Heartbreak

Today was Elizabeth's first day of middle school. I think I was more anxious than she was. I spent most of the night last night worrying about her day...would she get lost? Would she be able to open her locker? How will she know where to go? What if she gets bullied? What if she goofs off in class?

I imagined her having this wonderful send off from home...she would get up and get ready, nervous but excited. Giggling a little bit in the oh so grating ways that middle schoolers can. She has had her outfit picked out for a while now. God forbid that she show up to school looking anything but her best cause you know, the WORLD might END if that happened! (My first day of middle school...God, I probably threw on the first thing I came across and maybe slapped my hair into a pony tail. I get the feeling that Elizabeth's middle school experience will be markedly different from mine...) She elected to ride to school with a friend today...why I don't know because tomorrow she will have to get on the bus and figure that out! Way to spread out the stress there, kiddo...but maybe that is not stressful to her. It sure as hell is to me.

Anyways, I had this image in my head of how things would go for her...the way they were supposed to go. It was going to be so perfect, her send off, and she would go to school and have this wonderful day and life would be all pissing sunshine and farting rainbows. The reality is, not so much.

She got to bed late last night. She did not wake up when her alarm went off. At 5:30 AM. Which then woke me up. And I am not a morning person. I am an epic-not-morning-person, if you are into the over-usage of epic. Luckily a bit of sense prevailed over me and I just went up to her room and shook her awake. Luckily for her, it did not wake Alexis up :p The rest of the morning went ok...I got up, worked out, lifted some. Got Alexis breakfast, got her dressed, etc. Took a pic of my big girl middle schooler. Her ride arrived.

Now school starts at 7:30, and they needed to be there by 7:24 for when the doors opened. I get a call at 7:10. "Mom, my agenda! I forgot my agenda! You never gave it back to me!"

OMG, I saw red. I had in fact given it back to her, with the repeated admonishment to "Put this in your bookbag." I had given it to her at the same time I gave her her emergency medical form. And anyways...it is your fucking agenda kid. Not mine. YOU keep track of it.

I did not take it to her. It will make her first day harder...and makes me worry that by doing this I am giving her the message that she can't ever ask me for help. But I am big on natural consequences, and not having your agenda because you did not put it in your bookbag is a natural consequence. It will be interesting to see a couple of things...first, if this happens again. Second, what kind of attitude she comes home with tonight.

I will admit I did pick a little (OK, a lot) when she called. I did not yell, though. I did tell her I was disappointed in her. But that was only a part of it. I so wanted her to have a good start to middle school. I wanted her to be nervous, but to have things work out. I can't protect her from everything, and this just so very clearly illustrates that to me. It pains me to see her in pain, even if it is of her own doing. I no longer have that control over her life and it terrifies me. What if I have not done enough to overcome what she got from her father? What if she turns out to be one who blames everyone but the person at fault (i.e., herself!) like him? What if she makes mistakes that I can't fix? And furthermore, why do I still feel the need to fix her mistakes? Does that feeling ever go away?

Does the heartbreak?

Girl

So we had the big ultrasound last week. It looks like another one for Team Pink here in this household. I am kinda relieved, as I would have no idea how to raise a boy in this incredibly misogynistic area that we live in...my biggest fear is that he would become one of the little country boys that I see running around who like to pat women on the head and patronize them and who truly think Sarah Palin is a feminist. Then I would have to go all off on the poor boy and give him who knows how many Mommy issues...best to stick with what I know, I guess. At least I can understand a girl's issues because, well, I am a female myself. That and I already have the baby clothes for a girl...

I think that Charles is secretly relieved as well, though probably a bit disappointed. He truly thought that this baby was a boy. Elizabeth too...in fact, she is still insisting that it is a boy. Since I will be having numerous ultrasounds after this one, we will definitely know for sure. Wouldn't that be something if they were wrong? The tech was pretty good, though, and said that she could CLEARLY see what sex the baby was. At first that made me think boy too...

Now the next hurdle: Naming this child. This is going to be hard...

Friday

This Friday is my "big" ultrasound.

At this point in a normal pregnancy, most women will have had one so far. This will be my fourth, and likely NOT my last. Nothing about this pregnancy has been normal so far, though...

It is very hard to stay positive. The last ultrasound that I went to at this hospital did not end well. That would have been Gabe's. This pregnancy is eerily like his in a lot of ways...most notably, the lack of movement.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is NOT abnormal for me, and that I HAVE felt the baby move somewhat. Not as much as I like, of course, but I have felt SOMETHING. I never felt Gabe move...he was simply too small to feel anything, even at 20 weeks.

It is very hard. This week is dragging on and on. Clients are cancelling, leaving me with big chunks of time. Normally I don't complain about this except for the lost productivity...but now, it leaves me with time to think. I am dragging along, barely functioning. Barely sleeping...the tension is completely unbearable at times and I feel like I am going to completely lose my mind.

There is a certain tension between doctor's visits now anyways...after they go OK, I hear the heartbeat, etc., I am fine for a few days. Then the waiting starts again...the four weeks drag on and on...until I am a mess right up to hearing that beautiful bwambwambwam again.

This, however, is worse. Not only is it another visit, another opportunity to hear something is wrong...I am returning to the scene of where my worst nightmare started. I have not really thought much about it...though I can remember every single thing about that place. It is all branded into my memory like you would not believe. And to be perfectly honest, I do not want to go there.

I want it to be Friday EVENING, with pictures of my healthy baby. Not Tuesday afternoon, with 2 1/2 more days of work and having to function left.

Umbrellas

Alexis has recently discovered umbrellas. They are wonderful! Fantastic! They keep the rain OFF OF YOUR BODY! How amazing is this!

I am not one who usually uses umbrellas, which makes absolutely no sense if you know me. I have a hatred, a loathing, of water that makes a cat look like Michael Phelps. I have to tramp down an irrational homicidal urge every time that my children splash me accidentally in the bathtub. I shower facing away from the water because I hate getting my face wet. The girls have made bargains with the devil to get me to take them swimming. Etc., etc...you get it.

Anyways, despite all of the above, I don't usually use umbrellas when it is raining. I also don't wear boots and gloves and hats in the winter, and don't usually zip my coats up. Hey, it is all part of what makes me me. And I guess a borderline unhealthy obsession with umbrellas is what is going to make my wonderfully unique child Alexis Alexis.

Now the umbrella that we currently own is an old one of Elizabeth's. Well, that is not counting the battered red one that resides in my Jeep that never gets used. Hell, I forget about the damn thing until I go to vacuum the vehicle out. But the kid umbrella that we have is Elizabeth's, and one of the spoke thingys on it is broken. Alexis still loves that thing, but recently asked me if she could get a new one.

My first instinct was to tell her, "Sure!" I mean, she is three, right? Why make her EARN it? Not like she will understand it. However, I forgot about the power that is anything that Elizabeth does....and Elizabeth has to EARN her extras (for the most part...I am not an entirely evil parent, despite what she tells her friends). So she agreed to do chores to earn an umbrella.

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. I told her if she were to do the chores, she could get it tomorrow. Do you know that that child WILLINGLY and ENTHUSIASTICALLY did every single thing that I asked her to? And ASKED ME TO CHECK THAT SHE DID IT OK? She was so excited to earn that umbrella...it was cute to watch, kinda like a little Pomeranian that is hopped up on Ritalin, that was how excited she was.

I wonder how many times I will do this to my kids...underestimate them and their capabilities. Not give them enough credit...not think that they are capable human beings. I wonder how much damage I will do to them because of this. I hope and pray that it is negligible.

Know what? I hope that is the best damn umbrella that anyone ever got. Ever. In the history of the whole wide world.

Pregnancy

Time for my list of things to never ever say to a pregnant woman unless you want her to rip your eyebrows out and feed them to you hair by hair...

1.) "You're glowing"
No, fuckhead, that is called sweat. It is merely reflecting the light off of your shiny bald head.

2.) "Wow, you've really popped"
Wow, you've really gotten fat and ugly and wrinkly. Oh, wait, I can't comment on you but you can feel free to comment on a pregnant woman? So sorry...

3.) "You sure you're not having twins?"
You sure YOU'RE not having twins?

4.) "So, you decided to try for that boy, huh?"
(This one really gets to me, especially given my history.) No, we were actually hoping for a hermaphrodite with a puppy's head.

5.) "I only gained three pounds when I was pregnant!"
Bugger for you. My goal here is to have a LIVING child, so really, my weight gain is the last thing that I will obsess over because I kinda have bigger fish to fry, mkay?

Miscellaneous

Right before Elizabeth left, Charles asked her, "I know you feed your fish when you go to stay the night at someone's house, right? But I am assuming that you want us to feed them while you are gone in AZ?" Elizabeth, without missing a beat, turned to him and said, "Yeah. I don't want to get a phone call about them having run away or anything like that..."


I regularly watch the Secret Life of the American Teenager, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I freely acknowledge that it is really bad TV (though Stiffler's mom from American Pie as a reformed hooker is pretty funny) but it is a train wreck that I simply can't turn away from. However, the whole Adrian being pregnant thing is pissing me off. Of course, the "good" girl Amy keeps her baby and is doing a fine job of raising him, not on any kind of public assistance, of course....while "bad" girl Adrian, who (GASP!) has sex frequently and (GASP!) enjoys it with (GASP!) numerous partners is contemplating an abortion. I applaud Adrian's assertion that it is her body and the knowledge that she is not ready for a baby, but really? WTF?


Elizabeth has been given a trac phone by her dad to use during the day while she is in AZ because they don't have a home phone over there. Fine, and I applaud them for ensuring her safety...but I hope she does not think that she can get one when she gets home. She will not be getting a cell phone until she is playing sports and needs one to call me (this is only if I can verify that there are no pay phones at the school...and it will be a prepaid one at that). If there are pay phones there, then it will be when she can pay for one herself. I may be old-fashioned, but she DOES NOT need a phone during the day at school...she is there to LEARN, and the odds of me needing to get a hold of her in such a way that I could not go through the office is slim to none. Plus, if something catastrophic were to happen (again, very unlikely) I would be hauling ass to the school, not calling her! I am not worried about keeping up with the consumption-driven mania that seems to have possessed our society WRT stuff like this. Finally, I need to have some more conversations with her about proper usage of them...I saw on one of her friend's Facebook page some borderline inappropriate pictures of this friend and another girl in their robes, with bras clearly visible....posted from Facebook Mobile.


I am not too thrilled with where we are living either at this exact moment. I wanted to get Alexis into a dance class for the summer. No place around here offers anything appropriate. If we were to live out by where I grew up, this would not be a problem. I guess that is a price to pay for knowing that you are far enough away from your family that they can't unexpectedly drop in and butt their way into your life, but is the price worth it?

Leaving

It is that time of year again. Elizabeth leaves to go visit her father this Saturday. Every summer, a part of my heart is ripped out and flies across the country. It never gets easier to give her a hug and a kiss with a false smile planted on my face and to let her get on that plane all by herself. It never gets easier to deal with the every other day phone call that I am allowed (to not make things difficult for her there). It just fucking sucks.

I deal with the fear that something will happen to her down there and I won't be there or that her father won't call me. I somehow, some way, seem to feel that because she is here with me that somehow I am able to shield her from the evil that is so rampant in this world. I am able to keep her blossoming figure from becoming the object of men's lust and that I can protect her from what our society allows men to do with that lust. I am able to protect her from the heartbreak that comes with the struggle of finding out exactly who you are throughout your teen years. I for some reason believe that simply being in my vicinity I can prevent her from ever being hurt.

All of which is hogwash, I know. I can't protect her from any of those things any more with her here than I can with her there. She has to grow up and learn and get hurt and make her own choices. It is a struggle for me to allow this to happen because it goes against every single instinct that I have as a mother. I can no longer pick her up and cuddle her on my lap and kiss the boo-boos away. I can't keep her a baby forever...but how much do I allow her to grow up and how quickly?

I have no choice in letting her go. I had to let her go before I wanted to, before I thought that she was ready to fly by herself. I tried to comfort myself by saying, "She will have experiences there that I can't give her. She deserves to see her father and his family." It does not comfort me. I want my daughter here. I want her to spend the summer with me and her sister and her step-father.

I wish that for about a half and hour I could be a toddler again so I could throw the huge fit that I have brewing inside of me. That I could just kick and scream and cry and carry on and someone would come to comfort me. I suppose I could and blame it on pregnancy hormones...but really, what would that do for me other than temporarily make me feel better? I was trained to think systemically...to change the rules that govern the system, not just treat the symptoms. I have to treat their underlying causes.

Time

I have been lax in writing on this blog lately. My original intention when starting this was to try to write every day. I want to record the daily minutiae of my life because time is just going by so very quickly. Elizabeth will be a teenager officially soon (she has been one in attitude for years now), Alexis will be entering her second year of preschool, and I am currently growing another small person in my uterus. So far things are going well with that, but with me, they can change at any moment.

I have this incredible torn feeling right now....I want things to slow down because life just feels like it is slipping away from me and I am missing it. On the other hand, I want thing to fast forward at least 16 more weeks. To viability. To the possibility that I might actually get to hold a living baby in my arms after the hell that is the first trimester for me. To an end that, for once, does not involve heartbreak and grief.

Then I have a moment like I did just now. Alexis is sitting next to me with an old notebook of mine (from my short-lived, panic-induced OMG I can't find a job with a BS in psychology foray into nursing school) and is drawing pictures of her family. Then she totally stops and says, "My last name is _______" and proceeds to write it. Then she asks how to spell her middle name and proceeds to write that as well. WTF? When did this little girl learn to do that? What happened to my baby who was 90% head who came out of the womb ready for a steak to gnaw on? To the little toddler who hated everyone? Even to the tiny little preschooler who was the smallest in her class? I see her emerging every day with a confidence that I just marvel at; growing and blossoming in ways that continually amaze me.

Then I look at Elizabeth and can remember when she was the same age as Alexis. They are alike in some ways, but mostly they are very different. Where Alexis is cantankerous and difficult, Elizabeth was very sociable and somehow exuded this air of refinement about her. Don't get me wrong....that child could throw a fit if she really wanted to. But mostly, Elizabeth reminds me of classics. She has avoided the slightly goth look that is so popular with all of her friends now for one that is more traditionally classical, but still within an acceptable range. She has always done her own thing, but life will most likely not be difficult for her the way it will be for Alexis (and has been for me) because Elizabeth tends to be able to toe the line of being different just enough that it does not cause major problems for her, while still allowing her to be true to herself. I could probably learn something from my daughter in that regards. She also continually amazes me with how very grown up she is and how much of a fundamentally decent human being she has turned into, despite all of the varied mistakes I have made in raising her and the hell that is my life sometimes.

So I am torn. I don't want time to fly by, yet I do. I guess it will go on no matter what I do.

Cuteness

A: Why you looking at me?
Me: You are just so beautiful!
A: I am so beautiful I stink!

Me: You make me happy.
A: That is awesome! I mean, that is so cute!

E: Alexis, you are being really good tonight. Thank you!
A: Awww, that's so sweet! Your welcome!

Blame

I was at a school, talking to a principal the other day. He mentioned that he was having some problems with some inappropriate sexual behaviors on the part of his students, and was struggling with how to deal with it. He said, "I keep telling these young ladies, they need to watch themselves. They are all flirtative (his word) and lead these boys on. Then there are hormones involved, and you get a bad situation. These girls need to learn how to draw some boundaries!"

I choked back my first response, which was to grab the nearest clue by four and whap him upside the head with it. SERIOUSLY??? These girls, because they flirt, deserve unwelcomed fondling and being told that they are "owned" by these boys? Holy victim blaming! If these girls are supposed to be held responsible for their behaviors, why the hell aren't the boys? Don't they have equal responsibility for their behaviors? Or are they to be excused because "they can't control their hormones?" (Not saying that the girls "deserved" this, because I sure as hell don't believe that...just pointing out the obvious misogyny.) I don't think that this particular man realized how insulting he was being to these boys!

I guess this will not be the only time in my professional dealings that I will have to deal with a man, however well intentioned, who is trying to control a female's sexuality. He probably did not even realize that he was expressing such internalized misogyny. I just hope that it will get easier to deal with as time goes on. I am still shaking mad about this. It has been said before, but it definitely bears repeating: The only way to not be sexually assaulted/raped/molested/harassed, etc., is to avoid being in the same place at the same time as a rapist/sexual assaulter/molester, etc. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT A WOMAN OR MAN DOES OR DOES NOT DO!!!!