Anything Said: April 2007

Friday, April 27, 2007

Here's a fun game for you

On Easter Sunday, my four younger siblings and I celebrated the holy holiday by eating a frozen lasagna, then sitting around my parents' living room composing satirical submissions to the local newspaper's "Your Turn" column. Guess which three are ours? I'm warning you: the submissions sent in by Actual Concerned Citizens are just awesome enough to psych you out. First correct answer wins a prize.

Bonus points: This post from a couple of weeks ago was the result of a bet with blog superstar Madness. See, the woman stomped me in her NCAA pool, which meant I had to incorporate three words or phrases of her nefarious choosing into my next post. Identify them for an extra gold star.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Not sure why I'm even posting this

Man. I have been sitting here in front of a blank blogger screen for like 20 minutes, just trying to think up something of substance to share. I got nothing. Really. You want to see a cute baby picture?

That toy spends about 50% of each day shoved into her mouth, the other 50% lying on the dog-hair-coated floor. And we have yet to wash it once. Awesome.

I'm cutting back on my daytime tivo indulging these days, trying to be more responsible about what's on the tube when the babe's awake. Which means I've been digging lots of radio time. Mostly, my mornings are filled with Morning Edition and Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio, which by the way I totally joined last December. I'm one of those people who gets sucked in by the "free" gifts. When I called, they were giving out This American Life cds and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me desk calendars. I caved.

Anyway, I usually offset my NPR with some soul-sucking pop and country radio. I can't deal with any station that calls itself "alternative." For me, it's kind of like when people refer to themselves as "humble." If you slap yourself with the nametag, you probably don't fit the profile, is all I'm saying. With pop stations, at least you always know what you're getting: music to which you know the words even though you pretend not to in front of the colleagues who underestimate your abilities at work (what? only me?), celebrity gossip, call-in contests that ask listeners to respond to fill-in-the-blank trivia questions about their sexual habits, etc. In recent weeks, one local station even ran a 6-week dating show, through which they attempted to marry off two strangers who met and communicated only over the phone. It was like bad reality television, only ON THE RADIO so it was totally cultural! Rock!

Not too long ago I was listening to some random music station and this really peppy song came on. It sounded like some jacked-up cheerleader shouting and chanting and giggling. I figured I had somehow stumbled onto Radio Disney or something and flipped the dial. Except that later, on another day, I heard it again. And again! Come to find out: it's Avril Lavigne's latest single, "Girlfriend". Dark little Canadian faux-punk Avril. I don't want to tell my husband for fear his heart will break forever, as Avril Lavigne has been his secret girlfriend ever since he saw the video for "Complicated". He was all: "Dude, that girl is fighting The Man. In the mall. On a skateboard."

Ok, baby's crying. Which is really for the best, because I'm grasping at straws here, friends.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Death be not proud

I just got back a short trip to Indiana for my uncle's funeral. He died of cancer, after several years of painful sickness and experimental stem cell treatments that he signed up for because he couldn't afford any of the "regular" courses of action. I wasn't really close to him, but I feel the loss for my family. He was the first of my mom's siblings to die. It's all sitting pretty heavily for her right now.

Aside from a memorial service for a friend in high school, the funeral for my uncle was my first. It was straight-up out of a movie, with the dimly lit funeral home and the police-car-led procession through town to the cemetery and the post-burial meal in a church fellowship hall. The service was led by a husband and wife preacher team who, to the fury of many of my relatives, barely knew my uncle and were unresponsive at best to his attempts to plan his own funeral from his deathbed. The result was a fill-in-the-blanks sermon commemorating the life of a stranger. What it lacked in personal details it made up for in well-worn sayings and Biblical greeting card verse.

What I'm wondering is this: why do people need platitudes when they're grieving? Somebody dies, right? Somebody who lived a life that was all his own -- maybe he rocked a sales job or sold handmade organic cotton sweaters on his Etsy site or was a fruitarian or whatever -- and you're going to remember his totally individual life with sayings and couplets that have pretty much nothing to do with him, or with anyone in particular? At my uncle's funeral, they passed out a little paper program with a picture of a canoe on it, and on the inside was a quote about fishermen and God and serenity. What did that have to do with anything? Why do we have to project this vague, kind of faceless peace all over the idea of death? How does that serve to celebrate someone's life? In other cultures and other times, isn't/wasn't there wailing and flailing and a general acknowledgment that hey, wtf, it totally sucks that people die?

I know that people need to grieve, to deal with death, in their own way. But I just don't understand.

On the way home from my parents' place yesterday, the husband and I were listening to NPR's coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech. They were broadcasting a convocation at the school, at which the president of the university and the Virginia governor and George W. Bush made remarks. The officials all kept talking about how proud they were of the student body, how brave they were being and how important it was for them to continue wearing their school colors. And all I could think was: "why are you trying so fiercely to heal when you haven't even taken the time to grieve?" Surely it takes more than a day to mourn the lives of 33 people. Why wasn't anyone talking about how PISSED they were? How in shock and scared? Why is it inappropriate for someone to stand up at a podium and kick some dust around and rage out loud about the motherfucker who decided he could just up and kill a bunch of people's children?

I don't know, I'm sure I'm being insensitive in like 5,000 ways. And I've never lost anyone really close to me, so I'm sure there is lots about grief that I just don't get. But it's on my mind these days.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Some stuff is funny

These two creatures are cracking my shit up right now.

First off, look at that ham-hand. Could you die? It's, like, the size of every other 6-month-old's head. It's a catcher's mitt. It's what's for dinner. I love it.

Second, this morning I left the room to go make myself some breakfast. When I returned, the dog was sucking on a pacifier and Cletus the Former Fetus was gumming a chicken-flavor Nylabone.

Third, the baby is getting way mobile. She can scoot and pull herself around, but only in two directions: a 360 degree circle, and backwards. Watching this has been providing me with days of entertainment. It's like: baby sees dog in front of her; squeals with delight. Baby reaches out in an attempt to grab dog. Baby propels herself backward, away from dog. Baby looks confused. Dog looks disinterested; licks own crotch.

Fourth, yesterday I hung out with some women from my moms group and discovered that one of them is actively teaching her infant son to refer to his penis as a "ding-dong." I went home and whispered "vagina vagina vagina" into my sleeping daughter's crib. Then I ordered her some Eve Ensler on Amazon -- you know, for later. Like when she's three.

And finally, the baby's refusing to nap right now, as usual, and later on she'll probably refuse to eat and then she'll poop through her diaper and you know what? It's still a pretty damn good day. Anyone want to come over and watch some Netflixed 90210 with us? We're just biding our time until we get to the Ray Pruitt season.

Friday, April 06, 2007

I used to dream

These days I am walking around with the distinct air of someone who has Let Herself Go. Back when I was reading parenting books -- back in the days before I birthed a real-live baby instead of one of those scheduled, sweetly napping robo-babies they talk about in Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child -- I remember reading something about new parents hitting a wall sometime around their child's 6-month birthday. Apparently 6 months is the moment in new parenthood when you've stopped running on nothing but fumes and fear, when the baby has gotten a little more fun and a smidgen less fragile and you feel yourself inching your way out of survival mode. Accordingly, you relax a bit, let your guard down, and your body chooses that moment to go "Wait. WHAT THE FUCK? I have not slept since before the dawn of time. I. Am. TIRED."

A few weeks ago Cletus the Former Fetus pulled some ridiculous early April Fools Madness on us by, for a whole week and a half, sleeping through the night. Like, as in the entire night. Completely randomly and with no intervention from us, she went to bed between 6:30 and 7 and got up around 6 AM. Not once, not twice, but for a week and a half. It was heaven. It was birds singing, angels floating on ganja clouds, manservants bringing me bacon for breakfast, endless America's Next Top Model marathon heaven. Stupidly, we wasted more than 30 seconds being happy about it. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it ended.

Now we're back to the usual middle of the night bottle followed by 30 minutes of babbling in the crib, unpredictable wake-up times, and the napless screamfests we like to call "morning." Her nighttime bottle wake-ups usually happen between the hours of 2:30 and 4:00, right in the thick of my deepest sleep, right in the exact moment where it hurts the most. The effects of accumulated lack of sleep are staggering, and are just now beginning to take effect. On Monday I fell asleep sitting up at my job. On Wednesday morning I almost fell asleep in the car. Wednesday night, when I woke at 4:00 to the sound of a crying baby, I was so randomly furious I was almost afraid to go to her.

I'm not looking for suggestions here, because - honestly - nothing anyone has ever suggested has ever worked on this child. Nothing against you lovely bloggers and your expertise -- you are kind and long-suffering and have brilliant ideas. It's just that my baby is constructed from the sum of my past misdeeds made real. Any progress that we have made on any front, whether it be sleeping, eating, or discovering the pleasant baby hidden beneath the colic, has all seemed to evolve naturally, on some mysterious internal calendar over which we are powerless. Whatever milestones she achieves, she achieves in spite of us and our clumsy attempts at enacting "sleep strategies" or manipulating nighttime feedings or dangling educational toys in front of her face. She didn't sit up on her own until, one random morning, she was suddenly good and ready to, and she'd just as well prefer to chew on this here cardboard box, thanks very much, Baby Einstein.

So I'm tired, and I'm grouchy, and I'm mulleted. Short haircuts are great for people who, like me, are grooming-challenged, but they are NOT great for people who, also like me, are lazy procrastinators. I need a haircut but getting one requires me to do taxing things like open up my phone book for the number of my salon, dial the number of the salon, speak to another human being (using actual English words), and then let's not even get INTO the fact that I'll have to eventually put on a coat and walk the three blocks to the salon.

Walking to the salon, though, would constitute exercise, which is another thing that has been suffering due to the effects of The Tired. When you can barely stay upright, it's hard to contemplate the treadmill. I am displeased with the state of my doughy stomach, and while I have reached my lofty goal of being able to fit into my pre-pregnancy pants, I have not reached my goal of feeling like less of a Fat Fattie. My lack of fitness extends to my most secret of nether-regions. Turn away if you can't deal. I never did many of those exercises I was supposed to do before having Cletus (which, you know, could explain the episiotomy pleasantness) and I most certainly have not been doing them since. Now I leak like an old lady and no amount of ben wa balls will help. Nothing says self-esteem like sniffing your baby's diaper only to find that the scent you're tracking? It's all you, mama.

I assure you that if I were not So Very Tired, I would have more sense than to share this. Lucky for you, I'm running on empty here. Come back later today and I might tell you about what I watched the dog do just before she licked me on the mouth.