For one who’s been finding her truest voice in the keyboard of late, I’ve been awfully silent the past week. I’ve been in a world of hurt. It was either a rib poking out of my chest wall or referred pain from an undiagnosed cervical disk problem, or a complex intersection of both with a little neck/upper back/shoulder girdle de-stabilization thrown in for laughs. At any rate, it hurt. Every time I took a deep breath it felt like someone stabbed me in the chest with an ice pick. And sometimes my hands went all numb and tingly.
In my typically more-geek-than-jock fashion, the injury came more from writing about karate than from doing karate. (A client who blew his knee out on the slopes last winter deadpanned, “I never write about skiing.”) It’s a classic keyboarding injury for me and one I saw coming when it was just a teensy light at the end of the tunnel the weekend before last. That’s when I settled myself into the inadequate desk chair, in front of the too-high folding table, to type non-stop against a pressing deadline. I knew I was strapping myself onto the tracks but I couldn’t help myself—the passion to write and the pressure of the deadline were too great.
So for a long while there was that stabbing pain; now I’m rationing my keyboard time and I’m on the bench at karate. But that wasn’t even the fun part. The pain—or perhaps the lack of oxygen to my brain because it hurt too much to breathe—scrambled my ability to think more than one step ahead of myself. It was like a crash course in mindfulness. I couldn’t organize myself well enough to think of the future or remember the past. My to-do list became rudimentary. “Snack, shower, Tylenol” I wrote one day. Those are the kinds of things that usually don’t even make it on to the list, I just do them—but suddenly they were the main event.
As I was navigating through the pain-haze, Birth Pie reminded me that I was confused because pain had shot my brain’s Executive Function to hell. Birth Pie is a trained doula so she knows something about pain and its effect on intellect and personality. But the real reason Birth Pie was tuned in to Executive Function, and lack thereof, was that hers was shot to hell too. She’s been missing a lot of sleep because of sick kids, and holding stress on behalf of her family in the way of all mamas.
This was mildly alarming because I tend to think of Birth Pie as my other wife. (If you’re the type of person who finds it odd or offensive that a nice girl like me has a wife to begin with, you’re reading the wrong blog. No hard feelings—please move along.)
But this isn’t about Sweetiebabyhoneylicious, my crabby old honeybunch. This is about Birth Pie without whom I could run neither my business nor my home. I’ve heard that other women have taken on parenthood without having a woman friend like this, but I wouldn’t want to try it. I’ve also heard that other women have sisters and mamas and aunties and cousins who play this kind of role—babysitting back and forth without keeping score, washing each other’s dishes, making casseroles. My family is too far away and they probably would balk at that kind of intimacy anyway. We just don’t do that.
The last time my Executive Function took a gainer due to illness, back in October, Birth Pie came over and made me some to-do lists. “Call clients—cancel appointments, ‘So sorry,’” reads one. Another: “Read a poem. Hug your kid. Drink tea.” Then she washed all my dishes and sent her husband over to the school to pick up all the kids. The last time illness hijacked her Executive Function on an overnight flight from the west coast, I let myself into her house to steal her phone list and organized a week of meals to be delivered.
So last Tuesday when she mentioned that she still had dirty dishes from Sunday, it occurred to me to go over and wash them—but the impulse was vanquished by the next ice pick to my clavicle. And somewhere between the next few punctures I realized that things could get bad, very bad, if one of us did not shape up soon. On Wednesday the two of us had trouble herding four kids home from school, and that is a not a bad ratio—but one kept dropping his book, one kept lagging behind, and one kept running ahead to look for a puppy. It was only a matter of time before they realized that we were not on our game, and then all hell would break loose.
Except it didn’t. Two chiropractors worked some magic, and I rested all weekend, and no more stabbing. It’s more like someone poking their index finger into my chest, and while that makes me irritable and I’d like to punch whoever is poking me, I can think again. Birth Pie’s less stressed in general, although she still has some stuff on her mind, but when she stopped by on Monday I had time and breath to listen to her and offer some council. On Tuesday she brought me a pork chop. Things are back to normal, and not a moment too soon.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Nausea
Warning: Contains copious vomit.
A triumphant cry rang through our house last night: “There was something heavy in my body and it was the throw-up!”
And the entire family reveled in a mass of shimmering red vomit in our downstairs sink.
Now, a normal person—by which I mean, a person without children—would not celebrate a sink full of vomit. But any parent will understand why we were celebrating: because the vomit was not in so many other places it could have been. And has been, as recently as December.
Such as: in my hair, down my back, inside my ear or dripping down the inside of my collar.
What’s even more astonishing is the fact that the December bout of projectile repulsiveness marked its own tremendous milestone. It was the first time in five years of motherhood that I employed my lightning-fast black belt reflexes to remove my child from her bed before she spewed all over it.
I’m not sure if you can call reflexes lightning-fast if they’ve taken over five years to kick in. But I was pretty damned proud that, in the middle of the night, I was able to recognize the green glow about my baby’s face and the vacant, glassy stare in her eyes. With a ninja’s speed I lifted her from the mountainous, if machine-washable, caress of sheets, blankets, pillows and comforters, fully clear of the no-longer rubber-sheeted mattress, so that her stomach contents could land squarely on the wood floor—and the back of my head.
A midnight shower is so much easier than three loads of laundry, agreed?
A triumphant cry rang through our house last night: “There was something heavy in my body and it was the throw-up!”
And the entire family reveled in a mass of shimmering red vomit in our downstairs sink.
Now, a normal person—by which I mean, a person without children—would not celebrate a sink full of vomit. But any parent will understand why we were celebrating: because the vomit was not in so many other places it could have been. And has been, as recently as December.
Such as: in my hair, down my back, inside my ear or dripping down the inside of my collar.
What’s even more astonishing is the fact that the December bout of projectile repulsiveness marked its own tremendous milestone. It was the first time in five years of motherhood that I employed my lightning-fast black belt reflexes to remove my child from her bed before she spewed all over it.
I’m not sure if you can call reflexes lightning-fast if they’ve taken over five years to kick in. But I was pretty damned proud that, in the middle of the night, I was able to recognize the green glow about my baby’s face and the vacant, glassy stare in her eyes. With a ninja’s speed I lifted her from the mountainous, if machine-washable, caress of sheets, blankets, pillows and comforters, fully clear of the no-longer rubber-sheeted mattress, so that her stomach contents could land squarely on the wood floor—and the back of my head.
A midnight shower is so much easier than three loads of laundry, agreed?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Little Miss Sunshine
You know when someone starts a sentence, “I’m not a feminist, but…” and ends it by telling you how sexual harassment sucks or women should get equal pay for equal work?
I hate that.
So I started to get nervous when I heard myself saying, on more than a few occasions, “I’m not a Pollyanna, but…”
It really is beyond comprehension that I could be a Pollyanna. For one thing, I am evil. (Evil, I tell you!) I have a very dark sense of humor and an equally bad attitude.
But someone I met less than six months ago has commented repeatedly on how colorful I am—my clothes, my purses, my scarves and coats and socks. And she’s not wrong—those things are usually bright green with dark red and orange and sometimes even pink and purple thrown in for good measure. And I don’t just go with one bright thing, I slap on multiple layers. I’ve decided not to worry about whether things match, I just pick colors with strong personalities and expect them to stand up for themselves in the mix.
There’s always a chance that the result might be clownish. At the very least, it is colorful.
But that’s not how I think of myself. For the twelve years I lived in New York City everything I wore was black. Black suit, black hose, black shoes, black bag, black coat. Like everyone else in New York I looked like I was on my way to a funeral every day. A little depressing, but coordinating was never an issue.
The other day I was shopping for work clothes—which these days means workout clothes—and I tried on a hot pair of black wide leg leggings with a matching hoodie jacket. They had a great cut; even the jacket was very fitted with darts in just the right spot. It was the first time I had seen myself in all black in a very long time and I was struck by how strange I looked there in the fluorescent light. Thin, pale and strange.
I am confused. It is now strange for me to look thin, pale and mournful? I expect myself to look bright, cheery and colorful? Who do I think I’m looking at in the mirror anyway?
I felt a frisson of identification when I read Judith Warner's blog about mindfulness last week. She’s worried that mindfulness and calm, centered presence will replace snarkiness in herself and her friends. Me too.
My Pollyanna disclaimer always precedes a recommendation to see the glass as half full. I’m usually talking to a client who has made progress towards a goal but become stuck looking at the distance left to go. “Look how far you’ve come!” I exhort, smiling maniacally, jabbing at my clip-board for emphasis. “From where you’ve started, this is incredible progress! You need to celebrate!”
That’s when I give them a sticker.
It wasn’t that long ago that I got a smack-down on my own tendency to blow right through accomplishments without acknowledging them. That’s why I’ve scheduled a Gratitude and Abundance party for myself, to celebrate the business successes I had last year.
It’s scheduled for April 10—just before I have to pay the taxes on all that success.
Maybe it’s not impossible to be dark and sunny all at the same time.
I hate that.
So I started to get nervous when I heard myself saying, on more than a few occasions, “I’m not a Pollyanna, but…”
It really is beyond comprehension that I could be a Pollyanna. For one thing, I am evil. (Evil, I tell you!) I have a very dark sense of humor and an equally bad attitude.
But someone I met less than six months ago has commented repeatedly on how colorful I am—my clothes, my purses, my scarves and coats and socks. And she’s not wrong—those things are usually bright green with dark red and orange and sometimes even pink and purple thrown in for good measure. And I don’t just go with one bright thing, I slap on multiple layers. I’ve decided not to worry about whether things match, I just pick colors with strong personalities and expect them to stand up for themselves in the mix.
There’s always a chance that the result might be clownish. At the very least, it is colorful.
But that’s not how I think of myself. For the twelve years I lived in New York City everything I wore was black. Black suit, black hose, black shoes, black bag, black coat. Like everyone else in New York I looked like I was on my way to a funeral every day. A little depressing, but coordinating was never an issue.
The other day I was shopping for work clothes—which these days means workout clothes—and I tried on a hot pair of black wide leg leggings with a matching hoodie jacket. They had a great cut; even the jacket was very fitted with darts in just the right spot. It was the first time I had seen myself in all black in a very long time and I was struck by how strange I looked there in the fluorescent light. Thin, pale and strange.
I am confused. It is now strange for me to look thin, pale and mournful? I expect myself to look bright, cheery and colorful? Who do I think I’m looking at in the mirror anyway?
I felt a frisson of identification when I read Judith Warner's blog about mindfulness last week. She’s worried that mindfulness and calm, centered presence will replace snarkiness in herself and her friends. Me too.
My Pollyanna disclaimer always precedes a recommendation to see the glass as half full. I’m usually talking to a client who has made progress towards a goal but become stuck looking at the distance left to go. “Look how far you’ve come!” I exhort, smiling maniacally, jabbing at my clip-board for emphasis. “From where you’ve started, this is incredible progress! You need to celebrate!”
That’s when I give them a sticker.
It wasn’t that long ago that I got a smack-down on my own tendency to blow right through accomplishments without acknowledging them. That’s why I’ve scheduled a Gratitude and Abundance party for myself, to celebrate the business successes I had last year.
It’s scheduled for April 10—just before I have to pay the taxes on all that success.
Maybe it’s not impossible to be dark and sunny all at the same time.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Infested
Warning: Contains violent creature death.
“Welcome to the House of Vermin.”
When she greeted me with these words I knew Sweetiebabyhoneylicious was talking about the mice that have plagued this old house since September. The moths that ride in on my bulk goods from Whole Foods aren’t scheduled to return until July.
We’ve had three go-rounds with the mice in the past six months and I’ve lost every round. I favor the snap traps, especially after trying one of those new-fangled ones that looks like a chip-clip. It did a great job trapping a mouse but couldn’t quite close the deal. Thrashing desperately, the mouse was forced into a plastic bag and removed to an undisclosed location to be terminated in hand-to-paw combat. Small was mesmerized by the proceedings. We’re making double-deposits into her therapy fund right now.
Need I mention that it was not the black belt, ass-kicking mama who did the extermination?
The cycle went like this: find mouse droppings in some drawer with 5 gazillion cooking utensils in it. Wash everything with bleach. Find a temporary home for 5 gazillion things. Place mousetraps. Wait. Wait. Wait. Finally catch some mice. Discard dead mice. Clean area with bleach. Return cleaned items to cleaned area. Find mice droppings again, in the same or different location. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
I got some questionable advice from my friends, “How about a cat?” being most prevalent. The idiot feline who lives here didn’t get really excited about the mice until we caught one in a snap trap. He grabbed that sucker and ran through the house with it in his jaw, trap and all, Sweetiebabyhoneylicious limping behind him, Mama screaming in horror, Small transfixed with delight.
We are now accepting donations to the therapy fund.
Peppermint was suggested as a deterrent which yielded a very minty, mousey house. I can now attest to the aromatherapy effect of peppermint: I was dramatically more alert during my at-home work hours during the days of the Peppermint Offensive.
Someone recommended plugging up all holes larger than a pencil eraser, a Sisyphean undertaking in a place that is more holes than house.
I was also advised to find a way to live in harmony with the mice such as asking them during my morning meditation to stop pooping on my things. After all, I don’t poop on their things.
Nice to know: mice are immune to meditation.
It was also suggested that I poop on their things. Since they seem to think my things are their things, this advice just seemed mean.
Now I’ve declared all-out war on the mice. Instead of going drawer by drawer, I’ve removed most of the contents of my kitchen to the dining room and the porch. Boxes and bags of groceries, entire drawers pulled out of my kitchen cabinets. I’ve laid down baking soda throughout the cabinets to more easily track the signs of mouse activity and baited ten traps—including the one we had forgotten about from the last time, which lay gnawed and un-sprung in the back of a cabinet.
Good kitchen design is apparently based upon the triangle between the sink, refrigerator and stove. You should move efficiently between these three appliances and find all the essentials along the way. My triangle now detours into two other rooms and requires stacking and un-stacking towers of unreasonably heavy wooden drawers.
It’s not like I’ve had much cooking to do in the three weeks during which I’ve been awaiting the mouse apocalypse. Just a few church dinners for ten, a casserole for Birth Pie and Dr. Isaac when they flew back from Israel—and breakfast, lunch and dinner for the family every day.
The fat-hating fitness rags tell me that all this extra walking is a good thing. They call it “planned inefficiency”—working extra steps into your day to burn every calorie you can. If inefficiency was a weight loss method every mama alive would be thin as a rail and mamas with more than one kid would be in serious danger of wasting away. Nothing reduces your efficiency like a child.
In the words of my own mama, “It’s like eighteen years of constant interruption.”
Needless to say, the mice are nonplused by the assault. There’ s been no sign of them whatsoever since the contents of the kitchen were relocated. Small checked a favorite rodent hang-out the other morning; the vestigial built-in cutting board (circa 1945):
“Nobody’s pooping in here!” She chirped. “There’s a lot less mouse restrooms in our house than there used to be.”
In the absence of the mice two other infestations have taken over the homestead or more precisely, Small’s vivid and bizarre imagination.
Small cultivated the presence of fairies by establishing a fairy hotel in her bedroom closet. She posted a sign which went unread by human eyes until it fell into her hamper and I found it while doing the laundry:
“Welcome to the House of Vermin.”
When she greeted me with these words I knew Sweetiebabyhoneylicious was talking about the mice that have plagued this old house since September. The moths that ride in on my bulk goods from Whole Foods aren’t scheduled to return until July.
We’ve had three go-rounds with the mice in the past six months and I’ve lost every round. I favor the snap traps, especially after trying one of those new-fangled ones that looks like a chip-clip. It did a great job trapping a mouse but couldn’t quite close the deal. Thrashing desperately, the mouse was forced into a plastic bag and removed to an undisclosed location to be terminated in hand-to-paw combat. Small was mesmerized by the proceedings. We’re making double-deposits into her therapy fund right now.
Need I mention that it was not the black belt, ass-kicking mama who did the extermination?
The cycle went like this: find mouse droppings in some drawer with 5 gazillion cooking utensils in it. Wash everything with bleach. Find a temporary home for 5 gazillion things. Place mousetraps. Wait. Wait. Wait. Finally catch some mice. Discard dead mice. Clean area with bleach. Return cleaned items to cleaned area. Find mice droppings again, in the same or different location. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
I got some questionable advice from my friends, “How about a cat?” being most prevalent. The idiot feline who lives here didn’t get really excited about the mice until we caught one in a snap trap. He grabbed that sucker and ran through the house with it in his jaw, trap and all, Sweetiebabyhoneylicious limping behind him, Mama screaming in horror, Small transfixed with delight.
We are now accepting donations to the therapy fund.
Peppermint was suggested as a deterrent which yielded a very minty, mousey house. I can now attest to the aromatherapy effect of peppermint: I was dramatically more alert during my at-home work hours during the days of the Peppermint Offensive.
Someone recommended plugging up all holes larger than a pencil eraser, a Sisyphean undertaking in a place that is more holes than house.
I was also advised to find a way to live in harmony with the mice such as asking them during my morning meditation to stop pooping on my things. After all, I don’t poop on their things.
Nice to know: mice are immune to meditation.
It was also suggested that I poop on their things. Since they seem to think my things are their things, this advice just seemed mean.
Now I’ve declared all-out war on the mice. Instead of going drawer by drawer, I’ve removed most of the contents of my kitchen to the dining room and the porch. Boxes and bags of groceries, entire drawers pulled out of my kitchen cabinets. I’ve laid down baking soda throughout the cabinets to more easily track the signs of mouse activity and baited ten traps—including the one we had forgotten about from the last time, which lay gnawed and un-sprung in the back of a cabinet.
Good kitchen design is apparently based upon the triangle between the sink, refrigerator and stove. You should move efficiently between these three appliances and find all the essentials along the way. My triangle now detours into two other rooms and requires stacking and un-stacking towers of unreasonably heavy wooden drawers.
It’s not like I’ve had much cooking to do in the three weeks during which I’ve been awaiting the mouse apocalypse. Just a few church dinners for ten, a casserole for Birth Pie and Dr. Isaac when they flew back from Israel—and breakfast, lunch and dinner for the family every day.
The fat-hating fitness rags tell me that all this extra walking is a good thing. They call it “planned inefficiency”—working extra steps into your day to burn every calorie you can. If inefficiency was a weight loss method every mama alive would be thin as a rail and mamas with more than one kid would be in serious danger of wasting away. Nothing reduces your efficiency like a child.
In the words of my own mama, “It’s like eighteen years of constant interruption.”
Needless to say, the mice are nonplused by the assault. There’ s been no sign of them whatsoever since the contents of the kitchen were relocated. Small checked a favorite rodent hang-out the other morning; the vestigial built-in cutting board (circa 1945):
“Nobody’s pooping in here!” She chirped. “There’s a lot less mouse restrooms in our house than there used to be.”
In the absence of the mice two other infestations have taken over the homestead or more precisely, Small’s vivid and bizarre imagination.
Small cultivated the presence of fairies by establishing a fairy hotel in her bedroom closet. She posted a sign which went unread by human eyes until it fell into her hamper and I found it while doing the laundry:
Mide-niute to mid-niute 1 Farie 1 wish.
By the time I saw the sign I had been made aware of its presence and purpose.
“The fairies aren’t paying. They’re staying in the hotel and they’re not giving me any wishes.”
I’m not sure where Small gets this but when she’s indignant she’s a little bit unclear. Sweetiebabyhoneylicious and I are always calm and reasonable when we’re pissed off beyond belief, but Small sometimes doesn’t make complete sense when she’s angry. That must have been why I did not absorb the gravity of the situation. Or maybe I was just too committed to the rodent campaign to take on the Case of the Fly-By-Night Fairies.
It wasn’t until several more days of non-payment had occurred that we got to the bottom of things, and then only because Small staged a total melt-down at the door of the school when I dropped her off. She cried mercilessly and had to be pried off of my body so a teacher could drag her into the classroom. This is completely uncharacteristic behavior.
That was Friday morning. Friday is my day off. I had a massage scheduled. I was going to the grocery store with my I-pod to listen to Dick Gordon interview someone smart and fascinating and over 30 while filling my cart with non-talking items. If I played it right, no one would talk to me for several hours. I was a stay-at-home mom to the world’s wordiest child for five years. I could hear nothing but the sound of my own thoughts for the rest of my life and it would not erase the constant verbal contact of the last five years. So what if there was sobbing now? Silence was coming: beautiful, solitary silence.
A better mom would have been distressed to wrench her weeping child off her body at the schoolhouse door, but I frankly didn’t give it another thought. For one thing, I believe the teachers when they say the crying kids are fine the minute the (usually crying) mama is out of their sight. For another thing, I really trust Small’s teachers. They’ve got her number and they delight in kindergarteners. They are really much more qualified than I to figure out what the heck was going on.
Besides, I had that massage.
I stood at the end of the driveway chatting with Birth Pie about the trip to Israel and her kids’ precious mix of anxiety and resilience until it was time to go. When I went inside there was a message from Small’s teacher calling so I wouldn’t worry about the upset.
Me, worry?
In fifteen minutes Miss Chris had discovered the source of Small’s distress and the apparent cause of the fairies’ delinquency. Small was heartbroken that the fairies were not leaving wishes, but Miss Chris reasoned that it must be an infestation of Brownies that are interfering with the Fairy Hotel. The Brownies, known for their mischievous ways, are either stealing the wishes or tricking the Fairies into not paying.
So Small spent the weekend building a Brownie trap with its own seductive signage:
That was Friday morning. Friday is my day off. I had a massage scheduled. I was going to the grocery store with my I-pod to listen to Dick Gordon interview someone smart and fascinating and over 30 while filling my cart with non-talking items. If I played it right, no one would talk to me for several hours. I was a stay-at-home mom to the world’s wordiest child for five years. I could hear nothing but the sound of my own thoughts for the rest of my life and it would not erase the constant verbal contact of the last five years. So what if there was sobbing now? Silence was coming: beautiful, solitary silence.
A better mom would have been distressed to wrench her weeping child off her body at the schoolhouse door, but I frankly didn’t give it another thought. For one thing, I believe the teachers when they say the crying kids are fine the minute the (usually crying) mama is out of their sight. For another thing, I really trust Small’s teachers. They’ve got her number and they delight in kindergarteners. They are really much more qualified than I to figure out what the heck was going on.
Besides, I had that massage.
I stood at the end of the driveway chatting with Birth Pie about the trip to Israel and her kids’ precious mix of anxiety and resilience until it was time to go. When I went inside there was a message from Small’s teacher calling so I wouldn’t worry about the upset.
Me, worry?
In fifteen minutes Miss Chris had discovered the source of Small’s distress and the apparent cause of the fairies’ delinquency. Small was heartbroken that the fairies were not leaving wishes, but Miss Chris reasoned that it must be an infestation of Brownies that are interfering with the Fairy Hotel. The Brownies, known for their mischievous ways, are either stealing the wishes or tricking the Fairies into not paying.
So Small spent the weekend building a Brownie trap with its own seductive signage:
Broney Hotel. Wanny come inside? Broney speshel.
It’s not quite finished but the design calls for a row of clothespins disguised as beds that will snap those Brownies up so we can discard them in a far-away place.
She wants us to pick somewhere where we’re sure they will die.
Keep those checks coming, folks.
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