Princess Nebraska

All For the Love of a Button

2007-09-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I couldn't figure out how to add Tricia's button to my sidebar on Blogger, so I sucked it up and moved.

In October I'll be posting 31 times in honor of my sister and National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and I'll doing it at my new home, here:

http://princessnebraska.wordpress.com/

I hope you'll all follow me over there.

Thank you!
Elizabeth

Probably Not of General Interest...

2007-09-27T15:57:00.001-07:00

...but lately while doing my treadmill running I've been watching Season One of Battlestar Galactica on DVD and now I have THE BIGGEST girl crush EVER on Starbuck.

Seriously, I love girls that kick ass. Starbuck makes me want to quit washing the damn dishes all the time and worrying about when I'm going to fucking vacuum or whatever and she makes me want to ditch my kid and husband at home and go learn to fly a viper and smoke cigars and wear boots a lot, and I'll be honest, I don't really even know what a viper is, exactly.

In other related news, how come there are so few kick ass girls out there in TV land right now? And please don't tell me that Mariska Hargitay files a mean motion or whatever the hell her character does. Furthermore, I don't share the nation's interest in forensic science, no matter what random city it takes place in, so whatever ass kicking the sassy...uh forensic sciencey ladies of TV may be doing these days is of no interest to me. Anyway, I'm talking about actual physically violent bad girl power ass kicking and I can't think of anyone doing it these days. Anyone? If the situation doesn't improve I'm just going to have to watch Buffy Seasons 1-5 and BSG on an endless loop. And then I might have to start attending comic cons and writing fanfic and reading graphic novels and next thing you know I'll be buying Star Trek uniforms on Ebay and making Mr. E *renew our vows in Klingon.

And we can't have that.

*PS We aren't renewing our vows any time soon, we've only been married for four years. But if we ever do, it totally won't be in Klingon. Duh. It will be how everyone should renew their vows: in Vegas, before God and Elvis. Or Elvis, anyway.

Do I Know You?

2007-09-24T21:32:00.001-07:00

With Mom

2007-09-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Thank You

2007-09-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have much to say. Am doing much better. Thank you very much to all who emailed support. It has helped immeasurably. If you wonder why I'm not blogging or returning email, it's because I just googled "help baby teething".

Things I Might Delete Tomorrow

2007-09-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I feel like too many people I know in real life read my blog and I can't admit the things on here that I wish I could. Like can I say that right now I'm trolling the internet for cute baby boy clothes because right now it's either shopping or eating and for christ's sake I've eaten enough today.?

Ugh. I'm tired of depressing revelations about my mental instability. I'm tired of my fat ass and my tight jeans and my total lack of willpower. I'm tired of becoming a cliched binge eater but I can't stop eating mother fucking sour patch kids. I'm tired of soul searching.

Admitting things late at night feels cathartic so maybe I should just keep going. If you know me in real life just pretend you never read this since I'm about to admit it all, right here for everyone to see.

That we don't know anyone here and we have no friends with which to do anything and I think my husband and I are starting to get on each other's nerves and sometimes I wonder how I ended up in such a one sided argument of a marriage where everything I say is agreed with. That I finally the other day realized for once and for all that I did not, do not - have a mother I like, really at all, and that I will spend the rest of my life fighting the emptiness that is left because of that. That I say terrible things about everyone I know and I can't stop. That often we are barely getting by and we are living paycheck to paycheck. That I almost never feel like putting out and that my husband has given up trying to persuade me otherwise and even that depresses me. That I never feel good enough. That I once tried therapy and it was useless because I completely and totally lied my ass off to my therapist. That I shop and accumulate as protection against the insecurity that mounts on the upward curve towards a visit with family. That I can't drive. That I convince myself that this is not an emotional problem and that I love spending every day at home with nowhere to go. That I love my son so much I often wish I could wake him up just to smell his neck and yet sometimes I look at him and think "you're STILL here?! Yikes." That it angers me intensely when I feel judged - and I'll passively agressively post on my blog later to get you back for it. That I hate talking on the phone and I hate leaving the house by myself because dealing with other people freaks me out so much. That I wanted a girl. That I wish I believed in God.

Bet you didn't know that, did you?

Park

2007-09-19T15:07:00.001-07:00

I Know It's Kind of Wrong...

2007-09-18T16:59:00.001-07:00

But I am the only one who laughs out loud when they hear the NPR announcer say "massive unit withdrawal"?

Hee.

These Have Always Brought Me Luck

2007-09-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting because I'm really not in the mood to do ANOTHER I'm in a really crabby mood blog post. I'm waiting it out. And yet here I am, still in a really crabby mood.

It's that feeling like when you're itchy all over but you can't find the spot to scratch? That feeling like having a cold on the hottest day of the year? The weird puckery sore lip thing you get when you eat too much salty popcorn. The way it feels to walk into the ocean with cuts. Being stung by a jellyfish. Making a fancy dinner only to discover that the meats gone bad. Swollen achy joints in my fingers. (I've had this since I gave birth - what the heck is it? Anyone? Post partum arthritis?)

Anyway. I did run my nine miles on Sunday, just to let you know. In case you were waiting to hear how that went. It wasn't easy, but it was possible, and that's what counts in the end. Parts of it I only kept going because I wanted to be able to come back here and tell you all that I had made it, so this is me, telling you I made it. But still crabby.

Sometimes when I'm in a really bad mood I start to remember all the things that Mr. E has done in the past that have really annoyed the shit out of me. For example two Christmases ago at Starbucks, they had these kick ass reusable advent calendars for sale...nice red boxes with numbers on them, stacked in the shape of a tree. A place for a chocolate in every box. I adored them and the idea that every year I'd get to pull the advent calendar out of the christmas box and fill it with my own chocolate. It had such a very nice square pleasing symmetry to it that just suited me to a t. It was like the Kate Spade of advent calendars. Boxy and crisp. And every time I saw it would say to Mr. E "that's really the only thing I want for Christmas this year" and it got to be this running joke, and I just assumed that he had purchased it early on because I mentioned it every damn morning and I am the sort of person who, if you tell me there is one thing you want for Christmas and that one thing costs a mere $14.95 well, heck, I'm gonna buy it for you. Early on and all, just to be sure.

December 1st rolled around and that's the day the more traditional among us start opening our advent calendars, and so when Mr. E and I walked into Starbucks that morning and he tried to it buy it that day!!! and it turned out that it was sold out everywhere and there was no chance of getting one, I couldn't help it. I'm not sure what came over me, even.

I started to cry.

I was just so shocked. It had never even occured to me that Mr. E wouldn't just...buy the thing he knew I wanted well ahead of time. When he didn't I took it very personally. Which I know shocked the hell out of him and maybe taught him a lesson when he had to pay $34.95 plus shipping to buy me one of those advent calendars on Ebay later that day.

But that is not the point of this story. The point of this story is that even though it is very easy for me, on these saltwater sore angry days, to think of failure, it helps immeasurable to rise above, to try harder, to reach for better memories. Like how sometimes Mr. E will say "These have always brought me luck" when he hands me the car keys. I just love that. It cracks me up every time.

So. Working on the crabby mood, hope to snap out of it soon. Wish me luck.

Prepare Yourself For an Unbelievable Amount of Cuteness

2007-09-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

2007-09-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

So. I weighed myself this morning and I gained four pounds. IN A WEEK. Bah.

I'm probably projecting here. But people. I am so so so so so over the Detroit Half. So over it. I could not be more over it unless I actually just went ahead and broke up with it. "Hi, Detroit Half Marathon? You can take your nation's only underwater mile and your thirteen motown bands and your TWO trips into Canada and your ending on Ford Field and your Ambassador Bridge and cram them up your ass."

I know. I know. Sigh.

This is my third half marathon but it is my first as a mom, and holy crap, the massive time suckage involved cannot be overstated. And holy crap, is it hard to train when it's 80 degrees at 7 am. And due to a scheduling fudge up on my part I've run three eight mile long runs in a row and all three of them sucked hard. At no point during any of them did I did I think "wow, those nine miles I have to run next week should be totally super fun!" (Or possible, even).

And then afterwards between the breastfeeding and the long run I am so freaking hungry all day that nothing, but nothing, keeps me full for longer than an hour. I scarf down food all day. I'm hungry immediately after eating. I swear I get hungry for the next meal while I'm eating the first one. I can't deal with counting points. And come Friday I've gained four pounds.

Worst of all is that I am scared. Scared that I can't do this and that I will fail, and that's the ultimate terror because Mr. E's entire family lives in Detroit and those are the people who stress me out and intimidate me more than anyone else in the world and the idea that I could fail in front of them makes me want to enter the half marathon witness protection program.

Writing this all out here has kind of helped though. Admitting I am scared that I can't do this has helped. Admitting that I don't know if I can lose weight while running this much and that I might just have to suck it up and buy a pair of size ten jeans this weekend has helped. And maybe made me realize I can try a little bit harder. Even if I do feel like I could devour the world after I run, that world could be tuna and oranges and egg whites and tofu, it doesn't have to be forty three trader joes meringues.

However what helps the most is reminding myself that I only have five more weeks of this to go and only six more long runs including the half left and then I 'm totally breaking up with the Detroit Half Marathon for good. Although I am so keeping its t shirt.

First Picture From the New Camera of Wonder and Delight

2007-09-13T22:05:00.001-07:00

Re Run

2007-09-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Rather frighteningly, last night Mr. E's mom told me that when he was a baby the apricot baby food was her favorite and she usually ate about half of it while she was feeding Mr. E. Which I thought was funny because I think Mr. E eats more of the apricot baby food (the baby food that we sweated over for like, hours and made from scratch with our tender loving hands) than Eli does. Eli only really likes the most vile baby food - the kind no human in their right mind would actually want to eat - the jarred chicken lentil barley spinach pea puree of evil comes to mind. He loves that.

Also, let's just say that I know that some people who shall remain nameless were permanently life traumatized by the time that the CBS evening news report came on and announced that a dead body had been found in Kurt Cobain's Seattle home and then his or her father may have said "Well, Erik, sucks to be you!" but really, it is not necessary to keep me on permanent red alert update status regarding Greg Oden and his delicate playoff chance ruining knees. I am totally totally aware of the fact that once again, this season, my favorite sports team will break my heart, I don't need constant reminding. But thanks anyway.

Last night I was watching that Tim Gunn's Guide to Style because it comes on right after Top Chef and I was not done running my three miles yet and besides the fact that it's an egregious rip off of What Not To Wear, I found it rather heartily depressing that all the clothes that they making fun of and that horrified Mr. Gunn and his model helper the most were clothes that I actually own. Like, the actual American Eagle sweater that I wore this winter got placed in the discard pile. Also, the thing that annoys me most about those shows? Really, they're just telling you to dress up. And I have to say, I have those clothes. I have the dark skinny jeans and the blazer and the pointy toed heels and the aline skirt and I'm here to tell I don't care what you think, I'm not wearing that shit to the grocery store. I mean, of course you look better in dress up clothes, that's the point of dress up clothes! No one says "Damn, I look hot in this oversized hooded University of Michigan sweatshirt!" Of course not. But sometimes you want to wear the jeans and the hooded sweatshirt and I don't see anything wrong with that. I personally tried to do the whole little jacket and jeans thing a while back and I find that whole situation very restricting and I am not a fan. I'll just be over here rocking my striped unflattering what not to wear anti tim gunn American Eagle hoodie, thank you very much.

Off to order a shockingly overpriced must keep the babiessssssss safe carseat.

Plan of Attack

2007-09-12T14:09:00.001-07:00

Well. I decided I was going to quit feeling bad about myself and bitching about how my shorts are tight again and feeling depressed about buying new jeans again and I was going to give this stupid Weight Watchers thing the real hard core try and in order to do that and to stop eating chocolate ice cream like it's going out of style my new plan is to set out everything I'm going to eat the next day on my kitchen counter at night. I just starting thinking about what worked for me in the past and what isn't working for me now and I think it was just easier to lose weight when I was at work all day and could control what I ate during the day by what I brought with me...I couldn't just wander into my kitchen the way I can now and eat chocolate and chips when I was at work. So I decided I would recreate that same situation as best I could by setting out my food for the next day the night before and so I have been making a new grocery list with high protein low fat snacks because crap, I hate being hungry.

Depressingly, all the high protein low fat snacks are the same this time around as they were last time.

Cottage cheese, anyone?

Waiting

2007-09-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

According to the ~~bastards~~ fine folks at UPS my new camera will be arriving tomorrow!
I'm so excited I think I might pee ma pants when it gets here.
I wish it was arriving today though :(
Today is going to suck. (Mr. E works late).
I need something to look forward to.
Hmmm. I am allowing myself ten almonds as a snack later@!
And who says life isn't exciting?

Undecided

2007-09-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

I can remember the exact moment I decided I wanted to have a lot of kids.

Mr E. and I were in Ann Arbor because his little sister had just graduated from U of M and so his whole giant family was there as well and since it was graduation weekend in Ann Arbor there weren't any extra hotel rooms to be found and everyone was crammed into a tiny little hotel room. You couldn't hear yourself think. Mr. E has twenty six first cousins on one side. He is one of five kids. His mom is one of six kids. And EVERYONE turns out for these family events, you just wouldn't graduate in his family without your seven aunts and uncles coming to see it happen. And so there were cousins screaming and there were coolers full of leftover meatballs and thousands of bags of opened chips and people laughing and someone was doing someone else's eye makeup in the corner and my brother in law phoned in prank noise complaints from the hallway on his cell phone and I think someone (that may have been me) was dying her hair red in the bathroom and the tv was blaring and everyone was happy and laughing and it was just so much fun to be spending time with all these interesting, smart, beautiful people who loved me and loved Mr. E just because we were their family. I loved it. I loved this huge crazy family and the noise and the chaos and the free for all and I loved that they go to basketball games and graduations and all the things that no one ever really cared about in my life, and I realized in that moment that all this happened because Erik's grandmother had six kids and those kids had their own bajillions of kids and that I wanted the same thing. I wanted the chaos and the laughter and the love. I was done with the cold empty quiet afternoons of my childhood and I genuinely wish I had grown up with a sister close enough to me that I could share a best friend with her and whisper my secrets in her ear as we fell asleep. So Mr. E and I have always thought that if we had kids, we wanted a lot.

And then we had Eli and I started to wonder. I don't care, at all, what YOU do, but I am not a fan of only children, so I knew we'd have two, no matter what. But you have one and five starts to seem like, man, that's all you'd do. All you would do is be a mom. Is that what I want? And doesn't that mean that I'd have to have number two like, tomorrow? I don't know if I'm ready for that. I mean, I think I'm not ready for that, because when I think about being pregnant again, I feel like like throwing up. And this might sounds stupid and maybe this is my own best argument for having more kids but when I think about Eli not being the only one I feel sad for him. I feel like he's so amazing he deserves all of me, that he shouldn't have to share. Is that stupid? I think it's sort of sad that he'll never remember this time alone with me. He will only ever remember having had a brother or a sister. Mr. E doesn't remember life without his brother Greg. Funny.

And then there is the weight thing. Because I always like to bring things back to the most superficial issues I can think of as I enjoy clinging to those like a life raft in order to not have to deal with the big questions I would rather not think about. I wonder if having four or five children would be a fundamental life mistake in which I try to change the very nature of who I am (someone who should only have two children) and force myself to become someone I am not (fun, loud, crazy, sexy, cool, etc) but instead of really thinking about that nauseatingly difficult question I choose to tell you that when I think about working my ass off and really killing myself to lose the 25 pounds I lost before I got pregnant and that I gained when I got pregnant only to go and have to do it over and over and over again after being pregnant two or three mores times? Well, it seriously makes me angry. Angry! What a useless pointless way to feel! I'd rather feel sick or frustrated or annoyed or distressed or a creeping sense of unfairness and while I do feel all those things, and more, mostly I feel pissed off. I'm going to spend the rest of my life dieting off this fucking baby weight! So shouldn't it be easier? Sigh.

I could really go for a chocolate chip cookie right now. Or two. Or maybe four or five?

Yes, I Will Totally Be Showing This Picture To His Prom Date

2007-09-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Lupine Lady

2007-09-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open.”

-Muriel Rukeyser

I've have been in such a terrible mood lately. I have blamed it on PMS and exhaustion and my messy husband and baby jail and not being able to afford pedicures and a lack of Coffee Heath Bar ice cream availability in my life and I've blamed my thighs and my mother and my father and my in laws. And now I've run out of cliches to blame my irritation on.

Although I do really really wish my child would stop screaming his fool head off and go to freaking sleep already and I think it's safe to say that the screaming and lack of sleeping on his part and mine isn't exactly improving my mood. Not right at this minute anyway.

I feel like I am sinking under a sea of lies.

Because of all the emotional abuse heaped on me as a child I became a survivor at an early age. I will get along with you no matter what. I will lie my ass off and pretend to like you and laugh at your jokes and smile and nod my head and agree with you no matter what, all the while thinking the most terrible things about you. As long as you know me, I will always be one step ahead of you, gauging whether or not you like me, if I have offended you, if you don't like something I said, always calculating, checking, smoothing over, watching for an explosion, working to make sure one doesn't happen.

And so I never tell the truth about anything. I think the people who really know me can tell when I'm lying and they probably see through me better than I realize, but I never ever tell people what I really think of them if it's something negative.

Is that normal? Is that just being nice? Does everyone just go along with things they think are total bullshit, just for the sake of getting along?

Mr. E and I said that September should be the month of truth but I honestly don't think my life could handle it. I don't think my blog could handle it. I don't know if I could handle it.

Because the truth is ugly. (I had it all spelled out here and then I couldn't do it.)

I would much rather focus on the positive.

I would like to do something to make the world more beautiful. But I do know yet what that may be.

Saved

2007-09-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

So ya'll may have heard of this Dooce lady? Some of you? Maybe? (I kid).

Anyway, ages and ages ago I found her site and since the minute she described picking out her camera (the Nikon D70) because she wanted a camera that would take the picture when she pressed the button, I have craved that camera. For years now, before I had a kid, before I had a dog. I put it on my Amazon wish list in 2003 or something. (Shockingly no one bought it for me.)

Anyhoo. Heather has since moved on to bigger and better cameras and they don't make the D70 anymore but I continued to dream about a Nikon digital SLR and so for many many months I have been saving every dime that came my way. I did not buy clothes, I did not buy nail polish or fancy soap, I did not get my hair cut, I did not get pedicures, I did not buy books, I did not buy sports bras or music or underwear or the new martha stewart cupcake liners at Michaels (although I really really wanted those). I saved and I saved and I saved and yesterday I ordered my new camera and I cannot freaking wait till it gets here.

The other day I took down my dusty regular SLR that used to be my grandfathers and I showed Mr. E how to take a picture with it and I told him about how my father taught me to use it when I was ten or so and how much I loved taking pictures and my father loved taking pictures and my grandfather loved taking pictures and how everywhere we went, there we were, the three of us, always with our giant cameras hanging around our necks. I've been too long in the land of the teeny camera and the random snapshot and I am so excited to become someone who is excited about photography again.

Can't wait!

She's An Extraordinary Girl

2007-09-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

We ate pasta and shrimp on Saturday night.
We collected water and Gu and shoes and went to bed early.
We woke up at 5:15 on Sunday.
We loaded the jogging stroller in the car and bundled the baby up against the (very temporary) early morning chill. I tucked $5 into my shoe for an after run reward.

I did not run fast. I didn't break any records, mine included. I didn't even beat Mr. E and he was pushing a baby.

But I did it. I ran eight miles. Of course because I am a natural and constant self deprecater I was focused on how incredibly slow I was running and how some things were jiggling more than they used to and how I am 20 pounds heavier than the last time I trained for a run and then happened to look up and I noticed my shadow next to me, just bounding along. And all of a sudden I was beaming and I felt proud.

I am very very proud of myself. So never mind the rest of it. I ran eight miles!

Jesus Drive By

2007-08-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

The other day Mr. E was sitting on a bench with Eli waiting for me to finish running and a woman and her kids sat down next to them…started making conversation. She asked Eli’s name and Mr. E told her and she said “Oh, straight out of the Bible. Does Eli love Jesus?”

OH MY GOD HOW IS THAT AN APPROPRIATE QUESTION?

Mr. E just changed the subject, he is an excellent diffuser. I told him next time (and you know there will be a next time) someone asks if Eli loves Jesus we should just say, very sadly, “Oh, no, he’s lactose intolerant” and walk away.

Talking About Love

2007-08-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Let me think of how to put this delicately.

Practically seconds after I started thinking "ok, maybe, let's try this, I might be ready for this baby thing. Maybe. I guess?" I was pregnant. In the time between when it happened and when I found out I decided that if it didn't happen that month then maybe we'd put the whole business on hold for a bit because I started to chicken out. I never got the chance to change my mind and so here we are today.

I realized the other day that if you've been reading this blog lately and you don't have access to Eli's baby book in which I write down how much we freaking adore him and you don't hang out with us in real life (or even if you do), well, it's just, there's been a lot of complaining here lately. Last night I lay awake remembering - thinking of telling my best friend in the Safeway parking lot that I couldn't eat sushi because we were trying but that it probably wouldn't work right away but maybe we wouldn't try anymore for awhile because I wasn't so sure about things and I am so very glad I never got the chance to overthink myself out of becoming a mom.

Some days I am so tired. Some days I am so frustrated. Some days I count every minute.

Some days I see Eli lying next to me and I think "oh my god. He's here. There's a baby here and holy crap he's mine how did this happen so fast?" and I still don't feel like a mom.

But some days we laugh. Some days we have pajama parties on the living room floor and we play with each other's noses and we fall asleep together. Some days we share six month birthday cupcakes. Some days we read books and I get baby chortles for my rendition of the The Little Lamb. He tries to eat my toes. I nibble his.

And I am never regretful.

I don't have this blog to write letters to my son. I have nothing against it, but for me, my writing is this organic part of me - something that I just have to get out so I don't go crazy, it's like my therapy, and that's more of what I do here. So yeah, it's a lot about me. And I am a complainer. And this blog isn't necessarily the place where I will note that Eli is 26 inches long or that we went to the park (although he is and we did).

Maybe that's just an excuse I make because I don't know how to say how I love this child as well as it should be said. Writing about love is a near impossibility. Dancing about architecture and all that, you know.

But. Complaints and all. On the hardest days. I only know that he is it for me. The instant he existed he became part of who I am. He has twined endless invisible leafy tendrils across my heart and now I cannot say where I begin and he ends. He is the air I breathe. He is the blood in my veins. He is my cherry chip cupcake, my favorite song, my reason. He is inextricably mine. I've never regretted anything less.

Using Your Powers For Good

2007-08-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

I just got my period for the first time in 15 months (along with the debilitating cramps caused by my endometriosis), tonight is one of the two nights per week that Mr. E works late at his second job, and Eli would only take a half an hour nap this morning.

Pray for me. Seriously. Or better yet...

Concentrate as hard as you can, focus on Northern California, stare at your computer monitor, use your bat force or whatever your powers may be, and think "THREE HOUR AFTERNOON NAP" with every fiber of your being.

Thanks!

Edited to Add: At least we know now why I've been ~~such a raging beotch~~ so crabby lately. Ah, PMS, how I did not miss you.

Not Working

2007-08-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a dirty little secret.

Although it is not something I would admit even to myself, ahead of time, prior to Eli, one of the reasons I wanted to be a stay at home mom is because I didn't really like working. Although I knew as you do all the politically correct $148,000 a year propaganda about how staying at home is working and I also heard all the sturm und drang about how hard it would be, it still seemed less...soul sucking, somehow. Like it might even be fun to stay home with my kids. I thought we could do projects and I'd get some fingerpaints or something and we could make crafts out of potatoes.

It's not so much that being a stay at home mom sounded easy, exactly, and it's not even because any of the jobs I've had have been so hard, but there's only so many mornings you can drag yourself out of bed at some ungodly hour to go adminstratively assist people who act like you suck because you LET them break the copy machine before you think that maybe NOT adminstratively assisting for a while would be nice.

But my god is THIS job hard. Hard hard hard.

I feel like I'm barely hanging on. I really do. I am so so crabby but when Mr. E asks me why I don't know.

One million years ago exactly when I was a freshman in college and seriously the most naive and innocent freshman in college of all time I signed up to take surfing classes. (Hee. Surfing classes. How awesome is the UC system?) One of the first things we learned besides the fact that the Pacific Ocean in October at 6 AM is really fucking cold is how to turn turtle - how to duck under the wave with your surfboard over you so you don't get all thrashed up by every wave. But sometimes you get caught anyway and inevitably it scares the shit out of you, the indescribably cold and unfriendly and enormous violent ocean tossing you in every direction and rolling you without stopping and causing you to lose all your bearings and sometimes you would only get the tiniest of breaths in and just open your eyes before wam there'd be another wave pounding down right on top of you, roiling you all over again.

That's the only way I can think of to describe this. Or maybe it's like I'm in a room where the oxygen is slowly leaking out. And it's leaking out so slowly that sometimes I think I'm perfectly fine, I don't even need that much oxygen, really, to live. And other times I know I'm dying.

I wish this wasn't so abstract. I hate that kind of writing. But unfortunately it's not as if there is just one thing I can point to and say "this is it, this is the problem, this is what is making this all so hard, let's fix THIS."

It's not just that my husband really wants me to stop being crabby and I simply don't know how to. It's not just that he won't take out the recycling, ever, and not just that my soul dies a tiny bit every time I open the broom closet to find thoughtless random scraps of cardboard that I will have to gather up and bag and cart out to the curb myself. It's not just that the second I finally get my house clean I can actually see the dog hair settling back over everything and I can feel the decay begin again, immediate. It's not just that I can't keep up with my running or my writing or my email or my friends or my family or my flickr account or my bills or my budget or my library books or my weight watchers points. It's not just that I can't imagine how anyone could do this with two or three or four. It's not just that I think I'm not doing a very good job. It's not just that I thought things must just gradually get better and so that's what I've been counting on and now my six month old is 100% straight up crawling and it turns out that's not easier than when he couldn't move at all and just stayed in one place and cried all the time.

So what I want to know is this:

When do I get a raise?

When do I get my two weeks vacation?

And doesn't someone owe me six months worth of two fifteen minute breaks?

The Story of the Elizabeths

2007-08-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

I hid my scale right before my parents got here.

Part of the reason is because I think I stole it from their bathroom the last time I was at their house. (Hi, I am 12). But mostly I wanted to see how it would feel if I separated myself from the numbers I just keep seeing over and over again.

143.5. 144. 148. 146. 144.5 146.5

I'm not sure what I think yet about this separation from the scale. It's like there are about fourteen Elizabeths in my head and on different days they each seem to make sense.

I would love to not think about food all the time, so sometimes I think I should just eat whatever I want and not worry about it and learn to be happy with me. That's carefree "fat is good for you it keeps you full! Elizabeth". She has a full fat caramel macchiato in her hand, and she wonders if you think "she shouldn't be drinking that" when you hear her order it.

I would love to eat just picked farm fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and not care about the calories in the olive oil drizzled on top or in the cheese or the bread. That's hippie "Whole Foods Elizabeth" and she eats a lot of olive oil, but only the local stuff. She worries that she doesn't try hard enough because she doesn't come anywhere close to eating only local or only organic or only free range or only hormone free and she's not reducing her carbon footprint and she secretly craves sugar free jello with cool whip.

But I would also love to be able to wear something besides the one pair of shorts that fit me and I don't want to buy new jeans this fall. And that's "Strict Dieting Don't You Want to Buy New Reward Jeans Elizabeth" and she eats Light yogurt and carrots and she really wants to weigh herself RIGHT NOW because she's been "good" all afternoon.

Then there's "If I ever have a daughter I can't fuck her up the way I am fucked up I need to get a handle on this soon Elizabeth" and she's eating chocolate (but only the dark Really Good Stuff!!!) while she reads self help books.

Then there's "you can't let people think you have let being a mom make you soft" Elizabeth and she's so scared of looking like a failure or a loser that she doesn't eat anything. She knows I have to lose fifteen pounds and that I sometimes look like I'm still pregnant even though my child is six months old.

Then there's sensible Elizabeth and she eats plain popcorn and diet coke and and she tells me to get off my ass and count my points and quit my complaining. She thinks about food all the time.

Don't forget runner Elizabeth. She thinks I'm amazing for running eight miles but she's scared I can't run nine and so she eats pasta with wild abandon and says "Screw portion sizes, I need the carbs."

Mostly there is scared Elizabeth. She makes sure she always has nuts and beef jerky and yogurt and apples and Clif Bars around and she wonders how to lose weight without fear, without hunger. She is afraid she will never ever like herself, no matter what she does. She is afraid she will never be skinny enough. She is afraid that if she doesn't eat enough she will be revealed for the selfish crazy body obsessed incompetent lunatic that she is when her milk dries up and she can't feed her son because she cared more about the size of her thighs than her own child.

I am all these Elizabeths. I can't help but notice that none of them are very happy.

And I have no idea what to do about that.

Wish Me Luck

2007-08-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

My mom is visiting...she has no idea about my blog so I won't be posting till the weekend, maybe. Although after cleaning the house for three days straight and then spending four days with my mom I am not lying when I say I can already tell I'm really going to just want to spend all next weekend lying around with a gin IV dripping straight into my veins.

My mom walked in the door and said "hmmm. Very clean in here." and then LAUGHED. What does that even mean?

A. She thinks my house is not actually that clean.
B. She thinks I'm a psychotic freak/bad mother for cleaning my house obsessively instead of teaching Eli french and how to diagram sentences and to play croquet at the age of six months.
C. She thinks I'm a loser who does nothing but clean my house all day and that instead I should get a job and a cleaning lady so I can be "successful" like her!
D. She thinks we have nothing in common and has nothing to say to me so she just comments on the first thing that pops into her head and then laughs nervously?
E. She thinks I am raising her precious grandbaby in a horrible neighborhood and so it shocks her how cute and clean my house is on the inside
F. She thinks having a dog is such a terrible and freaky idea that she can't believe its possible to have one and also have a clean house that's not filled with poop and half chewed god knows what.
OR
G. My house is just that freakishly clean it's all you can notice or think about.

I seriously have problems. I can't believe I can infer all that from ONE "mom sentence." God knows how an entire evening will go.

Again. Wish me luck. And send booze.

ROY G BIV

2007-08-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

My mom and stepfather arrive in less than 24 hours and my house is a hardcore disaster area and I completely exhausted myself running eight miles on Sunday and I have the crabbiest baby ever in the history of all time and so naturally I decided that now was a good time to put my books in rainbow order.

God I love procrastination.

Off to clean the bathroom!

(Yeah right).

The R Word

2007-08-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

Ever since I read Tricia's post the other day I can't stop thinking about it.

The word retard has always been the dirtiest word in my life. Hearing it is like being punched in the stomach, every time. It never gets any better. It never goes away.

I still remember going to see Clueless in the theater and hearing someone in that movie say retard and how it wrecked everything in an instant. I was at that movie with my sister and my whole family and I knew in that moment that an otherwise great afternoon had been a tiny bit ruined for all of us.

I remember seeing Scream and There's Something about Mary and wanting to run out of the theater at the horrible ridiculous caricatures of mentally retarded people. I was angry that I had to sit through those movies. I probably shouldn't have. And I'm sure everyone who was there with us felt the awkward because hey...this stuff is only funny if you don't know someone who's mentally retarded and everyone who knows me knows that my sister has Downs Syndrome and so of course I wouldn't find this stuff funny, and I swear I can still remember what the awkward sick twisted smile I had plastered on my face to just get through the moment felt like. Not good.

I broke up with someone I once really loved, could have loved, maybe loved for a moment, maybe, because he flat out wouldn't stop using the word retard after I asked him too. Before and since then I've asked hundreds of people who probably never thought twice about it before to do me a favor and to not say retard in front of me. Most of the time they listen. I don't know how many people have only stopped saying it in front of me. I do know that when I was growing up it was very much slang and I hope it's not anymore but I don't hang out on playgrounds too much anymore.

Eli won't be saying retard, I can tell you that much.

Sometimes I tell myself that the word "retard" is a built in asshole detector. Like I'm lucky if you use it because I know you're a jackass and I don't have to worry about being your friend. Sometimes I think that's too harsh and hell, maybe I'd be throwing it around if I didn't have this gift - this gift of growing up loving someone different and special.

The thing is this. I'm here, on this earth, for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is to keep my sister safe, to have her back, to protect her. And while the word retard hurts me and ruins movies for me and, yes, makes me like you less? I can take it. However. My sister is 25 years old and she watches those movies sometimes and when she hears the word retard and she sees mentally disabled people being made fun of, it damages her irrevocably. Because every time it happens it's a lesson to her - that not only is she different, but that the world thinks that's a bad thing. Think about what it must be like to learn that. To grow up thinking you are just amazing and wonderful and loved and special and perfect and smart and funny and amazing, and then to learn that the world does not agree. THINK ABOUT THAT AND HOW IT WOULD HURT YOU.

That's my nightmare. That's what I hear when I hear Cher say "Well, I am such a retard." That's why the grimace.

So do me a favor. Bring something positive to this world. Don't make fun of people who have it harder than you do, through no fault of their own. Quit assuming that different is worse. Quit saying retard, for now and for ever, amen.

Thanks.

Safe

2007-08-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

I marched around my house yesterday gathering up all the baby crap stamped "Made In China" so I could throw it all out because all of the "surprise! There's lead in your child's bib" hoo ha is really really pissing me off and I can only imagine what might be next. Surprise! I've had enough. Even though as Mr. E pointed out we don't own anything that has been recalled, so far, I can't help thinking that safety and honesty isn't seeming like it's really at the top of these manufacturers lists of priorities and I'm not sure how we know any of the shit we have is safe when obviously the people who are supposed to be doing their job to keep this shit safe aren't doing those jobs.

It turns out that aside from one hippy dippy overpriced German wood Haba rattle purchased by Eli's yuppie wantonly idealistic Disney hating over protective plastic eschewing mother (that would be me) and one french fleece Dinosaur named Lloyd, all of everything else we own is made in China.

Do I throw it all out and start over with wood toys made in Vermont? A huge amount of this stuff we own now was gifts. Do I get rid of gifts that people gave us? Do I refuse gifts if they were made in China? That seems...rude. Do I donate this crap to someone else because even though it's not good enough for my kid it's good enough for your kid if you shop at Goodwill? That seems...elitist? (I did this with the plastic bottles and still feel weird about that one). Do I just need to get over myself and not care that Eli's walker and his baby spoons and his baby bibs and the teether he shoves in his mouth a thousand times a day were all made in China?

Can't use plastic bottles, bisphenol A. Can't use scented diapers or body wash, estrogenators. Can't buy baby food in plastic containers, bad chemicals, forget which. Can't microwave breastmilk, also bad, also can't remember why. Can't buy gerber oatmeal, choking hazard. Can't buy plastic toys from China, lead.

Where do we draw the line? How do we know our kids are safe? Who can we trust besides ourselves? I have no idea what to do on this one.

I'm torn between rampant over protectiveness and common sense. I don't want to get rid of all Eli's toys but I'm worried maybe I should anyway? Anyone?

This is Lloyd.

Greener Grass

2007-08-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not asking for advice. I'm just thinking out loud.

Mr. E and I first lived together in a tiny apartment in Ann Arbor Michigan.
The first year was rough.
Michigan made me miserable.

The sun never shone. I hated my job. (In retrospect, it was a terrible terrible job.) I was fatter than I've ever been and I hated being fat. I hated living in the Midwest. The pill made me crazy. And when I sent mail my return address made me depressed.

I did not, in the slightest, appreciate my wood floors or that I could walk to Starbucks. I did not realize that not everyone can just saunter down to a farmer's market or a junk shop full of remarkable used furniture or a world famous deli or a food co op whenever they feel like sauntering. I stewed in my misery over the place we lived and I was convinced we needed to be elsewhere. Not just elsewhere. Somewhere better.

Then Mr. E got a job in Lincoln and despite a rocky start because the idea of living in NEBRASKA so horrified me, that was the two years I proved I could, if I had to, live anywhere. Even though it was in Nebraska, I loved my job. And thirty miles of paths meandered past our house and I learned to run on those flat smooth green covered paths. I wasn't fat anymore. I could still walk to coffee or the grocery store and I lived right next to a crazy store filled with my favorite kind of junk.

I still felt horrified whenever I sent anyone mail. I cried whenever we returned home to NEBRASKA from a trip. We visited New York and I had to force myself to tell people where we were living. I yearned for California.

Now we're here and I'm not sure how this can be but I'm still not happy. I adore my child. I adore my husband. I like sending mail. I feel proud that we live in one of the universally acknowledged best places on earth. (At least in my mind).

And yet. I can't walk anywhere except to another subdivision. I don't know anyone. Our house falls down around me and I feel like I could sum up my life in a history of the crappy closets I have known in rental houses that are always in the end not my own. I'm growing tired of the scrappy lawn filled with dog poop that I don't want to sit in. My sketchy neighbor has been idling his motorcycle for hours. I might be a little bit depressed. Taking a shower every day isn't turning out to be as important as I thought it was. I can't remember when I last changed the sheets and I also can't really remember why that matters.

I do love California. I do want to learn to be happy in the moment. I don't always want to be wanting. I do know that this all takes time. That I am very very lucky. That this is how the suburbs are. That I said anywhere in California would be better than Nebraska. That I claim I can only live in old houses and so this is my doing. That people would kill to have my problems. That I take my blessings for granted. That if I want a fancy house I should go back to work. And there are many other cliches I am also aware of. But I can't help it. I sit in the sun I yearned for for so very long and I dream of this:

Apartment Therapy - Nursery

2007-08-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was pretty excited to see Eli's nursery featured on Apartment Therapy today.
It's even more exciting now that he's actually sleeping in it!
You can check it out here if you want.

One of the Top Ten Signs You're A Huge Loser

2007-08-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

1. You just googled "Hills Season Premiere"

Separated

2007-08-13T11:29:00.001-07:00

Friday night. We lowered the shades and turned on the nightlight and kissed the boy frantically, too many times, and said "I love you" as though we were saying "I'm sorry", and we turned on the noise machine and the baby monitor and tiptoed backwards out of his room.

He cried for thirteen minutes.

It wasn't too bad. I had Mr. E here with me and we'd make faces at each other and we both found other things to do during the crying and then when the boy fell asleep we silently high fived as we held our breath, waiting for more crying.

The boy slept till 6 am on Saturday morning and when we woke up and realized we'd gotten seven hours of sleep without any interruptions, angels sang. A glorious chorus of angels. I felt like a new woman. I could have climbed a mountain or parted seas or something. It was magnificent.

And I felt so proud that a theory of mine (he's waking up all the time because he's sleeping right next to us) was actually correct! My hair brained theories are never correct. Holy crap. To finally be right about something made me feel super.

My mom said, on the phone, "it's good for him to sleep by himself. He's his own person, separate from you."

Is that why it took me so long to put him in the other room? Is that why I kept co sleeping even when it stopped working? So I could keep him snuggled up next to me, part of me, for as long as I could?

This morning Mr. E is not here and Eli is crying in his crib and he is separate from me, his own person, and I am not super. I have no one to make faces at. I am not in this together with anyone. It is me and my screaming unhappy son and I am the one who always fixes the crying and I hate this. I can't even write coherently about it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

All I know is that I am the one who keeps him safe. I am the one who takes him, screaming, crying and afraid when someone has sneezed or he gets scared or he's cold, who says "I forgot to tell you, he doesn't like sneezing," who holds him to me and who wipes the tears and who feels the shudders leave his body as he curls into me and gulps and eats for comfort and now I am supposed to leave him to cry, to hear him scream and do nothing.

Twenty minutes are up. Going to get my boy. He needs his mom.

Notes from the Trenches

2007-08-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

We're right in the middle of "crying it out."
It's going ok, although I think I might have to start "drinking it out".

EVLO

2007-08-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

I really have no opinion on Rachael Ray one way or the other, but that EVOO thing is getting on my last freaking nerve. Is it really so hard to say Olive Oil? (Not to mention it turns out what we're buying at the store is probably lamp oil anyway.)

It's Not Just Television for Women Anymore

2007-08-12T16:03:00.001-07:00

Mr. E, out loud, while reading The New Yorker:

"Oooh, Kim Delaney...

Fuck! She's in Army Wives?

I'm going to have to start watching that now."

Happy Friday

2007-08-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

Did you know that today was International Barf on Mom Day?
I didn't either, but Eli did!

The Big Sleep

2007-08-09T20:58:00.001-07:00

The sleep thing has been rough going from the very beginning. And the annoying thing is that it’s all people can talk about before you have a baby – the sleep deprivation, and I totally expected it to suck, but somehow, I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I didn’t expect it to suck in this way, at all. I can’t explain it, it makes no sense, but I feel like a total cliché and that makes me even more annoyed. Like we’re having the same boring sleep problems that everyone else is having, how typical, how lame. But here we are, nevertheless, sleepless.

So. The night after he was born, Eli cried all night long, and nothing we did made any difference. I breastfed him over and over and over again and he’d fall asleep in my arms and then every time I put him back in his basinet he’d wake right up again and start to cry. The nurses told us we had to feed him every single time he cried because if he lost weight we might have to leave the hospital without him and they also made me sign something saying that I wouldn’t let him sleep in the hospital bed with me and that was just ridiculous, when you think about it, and I should have either ignored it or had the balls to tell them where to put that piece of paper and that idea in general, but we were terrified about our very tiny new baby and we did what we were told. What’s even more annoying is that the one useful piece of information, that babies will cluster feed over and over and over again sometimes randomly and you just have to go with it and it’s normal, was the one piece of information they didn’t tell us, and so when we emerged from that first night of hell, bleary eyed and desperate for sleep, the nurse laughed and casually said “oh, yeah, we should have a sign up about the cluster feeding! Ha ha!” Ha ha indeed. Fuckers.

And then we came home and further not sleeping commenced. Progress came very very slowly, earned in tiny victories as we experimented and tested and read books and googled and walked the floor and called up our moms and slowly figured out the enormous mystery that was our tiny screaming baby. It turned out that we had the particular sort of baby who would cry unless he slept on me, curled up with his tiny head jammed right up into my neck. And so that’s what we did, and I was so tired at first that the thought that I’d never get a normal six hours of uninterrupted sleep again made me just want to cry, only I was too tired to cry. I wanted to throw up every night when it was time for bed, because I knew I would be getting up again in 2.5 hours to feed my child for the umpteenth million time.

But slowly we figured it out. We learned how to swaddle and we dragged our exhausted asses to Target and bought a co sleeper and some blessed soul gave us a white noise machine and then one day Eli could sort of maybe go to sleep in the middle of our bed instead of on me. And a light bulb went off at around month three and we figured out that he was supposed to take naps. Who knew. Not that he would take naps, per se, but at least we finally knew he was supposed to be taking them. I had just assumed he would fall asleep when he was tired, I guess. I really didn’t realize I had to physically take the child and put him down for naps. That’s when I started to think I needed to write a parenting book called “Guess What, They All Lie, Breastfeeding Does Hurt, and By the Way, Good Luck Getting This Child to Fall Asleep Four Times Every Day, it Doesn’t Just Happen on its Own, Sucker.” I see that book becoming a run away best seller, don’t you?

So we learned all these little things and time passed and getting Eli to fall asleep slowly got easier. He still wouldn’t take naps, and he wouldn’t go to sleep at night unless we also went to sleep with him, next to him, but he would actually fall asleep at night. So that was progress, of a sort. Then we had another breakthrough and one day Mr. E put him on the dryer in his little bouncer thingee and he fell asleep right there, and then he would take short naps, but only on the dryer. I’d have to run in and reset the dryer every 70 minutes because if it turned off he’d wake up instantly.

I actually started to feel sad about the 17 year old my son would be someday soon before I knew it and how that 17 year old would have dirty feet and fart and burp a lot and probably would be too tall to sleep curled up on his mom with his head wedged up into her neck and a couple of times I let Eli sleep on me a little longer than he maybe needed to and I just smelled his dirty milky neck and whispered in his soft little ears and felt his little baby breathing and so through out all this, as bad as I might make it sound, you must know that despite all this exhaustion and confusion and everything, please don’t doubt that it was all worth it, every single horrible minute of it, and know that I’d do it all over again in a second for my boy and his soft little milky neck folds. I just really thought it would be nice if he might decide to also take a nap once in a while.

Recently we took a trip to Boston and we really needed him to nap before we headed out to my cousin’s wedding and there he was in the big hotel room bed and not a dryer in sight and he would not sleep, just flat out plain would not sleep, and something just clicked in my head and I pulled those big thick plastic dark hotel room shades shut and instantly! He fell asleep. Instantly.

So then the title of my book became “Guess What, They All Lie, Breastfeeding Does Hurt, and By the Way, Good Luck Getting This Child to Fall Asleep Four Times Every Day, It Doesn’t Just Happen on its Own, Sucker, and By the Way It Needs to Be Dark For Him to Fall Asleep, Duh, and What a Terrible Parent You Are!” I just can’t believe it never occurred to me before that he needed it to be dark. I mean, for christ’s sake, I can’t sleep unless it’s pitch black, why the hell would he be able to? God. I can’t believe I never thought of that or read that or asked someone about that. Best. Parent. Ever., I am.

We bought magic room darkening shades at Walmart and even though they gave me this weird throat tickle and I suspect I have a vinyl allergy and Mr. E cursed the designer of the room darkening shades to hell many many times, they totally made the room really really dark and they worked! They worked! Eli was taking naps for hours and hours and hours. And it was magical. I had time on my hands. I plucked my eyebrows. I read a book. I ironed, people. I actually considered waking him up because I got bored a couple of times. Seriously. It was wondrous. And he would go to sleep at night at 8 pm when we put him down and he would stay asleep for 12 hours, more or less. It was nothing short of The Miracle of the Vinyl Shades.

And now it has gone totally completely and 100% totally to hell. Eli will not nap, will not sleep for love or money or room darkening vinyl shades. Is he teething? I don’t know. I don’t really feel teeth, but then again, I am the person who never realized it needed to be dark in order for my child to sleep. Maybe there’s a tooth there? I can’t tell. Last night he woke up at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 2, 4, and was awake from 4-6. Because he has to nurse to fall asleep and because I’m the one with boobs, I was also awake at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 2, and from 4-6. Because Eli was screaming at the top of his lungs and vibrating his entire little body and possibly the whole state of California with his screaming, Mr. E was also awake at 8,9,10,11,12,2 and from 4-6. Fun times were had by all.

At one point last night Eli projectile vomited all over me from a prone position. I didn’t even know that was possible. At some horrible hour of the morning I held him out from me with straight arms and just blustered “YOU MUST FALL ASLEEP” at him and then Mr. E took him away and into the other room to change him and I literally saw, crumbling before my eyes, my image of myself as the nurturing mother who would take my child and sit with him in a soft glowy light in the rocker in the other room and soothe him and shush him and just love him through whatever he needed loving through and I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just so tired.

We have decided that this weekend will be Sleepgate 2007 and since we have no other ideas we’re going to try to get Eli to sleep in his crib in his own room. He has completely outgrown the pack and play basinet that he sleeps in next to our bed and I think we are waking him up when we come into our room at night and I just don’t think I can co sleep anymore. I have the darkening shades for his room and a noise machine all set up and I was thinking I would put a mattress on the floor in there and nurse him to sleep and then lift him into his crib, so we’ll see if that works. If it doesn’t, I have no idea what we’ll do. Everyone says “Well, no one goes off to college and co sleeps” but they never tell you how they got that 18 year old to sleep in his own damn crib 17 years ago, do they?

The Life of a SAHM

2007-08-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

I just had a lengthy (and scintillating) conversation with a six month old about whether or not Mommy should have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.

(The answer was yes).

Gym Class

2007-08-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

The tiniest of moments can change your life.

So there I was. Many years ago. The smallest of fifth graders. I tell you that not because it's of great importance, but because I like to set the stage. And also it's so truly rare that I think of myself with such great fondness as I do when I think of Fifth Grade Elizabeth and so I like to mention it. I had the cutest little bob with bangs and my skin was still all dewy and non broken out and I was so tiny that my uniform skirt had to be held on with suspenders because fourth graders wore jumpers so the skirts for the fifth graders didn't go as small as I was. I found it very humiliating but I also kind of liked it and secretly thought it made me special.

And so a few months into that year I forgot my gym clothes and I had to sit in the wooden bleachers of our old crazy catholic school gym and I truly believe someone reached down and did something in my universe that day almost 21 years ago and on that day some other girl in our class forgot her gym clothes too and here we are folks, 21 years later, best friends to this day.

And man have we seen each other through a lot. We have been left by our mothers together and let down by our fathers together. We have been selfish together and mean together and together we have pushed each other to rise above. SP has permed my hair, dyed my hair, ironed my hair, and cut my hair (although not all at once). She's been there through bad boyfriends and worse boyfriends and terrible girl friends. We've cried in each other's arms and we've cried long distance. We've gained weight together and lost weight together and we stood at each others sides as we both said I do to other loves in our lives and on the day I gave birth SP was right there holding my hand on one side as Mr. E stood on the other side and together all three of us welcomed our boy into this world and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I am sure our kids will hate each other with a fiery passion but I do have visions of waspy sleep away camps in their future and I hope we'll be standing there together in unintentionally matching outfits from J Crew as the bus to camp pulls away with our babies on it. I'd say I know we'd dry each other's tears but chances are we'll too busy gossiping about Lindsay Lohan to bother with crying.

Is it uncool now to say you have a best friend? I get that vibe from the world, but I'm not worried. The uncoolness factor is made up for by the fact itself. It's amazing and wonderful to have such a friend in your life and coolness just doesn't compare with that.

I think I mentioned that my dad has been emailing me and have I mentioned that one the things that I like least about him is his thinly veiled and bigoted strict moral code? Doesn't like profanity, doesn't like sex, really doesn't like gay people. And now unfortunately that's really going to have to just be his problem because I spent 22 years of my life censoring myself so that he wouldn't get all worked up and I'm done with that now and you know what? I laugh at the word rod, and I giggle whenever someone talks about beavers, and that's just who I am, and I can't not be that for anyone else. I'm not going to send my father a collage of the F word but I won't hide who I am when I am not ashamed of that person. I prefer laughing to yelling, regardless what it's about.

Anyway. Emailing my father. It's all been very nice and friendly so far and we haven't brought up any turds or punchbowls but he did ask me the other day about SP and if we were still friends and if she was married and I squared my jaw and wrote him back and told him that yeah she was married although since it was to a woman it wasn't technically legal but I know she considers it to be the same thing and I haven't heard back from him since then.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's really fine. I had hoped he had changed. I had hoped I wouldn't have to make a choice like this. I wish the world was a better place. But I insist on living in a world where love is always right, no matter what. And furthermore I think if there is anything I have learned in the past thirty years both from my father who abandoned me and from my best friend who did not it is that family is defined by much more and much less than blood relations and if I have to choose between my father and the person who's loved me and been there for me for the past twenty one years, I... Well. It is not a choice for me.

B.F.F.

Baby Wolverine

2007-08-03T14:10:00.001-07:00

Eli As A Simpson

2007-07-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

Help!

2007-07-30T16:14:00.001-07:00

Does anyone out there know anything about jogging strollers? I need one now that I've got to train for the Detroit Half Marathon, and I can't tell what kind to get. I'm worried that the BOB Revolution (with a lockable swivel front wheel) is too "all purpose" and won't be the right thing for running ten plus miles with, but I'm worried that the Baby Jogger with the fixed wheel will be incredibly annoying for anything but running.
Any advice?

Oceans and Other Salty Things

2007-07-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

The other day I was nursing Eli and I thought something felt funny and I looked down and saw that he was nursing and sucking his thumb AT THE SAME TIME. Is clearly genius.

We're going on another trip this weekend for my cousin's wedding and I got some of those crazy Spanx underwear thingees to wear under my dress and holy wah. Worth every penny. I wouldn't wear them every day, but if you just need to feel more confident and less bulgy at some kind of formal event or in a fancy dress they get the job done.

This will be the first time Eli sees the Atlantic Ocean, but I've now lost count of how many times he's seen the Pacific. That fact makes me think I'm doing something right. Babies should be dipped in the ocean a lot, I think.

I'm going to run the Detroit Half Marathon and I'm inordinately excited about it. You get to run around downtown Detroit and cross bridges and run into Canada and run underwater! (in a tunnel). Now if someone would just sell me a nice cheap running stroller so I can get outside a little more easily with the boy...

Before E was born, I was slightly obsessed with finding non babyish non typical non baby blue clothes for him to wear. I bought a lot of red and stripes and polka dots. It's now completely obvious that blue is his best color. That and if he wears red you can't tell that he's a boy. That's ok though, on those days we just call him Barbara.

I've been rewatching the first seasons of Veronica Mars on DVD and it's awesome.

Just finished HP, I surprised myself, but I loved it. Because I used to work in a bookstore my feelings towards Harry are always very mixed. I've never been a rabid fan - I of course found the whole hoo ha great because it meant kids were reading but annoying because it meant I had to work at midnight and try to figure out where your name was on a list of 7 million people and if you had your correct wristband blah blah blah. So Harry will always be inextricably linked to that whole "jesus, people, calm down" feeling for me. However I do have some signed stuff and while I have no idea of its real value I have a secret dream that Harry Potter is going to buy me a house in San Diego someday. Regardless I really enjoyed the last book, and it was kind of fun to feel like the whole country was READING together. If only we could to that with more than just one book per year.

I made grilled peaches for the first time while camping. Truly delicious, and I am not one for hot fruit.

We climbed a cinder cone volcano thingee on our camping trip. When we saw it for the first time and someone said "we're climbing up that" I thought they were joking. Apparently I was picturing a smallish cinder cone volcano thingee. You know... a tourist photo op type of thing you lean up against and have your picture taken? This was...not that. This was a giant 75 degree angle beast of loose black lava. It was totally worth climbing it though because I received an excellent geology lesson at the top. Also I can't complain too much because Mr. E carried Eli in the Moby Wrap which means he toted up an extra fifteen pounds or so in addition to his giant brain stuffed with important geology knowledge. With that Moby Wrap on he strongly resembled Brad Pitt, although I really doubt Brad Pitt could give such a stunning and well rounded geology lesson at the top of a cinder cone volcano thingee. I knew I picked the right man.

Do you think it's rude to ask people in public if their baby is a boy or a girl? I could care less if people ask me, but I feel weird asking other people. Usually I just say "what a cute baby" and leave it at that.

On that note, what a cute baby!

The First Four Years

2007-07-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

Aren't we all just looking for something?

You know the feeling. I've had it a few times in my life. I used to get it from food, sometimes. A long time ago I got it from sucking my thumb. I got it when I was just a girl and my mom would rub my back and sing lullabies to me and I would fall asleep that way, before my parents got divorced and it all fell apart. I can (only sometimes) find it with wine although I'm afraid I always do get it from the vicoprofin I used to take for my cramps. On rare occasions, it used to happen more often, Mr. E would rub my back and I would fall asleep and the feeling would be right there, just around the corner, although I would fall asleep too soon to really grab onto it.

Every once in a while I get it from just the right manicure or pedicure (when I'm not worried about how much it's going to cost) and I've gotten it from lying under a sun so hot I can feel sweat splash off my eyelashes and there have been sun dappled afternoons in the car with maybe elvis playing on the stereo as the trees flashed by and I just felt like putting my whole head out the window of the car and lapping at the breeze like a dog. Music, drugs, backrubs, booze.

I suppose it's called relaxation.

I never feel that way anymore. Maybe after a long really good run.

You feel scrubbed out. Tired, but free. Weightless. Calm. The things you say are funny. The world loves you. You can breathe.

And I look at Eli with BOTH fists shoved in his mouth and I think damn. That feeling's something he's going to spend his whole life chasing too. I feel sad about that. And I wonder how to make it so that he doesn't have to look for it with drugs or booze or food. So he's not thirty years old and still chasing it like I am.

I thought about this for three or four days and worried over it because that's just how I am and also I thought I had pretty much figured out the secret of life. That we're all just trying to get even maybe back to the womb or since we can't do that, we;'re just trying to find some comfort, some peace, some relaxation, even five month babies are just gnawing away on their own fists trying to get high and feel happy. And so yesterday over pizza and beer I looked at Mr. E sideways and said "Do you ever think we're all just looking for something in life that we can't ever find, do you ever think in this life we're all just searching for a peace we can never quite grasp, and we're just trying to get back to our childhoods because that was the closest we ever got?" and as I said the words I realized the full import of what I was telling him and how I had finally figured it all out and how now he would finally realize just how fucked up I was and the world was and how his son would be someday be too and he looked back at me and just said. "Duh."

And so amazingly sometimes I do find that peace I am looking for, right there across the table from me, in this person who doesn;t take me and all my seventh grade angsty shit too seriously. And who really does know how fucked up I am and who doesn't care. Who even likes it. And loves it, and loves me. Not just anyway. But also because.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. E.
Thank you for being in this together with me.

Summer in the Central Valley

2007-07-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

This whole batch was $5.00!

I don't much care for canned peaches, and we don't eat a lot of jam. Not a big fan of cobbler/crisp/crumble.

Any other ideas?

Five Months Later

2007-07-12T15:30:00.001-07:00

I finally put up a set of pictures of Eli's nursery on Flickr. You can check it out here, if you want.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e_and_e/sets/72157600783059731/

(Note to self: Never refinish another piece of furniture for as long as I live.)

Freedom

2007-07-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

Breastfeeding has gotten so much better. To the point that Eli will be six months old in about 45 days and I don't think I could give it up that soon, I think I'd be sad if I had to stop at six months. So we're aiming for the one year mark and I am looking forward immensely to my one year of breastfeeding are you insane reward I picked out.

And I'm pretty much over my whole judgement thing. I don't think much about whether or not other people are breastfeeding their kids, I really don't care. I'm glad I chose to breastfeed, but I'm not so concerned with other people and their choices right now.

I'm not sure why this is. Partially I think it's just that now that I am better at it and Eli is much better at it and I am much more used to it, it's not so incredibly soul sucking anymore. I love that I have an immediate and never failing way of comforting my child when he is upset. And I appreciate that breastfeeding forced me to slow down, to chill out, to sit down and shut up and bond with my child already. And to be honest it hurt A LOT until about three months into it and when it finally stopped hurting that made a big difference. So breastfeeding is not something I hate to do anymore, and although I still don't love doing it in public once you've had to breastfeed in the Detroit airport sitting on the ground by a trash can, you learn to get over yourself and you just do it.

Awhile back after I posted about breastfeeding and weight loss and judgement Mr. E and I were talking about how I was worried that my post had been misunderstood. Because I certainly understand that there are many many reasons why people don't breastfeed but understanding those reasons was not helping me feel less bitter about how much it sucked for me and that bitterness was spilling over towards people who don't even TRY.

However in the course of our discussion once again I was reminded of something I seem to have to learn over and over - since I was raised in a cloud of constant judgement I struggle with this a lot. Because the fact is that breastfeeding is not a moral issue. Losing weight is not a moral issue. You are not a good person because you breastfed or didn't, anymore than you are a good person because you are fat or thin. You are not a good or bad person because of these things. You just are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still chained to the sucking succubus known as my son and there are some days I feel as trapped as ever by the breastfeeding. But I have let go of the moral judgement thing and truly, that's also when I started to feel free.

Best. Picture. Ever.

2007-07-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Which Is Better For You?

2007-07-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

At first I hated yogurt.

Then I started WW and discovered that Yoplait Light fruit flavored stuff and I loved it. It was the perfect midmorning snack at work and it was only two points (or around a hundred calories). And it actually tasted good to me, so it was kind of like having a treat, but not one that was a bajillion points and that was going to make me fat. It also contains a bunch of fake sugar and high fructose corn syrup and I'm sure the milk it's made with comes from cows that are fed every hormone under the sun. But again, six ounces, a hundred calories, no fat.

Then this weekend we bought some Organic Plain Whole Milk yogurt because Eli has started eating solid food and the operating instructions that came with him suggested yogurt as a good first food, and he's supposed to have a lot of fat in his diet and also, if I worked this hard to breast feed this kid for all this time you had damn well better be sure that yogurt is going to be organic.

Eli is not overly fond of the organic whole milk yogurt, but I freaking love it. I would never have ordinarily bought it, but now that I have, it's making me rethink things. I mean, this yogurt came with a layer of CREAM on the top about a half inch thick. It's got 180 calories and 9 grams of fat in a cup. So while it has a lot of fat in it, it also has no hormones, no pesticides, no fake sugar, no high fructose corn syrup, no sugar at all, in fact.

Last night I had about half a cup of the full fat yogurt with some raspberries and this morning I had some with some peaches. It was delicious, it kept me full for ages afterwards, it didn't upset my stomach like ice cream, it got me eating real fruit, and best of all, it didn't give me that itchy "what else sugary can I eat now or should I just eat some more of this" bingey feeling afterwards. I just felt satisfied.

So now I ask you...can this full fat organic plain yogurt really be worse for me than than the non fat fake sugar yogurt?

Wouldn't I rather be eating something healthier than so obsessed with a number on a scale that I am willing to eat anything as long as I think won't make me fat?

Wouldn't I rather be a slightly larger size than hating myself no matter what size I am?

Also, who knew anyone could write this many words about yogurt?

Ordinary World

2007-07-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

I have long held a deep seated fear of becoming ordinary.

Back in the day before we got married sometimes Mr. E and I would talk about why the idea of marriage and living out our days in Michigan and living an ordinary life just like his brothers and sisters and every else in his family freaked me out so much and all I could say was "don't you sometimes see us just lining up to be exactly like your aunts and uncles a generation later? Do you really want to be just like they were, only a generation removed? And doesn't that give you the creeps?"

And one of the reasons I didn't want to have a baby for a long time was that it seemed like something that such ordinary boring people would do. It seemed like something that EVERYONE did. It seemed to lack imagination and I really didn't want to be like everyone else, popping out kids and blogging about their poops and taking them to see "The Little Mermaid 4: The Awakening".

And for some reason I was also hesitant to mention here that that last week I emailed my father and a very tentative and slight olive branch has been extended. And I think it was because it just felt like a cop out to me. Like, everyone hates their parents but most poeple try to get along with them anyway and I was the one who had drawn the line in the sand and NEVER talked to my father, unlike EVERYONE else.

But somehow along the way ordinary snuck up on me - maybe it's just a part of getting older or maybe I just don't have time to care anymore. Now I find myself WISHING and HOPING that we turn out JUST LIKE Mr. E's big group of aunts and uncles, who seriously exemplify raising a village together and who love each other like crazy and who have been through it all together and have become this amazing tight knit group of people where for example the divorced aunts are still just as much as part of the family as anyone else, if not more so.

And the thing with my father has actually turned out kind of nice, I have to admit. He has been, I don't know, friendly. It feels sort of...good not to be all consumed with hating his guts and drawing lines in the sand and not speaking and announcing how long it's been since such and such where my father was concerned.

And as for having a baby. I am sure it is such an ordinary experience, it is one that everyone who has children goes through, I know. But to me it feels unique, like the most singular experience of my life. The other day we fed Eli "solid food" for the first time and he gummed around some oatmeal flakes and breastmilk and rubbed it all over everything and Mr. E took pictures like the loser first time lamer parents that we totally are, and people, it was amazing. And it felt as though we had discovered the moon or climbed the Eiffel Tower or performed some other outrageously wondrous and amazing feat.

Feeding the baby. Who knew it would be so special.

Big Plans

2007-06-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling much better after my emotional breakdown slash bloggy rant.

This weekend I plan on doing nothing more than drinking, eating my favorite ice cream, and lying around in the sun reading. I might take in a movie or two. (Even though I hate animation, I hear good things, and you never know. )

I want to try to make the french toast that Anne Lamott eats in Operating Instructions. I've been thinking about it ever since I read that book.

I also may try to do a long run on Sunday. Running has become my feel better drug of choice these days. What could be better than really leaving it all out there? You can come out of a five mile run feeling like everything really is going to be ok. But I need to be careful of my ankle so I might not run that far.

If things get really crazy, I may put some more goofy hats on my child and take pictures. Just for kicks.

I Don't Know What to Say

2007-06-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your words of support.
It will get infinitely better once Mr. E is finished with his big work project and stops going out of town for work.
I guess I was just wondering whether there is a way to change a leopards' spots, so to speak. Is there a way to nicely say "look how clean this house is. You can't know how much it cost me. You have no idea how hard I worked. You can't imagine what it took. So please please please please don't leave your dishes in the sink!." Because I try and it feels like nice doesn't really work and I am starting to feel dish smashingly pissed off about it, I won't lie.
There is always the possibility that I should just chill the fuck out, loosen up, relax, etc. But I have been asked to do that all my life by many many many people, and it hasn't happened yet.
Mostly I just don't want to be crabby, but I don't really know how to uncrab. I don't know people here I can ask to stay with Eli. I don't have friends here. We have lived here for a year and we really don't know anyone, the people we meet...are not like us. Let's just put it that way.
That is one of the reasons we are really hoping to get out of here, but it all takes time. In the meantime I know I should not take it so personally that Mr. E does not notice things like muddy floors, although those are things that send me up the wall.And so I do take it personally. So really my question is...
Can make someone stop being so damned messy and scatterbrained? That is what I need. I can deal with a crying baby who never naps and a dog who never calms down and taking care of both 24-7 while my husband works, but I just need to do it in a clean house and I need my husband to understand that and to work harder than he has ever worked before at not leaving his flip flops lying around every damn day because otherwise dude, I think I will lose my shit.
Lately I have been thinking about how when my mother left me at my father's and moved across the country, about how terrible that was, and how I just...took it. How I never said "I hate this. I don't want you to leave me here. I don't want to get back on that plane and go back to dad's." I never said any of those things. I cried at night and made sure no one heard me. I hid everything. One time my mother said to me "I should have kept you here. I shouldn't have sent you back" and I still wonder. Was it my fault too? Should I have said something? Should I have refused to go back?
So for the rest of my life I think I'll struggle with that. I...go along. I conform. Still, I might be crying in the dark where no one can hear me, but I am, as always, a survivor. I manage and struggle through and in the end things do get better.
But when do you say "enough"? "I can't do this. This is too hard. I'm not getting back on that plane?" That's really hard for me to do. And this whole situation is reminding me of that and I don't know how to say: I need more help. I need more sympathy. I need more understanding. I need you to work so much harder at helping me keep the house clean and I need you to keep the dog away from me and I need you to bring me flowers and I need you listen to me when I am crazy and I need a break and I need to relax and I need to let go and I don't know how."
ANd meanwhile. I must say.
I totally also don't appreciate Mr. E at all, because I am so overwhelmed I can't really get my head above water to appreciate him, if that makes sense. I can't see past the flip flops on the floor. I am forgetting how he rocked the baby to sleep for hours the other night when he WOULD NOT SLEEP, and how he wakes up early and takes him for walks, and how he feeds the dog and pets the cat and loves us all. And also how he is not here because he is working his ass off for his family.
It sucks for him too.
But this is just really hard.

Solo

2007-06-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

I find myself in a seriously bad mood of late, and I can't shake it.

I've got a four month old WILL NOT take naps, no matter what I do.

I've a two and half year old dog who still acts like a eight month old puppy and who is always, endlessly, on the verge of losing her shit and who the neighbors actually bring people by to see because every time someone walks by she jumps up and down, up and down, endless times in a row, each time with her head clearing a six foot fence.

I've got a husband who is gone for days and nights at a time at work and this dynamic is really the worst possible scenario for dealing with the two aforementioned beasts. Just when I get used to him being gone he returns. Just when I finally get the floors clean, there's a pair of muddy boots thrown on my living room floor and just when I get all the dishes done there's pizza left out overnight and then he turns around and takes off again and by the way doesn't sweep the floor and doesn't throw out the pizza and also steals the fucking contact solution! What the hell.

I need a break. And when Mr. E gets home I think "Thank god, finally someone to help me." But he's exhausted from working and when he finally does get home he thinks "Thank god, I finally get a break." Then when neither one of us does get a break it just pisses us each of us off, I think.

And I know he tries. I know he does. I know when he said my house was clean before I got home from Michigan that he thought it was clean, but that does not change the fact that no, it wasn't clean, not in my opinion, and so I spent this whole week and weekend trying to catch up and clean and just get half an hour to sweep the floor and feeling like I can't even get time for that in the middle of being thrown up on and feeding the dog and changing the sheets and taking out the trash and sending baby presents and answering email and picking up all the shit that Mr. E just drifts through the house scattering like a fairy, dusting the world with petals and/or his crap.

And now I just can't shake this feeling...it's like I'm always about to cry in the back of my head or right behind my eyes, but I'm so mad and crabby that I can't even cry because that would actually release something in me and there's a part of me that can't stand to let go even that much. You know that feeling?

I am feeling again like i can't catch my breath, like I am never caught up, like I never get a break.

And now I just discovered that Mr. E took the contact solution with him and hi, what the fuck? Get your own goddamned contact solution.

Thank god it's 5:12.

Happy hour indeed.

I Heart Elizabeth Edwards

2007-06-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

And I hope twenty years from now I can say this same thing about my house:

"That's why, with John and me, it was always our house that had the string cheese and the soda and the big thing of Twizzlers for our kids and their friends, and because of that, there's a generation of 20-year-olds in North Carolina who have seen me in every nightgown I own.

There Will Always Be Plenty of Chocolate Cake In This House

2007-06-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

Enough

2007-06-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Before you have a baby if you read a lot of blogs as I do you read over and over that no one tells you how hard it’s going to be when you actually have a baby but that it is really really hard. And you read A LOT about how much you’re going to love this new baby person of yours and how that love is going to knock you sideways and leave you gasping with fear at the idea of anything ever ever happening to this child and that is all true. That does happen. It happened to me and should you ever have kids it will happen to you and sometimes it does keep you up at night while you lie awake wishing you could sleep, wishing for a break, and also thanking god that you don’t get one.

However what I was not prepared for because I hadn’t read about it anywhere was an immediate and often all consuming terror that I might die, that I could die at any moment, that I would die and so I would miss getting to see my son grow up.

I know that doesn’t make sense, because hi, I never WANTED to die before I had my son. I know I’m not explaining it right, somehow, but all I can tell you is that in the weeks after Eli was born I made Mr. E promise that if I died that he would tell Eli about me and I felt terrified, pretty much all the time, that somehow I would not get to be here for every part of this life that I’d created. Somehow the second Eli was born I really really really needed to be here to see every bit of his life unfold, and the fear of not being here for that was what started to keep me up at night, every night.

And I don’t know if this feeling goes away. I’m not sure. All I know is that being here and watching this kid grow up seems like pretty much the most amazing thing in the world to me now and the thought of not being here to watch this kid grow up seems unbearable.

Father’s Day is coming up. I didn’t realize it but Eli and I will be gone visiting relatives far away and Mr. E will miss out on his first father’s day with his son and that sucks. And there are things I wanted to say before I get on that plane. But rather than write a big overwrought mushy post about what an amazing father Mr. E is (although he is) and how much I love him and how I couldn’t live without him (I do and I could not) I thought I would say this.

As much as it terrifies me that I will die, that somehow I will not be here when my child learns to walk or talk or graduates from kindergarten or breaks his arm or loses his first tooth or falls in love for the first time or wrecks my car, as much as that keeps me up at night and as much as that thought makes me feel like I might throw up or stop breathing. Well. The other day Mr. E sat in the rocker in Eli’s room and held him on his lap and read him Blueberries for Sal as I sat on the floor next to them and although I did not say it at the time, that was the number one moment of my life so far.

And I’ll carry that moment in my heart forever. It is nowhere near all of what I want for my life and my son’s life and for my family for the rest of our lives, which I hope with all my heart will be long and healthy. But if for some reason that moment is all I get?

It would be enough.

Thank you, Mr. E.

And Happy Father’s Day.

Cherries and Mountains

2007-06-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

I know I mentioned I wanted to send my dad a baby announcement, but I haven't yet because I don't have his address. I think he does know about Eli though, because my sister said she told him. Which is fine with me, she knows that I'm not about secrets and I refuse to make her feel guilty for anything that comes out of her mouth - unlike my entire childhood where I had to think over every word I said before I said it and still got yelled at half the time anyway.

Moving on. I thought that I might email my dad but then! Then I heard through the grapevine that he is divorcing my evil evil stepmother. Ding dong (the witch is dead), we all thought. Or hoped. But meanwhile I also heard that she is divorcing him (not the other way around) and there is much drama unfolding and I decided not to get involved, not just yet. I do feel sad for my father. And I think of sending him an email with a Flickr link and how maybe he would look through all 562 pictures of Eli and he would see Eli's Grandfather (Mr. E's dad) and my sister in laws and my brother in laws and my friends and all these people who are my FAMILY now and how he wouldn't even know WHO THEY ARE and I found that thought unspeakably bizarre.

Moving on. When I was growing up, my mom always cooked in a trifecta of similarity. It must have been the way her mom cooked for her, and it's the way I cook now. Protein, vegetable, starch. At every meal, no matter what. My mom is an exotic chef, at times, and it's not like we got meatloaf and mashed potatoes every day (although sometimes we did, but this is a woman who once ate lamb brains from the skull of the lamb so you know, sometimes we had other crazy shit). And now I have no problem with the protein part and no problem with the vegetable since I love vegetables of every stripe but I can never come up with any damn sides or starches or carbs or whatever when it's time to figure out what to have for dinner. I try to find something filling and healthy and low fat and it's totally impossible. And also the fact is I am the original carbs girl. When I was in high school I ate graham crackers or saltines every single day for lunch. EVERY SINGLE DAY. And so if I had my way I would sit down to a meal of bread and butter or potatoes and butter or noodles and butter every damn day, but then that's not very healthy and so I search for interesting delicious healthy non buttered things to have with my grilled chicken and my salad and then I thought screw that and thus began the summer of Two Vegetables. That's this summer, btw.
It's mostly just an experiment so far and I often forget that we are doing it and sometimes I revert to cooking rice. But sometimes now we have steak AND mushrooms AND asparagus AND strawberries and no baked potatoes. Although I do notice that later on in the evening I tend to get hungry and have oatmeal but that's not the end of the world and overall, it's going well. So that's my food advice for the day. Can't decide what to have for dinner? Try making TWO vegetables. Revolutionary, I know.
The other thing on my mind right now is this. Mr. E's parents make it abundantly clear that they would love nothing more than to have regain our senses return "home" asap and by the way they'd like to teach their only grandchild how to fish in Michigan where they grew up fishing and know about these things and they are not particularly interested in our species of foreign and bizarre California fish. We do miss our family terribly but we also love the separation that comes when your family is farther away and we kind of like doing our own thing. And we love California and we love living in a blue state even if we live in a reddish city and I can't see myself raising children somewhere without an ocean and without mountains. And also? When I met Mr. E in the fine and glorious state of Michigan he kept "vegetables" in a cookie jar in his refrigerator. His sister came over for dinner and remarked that she didn't know that you could put things besides lettuce in a salad. When Mr. E's parents come to visit and go to our average grocery store they walk around the produce section like they just arrived from Russia, circa 1988. And Eli has already tasted his first cherry. He sees mountains on the way to Target. And just the other day I would have dipped his toes in the Pacific Ocean if I hadn't been having a personal crisis involving leaking breastmilk. Don't know what the answer is to that. I only know one can fish here, although perhaps not with ones grandfather. I guess in some ways that's what life is...the good and the bad, and you just make do and you choose what matters most and right now I think...it's being here, together, eating cherries, checking out the mountains. Glad to have grandparents, glad to be going to visit them, but not sad we don't live in their backyard.

Brown Eyes Blue

2007-06-06T14:23:00.001-07:00

Next week I'm taking Eli on his first airplane trip. I'm traveling by myself and I'm ~~freaking terrified~~ slightly apprehensive but in this house we feel the fear and do it anyway so stiff upper lip and all that. I ordered a Lands End Diaper backpack and if more bags can't make everything better then that's a world I don't want to live in.

We are taking this trip to visit Mr. E's family - it is really important to me that Eli meets all his aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles and great grandparents and a whole slew of friends of various stripes all of whom have been so supportive of us and have been incredibly generous and who we just couldn't do without. I figure it's the least I can do - let all these people who love us and support us meet this kid they've been so excited about since day one.

However this is also the obnoxiously good looking family and all of Mr. E's siblings, in addition to being smart and skinny and having good hair, have big blue blue eyes. And I hope this doesn't happen but really. If one more person gazes down at Eli and says "Look at those big blue eyes" and then glances sneakily at me and says hopefully "I wonder if they'll stay that way" I might have to lose my shit.

I HAVE BIG BROWN EYES AND I THINK THEY'RE NICE.

The End.

Now Remind Me Again Why I Had A Baby?

2007-06-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Ah yes. So I can put funny stuff on his head and then post pictures of it on the internet.

If You Knew How Many Times the Pioneers Were Referenced During this Process You'd Really Be Amazed. At my Extreme Dorkiness.

2007-06-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

You're So Much Like Me, I'm Sorry.

2007-05-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

Mr. E tells me all the time that Eli is just like me, personality wise. I can't imagine why he thinks that. It's not like I need constant attention, get crabby when I don't eat, can't take naps, babble on constantly about nothing, find Mr. E absolutely hilarious even he isn't, really, hate going to sleep by myself at night, wear only pajamas, love to stare at the TV, and throw tantrums when I don't get my own way.

Ahem.

The real question is...is my son just like me, or do I have the personality of a three month old?

At least I don't have sweaty neck folds. I'm looking at you, Eli.

Life and Everything Like It

2007-05-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, I love Weight Watchers but it is ridiculously hard for me to keep track of anything when people come to visit. And since we have people here visiting ALL THE TIME because we had a baby and all, well, I tend to keep losing and regaining the same 6 and half pounds in the three weeks between visits. But I'm trying to learn from all this and not just keep making the same mistakes over and over again, blah blah blah organic pepper jack. So far it's going eh.

I tried on dresses this weekend because I need one to wear to my cousin's wedding in July and it turns out that below the boobs, I wear a size 8. However, my ta tas are so large they don't fit into a size fourteen! Christ, I have no idea what to do about that one. The reasonably minded would say suck it up and wear a skirt and a shirt but I am just not in the mood for reasonable skirts and shirts and sensible this and sensible that. I really wanted to buy a cute dress and I am super less than thrilled about my huge rack coming in between me and the beautiful relationship I had planned with the Grace dress from J. Crew. I might have to settle for some super cute really overpriced shoes. Maybe take some of the focus downward.

Eli has been montrously unbearably fussy for four or five days. It was to the point where he was nursing ALL THE TIME and there just wasn't anything left and I seriously got freaked out that my body could not keep up or my milk was drying up or I had dieted my son into starvation and the supply was running out or something. He would just latch on and not let go. My body could not keep up and that's saying a lot because usually damn - there is a lot to go around, is all. (At least my giant rack is good for something.) Of course we tried all the usual baby lulling tricks and none of them worked and then I thought to myself "today's kind of chilly, I wonder if I should put this fleece footed sleeper on him?". Moments after I put it on him I swear he gave an immense baby sigh of relief and settled down and took the worlds longest nap and since then we've dressed him in all his warmest winter clothes and he's been a perfect angel and last night he actually slept through the night! At three months old! Jesus. Turns out my child wasn't "fussy" or "going through a growth spurt" or "teething". He was just COLD. Yeah. We're awesome parents.

Someone gave us the McClaren stroller and I love it, Eli loves it, Mr. E loves it. There's your random overpriced baby crap recommendation of the day.

I realized earlier this month to my horror that the Target "capris" that I bought a few months ago to tide me over till my jeans fit me again in 2010 were actually KNICKERS. Something about that seemed not right and also horrifying, so I did go get some more pants and shorts and non knickers at American Eagle which is always an awesome experience because even though their pants fit me freakishly well their store makes me feel like I am nine hundred years old and also I did a scientific test using a real live subject and I can tell you difinitively that there store "music" is loud enough to not only waken but also to severely anger a baby. But I did get cute pants, so really, wasn't it worth it? Also, at first I thought when I went shopping that maybe I would also look for a cute swimsuit to which I can only say now "HA HA, HA HA, HA HA HA HA."

Running is going well. I love running. It's the only thing keeping me sane, some days, I think. And so of course my ankle is fucked up again. Awesome. I am doing the RICE business (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) except for the rest because hi, I don't rest. I hate rest. No rest for me. Rest is for...normal, non crazy people, who are unlike me.

And lastly. At first I was going to say that the baby smiles are totally worth it, that they are life altering, that they are like nothing in this world. And that is all true, yes it is. But then I heard the baby laugh. And the baby chuckle, the baby giggle, the baby cackle.

The baby smile melted my heart. But to hear my son laugh actually made me cry, it was that great. Truly one of life's top all time great top life moments.

Even Robots Smile Sometimes

2007-05-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Grandpa Peter was quoted in today's New York Times!

2007-05-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

Eli found the article utterly absorbing.

998 Left To Go

2007-05-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

The thing I am realizing is that with this baby stuff? It DOES get better. It just doesn't get better very quickly. And it's not overly helpful when you are mired in breastmilk and screaming baby and dirty diapers and all that to think "in a month, this will be so much better." However, a month or a week or even a few days later, things do improve, and you have hope again. And it makes all the difference in the world, those few days or weeks or that month, and the tiny bit of better that you gain every day adds up and pretty soon things seem not that bad. Thank god.

I am also working on being more positive. I've realized that I do this nervous thing where I always always always have to talking and there just isn't always that much to talk about and I am afraid that at times (as in all the time) I fill that empty conversation space with bitching and moaning and I've really got to cut that out. I'm going to try just being for a little while to see how that goes. Silence isn't the end of the world, maybe.

Also, today I dragged out the treadmill and I dusted off my running shoes and I crammed myself into my sports bra and I ran two miles! Go me! It wasn't the farthest I've ever run or anything but that I was able to run at all is rather thrilling. And that I did it at all makes me proud, I won't lie. And you know what they say about a journey of a thousand miles.

In other fabulous and exciting news, this weekend I watched - open mouthed, in horror - as Mr. E poured the remains of a bag of potato chips into a carton of dip, stirred it around, and ate it with a spoon!!!!!!!!!! Then I took a picture.

Today Was One of Those Days

2007-05-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Today was not a good day.

Eli is going through some horrible phase or growth spurt or something and all he does is eat and cry. Eat and cry, all day long.

It was ninety six degrees today.

I thought I hated breastfeeding before.

Breastfeeding in seventy degree heat was nothing compared to breastfeeding in ninety six degree heat.

Today was the kind of day where I hauled a screaming three month old around the house on my hip and tried to pick up all the shit my husband just leaves casually all over the house with one hand so that the house wouldn't be a total disaster when his brother showed up and after awhile it really started to piss me off that all this shit was all over the house and I had a vision of myself taking a hammer and just hauling off and breaking all his crap he leaves all over everywhere into a million pieces and the thought of that didn't even make me feel better, it just made me madder.

I pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer and found it covered in red ink splotches from a red pen someone had left in their pants.

My child was still screaming and I had to just leave him in his crib and walk away. I didn't know what else to do. I just couldn't take it anymore.

I started to feel guilty because Mr. E is so stressed out at work right now and he still had to pick up the dog from the kennel and his brother from the airport and groceries from Trader Joe's and then I felt angry again because it's not my stupid dog. I wasn't the one who wanted the stupid dog. Then I pictured Mr. E with his second wife as they gazed lovingly at each other across the top of seven golden retrievers and Mr. E said "my first wife hated dogs".

Eli was still screaming in his crib and I pulled the stained laundry out of the dryer and then I had to walk away and I called my mom and she didn't answer her phone so I sat there listening to her voice mail as tears streamed down my face and I thought "everyone says it gets better, but can six months or one year really be THAT much better? How much better is better, actually?"

And then I went and got Eli and he ate again and then fell asleep on me since that's the only way he can sleep, ever, and I thought how much better I would feel if I could eat all the granola bars in the kitchen or all the Junior Mints in the freezer or all the skittles in the world, and somehow there's no worse feeling in the world than being fat, feeling fat, looking down at your fat arm, and wanting to eat crap, and knowing you can't, because you're fat, fat, fat. It's just very stressful and awful to feel fat and to want to eat and to have to tell yourself you can't because you are fat.

Today was just one of those days.

Friday Weigh In

2007-05-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

I lost 6.5 pounds this week! Woo hoo! I love Weight Watchers. It removes all the guilt. I can eat whatever I want, just not ALL of it. Obviously.
Although I have to say that I think if this were my first time doing Weight Watchers, it would be incredibly hard to learn the ins and outs of the program while you had a newborn. Thank goodness I pretty much already know what I'm doing. And thank goodness for those extra 10 Nursing Points. Turns out there is an upside to breastfeeding :)
Mr. E and I are off to San Francisco for the weekend to see some friends of ours. A weekend of pedicures and decaf lattes awaits. (For me - for Mr. it's a weekend of stuffing his face with Mexican food and taming the music snob within at Amoeba Records.) Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Family Portrait

2007-05-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

The Turd in the Punchbowl

2007-04-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t fall asleep last night and I started wondering what I should blog about – besides rambling on about Entourage. I know I said I have NOTHING on my mind right now but the truth is this is one of those times when I only have one thing on my mind and it’s something I wish I wasn’t thinking about so I tried ignoring it for awhile and pretending it wasn’t there but that’s completely not working, so here it is.

The truth is I feel fat. Right now I feel really fat. And for me, at least, I kind of am fat.
I am not sure how exactly how much I weighed when I gave birth but pretty much, I’ve gained weight since I gave birth. It’s rotten. I hate thinking about food all the time and I hate being stressed about what I look like when I worked for so long and so very very hard to be thin. I hate it. I really hate that none of my clothes fit me and that eve the things that do fit are all bunchy and too tight and unattractive. I hate the tightness of things and the shortness of things and pulling things down and hitching things up.

Even thinking about this stresses me out so intensely. I hate that I am right back here again. And please don’t tell me that I have nine months to lose it or that I got a baby out of the deal. I know all that. I do. It doesn’t change the fact that I have ONE pair of pants that fit me and a closet full of size 4 clothes and that I weighed 156 pounds when I gave birth and I weigh 149 pounds now and that I just spend two years working my ass off to lose all that weight and now it’s right back on and this feels really hard and really awful and it’s making me feel panicked. I worked harder than I ever have in my life to not feel gross in a pair of shorts and now I can't even look at those shorts. Thinking about shorts and my thighs makes me want to throw up, I'm so stressed out it. That's got to stop, I think.

So. I don’t want to have to buy new clothes. And I don’t want to feel stressed or panicky or fat any more. I don’t want to look down and see rolls. I don’t want to have to fidget with my t shirts. I want to spend some of my summer wearing shorts instead of elastic waisted pajama pants. And I also don’t want to hide the fact that I had a baby and I gained weight and I’m having a lot of trouble with that.

My goal is simple. I want to lose enough weight to fit back into all my clothes. At the same time, when I get there, I want something else I never had before. I want to feel ok about myself. I want to feel enough. I want to feel like I am attractive and I am the right size. I don’t want to wish I weighed five less pounds for the rest of my life.

I’m signing back up with Weight Watchers online. Right now, I think. I was going to wait until Tuesday but I think I have to do it now. I’m going a little crazy and I need something to help me, kind of right now.

I’ve got some new challenges that are scaring me this time around. I’m lucky because I know I can do this, I did it once before. But I also know how hard it is because I already had to do it once. And now I’m also stressed out and bored and really really hungry (from breastfeeding), which for me is a deadly combination. When I am bored and stressed and hungry AND there are ice cream bars in the freezer, look out. All I can think is that it’s just gonna have to be hardcore for a bit. We might just have to buy not buy any freaking ice cream bars for awhile.

A Glimpse Into the Vast Nothingness That is My Brain

2007-04-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have to say, it's really wrong how much I love Entourage, and also how often I think to myself "Ooooh, I really like Vince's outfit" As in, I want it for myself. I keep thinking about this navy blue t shirt and these dark jeans and these aviators he had on and wondering where I can get all three of these things. I also can't help but notice that Vince wasn't wearing a two month old baby in a Moby Sling. Perhaps if I get the stupid sling in navy blue it will blend in? Now that I'm a mom I feel hopelessly unhip. I'm one step away from elastic waisted jeans. Actually I'm not even, because the only jeans that would fit me, if I allowed myself to wear them, would be maternity jeans, with an ELASTIC WAIST. Sigh. Tuesday night while watching Entourage I noticed Eli was watching it and that's bad dude! Babies should not watch tv. But it's his favorite show and so I had to ask Mr. E "Do you think Entourage is appropriate for two month olds?" (kidding. I mean, I did ask that, but I was KIDDING.) Although if Eli was allowed to watch TV, I'd let him watch Entourage before Baby Einstein. HATE.

Apropos of nothing, I once asked a friend of mine who was in the navy if he had to wear the "navy outfit" and he gave me a look of withering scorn and informed me that men don't wear outfits. So now whenever I can always tell guys I like their outfits. Isn't that fun? Life of the party over here.

Speaking of men and outfits, Eli is outgrowing all of his little blue sleepers and such at a rapid rate as he doubled his weight in only two months. The doctor seems shocked, but it doesn't surprise me, seeing as how my breastmilk is likely comprised of chocolate, chocolate, and leftover Easter chocolate (thrown in for a little variety).

So, the Moby Wrap. Eli has three snuglis, a maya wrap, another ring sling made of thai silk (it really is gorgeous), an infantino sling rider, and a baby bjorn. Yikes! Luckily, I didn't buy any of this crap, as the only one he likes is the Snugli, but it's hard to get him in and out of, he can't nurse in it, and it hurts my back and shoulders. We're going to try the Ergo once he can hold his head up, but since he refuses to EVER be put down, I need something to use until then, and I'm thinking the Moby wrap. If nothing else it's returnable and my decision has nothing to do with the fact that Brad Pitt is wearing one with Shiloh in it on the cover of US Weekly.
And coincidentally I think I just decided to give up celebrity gossip magazines. I don't read them a lot, as in I don't have a subscription, but I do read them sometimes and I realized they don't make me feel good about myself and who needs that shit? I prefer beating myself up over Martha's stupid impossible craft projects rather than Jessica Biel's ass. But then what do I read on the rare occasion that I get a pedicure? Sartre? Somehow that doesn't seem right.

Must start running again. Am nervous about state of the boobdom during running. Wish me luck.

Have decided to dress child only in stripes. Very Gaultier.

That is all.

E

Thin Skin

2007-04-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

When my son was born I didn’t have an instant bonding moment with him like I’ve heard some people say they have. Waves of love didn’t wash over me and I didn’t cry and I didn’t think “oh my god I love this creature more than anything else on earth ever no matter what.” Which was ok. I was kind of prepared for that. I know myself and I know that sometimes I am slow to warm to these things that involve massive amounts of change all at once and when I didn’t have the overwhelming love wave crash I was fine with it. Plus I was so so so tired and out of it I really didn’t even think that much about it, you know. I knew I was happy, don't get me wrong, but there weren't fireworks in my hospital room or what have you. I'm not that girl.

And then we went home and the business of taking care of another human being took hold and right in the thick of it, covered with breastmilk and spit up and poop and being so incredibly tired and having your period for five weeks and all that, bonding is pretty far down on the list of things you worry about. You just don’t have time. You’re too busy changing diapers and dealing with visitors and endless feeding and baby poop charts and breastfeeding consults.

But we sent out birth announcements for Eli about two weeks after he was born and I was waiting in the car in the post office parking lot while Mr. E mailed one to my cousin who lives in Japan. Eli was in the back seat and despite my misgivings regarding of the moment hipster indie wailings, Sufjan Stevens was playing on my IPOD and the song John Wayne Gacy Jr. came on. And I will admit I’ve never paid super close attention to the words of any Sufjan song but I’ve always found the melody of this particular song really beautiful and haunting and yet when Sufjan started to sing about Mr. Gacy Jr and his predilection for young boys although I am sure I will be kicked out the hipster club forever for saying this, that was it for me and that song. No more for me.

And then when I read a few days later that little Iraqi kids – LITTLE KIDS – were being used as decoys and killed in car bombs in Iraq – I don’t know. Hearing that hurt me in a way it never had before. And then Mr. E’s mom told me about what it was like when her parents sent her brother off to Vietnam and all I could say was I couldn’t imagine and I really couldn’t. I could not imagine that. Eli going off to war. It makes my breath catch just to think of it.

And when Mr. E came home that day last week and told me about what had happened at Virginia Tech I felt the ground lurch under me and I had to grab the counter to keep from throwing up. People’s babies, older, yes, but still, just like mine, lined up and shot. Again, it’s hard for me to breathe when I think of that. It's hard for me to think that we live in a world where that happens. And then I tried to watch Blood Diamond and even that’s just a stupid fake movie and little boys were getting strafed with gunfire and I had to turn it off ten minutes after I started it and when I tried to explain why I couldn’t watch I couldn’t even really explain it but I think Mr. E understood anyway.

People often say that parenthood is like forever having your heart walking around outside your body. I don’t know that I would describe it that way. For me, it’s as if I’ve developed this incredibly thin skin I never had before. I think I’ve always been sensitive, but this is to a different degree.

This might not even make sense. But this is the best way I can think of to explain this thin skin of mine - and what feels like a constant heartache for the violence of our world. I heard that Sufjan song, thought of boys scared and hurt or worse; and on that same day I looked down at Eli’s hands and saw that on one of his fingers he has this tiny little ragged crooked fingernail. And it hit me, all at once, that somehow that tiny tiny fingernail, something so incredibly small - had just become my whole whole world.

Yes, They Do Make Baby Legwarmers

2007-04-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

Picking Up Socks

2007-04-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

You know how when you were a kid and your brother never did any of his dishes and so you did them for him every single time? Or when you were in college and your roommate left her rabbit in her room and you ended up cleaning up the rabbit poop that was all over the hallway of your apartment? Or how when you first moved in with your now husband and he left his socks on the bedroom floor and you picked them up for him every fucking morning? And you know how every time you did the dishes and picked up the poop or washed the socks it pissed you off immensely, but not as much as the fact that every time you complained to each of these totally irresponsible people their answer to the situation was always "Well, don't do my dishes, then" or "Don't pick up my socks, if it makes you so mad."

I wish, with every fiber of my being, that I was that person. I so wish I was the person who could step over dirty socks every morning of my life, ignore them forever, and leave them there until they crumbled into non existence, eons from now.

I am so so so so so so not that person.

Thanks Mom

2007-04-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Lately I find myself doing something I really don't want to be doing.

And that is this:

I'm very judgemental of moms who don't breastfeed.

Not out loud, and not on purpose, and I told myself ahead of time I wouldn't be a mommy judger and I'd just mind my own damn business, but the judgement happens, in my head, all the same, despite all this. Of course I wish I wasn't like this, and so I'm working on not doing it, and as I thought about how to not be like this I started thinking about why am like this and I think it's the same reason that while I was in the process of losing sixty pounds I was so judgemental of everyone else who wasn't. I was extremely judgemental of the larger person in my office who ate a bag of Chex Mix every day as a snack and I couldn't help myself then either, and the reason I think I do this is because when I work so hard at something, it's really hard for me when other people don't.

In other words, dieting sucks. NOT eating the ice cream sucks. And guess what? Breastfeeding sucks too. It's really hard and it's never ending and it's just not something I really enjoy. I do it anyway, because it's something that's important to me. Just like I DIDN'T eat the bagel. But when you are making yourself do something that is really difficult and that often times sucks and that you wouldn't choose to do if there were any other way, it makes you really bitter towards all the other people who aren't choosing that path. Not eating the bagel makes you kind of hate the bagel eater even though you know all the good reasons why you shouldn't. Breastfeeding is so hard, and I am making myself do it any way, and so I judge people who don't.

Man, that sucks to admit that, because it makes me sound like a huge asshole, I know. Maybe it's just that simple. I need to not judge people who chose another way because otherwise I am a huge asshole. And there's really no excuse for it, sadly.

The more I think about it the more I think that my problem is that breastfeeding is a thankless task. Although I have convinced myself that it is of the utmost importance that my child never consumes a drop of formula, let's be honest here...we'll never know if it made a damn bit of difference in anything, in the long run, and he'll almost certainly never say thank you, at least not out loud. When was the last time you called up your mom and thanked her for all the boob time so many years ago? Yeah, me neither.

What it comes down to is this. There's so many good reasons to breastfeed and none of them mitigate the fact that for me, breastfeeding is incredibly hard and I have to force myself to do it every single time and this makes me resent everyone who doesn't. In my search for freedom of this resentment I searched for some deeper meaning, some real reason why I was doing this besides the fact that supposedly someday my son might have improved muscle tone or some other La Leche league hoo ha and all that. And then I remembered that once upon a time, someone breastfed me. My mom sat with me for countless hours and breastfed me for a gazillion years and I never said one word of thanks to her either.

So yeah. I'm breastfeeding. It sucks. And I'm doing it anyway, beacuse someone who loved me once did it for me. And I hope that this circle, this feeling of, I guess, repayment? Will somehow give me a chance to let go.

Days to Remember (BTW, this is incredibly long)

2007-03-26T20:56:00.001-07:00

Previously:

Mr. E came home from his week long trip to San Francisco.

The nursery was finished.

Our tax return came.

Our dryer started working and every scrap of baby clothing was washed and folded and put away.

We blew off our final childbirth class.

I went in for my non stress test and the doctor said the baby was doing fine.

Mr. E’s mom sent an embroidered ABC for the nursery and when I opened the box a piece of styrofoam had worked itself loose from the packaging and there, clear as day, was a styrofoam E, staring up at me.

I got a new cell phone that actually worked.

Mr. E and I went out for a really nice, quiet dinner. Chinese food. We got these two fortunes:
An important word of advice may come from the mouth of a child.
Now is the time to call loved ones at a distance. Share your news.

We were headed into a three day weekend.

I breathed a sigh of relief. And for the first time in nine months, I relaxed.

I woke at 6 am on the morning of February 16th and I thought it might have been the Chinese food from the night before but probably not and I said to Mr. E “I think I might be having contractions.” They weren’t anything super painful, in retrospect, and they didn’t last very long, and I wasn’t sure they were much of anything, but at the same time, they seemed different than any of the weird random periody pains I’d had before. Still, they seemed like not much, so Mr. E went off to work and I said I’d call him if things picked up.

I didn’t do very much that day. It’s weird, but I can honestly say I have never in my life felt so mellow. Maybe I was tired, I don’t know, but I just felt this bizarre calm and I think that’s what made feel that I was in labor, more than anything else. I actually took a nap, and I am so not a napper. I just felt this intense peace, an intense calm and that’s not something I normally feel, really ever. It was weird, but cool at the same time.

At about 3:45 I noticed I had some bleeding and since I couldn’t remember if that was one of those “go to the hospital right now” kind of things I called labor and delivery and they told me it sounded like early labor and not to come in until my contractions were 4-6 minutes apart.

At that point I decided that yes, I was really in labor, even if it was early labor, and that this was really happening, and I called Mr. E. He was in his company’s annual meeting so I told him to stay there but then I realized I was HAVING A BABY and in a rare moment of decisiveness I said “No, you know what? That’s stupid. Come home.” And he did.

So there we were. The contractions weren’t coming that often, and they weren’t that severe. It was a weird feeling because they hurt, don’t get me wrong, I was breathing through them and they definitely didn’t feel nice, but I was laughing and joking and talking to Mr. E in between them and every time I did I could feel myself think “Oh, laugh now, you fool, they’re going to get so much worse.” (And so they did.)

For awhile Mr. E and I just hung out. We sat on the couch and he rubbed my feet and we just talked. At one point I turned to him and said “You know what’s crazy? All those times you heard your mom tell you the story of the day you were born? This is HIS story, happening right now.” And we both just looked at each other and I think somehow that was the moment that it all seemed real.

But then it got sort of boring, and we didn’t have any food or anything in the house, and we still needed like, diapers and wipes and god knows what else. So we went to Target and bought $350 dollars worth of stuff I thought I needed to give birth and I am here to tell you – don’t take the tags off this stuff. As you will see later on in the story, most of it I did not use. But we did get diapers and stuff and I also think it adds something to the story that I went into labor and went to Target. Really, that says a lot about me, no? Perhaps just that I really love Target.

We also stopped by the grocery store because despite all the warnings of barfage I was starving and I just really needed a turkey sandwich, and right when I walked in there was the nurse from my OB’s office. The only nurse I had the whole time I was pregnant, the one who told Mr. E he was an inspiration, right there in Safeway while I was in labor. Crazy. She gave me a big hug and asked how I was and I said “I’m fine, I’m in labor!” She said “I can tell!” and told me not to eat anything I didn’t want to see later. She was right too, but I’d eat that turkey sandwich again if I had it to do over. (I was really hungry.)

We went home, did some laundry, and then the contractions started to ramp up. Now, let me tell you. I really really didn’t want to be one of those people who got sent home from the hospital. I just thought that seemed so…stupid. Like, can’t you tell when you should go to the hospital? Did you not pay attention in birth class? I was not going to be one of those girls. Except that I totally was and I also had no idea what I was doing, and also my contractions were so erratic that it was hard to tell how far apart they were and Mr. E thought we should go to the hospital and I pretty much agreed and again, had no idea what I was doing, so we went.

As soon as we got to the hospital, I could tell they were going to send us home. I could tell we were there too early. And they made me lie down and put monitors on me and of course lying down made my contractions slow waaaaay down to the point where they were barely coming at all. When they did come, they hurt, so there was no doubt in my mind that I was in labor, but to be honest with you, the nurse seemed dubious. They told me I was maybe 1.5 centimeters dilated and asked me all sorts of questions and after leaving me on the monitors for a while longer they sent me home. We signed early discharge papers and the nurse told me not to come back until my contractions were 3-5 minutes apart for AN HOUR. She said “FOR AN HOUR” loudly and slowly like we were total morons – and told us that we could try having sex to speed things along. (I might not have been in active labor or what have you at that point, but I so wasn’t going to have sex. Eight minutes apart or no, the contractions HURT and I wasn’t about to stick anything else up there if I didn’t have to.) The nurse also said to come back if I had a contraction that I couldn’t walk, talk, or breathe during. And to keep my next doctor’s appointment on TUESDAY. (This was Saturday night).

I have no idea why I didn’t say “Lady, unless I’m in labor for 72 hours, I won’t be having an appointment on Tuesday”, but I just…didn’t. Deep down I knew that wasn’t going to be happening, that I was really in labor, and I wouldn’t be pregnant for that much longer, but I guess I didn’t really realize that at this point, the nurses really didn’t think I was in real labor, or something. I don’t know. I’m not one to argue with authority. I just assumed they knew what they were doing. Just goes to show you. Trust yourself. Trust YOURSELF.

I should have trusted myself.

And so we went home. I think I had about three contractions in the parking lot walking back to the car. They started to really hurt. And I was really really tired. Mostly I was discouraged because I had just become that girl who gets sent home from the hospital. I had not aced the having a baby test and it just felt…shitty. I felt like I had failed and I felt like an idiot.

I think it was about midnight when we got home, maybe a little bit earlier. I was exhausted, which absolutely sucked, because I don’t know about you, but it was hard for me to sleep knowing I was going to experience blinding pain about four minutes from the last time the blinding pain woke me up. But we went to bed and I tried to sleep while I went on having contractions.

At some point things started to blur. I know the contractions got worse, but not necessarily closer together. Mr. E would fall asleep, and a contraction would hit, and I’d yell his name and he’d wake up, write down the time, rub my back, and then fall back asleep after the contraction was over. At some point we’d called my best friend and she arrived and Mr. E got up and made coffee and watched tv in the other room and then I’d yell his name and he’d come running in from the other room. I’d check with him sometimes since he was the one writing down the times to see if things were progressing and getting closer together, but he was always sort of vague, mainly because the timing was so erratic and so the contractions still weren’t three to five minutes apart.

Meanwhile Mr. E had called all of our family members and I’m here to tell you if you go into labor and you’re at home turn off your phone! The phone kept ringing and it was driving me crazy. I have no idea why we didn’t turn it off. To be honest with you at that point I don’t think I was at my most coherent. I don’t think I was capable of saying “Turn the phone off please it’s driving me crazy.”

I remember reading that there’s this stage of labor you enter where the joking ends and you are doing the serious hard work of labor and you just settle down to business and you sort of…go to another place. I can say looking back that this was 100% how it was for me, but at the time I didn’t realize it was happening. I was just sort of…in it. I didn’t want any music, I didn’t want to talk to anyone or be touched. I just wanted to do my thing and be left alone. And this is when I didn’t use my magazines or my labor music cd’s or my birth ball or my fancy massage oil or my slippers or my new soft pajamas or my us weekly or my popsicles or any of the other crap I was convinced I needed to give birth correctly, so keep that in mind. If things had gone according to my plan I probably would have been in the hospital with a fatty epidural, whiling away my time while checking out my freshly pedicured toes and eating a popsicle and reading about Britney, but for natural childbirth? I doubt you would need any of that crap.

Sometime around four in the morning I threw up, three different times on three different contractions. Considering how much I hate throwing up, it wasn’t that bad.

The contractions got worse. But still not more consistent. At some point I decided that the birth class people and their various admonitions to breathe and relax and move around could go fuck themselves, and I started holding my breath and tensing my whole body during every contraction. I would scratch the back of my hands and down my arms with my fingernails because that other pain was the only thing that helped me get through the contractions. I have never wanted to get away from anything more in my whole life. I had a strong feeling that I wanted to run away from my own body.

And yet, I endured. I had a strange calm. And honestly? The pain is bad. It is bad. But it lasts for maybe, a minute? And then it goes away. So really, you can take it, because it just doesn’t last for that long, you know?

There’s this line in the sand between women who have given birth and women who haven’t. After I gave birth, all my friends and family called to congratulate me and then after the initial niceties every woman friend I have who hasn’t had a baby yet wanted to know about the pain. How much it hurts, what is it worse than? And I always said the same thing. It really really hurts. It’s worse than really, all other pain you’ve ever felt. But it’s for a very short amount of time. It goes away. And you can take almost anything for a minute at a time.

Things started to get more intense. Every time I would have a contraction, I’d get incredibly hot, throw off all the covers, and then as soon as it was over, I’d be freezing cold and I’d start shaking I was shivering so hard and I’d have to pull all the blankets back over myself and try to get warm. Mr. E would push on my back as hard as he could and he would also rub my stomach, which helped a lot. And because the pain was so intense even though the contractions still weren’t very regular, at some point he called the hospital again. They told him again that it sounded like I was still in early labor, and that I shouldn’t come in yet. I was having contractions so intense I would see stars and I could tell that I would black out soon, and that was when I decided that if this was still early labor, I could not do it without an epidural. If it was going to get worse, I knew I could not do it without an epidural, so my goal was just to make it to the hospital, where I would hopefully be dilated enough that they wouldn’t send me home, and then I would have an epidural. I remember thinking that I was going to have to do a blog post about how it turned out I was a giant wimp who couldn’t take any pain at all and had to have an epidural in early labor at about three centimeters. I think my title was going to be “It turns out I am a giant wimp”

I don’t know if you can tell from reading this, but I was SO NOT in early labor at this point. Even though my contractions were never within the time frame that the hospital specified, I was way way way into like, transition labor. But we had no way of knowing that. Looking back I have no idea why we didn’t realize that I would have been dilated at least enough to stay at the hospital if we had gone, but all I can say is that I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never had a baby before and I was also totally out of it, and in so much pain, and I had already been sent home once and by god I was going to follow their rules and every time I had a contraction even though I would almost black out I would think “I probably could have talked during that if I really had to” and the contractions were still sometimes six minutes or seven minutes apart and so we stayed at home.

Mr. E went in and got all the shit out of the shower and turned it on high and turned on the heat lamps in the bathroom and he made me get in the shower and lord, that helped so much. I argued and argued and argued with him about getting in there as I had told him ahead of time that I would and so he ignored me and pretty much grabbed me and took my clothes off and put me in the shower. And then the contractions started to come much much faster. But the shower was heavenly. It helped my back so much. I had to sit down on the floor eventually because my legs were buckling underneath me with every contraction, and I was afraid I would fall, but I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out.

When I got out of the shower and got back in bed, once again the contractions slowed way down, maybe to five or six minutes apart. And so even though they had been very close together in the shower, I was convinced I would get to the hospital, they would make me lie down so they could put on the monitors, the contractions would slow down again, and they would send me home.

Thank goodness for Mr. E. He called my sister in law, who’s an ob gyn nurse, and she told him that the intensity of the contractions also mattered a lot, and she asked if I had started telling people to shut up or if I seemed crabby? Mr. E told her yes, and yes, and she told him to get me to the hospital right away.

So then we finally went to the hospital. I argued the whole way. I did not want to go. I was convinced that we would be sent home. The contractions slowed down again, although I did have three or four in the car. I couldn’t even yell out anymore that I was having one, I would just grunt. Other than that no one said a word. Every time a contraction would hit, I would grip the armrest as hard as I could, push my body upwards, rigid, out of the car seat, and hold my breath and clench all my muscles as tight as I could. It was just…how I got through it, good or bad, that was how I did it.
I do remember thinking how surreal it was that it was the middle of the day, a bright sunlit morning. I always thought of having babies as something that happened at night.

We got the hospital at about 10:50 AM. Mr. E parked, and we walked in from the parking lot. I would stop and hold onto his arm and brace my whole body against him every time I had a contraction. We must have looked sort of funny, a woman stopped and asked if we were ok, and Mr. E said, very matter of factly “Oh, she’s in labor.” The woman said, “Oh, I just had a baby three days ago, I’ll get you a wheelchair.” A few moments later, two nurses came running out with a wheelchair, and I remember thinking, I don’t need a wheelchair! And as soon as I sat in it, it was wonderful. It was amazing. One of the nurses ran ahead to alert labor and delivery, and I remember thinking “the contractions aren’t that close together, no one needs to alert labor and delivery”. It is really interesting to note how differently we were treated the two times we came in. Outside observers could easily tell the difference in my state, and I couldn’t.

As soon as we got to Labor and Delivery I was wheeled to my room and they said a nurse would be in shortly. Changing seemed like such an enormous project, and I almost just gave up right then and there, but instead I took off my pajamas and my University of Minnesota sweatshirt and put on the hospital gown and sat on the bed. The nurse came in to check me and as soon as she did I could tell that things were different this time. I had my eyes closed and I was really out of it, but I will never forget that moment when the nurse, sounding shocked as hell, said “Oh hon. Hon. You are at ten centimeters. You are DONE.” That was when I decided I was going to change the title of my blog post to “It turns out I’m a ROCK STAR.”

I was so out of it at that point, I don’t remember too much. I think I was relieved, that I wouldn’t have to go home, that I had made it as far as I thought I had to make it. Someone asked me if they could get me anything, and I said (polite to the end) “I would like an epidural as soon as possible, please.”

People were running in and out my room. I remember chaos and lots of fast talking, and looking up and seeing a nurse or someone ripping a bag open, people wheeling carts and pushing things around. Things were hectic, to say the least. My room was full of people, everyone doing something as fast as they could.

My memory from this time comes only in flashes. Whole chunks of time passed as if in an instant.

I could not stop shaking. Someone told me to nod my head if I gave Mr. E consent to answer questions for me and I nodded and then they started firing questions at him. They tried to put an IV in my arm and they were fucking it up and I remember feeling so glad that it was hurting because that pain was so minor it actually felt NICE.

The nurse who told me I could have an epidural came back and told me that she had talked to my doctor and that unfortunately there wasn’t any point in giving me one, that I had done all the work and that it wouldn’t make any difference in the pushing part of it, that it was a whole different kind of pain and I just didn’t need one now. I don’t remember this part, but Mr. E says that when they told me that, I started to cry.

My doctor showed up, in jeans and a t shirt. I was very relieved to see her, because a.) she’s awesome, and b.) I was worried that when they said they had to call my doctor that it would take forever for her to get there.

By the way. Let me say going into this that I am not your most cavalier of people. In the months leading up to giving birth, I worried about how much it might hurt, of course, but I was also worried that it was going to be really embarrassing, that I might poop and how gross that would be, that everyone would see my cha cha, that I’d have to breastfeed afterwards in front of everyone, that it would be so…undignified when they moved the bed around and got it all set so I could give birth.

And let me just assure you that (no pun intended) by the time I got that point, I didn’t give a crap about any of that. The end of the bed was whipped off and there was a giant spotlight situation going on down there and fifty million nurses and interns and various sorts staring at my girl parts and I could not have cared less. Just simply didn’t care at that point.

My doctor told me she was going to break my water, and I remember thinking…WAIT. Wait. It was all going so fast. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. But birth waits for no man, and my water was broken.

Before she broke my water the doctor felt my stomach and said that she didn’t think the baby would be small after all, but after she broke my water she said that she was changing her mind, that there was so much fluid that she was pretty sure that yes, he was going to be tiny.

She told me how to push. I asked her long it was going to take. It makes no sense but I was both terrified that it was going to take hours to push the baby and certain that it would not. She pointed out that my room was full of people and that was a really good sign, and maybe that was it, the level of frenetic activity, that reassured me that things weren’t going to be lengthy.

Pushing was my least favorite part of the whole process. I was not prepared for pushing. I had somehow believed, up to this point, that pushing was going to feel great. That the pain would subside and I would have this incredible urge to push and I would push like hell and it would be AWESOME.

People. It was not awesome. I could not tell when to push. I never had the urge. And it hurt, in a terrible grinding relentless burning shoving tearing kind of way that I was not prepared for. The nurses and my doctor coached me like hell and got me through it, and it only took about three contractions, but it was not fun. And indeed, the earlier contraction pain was very different. It felt useful. It felt like my body was doing something it was intended to do. Pushing felt…horrible. It felt like I was doing something horrible to my body and it felt wrong, like I was ripping myself in two and nothing was happening and it wasn’t right. But the nurses helped immeasurably and they told me when to push and my doctor told me I was losing the power of the contraction, and to take a deep breath when they told me to and then to push like hell, and then when the nurse said “don’t lose this one, don’t lose your progress” I made up my mind to just push through it and that the worse it was, the faster it would be over. I am sure I pooped, and I did not care. You are pushing so hard and it hurts so much, I am sure you must always poop. How could you not? You’re pushing with everything you have.

And then the head was out. It hurt like hell. The doctor asked if I wanted to touch his head, and I said no. I held Mr. E’s hand and I held my best friends hand on the other side and I pushed one more time and then he was half out, they make you wait to push again while they suction him and that part is terrible, you just want the baby OUT and you have to wait. You breathe and you wait. Then they said “give one more tiny push” and I thought it was the best moment of my life when I gave that one tiny push and out he came. Man. It was amazing. It felt amazing to have that pain over with. The cord was wrapped all around him so they unwrapped him as quick as pie and it all happened in an instant, that tiny push, the pain ending, someone saying “it’s a boy” and him slung way up high in the corner of my vision - that long gray body - and then crying and then there he was on my stomach.

And Eli was born.

They took him away and cleaned him up and Mr. E cut the cord and the placenta came out. I didn’t have to push for that, it just came out, and my doctor said “after the placenta comes out, you are going to feel GREAT” and she was right. THAT was the best feeling in the world. I thought I felt great before after the baby came out, but man, I felt so much better after the placenta came out, I felt amazing.

I could not stop shaking. I must have been in shock. At no point do I remember wondering where the baby was. They brought me three blankets from the warmer before I stopped shaking.

At this point all the nurses and everyone must have heard the story of how I got I sent home and then came back at 10 centimeters dilated and I was getting a lot of comments. One nurse saw the book from our childbirth class on the table and asked who it belonged to and when I told her it was mine she said “Well, you get an A on that class.”

They brought Eli back when he was all wrapped up, wearing that weird little hat they give the babies, with the pink and blue stripes. He was all swaddled up and I remember what a warm and compact and surprising little bundle he was. All the nurses had commented on how long his arms and legs were but he was indeed tiny, 5 pounds 6 ounces. It sounds not so tiny, really, when you hear it, but when you see it in a baby, when you see a baby that size next to the enormous clothes you brought to bring him home that he can’t wear, you realize how tiny it is.

I remember things only in patches from the rest of that morning. Mostly I remember holding my son and thinking “This is it. This is the most important moment of my life.”

And most of all I remember staring at Eli’s tiny perfect face and then tilting my head up to look at Mr. E and seeing him and just smiling. Just staring back and forth between the two of them and I could not stop smiling, and I was still so out of it I didn’t ask about Apgars and I didn’t count toes and I didn’t really think or say or do anything more than just sit there, holding my son, and feeling happy, and this sounds cheesier than anything I would like to admit in printed form, but I swear I had that song “These Are the Days” running through my head the whole time.

And then we were three.

Long Ago, and Oh So Far Away

2007-03-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

Eli doesn't like to go to sleep at night. I think he gets bored or lonely or maybe he just hasn't really figured out how to flip that switch and turn off but regardless of the reason a lot of 2 oclock in the mornings have passed lately with Mr. E and me trying to figure out how the heck to get this child to sleep. Most of the time he doesn't even cry, he just grunts...and only loud enough and often enough so that we can't fall asleep. It's like he's not really in a bad mood, he just wants to chat, and he doesn't care that we want to sleep. I can relate, since that pretty much describes my entire relationship with Mr. E up to this point. Poor guy.

So every night now we begin the Get Eli To Sleep Project, sometimes with better results than others. I am the Project Manager, since I have boobs, but Mr. E is right in there assisting, and i think I can say that we are both equally disturbed by the fact that the only song that ever shuts our son up and puts him to sleep, even as sung in our querulous and out of tune voices, although as loudly as possible?

Superstar, by the Carpenters.

Yikes.

Apparently bad musical taste doesn't skip a generation.

For the Baby Who Has Everything Except Hair

2007-03-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Eli models the Samuel L. baby toupee

Leggings Be Damned

2007-03-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend I fell victim to the 5.99 leggings at Target. Then I came home
and wept tears of despair when I saw them on my short stubby legs and I promptly threw them out after Mr. E informed me it would cost more in gas to bring them back than I'd get for returning them. I never thought a simple pair of "pants" could be so tragic and I really didn't think anything could make me look shorter than I already am. Vile. The whole experience was vile.

Speaking of diabolical fashions of the young that I've not managed to pull off, I think I may have missed the entire dark nail polish train. I will
tell you I tried to buy some of that dark stuff I can never remember the name of (Vamp?) at Chanel over Xmas and they were out of ALL the good colors. Last weekend when I finally got my belated "I need a pedicure before I give birth" pedicure, I just decided "screw it" and went with hot pink. You can't go wrong with pink.

Speaking of which, I just watched Marie Antoinette (because it never came to the theater in this desolate burg) and I loved it. I have never seen a movie before with a montage of desserts and shoes and it was the best three minutes of my life. I wish my life was a montage of dessert and shoes. It was really spectacular. It made me want to buy shoes. Or desserts. Also, apropos of nothing, Mr. E hated it. That doesn't surprise me, really, seeing as how he is not a gay male, but I was shocked anyway. How could anyone hate such an awesome movie? He just kept saying there was no plot. Whatever! There was a plot of awesome shoes and cute miniature desserts! What more could you need?

Then we rented the Illusionist and I have to say I was not impressed, and I also had
a really hard time explaining to Mr. E how Jessica Biel was famous just for having a really nice ass. I mean, maybe she is famous for more than that, but not really, at least according to US Weekly, which is where I get all my most
important and accurate news, and also how I know that the stars are just like us, and buy bottled water and such all by themselves at the grocery store.

Also, I hate to ask this, but Britney? Has she just lost her freaking mind? I don't know what her deal is but I am starting to worry about my own sanity as I caught myself thinking last week that maybe she should GET BACK TOGETHER WITH K FED. Anything that makes you think Kevin Federline might not be that bad after all isn't right. Just isn't right.

Eli can't figure out which he hates more...hippies and their colorful fashions, or socks?

2007-03-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

Unexpected

2007-02-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I would miss my husband so much. I spend a lot of my time cuddling someone else now and that's as it should be and I love every minute of those amazing baby cuddles but I really still need cuddles of my own and I miss it. I'm really hoping that once the two weeks of non stop Grandma time comes to an end we'll get some time to - I don't know, reconnect is the wrong word, but I miss just hanging out with Mr. E. My doctor said I was supposed to come in six weeks after giving birth for a check up and to discuss birth control options - I think I can just tell her we have a co sleeper and be done with that conversation.

I didn't know that I wouldn't be a baby talker. But I am so not. To the point where it kind of gets on my nerves when other people do it. Eli and I do have little chats - all the time, but not in ga ga goo goo speak.

I didn't think 5 pounds six ounces would be so very very tiny. Eli doesn't fit in any regular clothes. He doesn't even fit in preemie clothes. And when I see him out of his clothes I am struck every time but how tiny, and yet how perfect, this miniature child of mine is. He makes all the other babies I see look like great hulking beasts (but not YOURS, of course).

I didn't realize I would care so little about having my entire life taken over by this tiny creature. I have to feed him every three hours, sometimes more depending on how well he ate the time before, and even though it gets a little old because it takes him so long to eat each time, I really don't even care. We spend most of our time just hanging out and sleeping and eating and it's really my favorite time I've ever spent with anyone. If I had known how much fun it would be to be a mom, if I had known how little I would care that I can't go to the movies now or that I don't have any time to myself or I can't pee alone - I wouldn't have waited so long. I wouldn't have worried so much.

I never realized I would feel so lucky. I have moments where I look over at my husband whos been just incredible every moment of when I was pregnant and every moment since Eli's birth and I look at my tiny perfect son and I have moments like when our pediatrician said to me in her thick Indian accent "Oh, he has a BEAUTIFUL heart" and I just feel so lucky in those moments it feels almost dangerous, how wonderful and happy I am. I don't know that I deserve it.

I never expected to get over myself so quickly. Before I had Eli, I was really wrapped up, waaay too wrapped up, in everyone else, in what everyone else was doing, when they were having kids, what they thought of me, if they would have better baby furniture, if my sister in law would buy a pottery barn crib I couldn't afford, if someone else would take the names I wanted to use, if I would have an emotional breakdown when someone else had a girl before I did. And then once I had him I simply stopped caring about all that. It sounds weird but I just don't care anymore. It's not that I don't wish everyone else love and happiness and babies and puppies and rainbows, I do. It's just that it's irrelevant to my happiness. I've got mine. I hope they get theirs, but whether they do or don't doesn't add or subtract from my own.

I never expected that this tiny creature would make me feel so connected to everyone else that came before. It's more than just the stories of all the people who came before, of the grandfather who gave him his middle name or the great grandmother who raised nine kids on her own after her no good husband Beuxregard left her. It's glancing down at Eli's face and seeing my mom for an instant, it's my brother's chin in miniature, it's glimpses of Mr. E in a curl of hair or in Eli's long perfect fingers you know he didn't get from me, it's seeing my own nose right there on his tiny baby face and remembering my own mother teasing me about my pouty lower lip and seeing it all over again in my son.

The one thing I did expect, the one thing I was counting on? That indescribable new baby smell. It's there, and it's better than I ever expected.

The Birth Story is in progress, but please note I have had headaches for which I took more pain medication. Until then enjoy this update in list form

2007-02-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

-Have lost 20 pounds in nine days!!! Diet of chocolate and constant breastfeeding appears to be magic diet. Must work on marketing strategy and become millionaire. When not breastfeeding.

-Have already compromised all previously held morals as only place to buy preemie clothes in town is at Walmart. (please note: Child is not preemie, only preemie sized).

-Am forced to threaten Mr. Baby daily with ice cube hands and a lifetime of girls clothes from Walmart as Mr. Baby would rather poop than eat. Clearly takes after father.

-Will retrieve non maternity clothes from garage later today. Expect imminent emotional breakdown.

-Am strangely intrigued by that movie The Queen after having watched last half hour of Academy Awards. Am clearly huge loser.

-Child's umbilical cord just fell off. Is clearly genius.

-Thank you to all for congratulations and well wishes. Am feeling very very very lucky.

Welcome to the World, Baby Boy

2007-02-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

Eli Green_w00d Ekd@hl
born February 17, 2007
5.6 pounds, 19 inches long

Everything is Fine

2007-02-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

We had the non stress test and Thor performed beautifully...after looking at his heart rate and movement and various other printouts my doctor said everything looked great, and we're just going to have a small baby. Last night after the doctor's appointment I felt about ten thousand times better than I did the night before. We still have to have non stress tests twice a week as a precaution but it looks like other than that, now we just wait for the little stinker to decide when he wants to arrive. The doctor said it could be anytime now!

No Good Way

2007-02-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

I tried to think of a fancy way or a nice story to tell this but there really isn't one. We had an ultrasound on Tuesday and the baby is measuring small for his gestational age, particularly in the abdomen, which is how they diagnose IUGR. (Intra Uterine Growth Restriction). I have to go in for twice weekly non stress tests to make sure everything is ok and our first one is today, so we won't know more until later on today. If Thor (our nickname for the baby) responds appropriately and doesn't appear to be in distress I would imagine they'll want to leave him in there so he can try to fatten up - but they did say that it wasn't likely he'll gain much at this point. I'm small and I was small at birth so that could be the reason - maybe he is just a small baby. At this point they think he is about five pounds, but that is give or take 13 ounces either way.

If Thor fails the non stress test either I will start on steroids or they will deliver the baby if they think it's better for him to just come on out now.

Like I said right now we don't know much. I spent much of yesterday freaking out and blaming myself and crying and calling my mom but now I'm feeling better. After all everything else on the ultrasound was fine and Thor is still moving around and all that. I'm frantically cleaning my house in case we're about to have a new baby around here - and the dryer is fixed, thank god. I don't have all the stuff I need for my hospital bag and we don't have any diapers but at this point I don't care, I just want my boy to be ok. That's really all I care about. That and a clean toilet.

Like I said I am doing ok most of the time. I am used to having horrible valentines days (aren't we all?). We skipped our last childbirth class because I just wasn't up to it and I watched American Idol with Mr. E and some heart shaped Junior Mints and I felt better. Of course everyone tells me things will be fine and this is very normal and this happens all the time and to relax and not stress and don't be nervous and don't be scared but really unfortunately it is not something I can just turn off.

This might sound stupid but I finally just covered up the ultrasound pictures that we got on Tuesday of Thor and his little face and that I had put on the refrigerator. I just couldn't look at my little baby and his tiny chubby baby face and think that there was something wrong with him and not break down so I just covered up the pictures and now I feel much better.

Will let you all know what we hear from the doctor today.
Send good thoughts.

I Think She's Here

2007-02-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

There was no one else like my Grandma Jackson.

She was, from start to finish, a class act.

Because I am named for her she is inextricably tied up in my birth story, the one my mom used to tell me every year on my birthday. How my mom called up my grandmother when I was born to give her the news… and she asked who was calling and my mom said “the mother of Elizabeth Jackson” and at first my grandmother didn’t understand because that was HER name and then she figured out that her first grandchild had been born and had been named for her and she went and had a moment and then began bragging wildly to all her friends who were over at her house playing bridge.

When my brother was born my frandmother came to our house to help out and she taught me to make scalloped potatoes and I still make them today, the same way she did.

We didn't always live nearby but we used to visit her every year in the summer and to me her little stucco house in LA was paradise on earth. It was always sunny and she would have made me a new dress and her backyard would be full of the roses she grew and she’d make her famous lemon meringue pie from lemons she grew in her yard and I still remember a time she took me to the grocery store and when I asked her if I could get some Klondike bars, she said sure and put them in the cart. I’d never had a Klondike bar before. I still remember that day and how it felt. It felt like pure love. Because it was, I think.

When my sister was born and my mother called people to tell them that Annie had Down Syndrome my Grandmother Jackson was the one person who didn’t act as if some sort of death sentence had been handed down. She reacted as she had to the news of all her other grandchildren – with congratulations and love. My mother still talks about it and how much it meant to her.

No one was ever a greater advocate for my sister than my grandmother – no one was ever more patient. It’s a cliché and old fashioned but my grandmother tried hard to teach both me and my sister what it meant to be a lady and a decent human being, in the best of ways.

She always wrote thank you notes. She wrapped packages without any tape, so the paper could be reused. She wouldn’t buy grapes. Whenever I would come to visit she would just “happen” to have three or four desserts on hand to offer me. She taught me to make Christmas ornaments out of Lifesavers and she loved to play Rummikub.

My Grandma Jackson died about five years ago from lung cancer. I still think of her all the time. I still sleep under a king size quilt she made by hand. She never owned a sewing machine. This weekend I made some very simple baby blankets for our impending arrival because I was just plain sick of blue fleece and as I was stitching and pinning and folding I thought of my grandmother and I wished, purely and simply, that she were here. I wish she knew that her great grandson was about to be born.

And then I thought maybe, in some small way, in the stitch of a baby blanket, in the fold of a seam, maybe she is here after all.

I'd Like to File a Formal Complaint...

2007-02-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

...I just got out of the shower and it seems all the towels in our house shrank!

Must be all that line drying.

37 Weeks

2007-02-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

Making the Best of Things

2007-02-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

So ever since I started to wonder if our house was centered on some kind of ancient Indian burial ground or maybe a localized power inversion or perhaps the Hellmouth? I decided that maybe I should stop announcing to the world that I just couldn't take it anymore and I should instead try to make the best of things. Because you know what? There is no point to annoucing that you need a break and that you can't take it anymore. Things happen and you can't control that and you try to learn from them as best you can and then you soldier on. You take it. You have no choice, announcements or not. You hang your laundry out to dry and think of Antonia hanging her laundry out to dry back in the day on some prairie in the middle of Nebraska and you think of all the power you're saving and you transport yourself into a summer's eve commercial and tell yourself things like "fresh!" and "clean with the power of the sun!" and try not to notice that your pillowcases smell actually quite a bit like exhaust and your towels have this new exfoliant quality they never had before.

Mr. E assured me that despite my new pioneer spirit we needed a new dryer but I was caught up in making the best of things and so we did not get a new dryer, and then he went away for a work thingee and simultaneously it rained for a week. I don't know if you know this but pioneer spirit or no, large scale flood type raining isn't really conducive to laundry drying and really who I am not to support the local economy with my hard earned tax refund? So this weekend Mr. E and I went to Lowe's and bought a dryer and when a dark bitterness at having to spend a shitload of money on something I already had one of instead of something I wanted and had been dreaming about buying for a year I again made the best of things and told myself I was lucky to be able to afford a new dryer when we needed one and besides think of the soft soft towels, and I actually kind of got excited about my dryer, and the lovely folks at Lowe's promised to bring it the next day, a SUNDAY! So even when the Lowe's man called at 7 am ON A SUNDAY to tell us they would bring it by at noon I looked on the bright side and thought "Eh, now we are up early, we can get so much done, and now we will have our dryer and tonight I will wear soft fluffy pajama pants and sleep on clean sheets and we will once again have soft towels and yea! A new dryer."

Oh friends.

We do, in fact, have a new dryer, sitting dead, unworkable, in our kitchen, on this fine and gray February morning. We also have an appointment with an electrician, so he can come look at the wiring in our kitchen and tell us why, two dryers and three power cords later, NO DRYERS WILL WORK IN THIS HOUSE.

And try as I might to look on the bright side there is something that happens when you find yourself outside in the cold at nine oclock on Sunday night hanging out the very laundry you just naively assumed you'd be pulling from your BRAND NEW $500 dryer that sits useless in your house that demoralizes you just a little.

On the bright side, it isn't raining. Yet.

Which is lucky, because the new roof?

Leaks.

When It Rains

2007-02-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

I’m not a big believer in luck. I think maybe there’s too much chance to it – I like to think most good things that happen in my life happen because I worked hard for them, and I also blame myself when bad things happen – like the dryer broke because I’m bad at managing money and so it’s my fault that I don’t have savings and can’t run right out and buy a new dryer right now.

But I have to tell you I’m having a run of something and I just need a break. When we moved into this house it was partially because Mr. E had to two days in which to find us a place to live and partially because it really is a cute house, it’s very nice and it’s to our taste. We usually end up living in older houses because more than anything else I need high ceilings and wood floors and there’s just a certain aesthetic that I’m more into and that means an older house, which is fine, but never in my life have I lived somewhere more prone to random collapse than this house. And the luck seems to be spreading to all of us, our dog and our cat and our car and I hope you don’t get contaminated simply by reading my blog.

So this house. It’s safe to say it’s not well constructed and I think it’s had a lot of amateurish home repair - we notice small random glitches every day. Cabinet doors open the wrong way. Light switches are reversed. The bedroom door was installed slightly off kilter and would never shut all the way. This fall the house filled with thousands of mayflies that bred in the hundreds of rotting walnuts littering the lawn – the bugs are so small they can come right in through the screens. Some of the electric outlets are put in backwards, which means you can’t use a night light in them. The heat vents all face the wrong way. None of the sink stoppers work. Cell phones fail – anywhere in the house. The windows and roof both leaked like sieves and had to be replaced in days long projects involving a multitude of banging and lots of loud, bad construction worker music - heavy on the Creed.

Then there are all the things that simply break. Every time the toilet flushed, nasty water leaked out of it onto the floor, so that had to be fixed. The kitchen sink backed up and had to be snaked twice – I think the garbage disposal is a pretense at best. And we learned that in desperate situations, a bucket of hot water can sometimes unclog a toilet that won’t plunge.

Our dryer broke. The microwave caught on fire. The oven died.

And it spread. The dog gave us all ringworm. Our car wouldn’t start, for the first time since we’ve owned it. It’s freezing cold inside, all the time. Our electricity bill for the month of December was $315 dollars. And yesterday while I was taking a shower, the cold water knob snapped off in my hand, and when Mr. E went to take a look at it, the entire business at the end of the pipe flew apart and out of the wall, and a stream of icy water shot out of the hole that remained – for an hour and half, while all concerned searched frantically for a way to turn off the water to the house.

A plumber just now came by to take a look at the faucet and wanted $500 to tear out the whole wall and replace everything, which our landlords declined to pay. So…here I sit. Nine months pregnant, no water, save two five gallon jugs we bought yesterday at the grocery store.

This morning my doctor told me I was measuring small, and that she was ordering another ultrasound. And then Mr. E and I drove home - in the fog - to our house of many disasters – but not before noticing a mysterious and oily substance leaking out of the vents of the car and coating the insides of all the windows.

Now it’s almost like a game. What will go wrong next?

The computer appears to be making a high pitched whining noise, but Mr. E also reports a mysterious ticking emanating from his barely over a year old and just slightly past the warranty IPOD.

The race is on!

The Sacred and the Profane

2007-01-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

Mr. E sent me this article from Salon last week and it got me thinking.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/2007/01/23/glassner_qa/index.html

It's an interview with Barry Glassner, who just wrote a book called "The Gospel of Food". In the article he touches on all sorts of the dieting and food ideas and issues going on today, but the part that jumped out at me most was this:

I think that one way that the food industry is brilliant is in picking up on the bipolar approach to food that we have in this country where we think that certain foods are good or bad, or sacred or profane.

I've become fairly successful at reworking my life so I have a healthy attitude towards food. I eat about half of what I used to and I know what a normal portion of something is and I mostly stay away from fast food and I exercise and I eat vegetables instead of chips and I get a small non fat latte every once in a while instead of a grande mocha with whip every morning. But as I've learned all this and lost sixty pounds and become a runner, I've also gotten worse at separating myself from what I eat, I've also become convinced I don't do enough and I always feel like I could be eating better and that if I did, I'd be a better person.

Inherent in any diet or lifestyle where you're making yourself do something that doesn't come naturally, like eating carrots instead of ice cream, there's always a level of self flagellation. It's how you lose weight. If you didn't want to change, to be "better", you wouldn't have the motivation necessary to get off your ass and put down the spoon. But at the same time I can't help but wonder if it's gone too far when I always feel judged and when I never feel like what I'm eating is the right thing. Is it really normal to feel so defensive because I don't eat whole wheat pasta? I don't like whole wheat pasta, but I still feel like I would be a better person if made myself eat it. At every meal there's a little voice in the back of my head telling me I should be eating kale instead of macaroni and cheese and I can't help but wonder if I need to tell that little voice to shut the hell up. Also, I have no idea how to do that.

The worst part of it all is I don't feel like a "good" person when I eat "the right foods". I just feel like a bad person when I don't.

I can't figure out I feel this way because the lot in life of a perfectionist is to be stuck forever trying harder to do better, or if it's because society's anti fat stance is so strong that we apply it to whatever we think of as scary fattening foods as well. Maybe it's a little of both.

All I know is that deep down I really do know that eating kale won't make me a better person. But at the same time, in the same head space, I also know that I'm a bad person, because I'm not eating kale for dinner.

Nightmare Updated

2007-01-26T13:08:00.000-08:00

Seriously? God hates me.
Our dryer broke last night, right in the middle of the 70,000 loads of ringworm related laundry.

But today I am TRYING to look on the bright side. It's not raining, and so everything is drying outside on a clothesline. And just think of how much money we'll save on electricity this way!

Probably almost enough to buy a new dryer.

Complete Nightmare

2007-01-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

Can I just stop here for a minute and say?

I am having some issues.

First of all, we just had our roof replaced. It was annoying, but whatever, it was before the baby arrived and I didn't expect it to be silent. It was all arranged by our landlords and while I am happy that I'm not paying for someone to put a roof on the house and all that, some communication more than what's gone on would have been nice. The roofers just show up, do their (very noise) thing for awhile, and then disappear. I thought they were finished on Monday because the roof look finished, although they left a giant leaf blower in the middle of our sidewalk. We put it in our garage so it wouldn't get stolen, told our landlord to let them know they had left it here and they could come get it, and never heard from them again, until lo and behold, someone is RIGHT NOW walking around on my roof, when I thought it was finished. Seeing as how no one has been here for days and the roof appears to be finished, that was a natural assumption, I think. Maybe for the rest of my life they'll just show up wherever I am and walk around on my roof for fifteen minutes. Preferably right when I'm about to take a nap. They still haven't asked for their fucking leaf blower. For all I know I'm the proud new owner of one, despite my total moral objections.

Meanwhile it turns out I have ringworm. Which is almost as disgusting as it sounds. I didn't know what it was at first and then Mr. E informed me "oh, that's ringworm" which really pissed me off, because of course I didn't have ringworm. I would never have something so disgusting. Last time I was at the doctor I asked her what it was and she promptly informed me that it was ringworm (of course!!!) and to treat it with Selsun Blue. It's not actually worms, thank god, or I really would have had to cut off my leg due to the extreme grossness of that whole scenario, my doctor didn't in fact know what it was and so Mr. E had to inform her that it's a fungus. How annoying is that? The doctor did say that I got it from one my disgusting pets and to treat it with Selsun Blue and it's totally not going away, so today I did what all people with weird skin ailments should always do first and I googled "treatment of ringworm" and it turns out I haven't taken it anywhere near seriously enough and so now it's a total nightmare. I have to find out which of my disgusting animals has it (I'm thinking the dog) and then wash everything the stupid dog and my stupid leg have touched and I have to treat it twice a day with antifungal cream and wash my hands a billion times before and after touching it and I can't scratch it and did I mention that my electricity bill was $315 dollars last month? So I am obviously thrilled about having to do seventy thousand loads of laundry and I can't wait to give birth with a giant patch of ringworm on my leg and also to bring a baby home into a teeming cesspool of disgusting dirty animals and their various spreading funguses. Fungi. Whatever. It's a total nightmare.

I feel the need for a Frappucino coming over me. Even though last time I drank one of those it immediately made me so cold it was as though my nipples had been lit on fire and I had to put on two down vests and run around the house screaming.

Meanwhile the only positions I can sleep in (on my side) cause my hands to fall asleep and turn numb. If this doesn't happen I wake up with heartburn or acid reflux so terrible it makes me wish I were dead. This morning I resorted to sitting upright on (ringworm infested) pillows staring at the wall wondering when my library books were due and if I would ever get to sleep again. When Mr. E came in to get dressed I gloomily announced "I feel like I'm falling apart. I have heartburn and ringworm and numb hands and my feet itch."

Meanwhile my pants are getting tighter and tighter, I can no longer wear my wedding band, a double chin has arrived out of nowhere, I just feel gross. Sigh. Will try to get in a better mood tomorrow. Thanks for listening to my deluded rantings.

Butter Yuck

2007-01-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

Last night for dinner I made butternut squash ravioli, from scratch. I was thrilled because it was my first attempt at making pasta dough by hand and it all worked out - I didn't use a pasta machine (which I don't have) and the raviolis didn't burst open in the water like I thought they would. However, I was unthrilled because it turns out I hate butternut squash ravioli...the filling tasted way too much like dessert. I don't think it was my recipe either, I think that the flavor of squash in pasta is just not for me. Yuck.
But now that I know how easy it is to make ravioli yourself I'm excited to try some other fillings - less disgusting ones, preferable. I was thinking maybe crab? Does anyone else have any other good ideas? Otherwise I shall throw myself on the mercy of the highest starred recipe on All Recipes. Will let you know how it goes.

PS For the pasta dough I just used a basic Ravioli Dough recipe from Epicurious.com

Me and the Stroller the Size of Texas

2007-01-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, We Have a Theme

2007-01-18T09:55:00.000-08:00

Although the theme for the bug’s room should probably be “nowhere close to finished, get your ass in gear, lazies” it is actually children’s books and ABC’s. There’s nothing I love more than books, especially the ones I read as a kid, and I can’t wait to pass that onto my child, so we’re starting early. There’s ABC’s on the crib bedding and the light switch cover and we’ve got some wooden blocks in a jar and a Goodnight Moon poster for the wall and we’ve got a stuffed Madeline and a stuffed Paddington Bear and the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Goodnight Moon bunny. But no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find Babar anywhere, the Babar market in this country has dried up, but after all Babar IS from France, so he might not want to spend a lot of time slumming here in America, especially with our current international reputation and all.

Right before my mom made her most recent trip to France I asked her to keep her eye out for Babar and see what she could find, and that’s how she came to spend a whole day in a toy store somewhere in some small french town choosing a Babar from one of many many many varieties on display. She called me from the store and told me all about animatronic Babar and the interactive Babar and Celestes and all the other crazy Babars on offering. Over all the toy noises and the jabbering away in French going on in the background my mom asked me if maybe I wanted the talking Babar, and because I hate noise and I've ordered one of those noise free children and I’m therefore generally a huge hater of toys that make noise, I immediately said no, but then my mom did the right thing and put talking Babar on the phone, and it was truly the best thing I’ve ever heard. It sounded like nothing so much as the MOST POMPOUS French man you’ve ever heard, lecturing you condescendingly on something you have clearly fucked up very very badly. I loved it, every pompous and truly hilarious minute of it, as my mom clearly knew that I would. Talking Babar was tres awesome.

Two days later my mom emailed me a short note from her Blackberry to say that her luggage and the package containing Talking Babar were the first items safely off the baggage carousel in Ohare, and how relieved she was that her luggage had made it safely because she had barely made her flight. I was happy for her and all that because no one likes losing luggage, but I think this is one of those times when it’s ok to revise what you know because another way makes a nicer story. Instead of Babar spitting his way out of the Ohare baggage carousel in a cardboard box, I like to think of my mother, sitting in her window seat on the plane, wending her way across the Atlantic, towards home, towards her grandson, with Talking Babar on her lap, safe.

(I also bought Oreos, and they are delicious)

2007-01-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

Last night at the grocery store the check out guy told us that we were buying the most vegetables he'd ever seen anyone in our generation buy. Mr. E pointed at me and said "You just made her day." He did, too.

Pet Peeve

2007-01-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

While I think it's really neat and all that in today's day and age, women refuse to actually sit on the toilet seats in public restrooms, it just means that every damn time I have to go to the bathroom at the movies or wherever, all the toilet seats are covered with pee from someone hovering over it and missing. It's so gross and uncool and selfish, it just gets on my last nerve.

Also, it's one thing if a movie is super boring. I hate most movies so I expect that. But three hours long? It should come with a warning! (The Good Shepherd, I'm looking at you.)

Inspirational

2007-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Ya'all, I am going to tell you a bad secret. Get ready.

(I know everyone means well. I really really do.)

But the whole "oh my god you're pregnant how do you feel what do you look like send us a picture of your stomach" thing is starting to really really really get on my nerves. And also? I find it kind of creepy.

First of all? I know I'm pregnant, ok? But honestly? It's just not something I think about all that much. It's certainly not something I want to define me. I don't wish to be thought of as your "pregnant daughter in law" or "your pregnant friend." I am your daughter in law, I am your friend. Who happens to be pregnant. Who won't be pregnant soon, and who has a lot more on her mind than just babies and stomachs and stretch marks. Let's talk about Battlestar Galactica or something.

And also? It's kind of...personal. I don't know. I just don't really feel like being pregnant is this shared thing. I think it's kind of my deal with Mr. E and the baby and we're sort of doing our own little thing and I know it sounds selfish but I can't help it. It's an insular experience, it just is.

To be really honest I'm also kind of terrified. I cope with this terror by thinking about other things. And that's my coping strategy and if it involves NOT taking pictures of my stomach every two weeks...well, it's my stomach, you know? How about you take a picture of your stomach and send it to me? Not so much? Ok then.

It is inevitable that this little bug takes over our lives. I know that. But right now I am holding onto my own life as much as I can, and that means that if I choose to be ME first and foremost, and pregnant as an afterthought, that's my own choice, my own right, and whether you agree with it or not doesn't really matter. I know that there is a whole other pregnancy out there, one where you only eat organic and you're an earth mother and you don't buy ANYTHING for the baby and you run forty miles the day you deliver and a mother wolf licks the baby off when it enters the world and you grill your placenta and all that, but I'm not having that pregnancy, and it's not because I haven't heard about it and I need you to tell me about it. It's because I'm just not that into being pregnant. I would rather eat M and M's than organic sprouts. I don't want to take pictures of myself naked in the moonlight. I don't want you to kiss my stomach. I like to shop. I'm a little crabby. I'd like a wolf free birth.

Last night we had childbirth class and the nurse teaching us told us that back in the day they just gassed women right when they came in and then when you woke up the next day they handed you a baby. Is it wrong that I thought that sounded pretty damn good?

I know this sounds like nothing more than a long bitchy rant, but really it is just a very long introduction to something more. Because I still think it's creepy when people ask for pictures of my stomach, don't get me wrong. I'd still rather talk about Battlestar Galactica or Britney Spears than birthing class. But admitting that I am terrified about this whole deal has helped me to realize that the most important thing here is that I AM NOT ALONE.

And I didn't really think much about that until the nurse at the doctor's office told us that Mr. E was "inspirational" for coming to EVERY APPOINTMENT and then he went with me to boob class and was the only guy there and then he looked up the Blade Runner soundtrack on Itunes because it's the music he's always found most relaxing and then I realized, that yes, I am going to do this hard thing, this thing only I can do. I am going to give birth and be in labor and be a mom, but through the whole thing I'm going to have Mr. E right there by my side, and there's never been anything, ANYTHING, that I haven't been able to do when he's been there to help me. And when I get scared and when I get lost and when I am in pain and when I am sad I can tell him, and he'll know what to do, or we'll figure it out together. I really believe that, and that's how I know that everything is going to be ok.

Being pregnant hasn't changed who I am, even though sometimes everyone acts like it should. I never wanted to eat organic peanut butter. I NEVER wanted to send you pictures of my stomach! Why would I now? I mean, yes, I'm pregnant, but I am also the girl laughing at the childbirth video from 1972, who is horrified and making faces at all the pregnant PDA going on in the room. I'll always be that girl. But lucky for me, Mr. E is laughing too, right there along side me.

Aw, man...

2007-01-09T14:17:00.001-08:00

maternity overalls are so so so so SO unflattering.
I don't think I can do it.
I look like a fat farmer, or humpty dumpty. They're not even that comfortable.
Back to the pajama pants, I guess.