Maybe I Should Smear Some Eye Cream On My Hands

Yesterday was my birthday. Since I am not seven, sadly, there were no ponies or piles of presents. My MIL did bring me a lovely card and my folks took me out to dinner Sunday to celebrate. And thanks to Facebook everyone I know said Happy Birthday. It was a strange day--maybe because it was a Monday. But also because my grandparents forgot and my sister forgot (I SWEAR I am not calling my sister out--heh--we all have lives people). It was just sort of strange and a non-thing.

I am mainly just weirded out because I am thirty-two. I am thirty-two years old and have a two year old. So I guess that this is real life and really happening and crap I am the adult here. A few years ago a friend of mine died (I am not linking because it will make me throw up honestly) and she was thirty-two and had a two year old. So my main goal for the year is to not drop dead at dinner with my husband and daughter. BIG GOAL.

The last year has been so strange and an adventure almost. Overall it has been amazing for me and for my family and I am ready for this stage to be over but I don't know. I feel sort of frozen. Kind of like when you were a kid and summer vacation was almost over and you didn't want to go back to school but you had done everything you wanted to do and you were sort of bored and didn't care anymore. Maybe I have the summer fuckits. Or the thirty fuckits. I will feel less frozen when I am forty?

None of this makes any sense. I am just typing typing typing.

And looking at my hands. The women in my family have some jacked up looking hands. I am pretty sure mine are going to go all crypt keeper ANY SECOND.

Benedryl Makes Me a Wee Bit Loopy

Something horrible is in the air and well it has made me swell up like the elephant man. My father swears it is blackberries and, I admit I know less than nothing about plants and how they pollinate (an aside, I absolutely loathe that moment when some one comes to my house and they ask me about various plants in my yard and PEOPLE I DO NOT KNOW IF THAT IS A CAMILLA. I feel so dumb and I should know but I don't know anything at all about flowers. It is not unlike that feeling of stupid I get when I am hosting some one from out of town and they ask me which mountain you can see from my house. I should know that. But geography is uh not my strong suit ok? If you want to talk about the cast of Glee I am your girl. What might save your pan when have scalded tomato soup on the bottom? I can help you. But on actual real information I am less than useless). So I am willing to believe my father when he says it is blackberry pollen that is melting my face off but GOD IT NEEDS TO FUCKING STOP.

I have been working my ass off the last couple of days absolutely sloshed on allergy medications. It is like having your brain drowning in molasses. With more snot.

I did a sinus rinse and the most unspeakable sludge came out. Unspeakable and yet I just spoke of it. Or typed. Let us not think about it too much. Can I recommend the sinus rinse? It is delightful and disgusting and WOW IF ONLY MY BRAIN DIDN'T FEEL LIKE MUSH.

I am also medicating with ice cream. If you do not want to be a fat ass? Do not buy the Costco box of ice cream treats. And eat them all in a week? Things that did not occur to me when I was buying the deliciousness.

The Clench

I am spinning around and around lately. There is a lot of stress happening. Some centered around the job hunt. Some financial. But mostly stress because of my own personality. I am some one who takes a worry and rubs it around in my hands. It spins and spins in my head until I can't let it go. I need structure and routine to feel comfortable so this limbo status is hard. That doesn't mean it is bad but it is hard.

The stress is making me clench my jaw again and this morning I woke up with my eye almost swollen shut and throbbing. Just another sign that I need to learn to calm the eff down.

I've been thinking a lot. About how what is right for my family is a fluid thing. Last year leaving my job was the right thing. It has been hard but it was right. And though it is hard for me to accept--going back to a corp gig isn't saying I was wrong but really just acknowledging that things have changed. And when it is hard to accept that what is right for ME, for US, can change so much no wonder all of us have a hard time grabbing hold of acceptance for other people's choices.

I feel my MIL staring at me sometimes. I know she doesn't agree with me all of the time, or even some of the time. We are very different people who were brought up very different ways and I think in a lot of ways how my husband and I live feels like a rejection to her. It isn't meant to be but it is true that we live in a very different way than she did. Or does. If you are a hippie who lived on a commune and in the mountains and then were homeless by choice it would seem really ODD that your son would get married and become a techie guy and move to the suburbs. But there it is and here we are and I wish I could just say look we don't think you were wrong (well not about everything) but we're doing something different. This is what is right for US.

Instead I just worry about it. And resent her judgement.

And clench. Always clenching.

I Miss Him

I will never forget that phone call.

My dad, early in the morning, but not too early because he didn't want to wake me up. What could I do? And he was crying, which I don't think I had ever heard before but have heard many times since. My grandpa gone. The one person that I stupidly thought could never die was dead.

The anniversary snuck up on me a bit. I have been a little crazed and wired and well maybe my freak out about not having a life was really about something else? I am stressed about looking for a job and sad about my grandma dying and all of those things but I can handle them.

My grandpa has been dead a year today. He really isn't coming back. I am an adult and I knew that, I know that, but it is like finding out again today. He is really gone. And I miss him.

I didn't see him often, not often enough that is for sure. I didn't call because I was so stupid. I didn't want to bother him. But I can still smell his old man spicy smell. I can feel how strong his hugs were. I remember him carrying me around--uh in my twenties. He was the strongest man I ever knew (I am pretty sure my father would fall over if he tried to carry me three inches). I can feel his hand on my shoulder, waking me up to have ice cream in the middle of the night. I remember his face when he told me he restored the piano for me. I can feel the heat of his lap and how he smelled like sweat and sun in the dark den during Cubs' games on summer afternoons.

I can see the cold, waxy skin in his casket too.

In Judaism the anniversary of death is called Yahrzeit and technically it is the anniversary on the Hebrew date but I lit a candle today for him. And I said the Kaddish. I hope he wouldn't mind. This is supposed to be the closing of mourning him. I don't suppose I ever will stop.

Maybe I Should Open With DON'T RUN

My husband has a life. In the past week he has gone to the movies, played in a softball tournament, played his regular softball games, gone to two MLB baseball games and tonight he is at a concert. In the past week I have gone to work and uh stayed home to watch our daughter.

I don't mind this, really. I am so glad that he hobbies and interests and he is much more fun and engaged with me when he has those outlets. But I need something too. I don't really have a pack of girlfriends I run around with. My friends are spread out--some far from me--and most of us have kids and don't really get out at night. So my husband is my main source of adult company. And when he goes out every night that means not only am I home with the kid but I have no one to talk to either.

In fact, this past weekend he was gone most of the days too.

I never want to be the one that says no, I don't think that is my place. He is an adult and can have his own time. But now this pattern has played out that I have no social life and his is more active than before we had kids. But I still feel stymied about it. It isn't easy to make close girlfriends as an adult. Most of the women I know are from work--which means geographically they are far from me. Or they are the wives of his friends--which means I don't know them well at all and we may not have much in common. Neither of these lends itself much to me just hanging out with them once in a while. And my social anxiety--and the extreme likelihood that I will be unable to make small talk like some sort of backwards social reject (which I guess is fair)--doesn't help.

I guess I am lonely more than anything else. It is strange because I have a lot of person to person contact in my work now and meet many people who I would like to be friends with. But it would be strange and unprofessional for me to ask a client if she wanted to get a drink sometime.

I will be fine--I just need to make more of an effort to be less ridiculous. I need to give in and call the other moms I know because even if they may not appreciate my sense of humor or my obsession with the Golden Girls we can still have fun.

I need to have friends like men do--where sometimes they don't even know the guys last name but they still hang out and have fun.

Man, this is when I miss being single. I used to have tons of men friends. But that all fades away when you get married--even if no one really wants it to. I guess I will just have to hang out at the park, the first mom who is nice to me and doesn't look like a crazy person I follow her home.

Wait, does that make ME the crazy person.

Saturday Night Madness

I read this horrible article tonight about how the BP spill is bringing forth a methane explosion. A methane explosion that would likely kill all of humanity in a fiery ball and also most of earth. In the next six months. And no one can do anything.

I would like to unread this article. It is causing me an endless loop of anxiety (FIERY BALL AND THE END OF HUMANITY) and depression. My life has been wasted! Oh shit my baby is going to die! I don't want my baby to die before me but I can't hope to die FIRST because she would be so scared and ALONE. And also I have done nothing to use my life in a useful or compelling matter but really what does it matter since we are all about to be ashes and toxic waste before my kid turns three. Part of me wants to hide in the closet and cry, part of me says screw it lets go to Europe and enjoy the last six months of humanity but mainly I hoping to find sweet sweet solace in denial. Denial and cowardice because what else is there?

It is nights like this that I really wish I had some sort of pharmaceutical available. Wine isn't going to cut it since I am much more likely to end up sobbing in the bathtub. And I am alone here with the baby so that seems like a bad idea. Mostly I would like to forget that article because I am just thinking "well that dinosaur that tried to warn the other dinosaurs about the Big Bang just ended up dead with the rest of them and I am sure they never thought it could happen either."

Other than that Saturday is GREAT.

**Edited to add, yes I KNOW that this is pretty much a tinfoil hat conspiracy but I am in a highly suggestible mood tonight.

The Yard

When we bought this house I didn't really understand why our realtor kept talking about the yard. J and I are not yard people. We hate doing yard work. We don't garden. We had two little dogs. A yard was wasted on us really. We just wanted somewhere the dogs could pee.

Last summer we had a patio built out in the back. Had the yard leveled. And I began to understand a little more why he was so enthusiastic about it. In some parts of the country this yard would be tiny but around here it is large. We have a view of the mountain. You can see the trainyard (this is not a feature for adults but for the preschool set it is like growing goldfish crackers on a bush out there they are very excited). The house and the trees are laid out in such a way that it is all shade in the heat of the day.

This year I get the yard.

When Mo wakes up from her nap we go outside. We take the puppy (oh did I tell you about the puppy) and go lay in the grass. We sit in chairs and have a drink. We blow bubbles. She rides her tricycle. She slides on her slide. The neighbor girl, who is the nicest child I have ever met, comes over and throws the dog a ball over and over. We pick flowers and dig in the dirt and hit baseballs and everything in my head is quiet.

My yard is covered in toys. We have eight hundred old softballs that the dog chases and rips apart. We have a toddler bat and ball and tee. We have a climber with two slides. We have a bubble bucket. We throw balls and slide and count bubbles. The world is still spinning but we're eating apple slices and chasing the dog and if I could freeze time I would. I would hit pause.

I get the yard. I love the yard. Especially since I don't do any yard work.

I Miss My Friend

When we put Buster down I felt so sad, so broken. I came home and put Darla in my lap and cried. I cried many times over the next few weeks. I talked to her and told her how much I loved him, how much I loved her, how much I missed him, how much I was sure she missed him. They had been a pack for a long time, more than nine years. That is a longer than a lot of marriages. Darla was an amazing comfort.

And after a time it didn't break my heart when I listened for him and he didn't come. And I could accept what had happened. I started to remember what he was like before he got old, before his body betrayed him. I really took the time to enjoy Darla and to remember them when they were young.

And this week Darla died.

We put her down Monday, after one of the worst nights of my life. She was in pain and we took turns sleeping on the couch and in the bed and for a while in the bathroom because she squeezed herself under the tub.

We were absolutely right to do what we did. I know that. But I feel as though some one has used an ice cream scoop to hollow my insides and then poured lemon juice on top of the wound. Then set me on fire. I feel empty and angry and oh so very devastated. It was always our joke that Buster was J's dog and Darla was mine but in part this was not a joke. I loved them both so much but it was her that slept beside me all those years, her who liked to walk with me. She was my friend.

And now she is gone.

I alternate between eating things like bacon for comfort and uh puking randomly because I hate what has happened. I hate that my daughter saw J and I leave with the dog and burst into tears because she knows we are not bringing her back. I hate that we stole her friends from her (at least from her point of view). I hate that she asked me this morning, "where's Dar Dar?"

My feelings about Heaven are complicated. Jews have no official position on it, and I think most Jews don't believe in Heaven or Hell. Of course I was raised Christian and those views are at least part of our greater consciousness. But I don't really think I believe in Heaven. Except for dogs. I do believe that dogs are good creatures who deserve more and in my vision all of the dogs from your family take care of one another and run in a big extended pack. So I told Darla to go find Buster. That he and my parents dogs Rocky, Maddy, Sarge and even Mikey and Heidi would make sure she found her way. I know that sometime yesterday she was testing her newly strong again legs and bossing them all around.

People may just go back to the earth and I feel comfortable with that. But Darla is laying in the sun where she belongs.

Love Letter To My Kindle

Part of the deal when I quit my job is that we had to cut back. We are lucky in that my husband makes a good salary but I don't know any American couple who can bail on half their income and not feel the pinch. We did many sensible things like pay down some debt before I quit and save a bit and well a lot of expenses went away immediately (like commuting and lunches out etc).

I immediately stopped doing anything fun or spending any money on myself. This is not because J asked me to or because I needed to I am just sort of crazed about money anyway. I have guilt spending it even when I had earned it myself so spending money that I hadn't earned (which uh I was still making money and my own argument makes no sense but uh neither do I ever really) just was a no go. If I had money I bought Ramona things or Jeremy things. In a year I have spent less than a hundred dollars on things like t-shirts and yoga pants and honestly I spent some gift cards for that stuff. I bought a very fancy pillow because my neck hurt and uh a few haircuts.

And books. Always books.

J, in the meantime, was more sensible. He still played in his softball leagues, still got the equipment he needed, still went out with his friends. And it was good. But when we got an unexpected and small windfall he told me that I needed a present. A good one.

I didn't know what I wanted, really I couldn't think or decide. I was like I really need clothes but gah I don't know there were lots of things I needed really but he kept urging me towards a Kindle. Oh I have been coveting one for so long. All those books in one place. Would have been a dream for commuting. And when this happened he pretty much forced me into it.

Ever since I don't want to be separated from it. I want to hold it and squeeze it and hug into little pieces. Except that would be bad since it would be broken. I have just been reading reading reading. And even better, it has led me back to Goodreads (are you on Goodreads? let me see what you are reading!) so I have been jumping around to all sorts of good books.

Right now I am reading Into Thin Air which I will not link because GOD this book. It is an accounting of a summiting of Mount Everest and . . . people who do this are crazy. More than crazy. I do not understand how they are allowed to drive cars they are so nuts. On one of the boards I read online there was this very heated defense of the parents who's teen summitted Mount Everest a couple of months ago. It was a compelling argument and I am not going to lie I was sort of convinced. But reading this I think those people are idiots! There is no way a child could have been prepared for this. And even so chances are the people up there with him have no judgement since they have been up there so many times and have permanent brain damage from the altitude. It was all very grim with hallucinations and frozen corpses.

WTF? People give me shit because I let my kid drink apple juice. This kid had to hope over a dead body to his own damn doom.

This is a strange love letter to my Kindle but not misunderstand, it is a real love.

More Sadness

My first words were "Shut up, Gramma," said when left with her for the afternoon and she chattered away at me in a playpen. At least that is family legend. My grandmother was sort of notoriously difficult, stubborn, controlling.

Notice I say was.

She died Sunday morning. Early. And, against all of our hopes, alone. She lasted a little over ten months after my grandfather, her husband of sixty-four years, died. This is what she wanted so badly. She hasn't been well, well ever, at least not as long as I have been alive. She was a childhood survivor of polio, morbidly obese and had all those attending illnesses.

I loved her. Love her. She was one of the most frustrating people I ever met. She forced herself into a life much smaller than she had to have. She spent many years shut into her own home. But she was also generous--took care of all of her in-laws' children, loved all of us so much. Her life was small but it was the one she chose.

She was a terrible cook but a gifted baker. I regret never learning to make a dozen or so types of cookies. But she lost the use of her hands again to the polio symptoms before we were all ready. And was stuck in a wheelchair before we knew it.

Their house had this smell and this unchanging look to it. Everything stayed the same. When they cleaned out the house after my grandfather died my sister put some linens into a plastic bag for me. I took a hit off the smell yesterday and cried. There is no trace of that smell with a person in the world anymore.

She loved my daughter. So much. Much more than I could really imagine since she only got to see her a couple of times. But I would write her letters about what she was doing (she liked letters more than calls because she could re-read them and then read them to her visitors) and send her pictures. She told me her great grandchildren were her only reason to live. She held on to see my cousin's daughter. I had hoped she would hold on to see my sister's son--the one named for my grandpa--but I just don't think she could.

I am honestly surprised how devastated I feel. Just sad and lonely in a way that doesn't make sense. I hope that she has peace now, whatever that is. I hope that she was right, and that she will be with my grandfather. And I hope we all make it through.

The Deal

When J and I moved in together we got a dog. To us that was what would help us be a family. And I have never really felt at home unless there was something to fart in my face and wake me up in the middle of the night to pee. Plus I really really don't like to throw table scraps away. We got Darla six months before we got married. She was a lap dog, so loving, went to work with me every day. She was also so lonely, since she was rehomed from a place with twenty other dachshunds. We got Buster for her, and for us, as a wedding gift. We've been a family for more than nine years.

When you have a dog, or any animal, you are making a deal. It is a deal that doesn't seem like a big deal AT ALL when you have a tiny squirming puppy, or even an older dog of about three. Everyone is all healthy and young and running up and down the stairs. You know this deal is happening but you are in denial.

You are in denial about the deal later, when maybe no one runs up and down the stairs anymore. Maybe everyone is just REALLY tired now. It suits your lazy lifestyle anyway.

Then one of your dogs is seriously ill. Then two. One is covered in tumors. The other gets a shot in the ass twice a day.

Then the pug starts bumping into things. He gets lost in your tiny house. He knocks over the baby because he can't see her. He drops a lot of weight, fast, even though you are watching his diet carefully. He can't get up and down the stairs to go outside and you have to carry him. Then he cries when you take him out in the front yard thinking it will be easier for him. He doesn't know where he is.

Then the deal is real. The deal is that when you bring a dog into your family you are promising to take care of that dog until the end. And you are promising that you will be brave enough to decide when that end is. You are promising to love him all weekend and maybe sneak him Doritos like he likes. You are going to let him sleep in the bed tonight even though you know he will pee in it. And then you will hold him and try not to sob and scare him when he leaves you.

Which is happening Tuesday.

That is the deal you made. You just didn't realize it would all go so damn fast.

We Will Always Have

I cannot count how many times I have thought that if I could give every woman in the world the relationship I have with my mother with their mothers that we could solve all kinds of problems in one fell swoop. It isn't like it is perfect and sometimes she makes me as crazy as can be--but my mother never criticizes my weight, my eating, my parenting or my hair. We are legitimately friends. She listens to my advice and I listen to hers. She thinks that I am smart and capable and perfect in every way. I am all too aware of how rare this is.

Sadly, I cannot give everyone this gift. In fact, my sister and mother don't have this sort of relationship. I can say with certainty that my mother loves my sister just as much as she loves me. And I don't think that she is critical of her (though I guess I don't really know). But for reasons of circumstance and personality and whatever drives family dynamics they have never got on that well. My sister has a much easier time getting along with my father--something that feels just short of mystical to me, like spoon bending. I feel like I got the lucky end of that deal but maybe she feels that way too.

I thought about this a lot last week. I was in Florida visiting my sister. She had a baby less than two months ago and I was going to see him. And to check on my sister. Take care of her a little if she would let me.

My relationship with my sister is complicated. She is a sometimes reader here so no one worry that I am shocking her with this. We have been very close at times and barely spoken at others. Our political, religious and philosophical beliefs probably could not be more different. We have very different view points of our parents. I still love her more than I can say but I do not pretend that it is always easy. Well, always easy to love, not so easy to get along.

My sister is going to be a great mother, is already a great mother. And watching her with her son all I could hope for is what I want for myself. I hope that our children grow up healthy and happy. That they always know how much we love them and give us the benefit of the doubt for our mistakes. That they always call--when they need something or just to chat. That they feel at home with us. I hope that both my daughter and my nephew will be able to look at their mothers and call us friends. Some day. After that nasty teenage period.

I also hope that my daughter never votes Republican (I hope my nephew doesn't either but I probably shouldn't admit it).

I love my sister and I know we will always have our differences. Our relationship will probably always be complicated. I wish that it wouldn't be but well as we get older we only become more of who we are. But I will always love her. And always be thankful that I got to help (even a little bit) during this time. To help her welcome her son. We will always have that.

Puke in Her Hair Would Make a Great Band Name

I am going to have to take back my last post.

My dad booked his ticket.

I am proud of him. Yet still oddly angry (my anger with my dad is only ever 50% reasonable--we have a lot of baggage). We will never talk about it so . . .that is all there is. I am glad he is going.

I am making no sense since I have been up since 5 this morning after getting something like three hours of sleep. My child puked a scary amount today. Screaming and crying and eventually there were no tears she was so dehydrated. We rushed to the doctor and fortunately they were able to give us something to make her head stop spinning around. And even luckier, she should be better soon and I won't be contagious as a carrier when I go see my sister and her new baby this weekend.

But the day was so hard. She was so sick. She puked on almost everything we own. Never, not even as a newborn, did she wear eleven outfits (in this case pajamas--we had to wash and rewear them a couple of times) in one day. She would apologize each time she threw up. She also has other digestive issues which made the day just more vivid.

I remember being sick and my mother would hold me and wipe my forehead with a cool cloth and just somehow make things better. After her medicine kicked in Mo looked at me and said, "tummy better, Mama rub tummy and tummy better."

Modern medicine deserves the credit baby but I will take. I am the one who has puke in her hair.

Cowardice

My grandmother is dying.

As in, she is in the hospital and my aunt called my dad to tell him that he should get his ass on a plane if he wants to say goodbye. He is not going, of course, ostensibly because of money or work or some other made up reason. It is really because my dad is a coward. He will talk a good game and know the right thing to do but he will come up with a lot of reasons to not do it. It is why he skipped his parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary party last May and then has been crippled with guilt since his dad died in July.

Note to everyone: if your sister, who you have a good relationship with, calls you to tell you that your mother, who you have a good relationship with, is probably not going to make it much longer you GET ON A DAMN PLANE.

I love my father and I am SO sympathetic to his fear and his worry and why he is not going. I am basically a carbon copy of his in his chicken shit ways. Except I see what this has done to him and well I just suck it up. Because he will torture himself for a long time about this instead of just going.

And apparently I am angry. So angry at him. Which is pointless and not helpful.

And I am angry that she is dying. She is very old, yes. And very sick. But much of it is very much self inflicted and her behavior wore my grandfather out and basically killed him and THEN AFTER ALL OF THIS she is finally getting the help that she needs. She is taking pleasure in the small things and just loving her family and appreciating what is left and NOW, now she dies.

Things often just work out in a cruel way.

If you had asked me yesterday if I was prepared for my grandmother to die I would have said yes. But I was just crying about it in the shower two hours ago so apparently that preparation only goes so far.

Hopefully I will stop being pissed at my dad soon enough to avoid screaming all of this at him on the phone tomorrow. It's been a while since he and I have fought and it is much better for both of us. He just needs to get on the damn plane.

Jobhunting While Losing Your Damn Mind

I was with my last employer for eight years. The irony is that before that I worked for a series of start ups and strange employers--none of whom lasted more than a couple of months. My resume would take reams of paper to print and trying to explain it all made me sound crazy. "Oh, that was the place that had heroin junkies on the front porch each morning" "Oh! I quit when my boss urinated on my desk." "Oh, that place was brought down by the affair a managing partner had with our banker--I testified in his divorce."

It was not good.

I went to Former Employer because I needed to be somewhere a year. I needed to pay my bills and keep my head down and not be threatened by a Black Panther/drug dealer who wanted to barter cocaine for his kid's school tuition.

Eight years later Former Employer had become a career but also ground me down to a little nub.

But I didn't have to interview anywhere for a long time. I mean I did interview occasionally--never doing well because it is hard to sell yourself when you are really not sure why you would leave your job anyway. It doesn't work. I realize that those interviews (I think maybe three in eight years) did me a disservice because they made me afraid of interviewing.

Yesterday I had an interview for a regular job. One of those epic all day meet everyone in the building interviews. I spent the week between the phone interview and the in person one freaking out about what to wear and did I want to do this at all. And wondering if I should just cancel. I got stress acne and bought new pants and was really really freaked out by the whole thing. And then I went to the interview and it went good. I think. I guess I am not a good judge. But the people were amazing and the job is perfect and I am fairly certain the money would be great. So now I want the job and I keep rolling it around in my head. It will be at least a week before I hear and I might not get it and the stress of it all is killing me.

So don't worry about me. I am stress eating cookies and yanking on my hair. I suspect I will be here a while.

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.

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.

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.

Jawbreaker

Last week a couple of my teeth started feeling sore and loose. Because of my chronic health problems my teeth are held together with smoke and mirrors so this was not stunning. But it seemed odd that it was these teeth since they had never had problems. And why so suddenly? And why did ibuprofen do nothing when it would usually help a bit?

Then came shooting pains into those teeth. And my jaw. And my brain. AND MY SOUL. Crippling pain. Pain that made my eyes water. After the drama last year I still haven't replaced my dentist and I kept cursing myself.

Late night pain leads to googling (at least for me, do you other people do something else) and I figured out that oh it wasn't my teeth it was my jaw. And it was muscle spasms probably caused by TMJ syndrome. In a weird way I am lucky, I treat people with TMJ all the time so I started doing self massage and oh it hurt and it helped for a while but it would just hurt again after half an hour.

Saturday my parents took the kiddo because J and I were going to a Presidents of the United States concert. I was taking a lot of ibuprofen and using (this is sad) aspercream and it helped a bit and the massage would work. But I was pitiful. But I didn't want to stay home. Do you know how often I get out people? NEVER. I never go out. I never socialize with adults. And I wasn't going to have to get up with the child in the morning.

After watching me wince every time I moved J does what he always does--made my healthcare decisions for me, "Babe, you are going to drink the pain away."

I really wasn't going to. But even though the doors opened at eight, the PUSA didn't go on until ELEVEN. I don't ever stay up to eleven. And they threw us out of the adjoining bar three minutes after we got new drinks (and the bartender was not skimping though at downtown prices he shouldn't be). So basically I don't drink anymore and I did the equivalent of like five shots in fifteen minutes?

I did not feel pain and J was driving and the show was brilliant. We had a grand time with our friends and indulged in Dick's deluxes on the way home and then passed out COLD at home.

Best yet, we both got to sleep in until ten the next morning.

Sadly, the pain was back and getting worse (which is weird for muscle spasms) so off to the doctor I went Monday. Diagnosis was TMJ as expected. My mouth wouldn't open far enough but he guess that my jaw was dislocated slightly. He gave me muscle relaxers and steroids (no pain pills sadly, tweakers ruin everything). And the chiro I worked for tried to adjust it.

Y'all. This is crazy soul sucking pain. My face is bruised and swollen. It's getting better but not like BETTER. Tomorrow, I will go for another adjustment but in the meantime I am on a soft foods diet and whining a lot.

If you hear any weird grinding noises from this northwest corner of the country--no worries. It is just my jaw.

Yes, Anything With Sour Cream

When I was pregnant I would think idly of a tasty food, let it roll around in my brain for a while, until it became an obsession. The world would end unless I got a fried fish sandwich from Emmet Watson's or bacon and corn chowder or oatmeal scotchie cookies. Nothing else would taste right until I had procured that food. And it had to be fast.

I would blame the hormones but I am doing that again. Except it really isn't eating the food. It is cooking.

I have long cruised recipe sites. I am always looking for something tasty to make. And J is trying (succeeding) to lose weight so even though he isn't dieting I am trying to find more tasty chicken dishes to make. And I will come upon something that looks good and I cannot stop thinking about it. Sometimes it isn't really appropriate--like it is a huge meal or something fancy or whatever--but it is like my Lizard Brain cannot let go. I just keep coming back to that item and feel compelled to make it.

I always liked cooking, and really love to make something that other people enjoy. When I worked crazy hours I just didn't have the time for it. We relied on the broiler and canned vegetables and honestly it was probably healthier overall. But now! Braised meats and stews and something wondrous done with chicken thighs. Roasted vegetables with sea salt. Burritos with two kinds of beans and spinach. Anything involving sour cream (he isn't dieting!).

I hardly recognize myself.

Except the weird obsessions. That feels very familiar.