Is the Ryan Seacrest Joke Too Much?

So you've come back for more, have you? Cruelly, I only offer you part two of what is turning out to be a three-part story. What can I say? I'm remembering more as I write.

(By the way, if you have a birth story, I highly recommend writing it out, even if you don't choose to overshare with the blogosphere. I'm finding it fascinating to see what I remember and what images can take me back to that time and place. Yesterday I found it really jarring to go from writing about "the baby" to picking up my actual, warm, cuddly one-year-old son.)

Part 2, or If Yesterday Freaked You Out, This is a Good Time to Go Get a Sandwich

After I’d finished…draining, I decided to go back to walking around the halls. I remember looking out the big hospital windows, noticing that it was snowing lightly. I thought about how, some day, I would tell my son, “On the day you were born, it snowed.” Within a few minutes of walking, however, I realized that that little crochet hook had apparently pushed some switch into overdrive. I was having real contractions now, none of this “surges” crap, and I wanted to sit down. Not because of the pain, but because I couldn’t do my full relaxation thing while standing. (Quick explanation: in Hypnobirthing, the premise is that, the more you relax, the less pain you will feel, because women’s bodies are designed to birth babies. Adrenaline and the subsequent tensing of muscles that comes from fear works against this natural design; they call this the fear-tension-pain sequence. So the “hypnosis” part is really about breathing, relaxing, and visualizing. I definitely didn’t have a painless birth, as you’ll soon see, but I really do feel like the Hypnobirthing stuff worked to keep me relaxed, especially between contractions. However, I’d always practiced this sitting or lying down, so the idea of completely relaxing my muscles while hoping they’d support my heavily pregnant self was unfathomable to me. We now return you to our extremely uncomfortable story already in progress.)

We went back to the birthing room and I sat on the bed, propped by pillows and reeling with the thought that this was NOT going to be like the videos and that this was…hard. E came back from lunch and popped her head in the room, asking, “How’re we doing?” I took a break from my quiet, even breaths to mourn, “I was smug.” To her credit, she looked properly sympathetic, even as she snickered.

I labored in the bed for a bit, but I wasn’t making much progress. Karen said briskly, “Let’s try nipple stimulation!” as if she was suggesting a quick and easy method for getting pesky stains out of your linen tablecloth. So I shuffled to the shower, disrobed, and sat on a little plastic stool while I aimed the hand-held showerhead at my breasts with one hand, massaging nipples with the other. I felt a bit ridiculous, especially since MOTH was in there as well, just keeping me company, watching this sad parody of porn. This wasn’t the last point in the process where I felt self-conscious, but it was the last time I cared.

I dried off and put my robe on. The hospital has a Jacuzzi tub for laboring (not for birthing), and that’s where I wanted to head. I liked the idea of warm water, but I wanted to float, to be surrounded by it. A nurse shepherded us across the hall, showed us how the faucets and jets worked. After getting it hot enough for me (apparently I am cold-blooded, because both my husband and nurse asked, “are you sure?” when I kept asking for the temperature to be raised), I lowered myself in with relief. I had heard and read tons about how water was amazing for ameliorating the pain of contractions, how it worked so well with Hypnobirthing because it promoted relaxation. Whee! I figured. I’ll just hang out here for the rest of labor and then a little pushing and—poof—baby, right?

I was smug.

The water actually was quite lovely. It really did seem to help me relax, but the contractions felt about the same. For each one, I would switch from my “relaxation breathing” (count in for 4, out for 8, sort of like yoga breathing) to “slow breathing” (inhale and exhale evenly and slowly throughout the contraction). I realized that each contraction was taking about five breaths, and I would count them as a way of remembering how short the contractions really were. It almost worked, except that in my mind I was going, “One…this is OK…two…here it comes, it’s getting worse…three…oh my God…four…I-can’t-do-this-anymore-and-I’m-going-to-have-to-and-I-don’t-like-it-not-at-all…five…oh, it’s ending. Huh. I really should remember that for next time.” And I did this for each contraction.

In between contractions, I really did relax, which I recommend to anyone considering this activity in the future. If you spend the time in between the painful bits obsessing about how painful it was/will be, well, that way lies madness, my chickadees. It’s here that I do credit the Hypnobirthing method and all of our practice, for I was able to be so relaxed that I was practically asleep between surges. This proved slightly dangerous in the tub, as I remember slipping down into the water and feeling it lapping over my mouth. I figured, MOTH was there if I actually did slip under—like, it didn’t occur to me that I might be able to keep myself above water. I was a little dissociated from my body at that point, I think.

After almost an hour, I got out of the tub. Looking back, I wish I’d spent more time there, because it was definitely the most comfortable I’d been, possible-self-drowning threat aside. But I began to be aware of how long poor MOTH had just been sitting there, watching me make what he later called “cute little moaning noises.” Aw, right? Anyway, I figured I’d been in there a while, surely I was almost 10 cm dilated and we’d start with the baby-outing thing any minute, right?

Say it with me, class—I was smug.

I got out, toweled off, and dressed again in my cami and my robe. I’d abandoned the idea of pants by this time. When we got back to the room, I eagerly (well, “eager” is probably the wrong adjective to use when describing a person, even a nimble-fingered person, using said fingers to determine the width of your cervix. You know, that part that you keep WELL INSIDE YOUR BODY) submitted to a cervical check, certain I would hear that we were near the end. I was at five. It’s hard to remember now, a year later, but I’m pretty sure my deep meditation at that point was like, fuuuuck.

The next couple hours are sort of a blur. I remember that I sat, backwards, on the toilet for a while, and that felt good. Leaning into something hard and cool (and, I hoped, given that this was a hospital, clean) while MOTH rubbed my back. I remember walking from the bathroom back to the bed and having a contraction hit me while people were talking to me and I sank down to my hands and knees, like I was dissolving away from the conversation. I remember E kindly stroking my hair when it was down and helping put it up when it was bugging me (and, of course, down again, when the ponytail was bugging me). I breathed. I counted. I know at some point, E had dinner and forced MOTH to do the same. They were really amazing, working as a team so that I always had one or both of them near me, but never felt crowded. I’d heard a lot about becoming irritable (to put it kindly) with labor partners, especially spouses, but I never got annoyed. To be fair, I had my eyes closed much of the time and couldn’t have told you if Ryan Seacrest had walked into the room. Well, I bet I’d have smelled him…doesn’t he seem like the kind of guy who’d wear too much cologne?

Anyway. Another check. Six. Mother fucking six. I believe my kind midwife actually threw me a bone and said, “six and a quarter.” This was really the only point during my labor that I felt a sense of despair, like maybe I couldn’t do this. I really thought I was further along, and the idea of being barely halfway was…demoralizing. I didn’t actually break down into tears, but somewhere in my mind I was conscious of the effort of this, like, “I’m (sniff) gonna be a big girl (sniff)…”

Part of our birth plan (which, thanks to MOTH, also featured the USDA Organic logo and “free range baby” on it) specified that I didn’t want to be offered medication, that I’d ask for it if I wanted it. When we were talking about the plan the night before we went in, E asked me, “What do you want us to do if you do ask for meds? Like, do you want us to try to talk you out of it?” We discussed how I’d depend on MOTH to distinguish between a genuine, calm, logical request and a panicky need for reassurance. Somewhere in the back of my mind during labor, I knew that I wasn’t going to be offered pain relief. And I knew that I didn’t want to ask for it. But it sure sounded nice, so I began to make cow eyes at people when they asked how I was doing: “I’m…so…tired…” I would whisper, thinking that, surely, someone would take pity on me and mainline some morphine or something. Instead, they all patted me on the shoulder and told me I was doing “good” or some such rot. Jerks.

Karen gently but firmly told me that we needed to move things along. She offered more nipple stimulation by using a breast pump, more walking, or…she didn’t say Pitocin, but I knew that it was lurking there. I couldn’t fathom walking in this condition, so I agreed to the breast pump. Hey, I figured, at least I’d get to practice how to use it. I really wanted to avoid Pitocin, because I’d heard how it ramps up the contractions, which was NOT AT ALL APPEALING at that point. A nurse went to get the pump, and I went back to my “breathe-count-‘I hate this’-relax to the point of near sleep” cycle. Karen told me that the baby still wasn’t positioned correctly (you want babies to come out face-down, but Tank had been mostly sunny-side-up for a few weeks), so she directed the nurses to crank the bed into almost a 90 degree angle so that I could kneel and drape myself over some pillows at the top. She then showed MOTH and E how to rock my hips back and forth during contractions. Because I was so focused on the breathing, I was really quiet during contractions, so I was to lift a finger to indicate that one was starting. Somewhere in here I got really cold, and I remember that the warm blankets they draped over me were heavenly. Something about the weight and the warmth was the most comforting sensation at that point. Karen left for a bit to check on another patient.

[Note: Somewhere in here, I threw up. MOTH remembers it being during the early pushing, but I remember it being earlier. The important part is that I totally missed the receptacle that had been offered to me during previous contractions. I threw up. A lot. All over the bed. It was kind of awful, because I HATE throwing up and have only done so three times in the last twenty years, but I have to say, those nurses are pros. Not only did they react quickly and without flinching, they had that bed—and me—cleaned up and changed before the next contraction. It was like the Indy 500 pit crew of linens.]

The nurse with the breast pump came back about the same time as Karen. Another cervical check, which I submit to without hope, considering how the last few hours have gone, and it’s only been about fifteen minutes since I was at six (and a pity quarter). With a brisk snapping off of her glove, Karen pronounces me at nine. Nine! MOTH comes over by my head and says, “You’re at nine, sweetie!” Still with my eyes closed and in between deep breaths, I faintly but firmly exclaim, “I rock!”

But do I? Do I really? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion (seriously, I promise tomorrow will be the last part)!

A Story That Ends With a Wet Bed

One of the things I'd wanted to write about (but then chickened out about) is the story of Tankbaby's birth. I've read some really great birth stories on various blogs, and have found them fascinating and funny (if occasionally gross and scary), and I'd planned to write it all down in the weeks immediately following the birth so that I wouldn't forget the details. However, one of those details was a real live baby, so it's now, a year later, that I'm finally getting around to it. I don't know if these stories are appealing to anyone who has not either gone through birth (as the deliverer, not the deliveree) or plans on giving birth at some point, but I've given you this whole nice long paragraph to buy you the time to flee, so consider yourself warned: discussion of bodily fluids, girly parts, and a frozen dairy treat to follow.

Tankbaby's Birth Story, Part 1, In Which I Remain Dressed and Dry (Spoiler Alert: in Part 2, I am neither!)

Tankbaby was due on February 26^th. He was born on March 8^th. That’s ten days late, people. Which doesn’t seem like much, unless you are holding a tiny-but-getting-bigger-by-the-moment human just above your bladder. However, I was on leave, I owned maternity yoga pants, and I was pretty comfortable. However, we’d been taking Hypnobirthing classes (surprise! We're big hippies!) and wanted as little intervention as possible, so I was trying to avoid an induction that might then lead to the need for an epidural. We tried everything. Walking, acupressure, sex—I even allowed a bit of spiciness to taint my beloved pad see ew. Nothing. This baby was apparently just as comfortable living in me as I was having him in there. I felt slightly guilty, like it was my fault that the baby wasn’t coming, just because I was feeling like I could stand to be pregnant a lot longer if it meant putting off this scary thing called “labor,” followed by the even scarier “delivery,” and the most terrifying: “parenting.”

But the baby’s movements slowed from his typical ADHD-gymnast-on-crack routine, and Karen, our midwife, ran a few tests and advised us to induce. It took a little time to let go of the idea of our completely natural (except at a hospital, because the idea of a home birth—well, let’s just say we have a dog and poor tidying habits, and leave it at that) birth. No water breaking at home, no calling MOTH with “it’s time!” Suddenly we had a schedule. An appointment to birth. After a few hours, though, the upside became evident. We had time to pack leisurely, to clean the house so that we’d come home to serene tidiness, to foist the dog off on some generous friends, and generally busy ourselves with comforting routines as we disbelievingly barreled towards possibly the least comfortable experience I would ever have.

When we got to the hospital, we were told that it was a busy night and that our room wasn’t quite ready. Having had ample time to pack well, we were prepared with DVDs, knitting, and books, and were quite happy to wait in the waiting room for a while, which seemed to surprise the nurses, who appeared to expect more protests. I pointed out, “Hey, I’m not in labor. Go ahead and help the women who are.” I promised that when I was in labor, I would be less accommodating. Secretly, I was also hoping that my water would break spontaneously in the waiting room—wouldn’t that have made for a great story?

No such luck. I texted friends and family and worked on the same ½ inch of knitting that I’d been working on for days (because the days leading up to the birth of your first child are a great time to take on a challenging project! It’s not like your concentration is totally shot or anything!). When we’d checked in, we learned that our wonderful Hypnobirthing instructor, Kristen (who was also an L&D nurse), was coming in at 11 pm. It was almost 10 when we got to our room, and the head nurse had heard that we wanted to have Kristen as our nurse, so she asked if we minded waiting until Kristen got there to start the induction. Nope, fine with us. More time to encourage the water to break. I poked my stomach, jumped up and down, but that babe was burrowed in. I donned my chosen birthing outfit (I did try on the hospital gown, but it was itchy and I didn’t like that I couldn’t fasten it myself), a pair of hand-me-down maternity pajamas of mysterious origin and questionable style. They were, however, soft, and tied in the front. There were some capri-length pants under a knee-length robe, and I also wore a cami tank top, being unwilling to have my not-insubstantial breasts unfettered during the upcoming aerobics.

Kristen came in and we hugged and chattered in as nonchalant a way as possible, considering that one of us was in scrubs and one of us wasn’t wearing underwear. I was strangely reassured by Kristen’s presence. Not that it was strange to be reassured by her, because she emanates a serenity and matter-of-factness that was the perfect antidote for such a nerve-wracking occasion. But I had been feeling strange, almost guilty, about agreeing to be induced, because it wasn’t Totally Natural. I believed I was making the right decision, because I was concerned about the baby’s decreased movement, but it helped my neurotic brain to have the instructor of the birthing method there, actually doing the induction. Like a weird kind of permission, as preposterous as that is. Plus, it felt like a neat “I’m controlling the world with my mind” thing.

Kristen hooked me up with two big Velcro straps, each with a fist-sized plastic disc in the center. The blue one measured the baby’s heartbeat; the pink was to measure contractions (or “surges,” in the parlance of Hypnobirthing). She tried to check my cervix, but said it was hard to tell and that it didn’t matter at this point, anyway. She inserted the misoprostil, which I barely felt. She showed me how to unplug the leads from the monitor and throw them around my neck if I had to go to the bathroom, but warned me that if I disappeared from the monitor for more than a few minutes, she’d have to come in and check on me. She encouraged us to try to get some sleep, which sounded perfectly logical, but equally impossible. I wanted to sit up with Kristen and review everything in the Hypnobirthing course, like cramming for a final with the prof. Failing that, MOTH climbed into the narrow hospital bed (which would have been a tight fit with the two of us and was downright awkward with the three of us—um, three meaning us and the baby, not us and Kristen) and watched the second episode of Dollhouse on my laptop. That particular episode opened with a woman in labor screaming. So much for controlling the world with my mind.

It was after 1 AM when the show ended, and we figured we might as well try to sleep. MOTH went over to the narrow couch, which had been made up into a bed. It felt strange not to sleep together on this, the last night when it would be just the two of us. I slept poorly. Even if I’d been able to shut off my brain, I was still tethered to the monitor. I could hear the baby’s heartbeat, which I found to be a sweet reversal, considering he’d been listening to mine all these months. But I could also hear when the baby or I moved in such a way that the band no longer picked up the heartbeat, and would move it around to avoid someone having to come in and futz with it. Around 7 AM, Kristen came in to say goodbye, and to reassure me that she’d hand-picked her successor, Heidi, another nurse who was familiar with and supportive of Hypnobirthing. I was disappointed that I hadn’t spontaneously burst into labor in the night and gotten to keep Kristen. She showed me that I had been having some surges throughout the night, which elated me. First, because I was making progress, and secondly, because I hadn’t felt them, so I figured my Hypnobirthing training was paying off.

The plan was for Karen to come in later that morning and break my bag of water if the contractions hadn’t picked up. We called our friend E, who was serving as our amateur doula, or Splendoula (like Splenda, she was as good as the real thing), around 8 and she came in around 9. Somewhere in there, Heidi came in and checked my cervix. I was a little more dilated, around 3 cm, and Heidi gave me another dose of misoprostil. She was able to tell me that the baby’s head hadn’t been lined up with the cervix, which probably explained why I hadn’t been dilating more. Basically, poor Tankbaby was standing in the doorway, pushing on the doorjamb. Like that Far Side comic where the kid is pushing on the door for the School For the Gifted, a door clearly marked, “Pull.” Heidi also let me know that Karen, who had been on call all weekend, had forgotten it was Daylight Savings Time and slept late (yet another reason why DST is wack), meaning she would be in closer to lunchtime. The contractions started to pick up a bit, and I used my Hypnobirthing breathing through them, greatly reassured that I didn’t really feel any pain, just the pressure I’d read about. I walked the halls with MOTH, feeling supremely confident. E pointed out on the monitor that I was having contractions every 4-5 minutes or so, and marveled and how well I was doing: “You could be one of those women from the videos!” she cried, alluding to the earth goddesses in the Hypnobirthing videos, who rested serenely, only a few looks of intense concentration or exhalations belying their relaxed demeanors until babies slid effortlessly from between their legs, like dropping a sudsy shampoo bottle in the shower. I replied, “I know! Of course, it’s still early…watch the surges kick in and I’ll realize that I was just being smug right now.” But secretly I began to believe that I could be one of those women and that this was going to be a great, natural, easy birth, just like I’d read about.

Karen came in around noon and used what looked like nothing more than an overlong crochet hook to break my water. It felt like nothing, until I felt the rush of hot liquid coming out. The feeling was unlike anything I’d felt before; it wasn’t like peeing, because there was nothing internal that was propelling this. It kept coming, however, and I’d soon saturated the pad they’d put beneath me. Let the indignities begin, I thought.

OK. Must sleep now. Part 2 tomorrow! If you're grossed out by this so far, you reaaaa-heally won't want to come back for that.

Meta. Meh. Plus, How Falling Got Her Name

So, I've been having a bit of a blogistential crisis over here. I love writing. I love being read and having smart, funny people comment and commenting over at all of your blogs and feeling like part of a community. So why don't I write more often?

I have ideas all the time. I compose paragraphs in the shower, while driving, while cooking. I read other people's posts and am inspired. And still, I put off writing. I make excuses, I get distracted, and, in short, I treat blogging like homework. Why?

When I first started toying with the idea of writing a blog, one of the things that appealed to me was the candidness of the people I enjoyed reading. I loved these women who were able to share (and sometimes over-share) their quirks and faults and humanness. As a documented approval junkie with a bad case of needotherstolikemeisis (what? that's totally a real disease), I was drawn to the idea of an anonymous place where I could write totally openly, moving beyond my own comfort levels. Which...I totally haven't done.

I blame Submom (aka SubWOW). It was through her that I found these other wonderful writers and got more readers, which was, at the time, delightful. But now? I have all these wonderful writers! Who are also readers! And I want you all to like me. Well, "want" is probably an understatement. I need you to LIKE ME, DAMMIT! APPROOOOOVE OF MEEEEEEE!

So I find myself only writing when I know I can write successfully. When I think I can invite good comments. When, as I write, I think to myself, "Oh ho ho, ____ will totally find that funny. AND THEN SHE WILL LIKE ME MORE!! MORE, I TELL YOU!!"

(It's at this point in the program where I look down at my sleeping son and silently promise him that I will do everything I can to make sure I don't pass this bizarre pathology on to him.)

I've been thinking about all this lately, and then I came across this old post over at Finslippy, and, well, go read it. It's like the nicest possible kick in the ass. And, if you've read any of her stuff, you know that Alice has struggled with anxiety as well, so I'm assuming she's writing it for her as much as for anyone else. She knoweth of what she speaketh, is what I'm saying. So I read this, and started thinking: what am I so scared of? Off the top of my head:

1) Y'all won't like me.
2) Y'all will like me just fine, but in three years, someone else will come across this and THEY won't like me.
3) Everyone who doesn't know me personally will like me just fine, but the four people in my three-dimensional life who read this will stop liking me.
4) Someone from my three-dimensional life will find this and I will be mortified at the idea that this friend/family member/work colleague/client/dentist of mine now knows my deepest, darkest secrets...
5) ...and no longer likes me.

Now, I am not so crazy that I can't see the ridiculousness of the above. For 1 and 2--so effing what, yes? If you stop liking me, you'll stop reading. At worst, you'll post mean comments, which will send me careening down a shame spiral, casting my computer aside in a fit of anguish, and Scarlett O'Haraing that I will never write again. There, now, that's not so bad, is it? (whimper)

Number 3--well, considering that the four people are my husband, my sister, and my two closest friends in the universe, I'm hoping this won't happen. After all, they've all had many years to stop liking me, and haven't gotten around to it yet. Plus, I've got blackmail pictures of each of them.

Number 4 is actually the only one that is close to reasonable, mainly due to my work. I do often think about the (small, but not non-existent) possibility that a colleague or a family with whom I work could stumble across this and possibly learn something about me that is beyond what I would chose to share with people I know professionally (the fact that a few posts ago I admitted that I pooped during labor leaps to mind). I guess I just have to keep in mind that the chances are really, really, really small ("Of all the blogs in the world, you had to walk into mine") and hope that whoever it is has the grace and tact to simply never speak to me again.

Anyway, I'm putting all this out there as a way to lead up to a little personal challenge: I am going to blog every day this week. And, I'm going to write about something scary or embarrassing or otherwise cringe-inducing (to me...hopefully you won't actually cringe while reading) each day. I'm going to fly my little freak flag and try to hold on to the original idea of what I found appealing about writing (and reading) blogs in the first place: honesty in the face of potential judgment. Perhaps this will be what I need to break out of my writing rut! Perhaps I'll need to go back on anti-anxiety meds! Who can say?! Whee! (See, not only am I challenging myself, I'm doing it with a positive mental attitude. Booyah.)

Oh, and because it's kind of in the theme (in that it was sort of embarrassing, although mostly it was just funny), and mostly because I promised dufmanno, here is

The Story About How I Sat On an Exercise Ball That Rapidly Deflated. In Public.

Most of the week, I'm out at our classroom site or driving around the county visiting families. On Fridays, I, like most of the agency, am at our main office doing paperwork, attending meetings, etc. So last week, I was headed to my desk when I spied, out in the main hallway, one of those giant exercise balls, with a sign marked, "FREE." Some people who work at desks full-time have been using them as chairs because they're supposed to be better for your posture, etc. Well, between my constant schlepping of a giant baby, my many months of nursing/pumping (i.e., hunched forward, the better to aim my womanly bits into a waiting mouth/funnel), and the fact that I work with tiny humans on a daily basis, I have been noticing that my posture could use some help lately. Perhaps this was my salvation? With my arms full of files and my bag on one shoulder and my breastpump on the other, I eagerly sat down on the ball...

...which promptly and quickly deflated with a loud farting noise, as I plummeted to the ground, smack on my ass, while papers, bag, and pump flew up around me.

There were only a few eyewitnesses (although this other guy was in the nearby supply room and heard, but didn't see what happened, not that that stopped him from snickering whenever he saw me the rest of the day, despite my desperate cries of, "You saw NOTHING!"), but they both burst into what I would call most unladylike laughter. It's OK, so did I. It was too ridiculous. I gathered my belongings, left the wilted puddle of ball there, and took refuge in my nice, stable chair.

Guess I'll just start walking around with books on my head.

I Am Full of Good Ideas

So, two weeks after Tankbaby's birthday, we have been blessed with gifts from generous friends and family. And I do mean generous, because we specifically said "no gifts" and people gave them anyway. Because my son is a preciousangelbabystraightfromheaven. Also, possibly, because he's big enough to mess you up if you displease him.

Anyway, after living with these toys for a few weeks, I have come up with some new legislation that I believe needs to be passed (hey, they finally came to an agreement about health care, how hard can it be to get a bill passed these days, right?). I'm calling it the Why Do You Hate Me Bill, and it would be effective immediately. The bill would require if you are considering the purchase of any noise-making toy for a young child (other than your own), you must first spend three days locked in a room with said toy and a trained parrot. The parrot would push the button(s) over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the idea?) again, while whatever insipid little tune sung by some lispy woman, or creepy animal sound effects, or trademarked character's overplayed catchphrase bleated out, echoing off the walls of the cell and burrowing into your skull. If you tried to stop the parrot, he would shriek madly and attempt to peck out your eyes (while also somehow insinuating that you don't love him enough). If you survive the three days without bludgeoning yourself or the bird, then bring on the gift wrap. Otherwise, can I interest you in a nice, quiet picture book?

Sigh. I am an ungrateful wretch. Wait, that's not true. I am a grateful wretch who is overwhelmed by the generosity of people. I just like my generosity quiet, is all (the exception being for generosity that comes in the form of clinking gold doubloons).

So that's my first idea. Who's with me?

This leads to my second idea, which came to me as I was trying to describe a particular toy. It's a stacking ring that lights up and plays music, and it's actually a nice example of a non-madness-inducing toy, in that it is a) quiet, and b) plays actual recognizable tunes. I was going to list these tunes, but I don't know the names of most of them. I could hum them, though. And that's when I came up with the idea of an interactive website (tentatively called www.itgoeslikethis.com) where you use some kind of microphone to hum or sing part of a song, and the database looks it up for you. Think of the possibilities! All of the bets it could settle! It could also be used to reduce earworming, because you know that a song is ten times more likely to get stuck in your head if you only know the chorus. Listen to the whole thing, and voila! It disappears.

I have no idea how something like this would work, but I think I could sell it to someone, don't you?

Senators or potential investors, you know where to find me.

Instructions for a Moment of Perfection

1. Due to weather, time, and baby, don't ride your beloved bike for, oh, nine months.

2. Have a productive morning, going to the park with the baby and dog, working on the surprise baby gift for C's shower this weekend, and generally crossing things off your list while feeling Very Efficient, Indeed.

3. After fortifying yourself with a piece of homemade bread and peanut butter (um, not homemade, because you're a hippie but you're not crazy), hand off the babe to your grease-monkey husband who has just tuned up your bike for you (and yes, ideally you'd be all Rosie the Riveter and do it yourself, but you were baking bread, sewing, and minding the baby...less Rosie the Riveter and more Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons, but never mind) and grab your helmet.

4. Reassure instantly-sobbing baby that you'll be gone for 30 minutes and that you are not, as he would assert, taking the very oxygen from his lungs while you're gone.

5. Start pedaling, relishing the muscles moving in familiar ways, feeling that quintessential almost-flying-but-still-grounded feeling that you love. Your MP3 player begins playing the Shins' "Kissing the Lipless." For a minute, you aren't the sleep-deprived mom with gray roots, working long hours and fretting about healthcare reform and an ominous-sounding "re-organization" at work--you're That Girl, wearing stripey knee socks and Chucks, grinning at pedestrians and pitying drivers trapped inside vehicles as the breeze lifts your hair and you stand on the pedals to crank up a hill.

6. As you get to a nearly deserted street, get some speed behind you and coast around the corner into the full-on sunshine, just as the Shins hit the chorus.

There.





(Hee. I included the video as a way to share the song, but didn't realize until I watched it that it features a Napoleon Dynamite-esque skating dude. You're welcome.)

Aw, But Rickeeeee...

I've been having a couple of what I like to call "Lucille Ball days." Which would be OK, if they came replete with a laugh track and my own little dressing table. I love dressing tables.

Today, I baked homemade bread, which came out looking great but weirdly salty. I also screwed up the marinade for our pork chops, with too much soy sauce and not enough honey, so...also weirdly salty (we drank A LOT of water with tonight's dinner). And, while heating the grill pan, I somehow didn't notice the Ziploc sandwich bag that had gotten stuck to the bottom--until acrid smoke began to rise and our 800-square-foot house began to fill with toxic fumes so that we had to sit in the dark on the porch and wait for it to clear.

This is all on top of a stupidly-acquired head injury on Thursday and a rapidly-deflating-exercise-ball-in-public moment on Friday. Apparently my wacky-sitcom-wife levels are dangerously high.

Lest you think it's just me in Sitcomlandia, though, I offer the following scene:

MOTH and I were getting the baby ready for bed. Tankbaby really wanted to nurse, so when I handed him to MOTH for a second so I could zip the sleep sack he wears at night, he began to cry piteously. MOTH sighed in exasperation as I reassured Tankbaby that his loving daddy is not, in fact, covered with spikes, and anyway, this will just take a second. This lead to a conversation about how Tankbaby is generally either trying to fling himself out of MOTH's arms (if Mama is a viable alternative) or trying to fuse himself into MOTH's body (the rest of the time). MOTH explained that he had some specific ideas for how a baby should behave, which led me to observe, "I think that, rather than a baby, what you actually wanted was a cockatiel."

MOTH: What's a cockatiel?

Me: It's a kind of a bird.

MOTH: I thought that was a cockatoo.

Me: I think they're both birds. In fact, they might be the same kind of bird, just in different...forms.

MOTH: Like...a solid and a gas?

Goodnight, everyone!

Spam, Egg, Sausage, and Spam

So I got this e-mail today to my personal account--meaning, the address I don't give out to anyone I don't know in real life; sadly, MOTH put it down on a form for my IRA, and those bastards sold me out, so I do often get offers for "Dear User, Would You Like 80% off Vi@gra" and "Tired of Having a Small Penis?" (the answers to which are, "no, thanks," and "not yet"). So when I saw a name I didn't recognize and opened the e-mail to find basically an ad for a local realtor, I was ticked (ooh, Falling, such strong language!). There was some sort of St. Patrick's Day connection, but basically it was an ad for this guy, with the poorly-punctuated tag line, "Oh by the way I’m never too busy for any of your referrals."

I wrote back immediately, saying, "I have no interest in receiving future correspondence from your agency. I have never heard of you and don't know how you got my information. Please delete my address from your company's database and do not contact me again." I guess I could've just labeled it spam, but it irked me (again with the potty mouth) that yet someone else had gotten ahold of this address. Hey, at least I refrained from writing, "Oh, by the way, you're missing two commas in that last sentence." Clicked send, trashed the e-mail, and went on with my day.

A few hours later I got a reply. I opened it and found a (still strangely comma-free message) from the guy, apologizing for the e-mail, then telling me that he was a friend of this couple that we know, and we'd met him last fall with his kids and talked children's theatre. And that the kids were interested in learning more, but that he was sorry he'd bothered me and wouldn't e-mail again.

So then I wrote back (isn't this riveting, how I take you through each step in real time?) apologizing myself, explaining that I thought it was spam, and saying, of course we'd love to talk theatre with your kids. And then I drove home, blushing alone in my car at the thought that he would tell our mutual friends what a bitch I'd been, and how he was just trying to reach out...for the children!

Now, I know that, as MOTH pointed out when I told him the story, this isn't exactly a social faux pas. Not like I failed to send a thank you note or farted at the opera or anything. If anything, I think that this guy was the one who was weird, randomly sending me crap about his business, rather than writing, "Hi, it's Joe Unknowntoyou, friend of Mr. and Mrs. Mutualfriend. I wanted to ask you about..." But I still felt weird and embarrassed afterwards, mostly because I'd been all righteous about my reply, like, take that, Spammy Spamsalot! and instead it was just this (as I remember him) nice, mild-mannered guy trying (awkwardly) to reach out. I am too often awkward myself to want to dump on anyone else's awkwardness.

I knew that I was not technically in the wrong here--I acted in good faith, I promptly responded, accepting responsibility for my actions and apologizing--and yet, I spent my commute home kicking myself. Like I do.

Do you all do this? Do your brains wait until you are otherwise peaceful and content (or, better yet, about to fall asleep) and then remind you of that time you tried to gaily jump the rope barrier in the college cafeteria and tripped instead? Or that time freshman year, when a much cooler sophomore considerately slipped you a note that said, "I think you have your period" in the middle of algebra class? (These are, of course, just examples, based on absolutely no real people, especially not ones who blog.)

And do you still blush, ten, fifteen years later? Do you still mentally--or occasionally physically--slap yourself on the forehead, incredulous about your own stupidity? 'Cause I do, and I don't know why. It serves no purpose. I have learned everything I could possibly learn from the experiences (respectively, "don't try to jump over stuff, you leaden-footed fool" and "go on the Pill already so that you're not caught by surprise...again"). I have done many worthwhile things with my life in the meantime, and have suffered much worse tragedies. So why do I still torture myself with this?

Perhaps I was evil in a former life. It would explain a lot, including my college dating career and my eyebrows.

A Promise to My Son

If you toss and turn all night and wake up five times in seven hours and do that baby-dinosaur cry with your eyes shut as you persist in trying to crawl into the wall or fling yourself over an arm or smother yourself in a pillow, resisting all attempts to soothe or cradle you, while you seem to settle long enough for one to juuuuust drift back to sleep only to be awakened five minutes later by your mewling for NO GOOD REASON THAT CAN BE DISCERNED and then you fling your small-but-solid arm directly into the nose of those who would comfort you...

...Mama's going to eat the last of your birthday cake for breakfast. Guarangoddamnteed.

This is Why I Don't Get Invited to More Parties

Argh.

You guys, I'm gonna be honest: I've been typing for forty minutes here, and deleting all of it. I'm up to my neck in work these days, but not in any ways that make for interesting storytelling (unless you want to hear about how today I would gladly have knocked some four-year-old heads together and considered that perhaps coal mining is an under-appreciated field). I have notes, I have things I want your opinions on and things I want to sort out to figure out my opinions, but when I try and write them out...nada.

I have written all but one post on this blog with a sleeping babe in arms, which is a little like trying to be creative and funny whilst holding a bomb, one without the benefit of a little countdown clock. I never know how long I have and I'm constantly aware of the fact that, with every failed attempt at getting the writing Just Right, I am losing valuable minutes of babylessness. So I get more frustrated, feel more pressured, and, of course, get more stuck. Then the kid wakes up and I have an unfinished post and am still further behind in reading/commenting on all of your loveliness.

Speaking of which, in all of this, I blame you. Yes, you, the funny one. Who updates regularly. With your wit and your charm and your saying-everything-I-want-to-say-but-first-and-better. Who do you think you are? Holding the rest of us to such a standard. Have a little consideration, would you?

Anyway, I have only one more week of work and then two weeks off for spring break, so please bear with me while I stumble through for a little longer. Then my class is over, hopefully work will have settled down, and, um...well, not much is likely to have changed, but surely having two weeks off will find me rested and renewed and riting (yes, of course I know it's spelled wrong, but don't you enjoy the symmetry of the "r"s?).

In exchange for your patience, I offer you...Aunt Benevola!

At some point last fall, my sister posted something on her Facebook page like, "Benevola has discovered that, if you use your dustbuster to clean up cinnamon, subsequent clean-ups will make your house smell like pie." I e-mailed her to ask exactly how much cinnamon she had spilled that she required a dustbuster to clean it up. This was her reply:

"The Cinnamon Story"

So, we had a minor ant infestation early this summer, as we do every year. However, these are not the normal ants, that gravitate towards, say, a dropped potato chip on the floor; they seemed to gather in odd non-food places, like the bathroom. I tried putting traps out (the kind that they feed off of, and then take the poison back to the colony, and poison the whole colony, thereby eliminating one's ant population), but these traps seemed to be geared towards attracting normal food-seeking ants, so they were not interested in said traps.

Then one day I discovered them crawling all over a bottle of peach Schnapps behind our bar. Apparently, a bit of the sugary liqueur had dripped over the side of the bottle, and this particular brood of ants must have been of the Lindsay Lohan variety: not interested in food, but loving their girly mixed drinks. So I placed a drop of Schnapps on the edge of the ant traps, and immediately noticed them streaming into the dens of poison I had set out. After a week or so, the traps must've done the trick, because they all about disappeared...

Until a couple of weeks later. I opened the pantry, and noticed a few rogue ants roaming around on the top shelf. In hindsight, I should've just cleared the shelf of opened food (this being my bread & chip shelf) and left well enough alone. But I was drunk with my own ingenuity for discovering their weakness, and instead took the food out and placed a Schnapps-laced ant trap on the pantry shelf.

Within days, my pantry was crawling with more ants than I've ever seen. Apparently, it seems I had just opened the most popular ant bar in town, and they invited seventeen other colonies to sip on peach Schnapps...in my pantry!! And they didn't seem to be making it home to their colonies to poison the rest--they were passing out on each others couches until they slept it off enough to revisit this bar the next day! I think I might've even spotted the Olsen twins at one point.

So now I couldn't very well put food back into the pantry, as that would just have encouraged late night drunken snacking, so for two weeks, my bread and chips and any penetrable dry food product sat on my dining room table while my pantry continued to be the hot spot nightclub, paparazzi camping out at all hours, really quite a headache.

Finally, I caved, and grabbed a can of Raid. Then I got scared to put the food back, a) because I'd just laced my pantry with real poison (the kill-you-dead kind, not the sneakier, take back to your ant family and kill you later kind,) and b) I didn't want to re-open the party central my pantry had become. So I inter-web searched for a "green"er way to keep the ants at bay, and I ran across several articles about ants hating cinnamon (also, pepper, FYI). So I cleaned my pantry out with soap and water, and sprinkle cinnamon around the edges of my pantry, as well as the edges of my kitchen floor leading to my pantry.

I kept vigilant watch and did not spot a single ant venturing towards my pantry, and eventually tentatively restocked. After a week, I did have to clean up the cinnamon on the floor at least, to somewhat take back control of my house, and my life. Here's where the dustbuster comes in.

To this moment, I still don't know whether the ants didn't come back because of the Raid or the cinnamon, but I do know next year I will just keep a bottle of peach Schnapps in the bathroom, surrounded by ant traps, and hope for the best.

See? Funny and useful. Also, raise your hand if you thought a simple story about cleaning up cinnamon would involve any mention of the Olsen twins.

Baby still asleep. Off to see what you all have been up to.

Have Officially Kept Baby Alive Longer Than Many Houseplants

One year ago today, I had a baby.

I also pooped in front of strangers and got stitches in my hoo-ha, but let's focus on the good, shall we?

A few posts ago I referred wanting to write about how hard, and sometimes how unfair it is to be the mama. I do want to write about that, because I wish someone had given me the heads-up in those early months. Or even in the not-so-early months, when I was still feeling overwhelmed, and feeling crazy for feeling overwhelmed.

But right now? As I sit, almost exactly to-the-minute one year after he was born? I am swamped with a contentment that I could not imagine until recently. I'm getting the hang of this baby-having thing--not as quickly as I would have liked or hoped or thought, but I'm finally feeling like I'm sort-of, almost, pretty much beginning to integrate this giant thing into my little life.

So please indulge me a moment while I write down what my baby, my sweet burly brute of a boy, is like right now, one year from the day he came into this world.

Although his overall growth seems to have slowed (and it's a good thing, too, for if he'd continued on a linear path with his expansion, we'd have to annex the neighbor's house soon), he still has these fat little hands. And yet, quite often his gestures are so delicate--a point here, a graceful pincer grasp here--which never fails to make me giggle, these meaty hands making fey gestures.

He's learning what words mean, people. Like, if you ask "Where are your toes?" he'll point to them (I don't know why, but this KILLS me). If you say "Hello," he puts his hand (and whatever he's holding in said hand, including a PB&J sandwich) up to his ear like a phone. He waves "hi" and "bye" when cued. And he knows "Where's Dada?" If, however, you ask, "Where's Mama?" he points to his toes. Or a can of soup. Or Dad. Or the dog.

He has four sharp little teeth, which has added a certain amount of...intrigue to our nursing sessions. He's getting better about not biting while nursing, but it's no guarantee, which means that every so often I'm startled by the fiery pinch of baby fangs. I try to remain calm, say, "no bite," and just take him off the boob, but when it happens several times in a row, I will admit to setting him down firmly (gently, but ever-so-motherfucking-firmly) while I cross my arms in front of my chest mutter darkly about weaning. He also has taken to biting when frustrated, so my tiny bruises are back, on my neck and upper arms. He may be part vampire bat. Also? Purely cosmetically, I have to point out: his two lower teeth are small and straight and right to each other and look like cute baby teeth. His upper teeth seem huge and crooked and, well...when viewed from an upward angle, he looks like a hillbilly baby. Like his first word will be, "Yup." It's distressing.

When eating, Tankbaby uses his first finger and thumb to delicately select food, as mentioned above. Lately, he's been wanting to see the plate of small bites and to choose the food himself, so MOTH holds the little plate like a waiter at a black-tie event, while Tank claps his hands together, puts one finger in his mouth and tilts his head coyly to the side, as if to say, "Well, I really shouldn't...it goes right to my thighs...but, yes, I do think another bite of waffle would be divine!"

He still only has approximately 12 hairs, but now three of them have conspired to stand up in the world's most pathetic cowlick. My dad sent a birthday package that included a tiny yellow Charlie Brown shirt (yellow with that black zig-zag stripe near the bottom), and I can't wait to put Tank in it. Then maybe I'll invite him to kick a football that I'll yank away at the last minute.

He's been giggling for a while, but now we're starting to get great big belly laughs, and they're making up for every bad thing that has ever happened. I would set myself on fire to hear him laugh like this. (Luckily, so far, all it's required is a rousing game of Zoom Close To Baby's Face With Sound Effects or maybe Do The Tina Turner Dance [aka Shake a Tail Feather].)

He's been working on drinking out of a straw (we've skipped the sippy cup stage, as the current thinking in occupational therapy land is that it's more functional to learn to use a straw, plus it builds oral motor strength--hi, I'm an early childhood development geek). He'll clamp his mouth down and furrow his little brow in concentration as his sips, and about 80% of the time he'll get too much and will cough wetly while his eyes water, and, still choking, he reaches for the cup again. I'm trying to teach him to gasp, "Smooth," as he does so.

I could go on, about how he does this funny "Cheese it! It's the cops!" take when I surprise him while he's crawling. Or how MOTH, after getting pants over Tank's feet, pulls him to a stand and has him assume the position against a wall so that MOTH can pull the pants up, all the while asking Tank to empty his pockets and keep his eyes forward, sir. But it's getting late and y'all have indulged me enough.

Happy Birthday, baby boy. Thanks for sticking with me.

Also? STOP WITH THE GODDAMNED BITING.

Love, Mama

This, That, and HOLY CRAP

First of all, a big thank you to Jen, for alerting me that when she clicked on a link in my post a few days ago about Mike (the one about the Manhattan Declaration), it took her to my personal Facebook page! Shit! No offense, because I know that you are all lovely people and wouldn't, you know, steal my identity or e-mail my employer or stalk my dog if you knew my real name, but, as I am clearly destined to rise to fame and fortune through this blog, I'm thinking ahead to when the ignorant, unwashed masses are reading through my archives and planning pilgrimages and whatnot and all I'll really want is to be left alone and so I went back and deleted the link. If you've already clicked through and secretly discovered who I am but have decided discretion is the better part of valor, I also thank you.

Criminy.

And this is why someone as blognorant as I about how the Interweb works should not be out here alone. I tested that link, and it went to the fan page I'd intended to show you. I was logged in to Facebook when I added the link, but I just tested it again, not logged in, and it still worked. So I dunno. But it's a little freaky, considering that I have tried to keep this blog private and anonymous, for reasons we've discussed before. I still try to abide by the notion that the one person you never want finding your blog will one day find it, so don't post anything counting on your anonymity. But there's a big difference between that "one day" and, um, linking to your own personal Facebook page. For one thing, even if I'm OK being identified, my Facebook names MOTH, Tankbaby, and my tens of real-life friends. It would be quite easy to identify everyone I write about here, without their permission, which is the last thing I'd want to do.

Also, sometimes I cheat by posting a one-liner from my blog as my Facebook status, and I wouldn't want you all to be disappointed in my lack of initiative.

Argh. I had wanted to write more, if for no other reason than to be able to discard things like a scrap of paper that says "re: pumping at work--must realign afterwards, or go back to work with nipples askew as Marty Feldman's eyes" on it. But this little side trip to OhMyLordWhatHaveIDone took some time, plus I finally fixed the wacky fonts in my last post. How about some quick excuses and a visual joke, hm?

The last two weeks, I have felt like a hamster in a wheel, running ever faster, eyes fixed on a point in space ahead of me while I go...nowhere. Work is nutty, with new kids coming in and parents making bus drivers cry and staff out sick. I'm keeping on top of it, but just barely. I told MOTH tonight that I'm trying to find the exhilaration that comes of balancing, of riding the wave and still remaining upright. Only that joy is meant for the five minutes of cruising, not for weeks on end. Right now it just feels like that wave is about to crash over me, and the balancing is a burden, not a triumph.

And I come home, and my beautiful, burly boy is ready for Mama. Which is great and lovely, except that he's been all over the place with his naps, which means that I'm often not getting the 5 pm nap-so-I-can-write slot. I have been reading lots of blogs while I nurse or while I pump during the day (thank you, tiny smartphone with internet access!), but can't comment with my hands...full, so please know that I'm out here, and I'm trying to get a wee bit on top of things. And as soon as Tankbaby learns to read quietly at my feet, perhaps while rubbing them, I'll be less neglectful of my lovelies.

In the meantime, I give you a little pastry absurdity:



I don't know, maybe "frosted" wasn't fancy enough? "Coated" seemed too pedestrian?



P.S. For those of you who would have such things, here is the Muppet Monopoly game. Play it in good health, and don't invite my sister unless you enjoy groveling with your wheeling and dealing.

P.P.S. Ooh! New--the Sesame Monopoly game!!

P.P.P.S. And yes, I did put that picture up on Facebook.