I'm turning thirty on Tuesday, gentle blogfriends. Thirty years old, and I've got a spouse, a baby, a puppydog, a Tivo, tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loan debt, a moderately satisfying if underwhelming career, and some free address labels from the March of Dimes. I'm psyched!When I was wee, my cousin Kelly and I used to cut up my mom's Sears catalogs and use the clippings to create "photo albums" of our futures. We must have made 20 or 30 of these albums before we were out of grade school, each one divided up into the same predictable sections. First, the "My Grown-Up Self is One Glamorous Bitch" section, featuring photos torn from the women's sporty-casual department accompanied by handwritten captions: "Here is Melinda after tennis practice" or "Here is Melinda on her way to her job" or "Here is Melinda in her apartment building, which has a doorman".Next came the "I May Wear Headgear Now, But Look at Who I Marry, Suckers" section, made up of photos of strapping blond men in sweater vests and polo shirts. "This is Melinda's husband Gary," read the captions. "She met him at a party. He works at the bank." Sometimes there would be a picture of grown-up Melinda and Gary together, maybe on a picnic or enjoying a frolic by the sea in matching outerwear. Then there would always be a 4-6 page spread of selected diamond jewelry, gifts from Gary to me on the occasion of our engagement and subsequent joyous union.The final and most lengthy portion of the album was always the "Be Fruitful and Multiply" section, in which Kelly and I cut and glued images of our future offspring. Blond children, brunette children, babies, toddlers, and usually a presumably adopted Asian baby thrown in for good measure. The captions for these photos were simple -- names and ages. My child-naming preferences went in stages. There was the hippy stage, featuring "Rainbow, age 5", "Ember Sunrise, age 3", and "Heaven Leigh, 16 weeks". There was the yuppy phase, highlighted by my infant son Collier Scott and his twin sister Clare-Paige Laree. And there was, of course, the inevitable New Kids on the Block phase, wherein I birthed 5 boys of suspiciously similar age and named them unfortunate things like Marky Mark. (The adopted Asian baby was a staple regardless of phase, and was always named something offensive like Ling-Ling.)Now that I'm an actual Grown-Up Glamorous Bitch, it's fun to remember how impressive being thirty seemed to a little girl cutting up her mama's magazines. I don't think my childhood vision of my thirties included quite as much debt or garage sale furniture as will my actual thirties. My apartment certainly doesn't have a doorman and I don't play tennis, but I did score the fine husband and the cute kid, so there's that. And dude, I get to stay up as late as I want every night AND watch Rated R movies AND order pizza that I get to pay for? With my own money. Boo-ya.So here's to gaining that intangible instant credibility that comes with transitioning from one's carefree late twenties to one's esteemed early thirties. Ling-Ling and I will see you on the other side.
This picture was not taken today. Today was a nonstop scream-fest of the sucking-my-will-to-live variety. I'm posting this picture today, though, to remind myself that the good times are possible. I'm posting it to remind myself to be thankful for small miracles.I'm off to Indiana. Have a good turkey (or tofurkey) day, all.
When I was a senior in college, I lived with two roommates in the slummiest slumlord-operated slumfest of an apartment ever to grace the rolling hills of Iowa. It had a crumbling front staircase, floors that slanted due to deep rot, and a perma-leak that gave us all a raging case of ringworm. It also, among other things, gave us an infestation of bats. The first bat to pay us a visit was seen only by my roommate Jenn. I was over at a friend's house, where I received a call telling me to come home immediately. I did, only to find Jenn standing on top of a stool in our kitchen, wearing goggles and rubber gloves and holding a plunger outstretched like a sword. The bat was nowhere to be found.The second bat appeared when I was home alone one night. I saw a flash of darkness and heard a thud behind the living room couch. Upon getting up to investigate, I was horrified to see a revolting little shriveled-up bat looking up at me from the floor. It had apparently flown into the wall. I flipped out and sealed my fate as a lifetime opponent of PETA by throwing a blanket over the wretch and trying to kill it with a freeweight. I don't know; it seemed like the thing to do. Don't email me. Anyway, I just made it worse: the bat didn't die. So I overturned the nearest trash can, put it on top of the bat, slid a piece of cardboard under the trash can, and hauled the whole mess out to the curb. Then I called a friend to come over and she and I, unwilling to get too close lest the bat rise up, renewed, to seek revenge, stood in the doorway and threw shoes at the trash can until it flipped over and the prisoner hobbled out and crept away. It was all just so very wrong.About a year later, I was doing an Americorps term in Washington DC and sharing a tiny Capital Hill 1-bedroom with my roommate Laurie. Our apartment had a cute little front porch, a cute little in-unit washer/dryer combo, and... cute little demonic cockroaches. The crunchy bastards hid their evil during the day, only to sneak out at night in hopes of eating our souls. We tried to defeat them by getting up in the pitch black wee hours, flooding the house with sudden light, and stomping as many as we could catch. Our efforts were, as I remember, largely unsuccessful.Why am I telling you all of this, you ask? Because my current apartment -- the one in which I'm raising my 2-month-old daughter and my wee beady-eyed puppydog? The one in which I feed and bathe myself and walk around barefoot? HAS MICE.Last Tuesday night I was reading a magazine in bed when I happened to glance up and see a dark spot underneath my chest of drawers. I looked at the spot. The spot moved. The spot HAD A TAIL, and ran across my room dragging its tail behind it and made a horrifying pitterpatter noise as it went and sweet lord was a MOUSE. It only took me about a quarter of a second to go fourteen shades of girly, fleeing the room and screaming and waking up the baby who was sleeping in the husband's arms. I gave him a Tupperware bowl and demanded that he catch the rodent. To his credit, he only slightly rolled his eyes before trading baby for bowl and going off to investigate.But then. THEN!! I sat, shaking and repulsed, in the rocking chair to try to get the baby calmed back down, and I wasn't there but three minutes before I saw ANOTHER FUCKING MOUSE dart out from beneath the living room radiator and run across the floor. You can call me Freaky McPsychopants if you want to, but hell if I didn't pull my legs up under me and clutch the baby to my breast and screech like I was running from an army of thugs. "There are TWO OF THEM!!" I shouted to the husband. "Could it be the same mouse?" he gently posed. "That's even worse!" I lamented. "It's a SHAPE-SHIFTER!!"Fast forward a few days. There is poison down in the basement (where dog and baby do not tread) and snap-traps all over the apartment and mouse droppings on my kitchen counter where I keep the baby's "sterile" bottles and prepare her formula. Because it's not enough that I'm denying her breastmilk and thus destroying her tiny insides with the Similac of Doom -- I've got to add a chaser of rodent shit to the mix. You know, just to keep her guessing. So far, we've only caught one mouse, although in my recent nightmares I've waged minor war against about fifty at once. I hear tiny rodent footprints tiptoeing across my brain. I see angry pink rodent eyeballs in the gaze of strangers on the street. Mouse traps may not be humane or kind, but neither is coming into my house uninvited and pooping behind the stove.This development was SO not in the plan.
Things I am loving this week:1. Borat. Specifically, that I got to see Borat in the theater on Sunday like a real live girl. My sister-in-law was in town and she watched the baby so the husband and I could run around the corner to a matinee. We were like little kids on a sugar binge. "Should we get popcorn?" the husband asked me, his eyes all lit up. "SWEET LORD YES," came my reply. "And a COKE!!!" We watched the whole hilarious genius mess of a film with our eyes half-closed because it was just so offensive and uncomfortable and delicious and I felt a little like we were getting away with something very very naughty.2. My new loaner baby sling. The aforementioned visiting sister-in-law brought along her sling for me to borrow. The husband and I already have one of these, but it was killing my back. Sister-in-law's sling is one of those hard-core bare bones ring slings that essentially snuggle the baby against you like a layer of saran wrap. Cletus the Former Fetus seems to love it, it's much more comfortable for me, and it has the added bonus of family history. As sister-in-law put it: "It loved my babies, and now it can love yours!"3. The cabbage leaves I am currently rocking in my bra. Dudes, I don't usually pay heed to advice of the old wives variety, but gather 'round and hear my message: if you want to dry up your aching, maliciously lactating breasts, take a couple of cabbage leaves, crush up the veins with a rolling pin, and stick those bad boys in your boulder holder. It's like magic, no joke. My milk supply has reduced to the point where I can comfortably pump just once a day, I am mastitis-and-thrush-free for two weeks running, and the baby has chunked up to almost 13 pounds on her new and improved formula and breastmilk diet. I may smell like sauerkraut, but it's either that or the aroma of despair. So, you know, boob-cabbage it is.4. Trader Joe's bagel pizzas. People! It's two delicious lunches for $1.99. My new blog-friend-turned-real-life-peep Samantha brought me to this particular promised land. If you visit, look her up -- she'll be the one rocking your world with her knowledge of celebrity scandals.5. The baby's smiles. They are coming more frequently now. However, you will note that I have placed them below Trader Joe's pizza bagels on my list because, frankly, the pizza bagels have proved more reliable and less costly, plus they come without...Things I am not loving this week:1. ... COLIC. I think we can finally call it what it is. I've been hoping and hoping that some treatable medical condition would make itself known and that we could do something, anything, concrete to deal with the baby's screaming, refusal to sleep, and general unhappiness. But the doctor says she's healthy, she's gaining weight and eating and growing and developing and doing all the things a baby is supposed to do... all the things, that is, except for cutting it the hell out with the screaming. It is so frustrating to hear about other moms of babies Cletus' age who are starting "sleep training" or whose babies' sleeping and eating habits are improving in a somewhat linear fashion. We are so far from sleep training, it is not even funny. We have tried 3 kinds of bottles, 2 kinds of formula, keeping the baby upright during/after feedings, singing, white noise, dancing around the room, 3 different baby carriers, gas drops, Tylenol, baby yoga, going for walks, sleep positioners, and crack cocaine on a stick. Nothing works for longer than five minutes. We are trying very hard to keep our senses of humor and to remember that this too shall pass. It is embarrassingly hard, though, to reconcile yourself to the fact that the baby you've got is not the baby you daydreamed about.2. The Gap. Last weekend I walked past a Gap store in my neighborhood and was horrified to see a window display of headless child-sized denim-clad mannequins posed in front of a sign reading "Introducing SKINNY JEANS for GIRLS!" Seriously? Fuck you, the Gap. You may have been my boyfriend back in 1994 when I was rocking the Reality Bites soundtrack on cassette, but I think it's time that we started seeing other people.Man. It is REALLY hard to type a whole blog post one-handed.
Excellent work with the rocking of the vote, people.Seriously, how great is it to feel HOPEFUL after an election for a change? In 2004, the husband and I hosted an Election Night Party where we served red, white, and blue parfaits to a crowd of friends who, instead of dancing in the street to Tracy Chapman's "Revolution," ended up leaving in tears. My memories of the 2000 election are a blur of hazy-eyed disbelief, of waking up the morning after and gaping at CNN as if the television had grown horns and a flavor-saver. I don't quite know what to do with myself this year. The House! The Senate! The door hitting Rumsfeld's ass on the way out! It's like a fabulous episode of The Daily Show that just keeps on going.Glorious election results are not all that's bringing hope to our household these days. The baby is smiling! Yes - smiling! Granted, the smiles are usually squeezed out begrudgingly just after a 2-hour crying binge and just before a round of toxic four-alarm farts, but who cares? There is smiling! Also, the baby is cooing. Every once in awhile, her little mouth stretches open and I wince, bracing myself for the screams that are surely to come, but instead I hear a teenytiny "gaa" or a littlebitty "eeep," which then tides me over on a cloud of bliss until five minutes later when, well, the screams surely do come. But still. There is cooing!
And also? I had my 6-week postpartum checkup, where the midwife heaped encouragement upon my boob-related choices and declared my nether-regions all healed up! According to her, once I build up my stomach muscles again through crunches and the like, I can cardio it up to my heart's content. And lo, I am also cleared to resume the fulfillment of my wifely duties in the bedroom, which of course fills the husband with delight and me with, well, honestly, sheer and utter terror. It's not just the whole "squeezed out nine pounds of baby, got cut open like scrap paper and subsequently stitched back together again" physical thing, but also the fact that having sex leads to having babies and OH MY GOD there will be NO MORE BABIES AND I AM TOTALLY NOT KIDDING ABOUT THAT DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? Cause right now, there are not enough condoms in the world. Is all I'm saying.Was that an overshare?
All you crazy kids are out there typing your little fingers off for NaBloPoMo while I can barely get my shit together for one post per week. Of course, my absence is due mostly to the fact that I am so fully consumed by the writing of my novel, the volunteering of my time towards helping the orphans of Malawi, the harvesting of my fresh and delicious organic bounty, and the general saving of the planet, so you know. I hope you'll understand. Also, Big Love came out on DVD and my daughter has horrific gas.This past weekend I was holed up at my parents' house in Indiana while my husband was away for a conference in Massachusetts. The thought of spending four days as a single mom to screaming child and whining dog caused me to break down in hives, so it was with extreme gratitude that I showed up on the family doorstep. My mom took care of us all weekend, fed us and did our laundry and cleaned up after us, and without one speck of shame I will tell you that I ate it up like heaven with a side of guac. It's no secret to anyone who knows me that my transition to parenthood has not come easily. I'm not proud of that; it's just the way that it is. My mom is the one person I completely trust to see my struggles without judging. She stayed up for two nights with the baby so that I could sleep. She took the baby from my arms when she saw me getting frustrated. She cried when we drove away this morning.Being with the baby around my parents, my four younger siblings, my grandparents, and various aunts, cousins, and hangers-on really helped me to see how isolated I've become these past couple of months. A purple-faced screaming infant who farts toxic fumes while you sing it lullabies seems MUCH less intense, and even somewhat amusing, when you are not alone with it in your two-bedroom apartment, you know? Just to be able to turn to someone else who has had a child, to point at the heap of tar in your baby's diaper and ask "Dude, what is IN this formula, anyway?" and to know that they too have experienced the same sentiment? A lot better than swearing at the dog, is all I'm saying.On our last night with the 'rents, the baby let loose with a two-hour fit of screaming that rivaled no others from her first seven weeks on earth. Her cries seemed to take physical form, slamming into the living room walls and shaking the frames of all the tightly-closed bedroom doors. The night became a perfect example of what has been happening so often these days: the Person I Want To Be comes to blows with the Person Who Shows The Hell Up To Play. See, The Person I Want To Be would have taken control of the situation. She would have taken deep, calming breaths and rocked the baby peacefully, remembering all along that babies are babies, babies cry, babies have rough nights, babies do not hate their parents, YOUR baby does not hate YOU. But The Person Who Shows the Hell Up To Play took a different approach. She rocked, walked, and jiggled the baby for 45 minutes, cried in unison with her for another 15, and then handed the baby off to Grandma in a fit of embarrassing self-flagellation. Grandma, of course, calmed the child in about 30 seconds. The Person I Want To Be realized that Grandma, of course, has raised five children and cared for countless others in her lifetime, that her ability to soothe her first and only grandchild does not stem from any innate and perfect baby-whispering abilities but rather from experience and confidence. But the Person Who Shows the Hell Up To Play declared herself an unfit mother and flung herself into bed wrapped in the Pajamas of Self Pity (they have footies).I would like to bridge this divide, this gap between my ideal self and the self I somehow settle for. I'd like to be a better mother, a happier person. I believe that it's possible. I'm not sure that I believe, though, that I'm going to be able to do it without help.
TV Commercial Voice: Try KFC's new "Famous Bowls"!Me: I'm intrigued. Go on.TV Commercial Voice: We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes...Me: Hmm. Well, I do love me some mashed potatoes. Will gravy be made available?TV Commercial Voice: ... layered with sweet corn ...Me: Um. Ok.TV Commercial Voice: ...and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken.Me: Wait, seriously? Why?TV Commercial Voice: Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy...Me: See, that would've been appropriate back at Step 2, but whatever. You lost me. Are we done here, because --TV Commercial Voice: ...and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend.Me: DUDE. You just crossed the line.
