Tuesday, March 30, 2010

No This Is Not About Golden Showers

The Jewish holidays just suck for J and I. Since we converted we have nowhere to go and no family traditions to follow. We just sort of wallow around and don't know what to do. Passover is the worst of these since it involves a big dietary change and somehow I am in charge of this even for J even though he is a DAMN ADULT and HOLY RUN ON SENTENCE BATMAN.

Anyway, J ends up not eating because life without toast or canned spaghetti or tortillas with processed cheese and ketchup is not worth living. And I run around trying to get him to put refried beans on matzoh and it is all really depressing and sad really.

What I am saying is that we need a Jewish grandmother STAT.

Next year I think I am going to suck it up and have our own Seder and just try to bully our non-Jewish friends into coming. WE WILL HAVE WINE.

In other news all I have done for weeks is clean up pee. Buster has been peeing on everything and everyone. Buckets and buckets of pee. I have steam cleaned our floors so many times that my pores are SPOTLESS. I have washed every sheet and towel in this house dozens of times. IT IS A LOT OF PEE. We kept trying to make it into a behavior issue but really something was very wrong. He lost tons of weight. He wouldn't move around. He didn't eat. And he is diabetic. So now we are giving him shots twice a day and well still cleaning up pee because the dose is not right yet.

I am not potty training the kid until this is over. I can only deal with so much urine.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Not Like Her Mama

Remember when you were a kid and you would spin in a circle? You (or me) would spin and spin and spin until you felt almost high from it all. You stop spinning but you couldn't really stop spinning and you would feel dizzy and excited and then eventually sick and then crash into a cabinet and bust your face?

Not a universal experience?

I feel like that right now. I can't focus, my emotions fly up and crash down so quickly I have whiplash, my natural anxiety is cranked up to eleven and the guilt is crushing me under it's weight. The good times are amazing, the kind you want to keep in your pocket so you can just rub your hands on them when things are dark. But the bad times send me deep into a diet coke can and wishing that I still smoked.

I remember now how anxious my mother was with us when we were small. How much she worried about us and how we felt and what we ate and was anyone mean to us at school? She has a crease on her forehead from the year we both got perms I think. And definitely a wrinkle from the one time I got home very late. She was sobbing so hard I was never ever late again. I understand now how some one with her worrying nature (my worrying nature too) could be turned inside out and flayed by motherhood. And how it never goes away. I am thirty one years old and my mother worries about me constantly. I wish I could go back to the year I started kindergarten and couldn't skip and my mother mind-fucked whether I was too young and should they have held me back, I wish I could go back and hold her hand. I wish I could tell her not to worry--her girls would grow up and get married and buy houses and pay their taxes and have their own babies giving you two more people to worry about.

It is the circle of life yo.

I would like very much for some one to hold my hand. J is wonderful and perfect in many ways and actually a comfort but he is not a natural worrier. He worries about how we are going to pay for an Ivy league college in case she gets in but he doesn't understand my anxiety. It isn't how his brain is wired (which is a damn good thing because two people like this would have nervous breakdowns and need to be monitored around the clock like those temperamental pandas in the zoo). He doesn't really understand, he thinks I can just stop.

I would like to know that we will be fine. That I haven't damaged my professional life beyond repair. That some day I will make actual money again. That I haven't doomed us to poverty FOREVER. I would like to know that my daughter will understand that I am doing this for her but also for me. That her mother is a person because I really want her to grow up to be a person too, and a mama if she wants to be. And I would like to know that one day she will look at my very rumpled face (because worriers do not age well) and wish that she could go back in time and hold my hand.

Also I hope that she is different than me. I hope she is brave.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

BAH FEBRUARY

I would like a re-do of February. First my jaw locked up and turned me into a sobbing mess of pain and then I woke up on our ninth wedding anniversary with a high fever and an anvil sitting on my chest. It's been over two weeks and I am still hacking away like a TB patient.

The child was sick and my MIL was sick and I suspect I got it worst of all because of the steroids I took for my TMJ. It knocks out your immune system and well BAM.

Other personal crap has happened--shit that is boring to everyone but me--but the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a failure and so guilty and GAH I still feel crushed by that too.

Today I found out my best friend's father has died. I am so heartbroken I cannot even write it out. I hurt for her, for her mother, for all of his children and grandchildren and for all of us that were lucky enough to know him. And I felt that rush of shit to the heart that everyone with father's over sixty feel. My dad has high blood pressure and is having problem with shortness of breath and seriously I am hyperventilating about it. Of course her dad, despite having health problems, died in an accident. So let me worry more.

I need everyone I love to stay alive because I am emotionally ill equipped to deal. I know this is impossible and yet I know that is the only way I will be ok.

Give your dad a big hug if you can. I know I did.