I’m having oral surgery today. I’m still in the process of fixing shoddy dental work done when I was a kid. I’ve been on antibiotics since yesterday. I feel like I was hit by a truck. My stomach hurts. My head hurts. I feel dizzy and disoriented. My neck muscles are super tight and painful. I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. Shanna’s not up for that option though. Man. This almost makes me wish I could use the tv as a babysitter. 😛
Shanna was talking about her vulva this morning and acting questioning (this is where her language skills get a bit muddy) and I said, “Yup all girls have vulvas.” And then I stopped. Actually, no. All girls don’t have vulvas. But most girls do. And very few boys have vulvas. Man. I think things are going to be complicated to explain to her.
I found this chick through mothering.com. As much as MDC is kind of wearing through my patience I have learned some neat stuff there. So here is a really interesting post about how toddlers are/can be triggering to abuse victimes. It gave me a lot to think about: Raising My Boychick
Shanna fell asleep on my lap. She hasn’t done this in a while. My foot is now asleep. I guess she’s gained some weight. 🙂
I discovered this morning that I am in Trouble. I wondered why the ASL class was moving so slowly given that it is a 5 unit course. Now I know. The reason we learn very little new in class is because you are supposed to spend a ridiculous amount of time in the lab learning everything by yourself. Uhm, thanks? Getting enough time in the lab is going to be a serious problem. They are open for very limited hours, 100% of which overlap with Noah’s work schedule. They seem to believe that only full time college students with no jobs or kids should be allowed to take ASL. Fuckers. (Technically it isn’t their fault. The problem is state budget cuts. But I can still feel whiny.)
I went out yesterday! I went to the fair and had a fabulous time. I ran into people from all over the country, many of whom I have not seen in 3+ years. 🙂 I didn’t even make a full circuit of the booths because I got there a bit late and the crowd was getting to me. I had a really great time though and I got a waist cincher from Dark Garden! w00t! I have the most generous of husbands. 🙂 Noah stayed home with the short one and he got to learn firsthand why I believe we need to acquire more board books. 🙂 It gets a bit old reading them over and over and over again. Before anyone suggests the library: Shanna is a book eater. She will grow out of this in time but for now it isn’t cool for us to have books for her that need to be well treated. I would feel horribly guilty about damaging library books. I feel confident that this stage can’t last too much longer. 🙂
I was thinking about it yesterday and I came to the conclusion that I am really glad I didn’t try real hard to have “my own time” when Shanna was smaller. I wasn’t ready. I felt anxious the entire time I was away from her. I didn’t enjoy myself. Now I can take off for a day and have fun and feel confident that it is ok and developmentally good for both of us. Yesterday was probably a bit longer than Shanna is thrilled about, but she didn’t spend the time having a temper tantrum so I think we did ok. I like feeling confident in my parenting choices. I’m super glad I ignored everyone who told me that I ‘had’ to get away from her early on. No, I didn’t. It would have sucked for all concerned. Now I can go do stuff and she does fine and I do fine and daddy does fine. We win!
Noah and I stayed up far far too late talking about all kinds of deep personal scary stuff. I didn’t know we had so much of that left. It was really nice to feel close like that.
And now Shanna is big enough to wear the ubercute clothes she got last Christmas! She’s wearing one of the awesome one-piece outfits she got from her Uncle Ben. 🙂 I should take pictures. 🙂
I should post pictures. Oy. I’ll do it someday.
And then we got a call from our mortgage broker! Whoo hoo! Rates dropped! I’m terribly excited about this.
Shanna is now saying please with very little prompting! She will even cut the whining to say please. Whoo hoo!
And we have a date night tonight! We so win!
Quite some time ago (more than three years) I embarked on the journey of permanent body modification. I didn’t start the project lightly. I assumed for most of my life that I would never get a tattoo because they were usually a bad idea. But I started dreaming about this tattoo and I decided that I wanted to do it.
So here is the story, once again, including pictures. Continue reading
Every time I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I spread the peanut butter on the bread and then I use the same knife in the jelly jar. Then I cackle.
-I got some plants from essaying in I think January (maybe early February) and planted them pretty randomly in my yard. They are still alive and thriving with inconsistent watering using only gray water from washing dishes. I think that is pretty rad. Of course my yard still looks like shit but that’s because of all the huge expanses of bare dirt between the small pockets of healthy thriving plants. 🙂 I need to plant more stuff out there.
-By contrast my food plants in the back yard aren’t doing so hot. I water them using fresh water because I have concerns about dumping that much soap on food plants. I don’t water them very consistently. oops. I did get a lot of tomatoes and they are all still alive so I feel like that was an ok first growing season of my life. 🙂
-Noah and I had a “conversation” *cough* this morning about how we each need to take responsibility for own happiness. Mostly this consisted of me being very upset about how hard I have tried to make him happy but my efforts have failed. So forget that noise. That strategy is obviously not working and it is time to try a new one. My wonderful husband managed to stay calm and collected and not bent out of shape when my tone of voice sucked. I’m so lucky to have him.
-Shanna went out back and played in her sand box for over half an hour this morning with no prompting from me. This getting bigger business is awesome.
-I keep thinking that I should track my emotions over a few months and see how it coincides with my cycle. I have been pretty upbeat and cheerful and energetic today and far more willing to put out energy in a social way than I was a few days ago when I whined about how no one loves me. I think that a complete lack of menstrual cycle was a lot of why I was in such a good mood for the whole first year of Shanna’s life. I stepped off the roller coaster and it was so nice.
-I think that the reason I feel so alienated in mom groups is because I am not there because we have much in common other than spawning. I feel like it is the worst parts of going to public school all over again. You are together with people you may or may not like for an arbitrary reason. Wow does that not work for me. I wish more of my friends would spawn. And then have the energy to be at least a little social. 😛
And now Shanna needs a nap. So I run off. 🙂
{f-locked so that it doesn’t port}
Facebook has been one long series of surprises today. This is actually really awesome. I have plans next Thursday evening with a girl I was good friends with in junior high. I spent a while messaging back and forth with another chick I knew from junior high; this is the one who introduced me to goth and vampires and all that shit. She’s now a lesbian living in London. I think that is pretty awesome. 🙂 A guy I started being friends with in junior high and it continued through high school is hitting on me. A guy that I admired a lot in high school for his brains is in grad school at UC Berkeley after graduating from Harvard and man did he get hot. He grew into his face. 🙂
And… my brother accepted my friend request. This is a HUGE deal. My brother hasn’t spoken to me in years. I get to see pictures of his kids. He has been unwilling to allow pictures to circulate in the family. I almost cried when he said yes. His kids are so big. The oldest is in fourth grade, the middle is in first, and the baby is four years old. I’ve never met the youngest and I haven’t seen the middle child since he was a few months old.
Holy crap. Ok, I’m glad I joined Facebook.
My darling husband has agreed to giving me the afternoon off so that I can go up to Folsom. I was hoping to maybe find some folks to go and be adventurous with. 🙂
Anyone interested?
It seems that all of the social traffic stuff I used to get from LJ has moved on to Facebook and Twitter. I fucking hate Twitter so that is right out. I guess I have to do Facebook. I’m not happy about this. I totally resent their policies. But it’s awfully lonely on the internet with only LJ these days. (I really need to ditch MDC so I’m not counting it.)
After writing about how upset I was with putting in all the effort I had a day where I had a bunch of stuff pre-scheduled. All of it was at my initiation (See KJB–I do try) and things went extraordinarily well. Noah and I ran around all day starting at 9:30 in the morning and not getting home until 1:30 in the morning. That is a flippin long day for us. We went from event to event. I started off the day with a major temper tantrum about stupid shit. In the midst of my temper tantrum I whacked my head on a wall and that managed to reset my mood completely. The throb demonstrated how truly ridiculous my whining was. We had a wonderful day and it was largely because I stayed upbeat and positive all day long. I really don’t want my method of self-help to become whacking my head against a wall but it was surprisingly effective.
And have I mentioned that my husband is amazingly hot? Thank you to the people who contributed to me having such a good day.
Noah’s parents sent us a box of stuff for Shanna. She loves the duck. The book is a bit over her head so it will go on the shelf for later reading. The clothes are all very adorable. There is something funny about the clothes though. They sent a mix of sizes. As in: 6/9 month, 12 month, and size 5. She wears 18 month and is rapidly heading towards 24 month. I find this kind of funny. 🙂 The too small stuff will go into the baby clothes box and Little TBD might wear it. Luckily we have a box of WAY too big stuff (started with that excellent juggling shirt from Andrew) so we can store stuff for later. 🙂 At least his parents send clothes I like unlike my mother. 🙂
I think I need to give up on having friends. My life is pretty lonely and I need to figure out how to come to terms with it because fighting against it is making me really miserable. Very few people are willing to make any effort to see me and even those people are too busy to do it often. I’m tired of being the one to put in 100% of the effort in relationships. I’m tired of trying to make new friends and having it go pretty badly. Like driving 30 minutes to south San Jose for a play date only to find that the mom I am meeting brought a friend and they sit there talking to each other…in Russian. I feel like going through a list of the things I try to do is a comedy of errors but it’s gone on long enough that I’m not laughing anymore. Scene people have dropped me completely. Shanna goes to sleep at 8/8:30 so dancing just isn’t an option. This is my life. People don’t want to visit me. I need to stop fighting it and just accept it so that maybe I can stop crying.
I have been in a flamingly bad mood lately and I don’t entirely understand why. I’m normally somewhat caustic but lately I’m being a total bitch and it’s not cool. I’m trying to monitor my tone of voice but I’m not being perfectly successful. I apologize in advance if I snap at you, I probably don’t really mean it. 🙁
I decided today that I want to have a little bit of excitement for my birthday. So, is anyone available to come over tonight for a little party? I think it will be pretty small given as it is a Thursday and extremely last minute. 🙂 I think that all food stuffs will be a variety of take out because that sounds kind of fun to me.
So uhm… can anyone come? Feel free to call/text me if you can come or leave a message here. I would love it if people aimed to arrive sometime around six but I understand if you will be a bit later than that due to work stuff.
So I’m having a hard time figuring out what is a reasonable and appropriate response to a situation in my life. This is a request for advice. 🙂
There are two couples we have been dealing with lately. Couple A involves a chick Noah has been friends with since college. Couple B involves a chick I have known since high school. The husbands in both couples are folks neither of us know as well.
Basically the first time chick in Couple A impacted my life was when she asked Noah to buy her $75 worth of vitamins a few years ago and then mail them to her. I thought this was rather bizarre and inappropriate. She was married and making ends meet–this was crossing a boundary. Noah and I went round and round about this but she never had any idea I was upset. I figured that she was across the country so I sorta let it go but if the topic came up I got pissy again.
Then Couple A moved to the bay area. Our interactions with them have been kind of weird. They both have geek social issues but they have them in a more extreme way than almost anyone I’ve ever met. They just don’t seem to be able to interact with people who are not geeks. Most of the meetups haven’t been fun for me but they haven’t really done anything wrong. But they keep doing things that set me off.
They have no respect for other peoples time. They asked us to babysit quite a while ago so they could go to a time share presentation. They said it would be a couple of hours. It turned into six hours.
I went to the museum with the moms from Couple A and Couple B and the mom from Couple A didn’t show up for 3.5 hours after she said she would be there. There was a weird amount of communication between the mom in Couple B and the dad in Couple A but no one talked to me. I wasn’t thrilled by this but I let it go. Then both members of Couple A showed up but the mom stayed in the museum and the dad was just there to pick up the mom in Couple B and they left the museum to go shopping. The only reason this was a big deal is mom from Couple B had come to the museum in my car and didn’t tell me she wasn’t leaving with me. She just up and disappeared while I was off doing a diaper change. She said, “I couldn’t find you and I had to leave.” I felt like this was pretty rude and I told her so when I talked to her later. I feel like I get to be mad when someone does that kind of thing to me. The guy in Couple A (so not the husband of the chick I am mad at) writes Noah an email asking him how is best to approach me so that he can explain that I shouldn’t be mad at my friend but instead him because she did nothing wrong and it was his fault. Noah being the smart fellow he is forwarded me the email and I took it from there. I emailed this guy and told him that when my friend is rude I get to be upset about it. He doesn’t get to get in the middle of that. But if he wants I can think he is rude too.
Couple A has asked Noah to come help them move with almost no notice and he showed up and they hadn’t packed. They expected him to basically come do all of the work for them regardless of the fact that he has a family he really ought to be spending his weekends with.
Couple A have both started talking to Noah about stuff in their lives that really aren’t that big of a deal but they make a big production about how he shouldn’t tell me anything about them. They are essentially telling him to lie to me. They are doing this about stuff that there is no way to really keep it from me forever and they really don’t matter.
We have been ostensibly going to exchange babysitting back and forth between the three families (both couples have kids) but at this point I don’t think I have any interest in doing that. If they are telling my husband to lie to me I would put money on it that they wouldn’t hesitate to tell my kid to lie to me. Granted she isn’t yet at that level of speech but it’s not far away.
I feel like the amount of drama these people have generated is pretty ridiculous given how rarely we actually interact with them. I’m feeling pretty done. But I know it isn’t exactly polite for me to tell Noah to ditch them. Can I have some advice about this? I’m really frustrated and angry.
As I was unloading the dishwasher earlier I was struck by how clear and pretty one of the containers was. It’s just a piece of plastic–normally I don’t think I actually even look at it. But it struck me suddenly as being quite beautiful.
Home Depot didn’t deliver the insulation and drywall until almost 4. This totally shot my plans of working in the garage today. Instead I got to spend almost six hours hanging out with Taylor and I got a massage. I think that is a wonderful trade. I feel so much better.
My plans for this evening are canceled due to my friend having a migraine. I’m sorry that she is feeling poorly but I’m kind of glad that Shanna and I get to hang out at home without any other distractions. She can use some mommy-time.
I guess the glass is half full today.
We are thinking about going to the Hoes Down (http://www.hoesdown.org/) hosted by the farm we get our CSA from. It looks like a lot of fun. It’s a drive up on Saturday drive back on Sunday sort of event. It would be a lot of fun to go with other folks. It is the weekend of October 3-4. We have a HUGE tent that could easily hold another two to four people in addition to us depending on how cozy we want to get. We could potentially take one more person up with us if we pack pretty light. 🙂 I’m always up for that sort of challenge.
Would anyone be interested in this?
The child I lost is named Alex. I’m not sure why, I doubt I would have given the child that name if he/she had actually been born but in all of my thoughts about him/her that’s the name the baby has. I would be 18/19 weeks pregnant right now, so not quite halfway through the pregnancy. I would be feeling movement. The early fluttering is some of the most powerful magic I have ever experienced. Feeling the creation of a Being, a Person inside me made me feel connected to the source of all life in a way I have never felt before. I’m sorry I am not experiencing that magic with Alex right now.
In some way I kind of wish that we would just hurry up and try to get pregnant so that I can bury my feelings of loss in the joy of another life but that feels wrong. In addition to Shanna deserving a full two years of milk I think that Alex kind of deserves the space in my heart and body that he/she would have had for nine months. I don’t feel critical of other people who get pregnant quickly–anything but. This grief is such that I don’t think I could possibly judge other people for how they handle it.
I’m bleeding again. I think that is why it hit me tonight. Once upon a time I greeted each monthly flow with relief, “Whoo hoo! Dodged the bullet again!” Not anymore. Now every time my body empties of blood I cry and see the loss of a person. I see the child who will never be. I can’t believe how much this hurts. I say this and know that I speak from the unbelievable privilege of having a living child. I feel desperately ashamed at my hubris and greed. I am so selfish. There are so many women in the world who would give anything to have a child–just one–and I’m crying because I had a normal menstrual cycle while using birth control. I’m sorry for being so selfish.
I miss my Alex. So I grieve. Even though I feel like I don’t really have the right I cry anyway.
When discussing blame for losing Alex my therapist said, “I knew it was your fault–I just didn’t know how.” It was really funny at the time. Every woman who loses a child feels like they are to blame. Sometimes I feel like I lost Alex because I am just not a good enough person. I didn’t deserve that child. I don’t know how to reconcile that with what I see when I look at Shanna. She is so beautiful and so perfect. How can I be a good enough person to deserve her and not a good enough person to deserve another child? But there is no deserving or not deserving in this. There is only luck of the draw and there is no such thing as fair.
Tonight I rail at fate. I want my child back.
Three years ago Noah and I ran off to stand in front of a walrus and promise each other all kinds of fun unconventional things. I’m really glad I did that.