent lately but I also wanted to be clear and concise in what I need to get out of me. Instead, you're going to get this I guess.

I'm assuming you all know about this thing. He raped a 13 year old girl in 1977 when he was 43. He admitted his guilt and when faced with jail time, because he raped a 13 year old girl orally, anally and vaginally, he fled the country.

I understand he had great personal tragedy in his life and it also appears from many accounts that the case was mishandled on quite a few levels. Unfortunate for Polanski, but moreso for his victim. The bottom line is raping a child will land you in prison. Or it should.

You can read the transcripts of the victim's grand jury testimony here.

I read this piece at The Village Voice and loved its tone. What Scorsese and All the Rest Know About Roman Polanski That Maybe You Don't.

And also this at Broadsheet, Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child.

Everyone's had a lot to say about this and I really have no clever new take but obviously this has hit a major raw nerve for me, given my own story.

When I shared my story I was sent all kinds of support that applied another layer of salve to the wounds that inevitably linger after being a victim of sexual abuse. But there were also some disturbing (to me) emails explaining how weak my father must have been as a person, possibly abused himself and how the best thing to do was to find forgiveness in my heart for him. (Or things with that running theme.)

Or worse a person who lamented the fact that sex should be "kept private", implying that being raped by my father was an act of sexuality and not abuse.

And with that I think I understand why this Roman Polansky case has gotten so deeply under my skin.

I like to believe we've all come a long way in understanding rape and child abuse. I also spend a lot of time wondering why so many girls are still abused every single day.

When people tell me to empathize with my father I question whether we understand as a society how terrible rape is and that men, even troubled men are accountable for their actions. 

When someone tells me I should be ashamed to discuss the fact that my father raped and abused me I wonder if our society will ever stop confusing Sex and Abuse.

When powerful people in Hollywood tell the world that Roman Polansky shouldn't serve time in jail for raping a child....

I think I understand why little girls will always be at risk and it makes me furious.

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.