Fabulous Miss S.

Levee breech

I didn't realize how much I was teetering on the brink of my emotional levee until I drove past a group of kids today on the way to the gym and witnessed something that brought out the MOM in me, the MOM I didn't know but hoped existed. 

And then I parked my car outside of my gym and sent a message to Twitter and cried. 

I saw some boys hitting another boy.  These were young kids, like, pre-pubescent.  (Horrible word, I know. Right up there with Clitoris and Vulva.)  I was at a red light just beyond where they had shed their backpacks and circled some little kid who was backing away, supposedly, in fear.  I almost got out of my car but I am a wee little lady and while my muscular-150-MOM-pounds can totally take a ten year old, it cannot take seven-10-year olds. Who might have guns.

I did do something. I called the police. After this week I should have them on speed-dial.  They seemed worried and asked if I saw weapons.  I did not. They said they would check it out immediately.

I drove away feeling overwhelmed and the incredible urge to hold my son.  

I didn't realize until this moment that I was feeling so vulnerable, so fragile.  It explains the three panic attacks I have had this week.

Being a parent is hard.  Anyone who doesn't admit that has a secret stash of meth in the mornings and valium at night.  I have experienced happier highs and lower lows since Noah was born than ever before. 

And I actually love how human it makes me feel. 

Upon super close-up you can note the appearance of not one, but two, TWO, bottom teeth just north of that lower lip. MAH BABY, HE IS GROWING UP.

Rain rain, don't go away. Yet.

Sometimes I quite like the rain.  The past two days have brought us a much needed inch or two of rain and it has allowed me to slow down, stay inside and attempt calm.   I haven't achieved that last one, however, I feel very burdened by my massive TO-DO list and I'm still mourning the ambition I had when this week began. The car break-in really drained my spirit.  When you are a mother, a wife, you feel protective of your family and your home and when something happens that tears one little string of that web, it brings you anxiety and unease, anger and questions. 

Instead of exercising I have been eating. Instead of writing I have been sleeping and walking around wringing my hands to the rapid beat of my heart.  It is an exhausting combination. I'd much prefer to write three blog entries while downing Crystal Light Iced Tea and endless amounts of string cheese. 

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Noah has two teeth. Two visible cutting through the gum, pressing upward teeth.  It bothers him severely at sporadic and unpredictable times.  Thus, I am sleepless and tired and whiny and irritable.  Come join my pity party!

In other news I'm feeling renewed about the summer coming to a slow end.  I like the back-to-school feel of the Fall.  Even though I have been out of school for many years and this time of year marked nothing except a small Labor-Day cookout, maybe, I still feel it is the beginning of something new, a fresh start.  Actually, I'm looking forward to cool days and cold nights, putting Noah in fleece footed pajamas and curling up on the sofa at night instead of watering plants and pulling weeds and going to the playground at 7PM.

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I am in the middle of a kitchen-type remodeling project.  It isn't really the kitchen, but the eat-in table and den-area attached to the kitchen proper.  The previous owners of our home deemed berber carpet acceptable for a KITCHEN. With food. And pets. And kids. WTF? 

I made Marc promise that if we bought this house we could replace the carpet as soon as we moved in saved the money had a child had a crawling child had a crawling child who licked the floor, often.  I actually started working on this project in JUNE when I casually went to flooring stores to try and match the wood in the adjacent living room.  No go.  The wood floor was made by Medallion and they are out of business. The ceramic tile in the kitchen was also, quite recently in fact, discontinued.  Thus, we are getting a brand new floor type: laminate. A woody-wide-board, diagonal-lay new floor.  It is being installed next week.  In honor of this fancy new floor I decided I needed to paint the walls, you know to commemorate this experience and add undue and totally uncalled for stress and anxiety to my already  full life.  So, two weeks ago I began painting the kitchen.  And two weeks later I am STILL NOT FINISHED.  Two coats of primer and three coats of Oh!-That's-really-YELLOW paint later, I am still working on it. 

I am tired.

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Meanwhile, we have a three-day weekend ahead and I plan to get some gym time, some painting time, some house cleaning time and maybe some sleep. What do you have planned?

Violated

I learned a long time ago that blogging about something when emotions are still raw and thoughts are unorganized pieces and the only words you can seethe forth are SHIT and MOTHERFUCKERS, is not such a hot idea.  But, I'm ignoring that part of me right now and I'm going to write about the feelings I have. The feeling of being violated. Targeted.  Hated or maybe just a random dumb fucker?

My car was broken into AGAIN last night. 

Yeah, it's a vaguely petty crime but it was against ME. AGAIN. DO THEY NOT KNOW THEY ARE MESSING WITH THE DAUGHTER OF A FUCKING HOMICIDE DETECTIVE? 

We went out last night to have dinner with friends and when we got home Marc went inside to let the dog out and I brought in the sleeping baby.  Marc had the keys because he opened the front door and I followed him and went straight upstairs to put the baby to bed. No one locked the car.  OOPS!

This morning at around 10 o'clock I went outside to get something from the car and saw that all-too-familiar stomach-dropping sight that is your glove box and car compartments spread all over the front seat of the car.  My car has the clicker-automatic lock thing so I thought I was unlocking it when I walked outside, I didn't realize it was already unlocked  and had been all night.  Some good items, even cash were overlooked for Marc's Oakley sunglasses and my Target sunglasses. 

When this happened once before I was upset and angry but I had knowingly left my fifteen-year-old-Camry unlocked because I didn't care if anyone stole my Rick Astley cassette. (Although now I realize I have lot all claim to the 80s, I digress.)  But this is our family car. A new car.  The car I drive my baby around in.  And I don't even want to touch it.

After a neighbor's car window was smashed for a GPS just three weeks ago a few of us decided to leave our front porch lights on, you know, to help deter this kind of behavior.  Is it kids? Is someone checking my door handles every night? (Um, most likely, YES) My baby was SLEEPING like five feet from where this crime against me was taking place.  And that makes me want to puke.

I am angry and agitated and EVEN MORE paranoid than usual.  I also feel scared. And helpless.

I want to move to Montana.

State of negative accomplishment

I've started a bunch of posts this week and haven't finished a damn one of them.  It seems like my life moves at a speed parallel to that of Noah's independent-movement ability wherein when he was a lovable luscious lump who sucked on my boob every two hours we both sat, cuddled, contentedly watching endless hours of ER-reruns and now that he crawls from one room to the next pulling on not-yet baby-proofed dust coated electrical cords hanging all over the place and splashing in germ-ridden dog water bowls creating werewolf-like palms of fur from my pervasively un-vacuumed floor my life is moving at a speed that makes me as uneasy as my old 1994 Camry when I neared MPH on the freeway.   So you can see why I have yet to master the art of getting chores done, husbands fed, babies in bed, pets fed-walked-and walked again, and also finding more than three hours a day to sleep. 

I'm not sleeping enough and it's starting to make me a tad bitchy.

Really? You can't tell?  You're so sweet!

Oh! I know it might be (not so) well hidden but trust me honey, I am one raging betch right now!  I need to get some sleep.  I am very frustrated that I can't make dinner, eat dinner and workout all in one evening.  It seems to me that caring for my family is a choice I make and when I make that choice, that choice that I love, that choice that I CHOSE, my needs and my time and my everything come dead last and as result, in truth, fall totally by the wayside.  I wish someone was as concerned about my needs as I am those of my family. 

I know motherhood means sacrifice but can you throw me a bone here? 

I went and took on YET ANOTHER website on which I will be "providing content."  I'm excited about the chance to write about something other than weddings and babies and parenting and it challenges me.  But when do I have time to write?  Right now!  At 12:35 AM ,at night, while the world sleeps and I grow red bags under my eyes.  I keep thinking I need to make a schedule like Monday and Friday night GYM, Wednesday workout at home during the day, Tuesday and Thursday nights WRITE for the entire week.  But Marc's schedule isn't predictable and it changes often and at the last minute. I fear I'll get more perturbed (READ: BITCHY) if my well laid plans get foiled rather than if my unmade plans just don't materialize. Does that make sense or an I just a lost OCD cause?

In this world of the Stay At Home Mom am I allowed a demand for ME TIME and, if so, how much?  I know that I am capable of handling more than my husband. Please, I gave birth. I carried a baby to term and endured twenty-god-damed weeks of braxton-hicks contractions. "Nuff said?! And I am awake right now, making and taking time for myself, at my own physical and mental demise. Let me back up and explain my blanket statement of blanket (not so) wrongness. I just feel that women, most women are able to handle the demands of family and self better than a lot of men who crumble under the weight of those sort of responsibilities. 

My husband is a great man, I'm just saying there are character differences that make us stronger in different areas.  Also, apologies for those who don't fall into my male-versus-female sweeping generalizations and more power to you!  I know that since I stay home and don't really shower until about 9pm each day and wear far too often only a tank-top and what can loosely be called boy-style underwear I have it easier in a sense. That sense being that I don't have to prepare myself each day to appear in the professional world.  Okay, score one for Marc. So yes, I can hide at home and not get dressed and pressed but I also don't have any predictability and sometimes my days are just filled with way too much poop that is not my own.  I suppose if I wasn't trying to build a freelance niche for myself I would be watching much more television and napping a lot more.  No one ever takes me to lunch and the chores of trash and laundry and meal preparation and pet care seem to take more hours than they did when I worked a real job ten hours a day.  WHAT? How DOES that happen?

I also don't support my family.  Hell, I don't even contribute.  I support my family nutritionally and I keep them in clean clothes but hell, I also did that when I worked full-time, so really, what is it that I do? (You know, besides nap and go to playgroups?)  The $30 I made last week on a humor-turned-factual not-yet-published article doesn't really cover the cost of the one gallon of paint I insisted on buying so that I could re-paint the kitchen prior to our new floor installation happening next week.  So I spend all this time writing and I rarely step away from the computer and I never accomplished even half of my TO-DO list so I'm working in a negative state of achievement which does SHIT for the postpartum self-esteem.  I feel guilty for not being with Noah at every moment although I'm getting better at playing with him when he is awake and working when he is asleep which brings me to the point of baby sleep and I'm NOT EVEN GOING TO GO THERE except to say, nights are good, nap-times are something a certain Italian-Family should put actual money on because DUDE, it is RANDOM and UNRELIABLE but about once every two weeks for one day I get TWO-TWO HOUR naps.  

So these issues of balance and self worth are weighing heavily on me at the moment.  I am curious about how might have dealt with these issues? 

Baby says: No worries Mom!  I can eat electrical cords and you can write! Also, I am hot, please note my RED cheeks.

 

Two men

These two men leave me more tired, annoyed and exasperated then I can explain. They also give me more joy and love than I ever could have imagined was possible in this life. I love them both.