glitches

The 25% Mom

I was just sitting on the couch nursing the baby when the phone rang.  I knew it was my mom, since she’s the only person who ever calls me at home, and I considered not answering it.  The baby was just about asleep and I was enjoying the quiet time, but I knew that ignoring the call would only lead to trouble.  My mom has this sixth sense about ignored calls and will torment me if she thinks I am not responding to her calls.  (“why are you so mad at me?” is a common refrain.)

I answered the phone.  It was her. 

“I just wanted to apologize for dumping all my stuff on you.”

Backtrack.  Set the stage.  A year ago this group approached me and asked if I would speak at their conference.  A conference for Native American women with breast cancer.  Since this is my target demographic for my research, it was a total no-brainer.  I agreed.

About two months ago sweets and his high school friends started to make plans for a guy’s weekend.  Sweets made arrangements with my mom to come and help me with the kids during the planned weekend, then made his travel arrangements.  A week later the people from the conference got in touch with me to tell me that they had to change the date of the conference, now it was going to happen at the same time as the guy’s weekend.  Since it was such a perfect place for me to build visibility, I agreed to speak, even though there was an obvious childcare issue.  Before I agreed to speak, I made sure my mom was still committed to helping out with the kids, like she had already said she would do.  I explained to her that I had to speak at this conference, and I really needed her to watch the boys during the conference.  She was delighted- she says that she really likes to spend time with them and always talks about how she wishes she could spend more time with them.  It seemed like a win-win for everyone.

The conference was on the 17^th.  On the 11^th, I called my mom to confirm that she was going to be with us for the whole day on Saturday during the conference. 

“I’m so glad you called!  I am still going to be able to help out overnight on Saturday and stay with you guys on Sunday, but I’m going to be speaking at a conference on Saturday and I’ll join you guys after that.”

What?  I was totally confused.  I am the one with the conference, not her.  What fucking conference is this?  Wait? Wait!  I reminded her that she had already agreed to watch the boys so I could talk at my conference.  She started backpedaling.  All of a sudden, this very wishy washy story emerged about how she was hoping to get a promotion in July and that they had signed her up to talk at this conference and that she had no choice and she really needed to do this and….

More backstory:  my mom is constantly telling me about how much they love her at her job but she doesn’t make enough money and times are really tight and she needs to find another job and they’re always, always, always just about to promote her.

So there I am, totally fucked.  I’m committed to speaking at a pretty important conference, but I have no babysitting.  The peanut is at that yucky developmental place where he is totally sensitive and only wants to be with mom.  We have a great babysitter, but she’s a fairly devout Jew and the conference is on Saturday.  I actually had the nerve to ask her if she would watch the baby, and we actually spent time trying to figure out a way to make it seem like she wasn’t working for us on that day.  I can’t believe I did that, and I felt so, so awful afterwards.  I asked some people who we’d had a playdate with the week before if they could watch the lentil and they were so friendly and agreeable, I’m entirely in their debt.  Forever.  So the lentil is taken care of, but I’m still worried about what to do with the peanut.  I’m actually envisioning myself trying to present at the conference with the baby hanging from my body in some crazy baby carrier.  Total hippy moment.  Unfortunately, my audience isn’t a bunch of hippies.

And to make things worse, the other person on the panel is a very important person who could easily make my career work and I need, desperately need to impress her.

So eventually my mom finds a way to watch the baby while I’m speaking, but I’m still left with lugging the child around for the rest of the conference, which made it very difficult to recruit subjects for my study.  All the brochures I’d had printed up (almost $100.00!) basically go to waste, and I leave the conference with just one subject recruited.  My talk goes fairly well and I make a very good connection with the co-presenter on the panel.  She discusses possible career options with me, which is very, very good, and we talk about setting up a more formal meeting soon.  The conference pays me well, which was a pleasant surprise.  And the baby behaved himself.  And afterwards, my mom tells me that she wasn’t “speaking” at a conference, she was there to co-facilitate an anger management session with a group of veterans and their spouses.  Important work, to be sure.  But the co- part of the co-facilitating is the bit that got me.  She didn’t have to be there.  She chose to be there.  Once again, my mom chose against being helpful to me for her own gain.  She didn’t even get paid to be there.  And nobody is a last-minute ringer at an anger management workshop.

But this story is less about the conference and more about my mom.  Her behavior over the past week has been a total trigger for me.  It made me realize that my mom is only 25% there for me, and has always been that way.  I’ve recognized for a long time that she’s pretty self-centered, but this weekend was the final puzzle piece that brought it all together with frightening clarity.

When I was 12, my mom left our family to live with her new boyfriend in Australia.  When I was 13 she returned, divorced my dad, and took me to California.  When I was 16, I woke up one morning to see my mom sitting on some strange man’s lap.  They asked me what I was doing that day and I said “playing soccer.”  Then they said “We’re going ring shopping!  We’re getting married!”  I think I may have thrown up, but I’m not sure.  It was a blur.  Closely following that conversation was the “and you’re going to have a new step-sister!” conversation where I learned about the strange man’s 12-year-old daughter.

For much of my life, my mom has found ways to justify the fact that I’m not a priority for her.  I’ve never really been able to pin-point this until this weekend.  It’s always bugged me that she has other things happening when I need her, but I never identified what those other things were and why it bugged me until now.  When I was 17, I was playing in an honor band performance about 150 miles from where we were living.  My mom swore she’d be there for my performance.  She didn’t show up.  When I got home, she explained that my brother was arrested that weekend and she had been forced to stay home and deal with his problems.  (Looking back, it seems totally obvious to me that my brother should have spent a little more time in jail when he was younger to try to avoid the chronic alcoholism we’re all living with now.)

That’s a perfect example of how these things work.  It’s always just out of her control.  She can’t come to my soccer games because her alcoholic husband needed something.  She can’t go to my concerts because she has to stay home and bail out my brother.  She can’t help me with my kids because she has to deal with some half-fabricated work problem.  She really wants to, she’s really sorry she’s not there, but she just can’t do it because it’s out of her hands.

Now that I’m a parent, I am starting to see through this bullshit.  I am realizing that sometimes you have to make decisions that might hurt because you have to be there for your kids.

In the doctoral program, I have a classmate who has three kids.  The doctoral students used to try to get together now and then for social events and she could never do it.  One kid was having a game or a recital or just needed some mom time and she always chose her kids over anything else.  She was a great roll-model for me, showing me how one makes their kids a priority.  She showed me that no matter what, you always have to choose your children over anything else.  Even if that means you won’t have fun with your friends or you might miss out on something exciting.

My mom doesn’t do that.  She will always choose the excitement.

But at the same time, she tries.  She makes promises, and she usually comes through by about 25%.  This conference weekend is a great example- she was able to watch one boy while I spoke, but I still had to spend a week trying to find another alternative, which took away from me preparing for my presentation.  She wasn’t there for us over the weekend when we needed her- at bedtimes, because she was too busy with her own life.  Even though we’d asked her months in advance to commit to our family, she still found a way to get out of the commitment.  We couldn’t rely on her to actually help.  She did come and spend time with the lentil, but it wasn’t what I needed.  She always tries, because after all, these things that get in the way are never her fault.  But she never follows through completely.

I realized this weekend that I just cannot rely on my mother to ever help us out in the way she says she will.  She just can’t do it.  She will make all sorts of promises, but they’re empty.  I love my mom.  She tries hard.  But she just doesn’t do that mom thing that I want- the mom thing where she’s there for me when I need her, where she helps me and soothes me and makes me feel like maybe the world is going to be okay.  I never realized how much this bugs me until this weekend, when her preoccupation with her own life became crystal clear.  I know this may come off as me whining, but I think maybe I just need to whine a little.  I wanted a mom who would follow through with promises and be there for me when I needed her most.  I got a mom who really wants to be there but only follows through at about 25% of need.  It’s a constant psych-out because I never know when she might actually follow through.

She offered to throw me a birthday party.  This morning, during our phone call where she apologized for laying her crap on me, she was really calling to tell me that she couldn’t throw me a birthday party after all because she has no money.  Good thing we already started planning the party without her.  Instead of throwing us a party, she’s making us potato salad.  But don’t worry- she’s going to make two kinds of potato salad, in case people don’t want the kind with mayonnaise.  Because she’s going the extra mile for her kids.

Happy Mother's Day!

feeling a little bit better

I'm here.  We had a surprisingly good weekend, and I'm actually feeling rejuvinated.  I usually go into the weekends dreading the tantrums, arguments, and negotiating.  This weekend we had little of that- probably because we did very little scheduled activities the entire weekend.  I took the lentil to the museum to look at quilts, we fixed our kitchen light (oooh, track lighting!) and we went for a hike, but none of these things were terribly time sensitive so it worked out.

Except for the hike. 

Do you remember those stupid buttons we all used to wear in the 1980s that had little slogans and crap on them?  They were funny and grating and now they are used as bits of charm on suspenders.  About halfway through the hike I started thinking to myself, "are we having fun yet?" and then I felt stupid and tschocky-full and generally cliche.  But I couldn't stop saying it.  Then I started looking for someone to blame because i wasn't having fun and then I really wasn't having fun because it was basically all my fault.

So it's April in New Mexico.  One week we have weather in the '70s and then it's in the '50s.  Flowers blooming like crazy, then freak snowstorm.  It happens every year, which is why they tell us not to plant anything in the ground until May 15th.  Even if we have a heat wave in March, you still gotta wait until May to plant because it can get really cold.  Living at 7000 feet will do that to you.  Last night it was 28 degrees and today it's supposed to get up to 73 degrees.  It's a little confusing sometimes, and hard to get used to.  So it snowed on Friday night- almost 2 inches.  By midday on Saturday the snow was all melted and we were all back in t-shirts, so when we decided to go for a hike on Sunday I wasn't even thinking snow boots and parkas.  We went to a nice trail that is only partway up the mountain, probably only at around 8000 feet. 

Sweets was clearly thinking ahead because he had packed snowboots and hats for himself and the lentil.  I wasn't thinking at all and was lucky to scrounge a warm hat from the depths of my filthy car.  See?  This is why I never clean out my car.  You never know when something will come in handy.  We got to the trailhead and started hiking but everything was frozen over and it was damn cold and none of us had gloves and the lentil was tracking dragons so we could only go about five feet at a time.  It was impossible to walk enough to stay warm because we were constantly hunched over, staring at small patches of dirt through a magnifying glass.  It was that cute-infuriating that really gets my goat.  And the dog was going nuts.

So we let the dog off leash, we hiked up the mountain, and we finally made it to the turn-around spot.  But the whole time it was about negotiating- negotiating with the lentil about how many frozen rocks we were going to carry, negotiating with other people and their dogs so our dog didn't bite someone, negotiating with each other over who would hold the lentil's hand, where we'd stop, etc.  And then we made it to the top and it was sunny and warm and the peanut was happy and we had a nice snack.  Then it was time to complete the loop and return to the car and we went the wrong way and we were on the north side of the damn mountain and it was all snow and ice, perilous trails where the lentil was just a step away from careening down the mountain.  It wasn't fun, it wasn't relaxing, and it was made worse by grumpy sweets and obnoxious lentil and dog that wouldn't stop menacing passers-by.

We're so not dog people.  Other people on the trail thought it was great fun when the dog would meet up with them and play with their puppies.  We just waited for the dog to bite someone.  Other people thought she was cute and happy, we were just waiting for her to run off so we'd never see her again.

We never had a lot of fun.  The dog had a blast.  We were cold and miserable and totally unprepared for the ice and snow.  It was stupid.  I ended up carrying the lentil the last quarter mile.  Sweets was sulking for much of the hike.  All of a sudden I understood that stupid pin.  Because we were out there, desperatly trying to have a good time.  We had all that we needed to have a good time- a healthy family, a happy dog, a nice trail of reasonable distance and a beautiful morning.  But try as we did, we just never had a good time.  I kept waiting for it to happen and it never did. 

So next time, not so much on the icy trail.  Stay warm.  Focus more on dragon tracking and less on making it to the turn-around spot.  Try to enjoy self more.  breathe.  bring donuts. 

time to pee.

Sigh.  just, big, sigh.

I feel like having baby # 2 turned me into a true, bona fide adult.  All of a sudden we have a budget and we can't go out drinking, like, ever, and I'm complaining about my mortgage payment and daycare bills and how will we ever pay for it all?  I go to girls night out with my lady friends and we sit around and grouse about our husbands and brag about our kids.  I would diet to get rid of this mommy body I somehow woke up to, but I'm too tired to stop eating chocolate.  I don't have time to play because we need to spend that time fixing the fucking light fixture or calling the termite man.  How did this happen?  When did I turn into a sad approximation of a mom?  I use that voice with my son and threaten to come over there right now if he doesn't shape up or ship out.  I have long agonizing conversations with my husband about whether or not I can buy that damn latte.  I would get a new cell phone to replace my ailing current phone but first I have to investigate all the cell phone companies and decide which one will serve my family best.  And don't get me started on taxes.  fucking taxes.

How did this happen?

I feel like all the play has been sucked out of my life with a sad, disturbing sucking vortex sound.  I can't even pretend to try to be hip anymore because I just don't have the time, money, or motivation.  My version of hip is wearing a t-shirt over a long-sleeve t-shirt, but that's hardly hip since neither fits me very well and I just end up looking chubby and sloppy.  sloppy is not hip.  I may as well stop thinking that I can even watch american idol as an ironic statement.  there's nothing ironic about me or my life.

I'm actually jealous of another mom at my son's school because she just got a new car.  of course, it's a saab station wagon, but whatever.  when we get a new car, it will be a wholesome, unironic minivan.  we've already decided, even though we won't be buying a new car for a few years yet.

I'm not unhappy, just terribly, sadly dissatisfied.  I feel like I went to all this effort to buy myself my favorite cracker and they went and changed the formula on me and it just doesn't taste as good as I want it to.  sigh.

Maybe I just need to go pee.  You can tell the lentil is going to have a huge temper tantrum when he starts pacing around because he has to pee.  He won't just step back and think "I need to pee.  maybe I will feel a little less desperate once I've relieved this pressure."  Instead he will get more and more wound up and scream and rage and then run off quick quick and pee.  And then he feels better and the tantrum is over.   Maybe I just need to have an enormous pee and get all this dissatisfaction out of my body in one long stream of yellow adult ennui.

Camp Robber!

Just when I start to think I have things under control, the rug is pulled out again.  Last week was spent taking care of a pathetic, sad, snotty sick kid.  Poor lentil got a headcold that became an earache and it was miserable for everyone.  While he has been sicker (once, when he got an ear infection last year and spent a feverish night thrashing about in our bed to avoid the fever dreams), he has rarely been so pathetic.  The poor kid's cheeks are red and rashy from wiping his nose.  He didn't eat all week and got to the point where I was holding an electrolyte popsicle in front of his mouth trying to convince him to take a lick.  But he's better now, after a weekend of amoxicillan. 

And now the peanut is sick.  It's raining, it's pouring...

After a week with the lentil in which I got little work done, I started to go a little bonkers.  Sweets and I had made a deal at the start of the week, before anyone was sick.  We agreed that I could go skiing on Friday if I made some sort of respectable progress on my work.  I was living for that.  I spent whatever free moments I had reviewing this manuscript I'm working on, trying to fill in another sentence when I could.  It was nearly impossible, and I think I only got through one or two paragraphs, but those were hard earned paragraphs.  It was enough for me to go skiing, and then the lentil was too sick and sweets had appointments and then I was sick.  On Friday, I was just pissed.  I had spent the week caring for the lentil, taking him to the doctor, taking him to the supermarket just so we could get out of the house, cuddling him and hugging him and trying to help him feel nurtured.  So then I couldn't go skiing because the lentil was too sick for me to leave him and I was depressed.

But Saturday morning, he had been on the amoxicillan for 12 hours and he was a different kid.  And sweets gave me the morning off.  I grabbed my ski helmet and my parka and I was out of there before anyone could reconsider.

When I was growing up, there was a ski program through the schools.  For a few weeks every winter, whoever could pay for it was loaded onto a bus and taken up the mountain to the ski basin.  We'd get lessons all morning, then we were free to ski for the afternoon until the bus took us down the hill.  I remember those ski trips with such fondness- I remember the feeling of absolute exhaustion after a day of skiing.  I remember feeling priviledged to have a little pocket change to buy a hot chocolate and a bag of M&M's at the ski lodge before I got on the bus, and I remember feeling like that was so special because I was NEVER allowed to buy candy.  I remember being good at something physical for the first time in my life, and how good that made me feel.  Those ski trips were some of the few times in my elementary school years where I was good at something other than academic stuff, where nobody was yelling at me for loosing the game or dropping the ball.  I remember all that, but most of all I remember the feeling of absolute freedom I had as I careened down the mountain at breakneck pace, testing my own limits in a way I never would on cement.

Then my parents divorced, and I never went skiing again.  At least, not until this year.  This year, I happened to see that the local ski basin was offering a deal too good to pass up.  A punch-card, good for six all day lift tickets, at a mere $120.00.  When lift tickets are normally $50-60 a go, this was a huge bargain.  So I bought one.  Even though I hadn't been skiing since I was about 12, I knew I had to do it.

I've been going up with my mom, renting skis there, and taking it easy.  She's no expect skier, although she loves to cross-country ski and has all the gear for it.  We do mostly easy runs, just trying to have a good time.  She falls a lot, so it takes awhile to get down a hill because I have to keep looking back to make sure she's still there, and she has to haul herself up every time she falls.  We have a nice time, but I was starting to wonder if I could do better if I wasn't worried about my mom the entire time.  So when i had the opportunity to sneak out on Saturday, I ran.  I raced up the mountain as quickly as I could, rented my skis, and hit the slopes. 

I'm still a beginning skier.  I will be the first to admit that.  I haven't had a lesson in years and I would probably benefit from a few.  Since I didn't have my mom with me, I decided to challenge myself and try some of the blue hills.  I can do green, that's no problem.  But blue is new to me, and still a little scary.  The snow was nice, it was cool but not too cold, and the sun was shining on Saturday, and after a few runs I was confident enough to explore the parts of the mountain I can't ski with my mom.  Those are the ones where there is no simple way down the mountain and you have to be slightly competent to ski down without crashing and burning.  So I went up.  It was incredible.  At 12,000 feet, on a slow day at the ski basin, you can feel like you're the only person in the world.  The wind whipped my face, blowing snowdust up and making it hard to see.  I was above the treeline, so it was me, wind, and rocks.  I skied down and felt so good, I decided to go for it.  I would ride up to the very peak, and go down from there.  I would go down the run that excited me- the one that had a few trees sketched in on the map.  Camp Robber.  even the name sounds exciting.

On most of the chairs, you can sort of see all the way to the top from the bottom, so you can get a sense of how far up you're going to go.  On the chair to the peak, that isn't so.  You're riding the chair, impatient to get to the top so you can ski some more, when you think you're almost there.  you can see the peak, or so you think, and you start to think about disembarking from the chair.  But when you get to where you think the chair will drop you off, the ground falls down from below you and instead you're floating over a small, rocky canyon.  The snow is white and clean and there are ski tracks all over the place, but instead of there being a little ski hut it's just mountain.  Trees, rocks, mountain.  And you're riding even higher than you ever expected on that little chair. 

That chair went so high up the moutain, I started to get nervous.  It was incredible, exhilarating, amazing.  I've never been to a place so amazingly beautiful.  The air was so clean, so thin, so cool.  I was floating above something I never would have seen if I hadn't been skiing, alone on that day.  Then the lift ended and I was at the peak and I was careening down the moutain.

Let me just say, Camp Robber says it's a blue run, but they're not fooling anyone.  The second I started down that run I knew I was outclassed.  It was iced over, there wasn't anyone else skiing, and it was difficult.  I had the decision to hike out or to give it a go.  Since I fell the first second I started down, I knew that I didn't have to worry about falling again, because I had already done that.  So I just went for it.  Inch by inch, I slowly slipped down that run, mostly by going sideways.  It was too icy for snowplowing, so I just stepped and slid down, falling occasionally until I made it to the bottom.  But I made it!  I made it, even though it was too hard and I wasn't technically skiing.  I made it, even though my wrist hurt from my fall and I was scared as hell.  I made it.  At times I wanted to look to the sky and yell "Camp Robber!" but that would have been a little silly, so I didn't.  But I felt it.

When I got home that afternoon, I was a different person.  The weariness and exhaustion of holding court for an ill three-year-old had passed and I was happy again.  The cold, thin air had cleansed me of the bitter, the grump, the crank.  I was back, alive again.  I'm ready to start anew, thanks to a day on the mountain and Camp Robber.  Thanks, Camp Robber.  I owe you one.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's day, my friends.  Sorry for the long time between posts- just when I start to feel like I'm on top of things, I fall back under.  The second-kid thing is really kicking my ass.  As my advisor says, one plus one does not equal two when it comes to kids.  wow.  Yeah, we're definitely not going to have more kids.

I'm feeling pretty discouraged today.  I've been emailing back and forth with my program director and it's pretty clear that I'm not going to get a stipend for my sixth year of study.  I can't afford to spend an entire year without any income, so I have to come up with plan B.  I can't quit this far into things, yet I feel like I'm just treading water most days with very little progress toward the degree.  What pisses me off is that I spent so much time and energy working to win Very Important Grants from the American Cancer Society and the NIH, but those stipends have run out.  If I had waited a year to get those grants, I would be funded for the sixth year.  The strategy at my school is to apply early and often with the expectation that you won't win the award the first year.  I was lucky enough to win both awards the first time I applied, so I earned my school a big chunk of change for the past 4 years.  Unfortunately, my school has a clear policy that they won't fund sixth year stipends, and since my grants have run out, I'm left high and dry.  All my classmates had to resubmit their grant applications, which delayed their funding by a year or two and now they're all funded through their sixth year.  It just pisses me off, actually.  While my classmates were trying for those grants, they were fully funded by the school, while my education was funded by the outside agencies.  Oooh, it burns.

I'm also discouraged by the whole friend thing.  I'm just not having a lot of luck finding friends here.  My old friends are all busy and as it turns out?  They're surprisingly different from us.  While we're avidly anti-cry it out and nurture first kind of parents, they're all about covering their children with honey and leaving them on anthills as a method of toughening up the brats.  Well, not completely, but it feels that way.  Interesting how the divide between parenting styles can really louse up a good friendship.  So I tried starting a mom's group with other parents I knew, but nobody wants to participate.  I hosted a few playdates and one big halloween party and people came to those, but I can't be the one to host everything all the time. 

And dish and spoon is just not doing what I wanted it to.  I started that forum with the hopes that we could get a few dozen regular posters and have a nice small but active forum.  Instead, we have about 10 regular readers and that number drops every month.  We had problems with spambots and had to change formats, which somehow caused about half the regulars to disappear.  I don't know what to do to get people back, and I'm so worried about spambots that I hesitate to post the url for very long.  If you're interested, please come visit.  I love having the forum, I love meeting new people and hearing new voices and I hope we're all a reasonable group.

I shouldn't feel bad about anything.  I have a healthy family, I DO have great friends, and life is generally good.  And really, how many people can say they are paid to do what I do- sit on my ass and listen to Kanye West (in secret, because he's SO not indy) and try to solve the problems of Indians with cancer pain.  I've got it good.  Even so, today I'm discouraged. 

Crap and goodness

The goodness?  My wonderful sons.  The lentil taught himself this poem last night after hearing it only a few times.  It was amazing to watch.  The youtube is below.  I was blow away by his genius.  But then I looked at other videos of children with the tags of "child genius" on youtube and was frightened.  I will be changing that tag, I think.  I meant it tongue in cheek, like, "yeah, I have a pretty bright kid and I'm proud of him" and not "My kid kicks your kid's poem-reciting ass!"  Wierd people out there.

The crap... Our refrigerator pooped out on us.  It's only a year old, so it shouldn't be doing what it's doing.  It won't get cold enough, no matter how low we set the thermostat.  We only realized this when I started vomiting on Wednesday night after eating a chicken salad sandwich made with mayo and chicken that had been in the fridge.  That night our geriatric dryer also died.  So Thursday was spent researching then buying a dryer, trying in vain to find a refrigerator mechanic who would come before next week, and throwing up.  Or dry heaving.  The good thing is that sweets took the day off and did most of the heavy lifting so I could mope around the house whining about how nauseated I felt.  The bad thing is that we ended up spending a lot of money on a good dryer and now we're many more steps away from doing the home improvement projects we had hoped to do this month.  Sigh.

But the kids are good and I'm trying desperately to work on my dissertation.  I have another interview lined up for February, which makes me about 1/3 of the way to having enough subjects for the study.  Daunting.  very daunting.

in other words, it's a hard knock life for us.  But we're smiling and trying and that's about all we can do.

my child is a genius

christmas cards

I've been feeling completely drained lately.  I attribute it to the second child.  No birth announcements have been sent (by me.  sweets has sent a whole pile of them.)  No christmas cards, no special gifts made for anyone.  In fact, I would have forgotten my name if it wasn't on my ID.  I don't know quite how I got to this place, I used to be pretty on top of things.  Now I can't even see straight most days.

Sweets has been working on our christmas cards.  He only sends them to his friends, and I'm responsible for sending them to my friends.  I have to say, I hate doing christmas cards.  They are second among disliked chores only to sending thank you notes.  Boy do I hate sending thank you notes.  I don't know why, really.  Sweets just pointed out that christmas cards are mighty handy for keeping in touch with people.  But see, we don't send out Christmas cards, we actually send out Happy New Year cards.  Since we're not on the christmas card loop, we don't get a lot of cards back.  For some reason, people have packed up their christmas card lists by the time ours reach them and we don't end up getting added to the list the following year.  I have only received two or three cards this year, despite my efforts to send them out every year prior.  So people get to see goofy photos of us, but they don't send goofy photos of themselves in response.  Also, sweets makes his own cards.  He takes a photo of us from the year, then adds a banner across the photo wishing the recipient a happy new year.  It ends up looking pretty amateur.  I'm not saying I could do better for the money, but I do wish we could just get some photo cards printed up and be done with it.  Then we could just sign the damn things and send them off, instead of having a whole card to fill with words about how lovely the universe is.  Forget the damn universe, just put me back on your damn christmas card list.  I'm thinking of sending out my own cards this year with just photos of the kids.  That way I don't have to look like half a box of crap in the photo for everyone in the world to see, and I don't have to write personalized messages to everyone on the list.  I really hate sending christmas cards.

fatigue

We're not at home.  We're in Rhode Island right now, visiting with sweets' family.  We've been here since the 23rd.  It was a hellish airplane day on the 23rd, and our luggage took another few days to collect.  All I'm saying is traveling with two kids is a lot harder than traveling with one.  Especially since we didn't bring the dualie stroller and I was the person carrying the baby for much of the day.  We didn't miss any flights, but it was still hard, made worse by the fact that the kids didn't sleep much during the travel day and then their sleep patterns were turned upside-down by the change in routine.

Now sweets, the peanut and I sleep in the attic bedroom, in a bed half the size of our normal bed.  The peanut doesn't have his cradleboard, which makes him wonky.  He has been waking up every two hours all night, and nursing nonstop all day.  The baby, who in other ways is an absolute dream, is not adapting well to the changes.  As a result, my body aches from trying to soothe him at night and my boobs ache from nursing constantly.  I tried to pump yesterday and made mincemeat of the poor self, and I only got two ounces for my trouble.  Two ounces is not enough milk to guarantee me time away from the baby, so I'm actually worse off than I was before pumping.

The night before we left sweets and I had a very open conversation about how difficult this trip was going to be.  My in-laws don't have any comfortable chairs, opting for antique awful instead.  We ended up bringing the boppy, but it doesn't seem to matter since I can't find a good chair to sit in.  At home I have TiVo and all sorts of interesting entertainment to get me through the incessant nursing, and here I have a very uncomfortable heirloom couch and a few books.  It's hard to read books when you're exhausted and dropping off to sleep on the backbreaker couch, trying not to drop the baby, and wincing in pain from the needles being shoved in your nipples.  I warned sweets that this was going to be the case.  I don't know why I thought he needed to know- I'd been mentally preparing myself for the torture for weeks prior to that night.  I guess I couldn't take it anymore, knowing I was going to be uncomfortable for as long as we would be away.  I was dreading the trip, and I didn't want to explode all over sweets (or my mother-in-law) at the first sign of trouble.  As it happened, having that discussion was the best thing I could have done.  Sweets immediately picked up my dread and has gone to enormous lengths to try to make things more comfortable for me. 

At this point, I'm completely exhausted.  In fact, last night I went to bed at 8:00.  I hadn't planned on it, and forced myself to wake up at 9:00 so I could put on my pyjamas.  Sweets had a guest over, and I didn't even make it downstairs to say hello.  I like to be social, so that was pretty unusual for me.

Today we went to visit one of my old friends from New Haven.  She lives in a lovely home in the Boston area.  The lentil and her daughter had a ball all morning, playing good kid games.  I was in heaven, simply because they have an enormous, comfortable, spacious couch.  A couch where I could sit and nurse the baby without trying to prop pillows under every limb the entire time.  It was such a treat.  I couldn't even express how relieved I was to have somewhere comfortable to sit for a few hours and nurse the baby.  Antiques may look nice to some people, but they're shit for practical.

Anyway, I should be grateful for all that we have.  A true bounty for christmas of desired and coveted items.  Grandparents who dote on the kids.  Caring and happy family, with no personal tiffs in the bunch.  It could be worse.  I just wish I wasn't so damn uncomfortable, so fucking tired of waking up and nursing this baby.  I had hoped we would get a chance to go on a date or two, go see a movie.  Instead, it's all about nursing the baby and wishing I was home. 

And now?  I get to go nurse the baby.  until tomorrow, my friends.