Multi-tasking

So as I sit here tonight typing this there are no less than 4 additional tabs open on my web browser.  Grand total: 5.

I have never been able to just sit and watch TV.  I am usually sitting and crocheting, sitting and folding laundry, sitting and catching up on paperwork from work, etc., etc..

I tried this morning, while brushing my teeth, to weigh myself.  I got really pissed when the scale gave me an error message because I was wiggling too much while brushing.  Apparently I put a bit of booty into my brushing...

I frequently eat my lunch while driving.  I am embarrassed to admit this, but I am really good at eating yogurt and going 65+ on the highway.  I don't do this during rush hour though (like that makes it any better...)

I have been known to read mail and cook dinner at the same time.

Springing off my last post here I guess.  Is it any wonder I constantly feel like life is a race that I can't win?  Like I am always second best somehow because I can't do as many things at once as I want to?    What the hell am I afraid is going to happen if I just slow down and RELAX for a minute?

I have always made things hard for myself.  My chosen career, my political beliefs, my religious beliefs, my style of parenting...all at one point or another in my life have come under fire in a major way.  Perhaps my need to prove to people that I am not worthless, my conditioned by society response to prove to the privileged class that I can pull myself up by the bootstraps (which ironically is never good enough for them...) is the driving force behind my inability to just do one thing at a time.

Or maybe my meds need adjusted. 

Sandwiches

There are two tasks that I truly dislike.  One is folding laundry, as evidenced by the current mounds that occupy a good portion of my basement (and most likely my dryer as well.  I could happily live forever out of my laundry baskets.  Folding laundry just seems to me to be an exercise in futility.  I seriously feel like that hamster running frantically on its wheel.  You never get anywhere, you know...)

The other is making sandwiches for lunches.  Elizabeth is old enough that and apparently cool enough that I dare not taint her lunch with my unholy, un-cool hands.  She packs her own shit.  I am also a bad wife and make Charles pack his.  This leaves Charlie and Alexis. 

Charlie is still young enough that she pretty much has no say in what she eats.  She gets sent to daycare with leftovers.  Alexis, however, has been corrupted by that oh so powerful force known as children her age and long ago dug her heels in on the leftover thing.  She now demands a sandwich for lunch.  The nerve, I tell you...I think I need to remind her of the hell that was her labor and delivery...

I really don't know why I dislike this task so.  I could possibly blame it on her wanting a PB&J, the most labor intensive of the sandwiches.  You have to get the correct ratio of the PB to the J, then spreading out the jelly...and those little fucking globs that JUST WON'T SPREAD....then there is the whole don't taint the PB with the J or vice versa; so really you HAVE to use two utensils to make it.  Is there any greater sandwich snobbery than having  to use TWO utensils?  I think not.  Then you have to use the nifty little cutter thingy that I have that removes the crusts (BECAUSE GOD FORBID THERE BE DARK BROWN CRAP AROUND THE EDGES, MOTHER!!!) and cuts it diagonally for you...bringing the total utensil usage up to THREE.  It gets very stressful.  Though I do admit that sometimes I exploit my child's distaste for dark brown crap and buy multi-grain bread.  Whatcha gonna do now, huh?  That entire bitch is dark brown!

At any rate, it is not her desire for the childhood classic as I hated it when she wanted bologna, when she wanted salami, when she wanted turkey.  I just hate making sandwiches.  Maybe it's because I don't eat them really myself.  Maybe it is somehow related to how often my mother did or did not hug me as a child.  I really don't fucking know, or care.  I am sure there is some grand symbolic meaning behind my reluctance to engage in all activities sandwich-making, but the internets haz funny videos made by funny peeps, so...

I delegated for a while.  I asked Charles to make it for me.  Not sure he really understood why, but he lives with me and usually does not pretend to fully understand me, so he went with it.  Then it just got to the point where I just started to do it.

Herein lies the problem. I think every working mother struggles with this very thing.  I just make all of the lunches at once, and if Charles is not readily available I just do it instead of waiting.  I am just too busy in my mind to wait.  Hell, I try thinking of ways to multi-task while brushing my teeth.  I am at the point to where I would try to pay bills during sex if I thought my husband would let me.

When did I get to the point where slowing down and waiting a minute became a sin?  What am I running from?  And how does this interrelate with some of what is going on  in my life now?  All very worthy questions I need to ask myself.

So much for not analyzing.

Remembering

I vividly remember September 11, 2001.
No doy, right?  I was always a bit skeptical when I would hear those "I always will remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when JFK was shot" stories as a child....but now I know how vividly such acts of violence can completely transform a person, a community, a nation.

I was driving in the car with Elizabeth on the way to the daycare when I heard on the radio something about a plane flying into the WTC.  Something was mentioned about "possible terrorist attack" and I vividly remember rolling my eyes.  That could NEVER happen.  This was the US of freaking A...I always hated the media's overreacting.

How I wish it was the media overreacting that day.

I dropped Elizabeth off at the center and returned home to get my stuff for my first class.  Acting for Non-Majors, Tuesdays and Thursdays, taught by Neil.  My roommate informed me that a second plane had hit the second tower and that the "Pentagon was on fire".  It still seemed surreal.  I got my stuff and headed to class.

Once I got there, people had found a radio and were listening intently to the news.  Neil walked in and spoke words that I will never ever forget: "Today is the day that America lost her innocence.  Class is cancelled.  Go do what you have to do."

Those words still bring tears to my eyes.

So do all of the memories of everything that happened after:  The firemen with the boots.  Trying to explain all of this to a not quite 4 year old.  Frantically calling a guy I was in a relationship with to make sure he was OK.  Watching those towers collapse.

Things changed after that day.  Ten years later, the effects of that day are still felt.  And the pain is still as real.

Tomorrow we are having Alexis's birthday party.  Ten years later, on a day that horrific, unspeakable acts of violence occurred, we are still able to celebrate a child's birthday.  Innocence and laughter will be in my house that day, juxtaposed against all of the solemn remembrances.  Elizabeth asked me if it was irreverent to  have the party that day.

No, was my reply.  They did not win.  We will stop to remember; of course...but we will not allow them to bring us to our knees with their hate and their violence.  We will remember and honor all the fallen that day the best way we can...by being Americans; doing American things; celebrating the birth of a child.

This is the US of freaking A, after all.

Insurance

I had a raging sinus infection (and double ear infections...) last week.
What else is new, right?  Welcome to life lived with Sjogren's Syndrome.  The meds I am on stop my body from fighting infections as efficiently as it used to in order to keep that same body from attacking itself.  Lovely, right?  So I am pretty much SOL when it comes to keeping a cold from moving into my sinuses or my chest and turning bacterial. 

What is new to me is the experience of having the insurance companies dictate what medications I can and cannot take, as well as where I can get my medications.

I guess I am fairly lucky that this is the first time I have run into this.  Though now that I think about it, I did have my daughter's ped look up to see what cough medicine he could prescribe, and my insurance company did dictate where I could get my heparin from while preggers with Charlie...but I have never had the experience of insurance denying a claim for a med that my doctor prescribed. 

I mean really, WTF does that doctor know?  I come into his office, fucking miserable from yet another sinus infection that I put off too long getting looked at (in the vain hopes that I could avoid having to pay that 20% coinsurance as well as the copay...), and he sees that I  have a shit ton of swelling in my sinuses and my earsies.  He prescribes a corticosteroid nasal spray and an antibiotic.

The insurance apparently knows better than he does and says, "Nope.  Not that one.  This one".  And in the meantime, it is almost a week before I get my meds while they play their games.  Because insurance companies don't work on the weekends, or the holidays.  Didn't these germs get the memos?  Didn't my body learn to NOT get sick because that costs them money?  God, so selfish!

Yet nationalized medicine will make this worse....how?  How is care not being rationed now?  How is this being effective?  Perhaps I would not have needed these meds if I had gone sooner.  Wait, that is my fault for expecting insurance, which is bought to cover these situations, to pay for medications.  Had I just gone sooner, I would not be in this dilemma.  Had I not been SO SELFISH and not worried about the cost, or saved more money to cover this situation while paying upwards of $3.65/gallon for gas and not getting pay increases because of the economy yet seeing insurance premiums almost double as well as the grocery bill skyrocket, along with gas and electric....

Or maybe if I had insurance that did not break the bank, if I knew that going to the doctor would not potentially lead to costly procedures that will bankrupt me....if I knew that going to the doctor when it was needed will not lead to the company being forced to go to a really crappy insurance like my work had to due to people ACTUALLY USING THE INSURANCE FOR WHAT IT IS FOR....maybe then this will not have happened.

Or maybe the insurance could just cover my meds so I feel better.

What do I pay them for again?

Shattered

It is funny how quickly things can change.

My last post reads so smug, so sure.  I should know better.  Nothing is ever sure.  Nothing is ever static.  Things ALWAYS change; not always for the better.

I will be all right though.  Maybe because of some of those very things I wrote about; maybe because I have no choice because I have children; maybe because it is really not as bad as I originally thought.  But I will grow and learn and be better. 

Perhaps we have to shatter so the pieces can be put back together in a new and more functional way.  I am reminded of the Tinkerbell movie (I  have girls, OF COURSE I have seen it 8, 987, 634 times).  She breaks the crystal, and in doing so finds a way to make it even better.

There is a lesson to be learned from that movie.  Going through it sucks, but a lesson nonetheless.

Kindergarden

Anyone else remember this taunt?
Kindergarden baby,
Stick your head in gravy,
Wrap it up in bubblegum and send it to the Navy.

My thoughts and feelings have been consumed by all things Kindergarden for the past few days.  Alexis started today.  Rode the bus to school like a big girl and everything.  Not one single tear.

She was just so goddamned BRAVE.  Charles wrote out for her on a piece of paper last night, "Mommy, Daddy, Elizabeth, and Charlie LOVE you!!!" for her to take with her.  I did a version of the kissing hand where I kissed her hand lots and lots so she could have them for when she felt scared.  And despite her begging me yesterday to allow her to take Beary to school, she did not even ask for him as we were walking out the door.

I barely held it together for her.

As I am wont to do, I was able to distract myself with seemingly unimportant details.  I could not find my camera, so all I have for pictures of this morning are on my phone.  That was enough to get me through.  Where the fucking camera is is still driving me nuts.  I used it yesterday to take a picture of Elizabeth (much to her irritation...see post on my compulsive picture-taking...)  A part of me wonders if she hid it from me today...

I cannot believe that she is this big.  I cannot believe that she did so well.  Not that I wanted her to cry...I am not THAT kind of parent.  She just continually amazes me with her ability to overcome her fears.  I truly admire her for that.  She is going to be a force to be reckoned with some day...

No one will be able to taunt her.  That was my fear.  And it is unfounded.

Romance

I recently read about a study that states that most married couples kiss less than once a week and that this kiss lasts less than 5 seconds.  To me, that is crazy.
Now my husband and I are not the most romantic people by any stretch of the imagination.  Our first anniversary was spent buying a new stove or dryer (can't remember which one, that is how memorable it was...) because we had just moved into our house.  We tend to be practical in the extreme.  We generally don't spend money on gifts for Valentine's Day or Sweetest's Day (an American Greetings Holiday here in Ohio, designed to pick up lagging card sales in October for those who aren't familiar with it...) because I generally refuse to participate in a holiday that exploits the very relationships that are supposed to be most important to people all to perpetuate a materialistic ideology that is so pervasive throughout our society today.  (Read:  We're too cheap.)  Hell, on our honeymoon our truck broke down and we ended up having to spend money from the wedding cards to have it towed and repaired.  That was an interesting start to married life...but I digress.

I am disclosing the above to illustrate the fact that while we are very much NOT traditionally romantic people, I simply could not fathom NOT kissing my husband every day.  We kiss at least twice a day.  He kisses me ever morning before he leaves for work (and I debated whether to include this kiss because technically I am not fully functioning and sometimes not even aware of it...though I will say that he does have my full consent to do this).  We also kiss every night before we go to sleep.  That is our minimum for a day, and usually only if we don't see each other all day.  We kiss every time one of us leaves the house.  We will kiss when we pass each other in the living room or kitchen.

Same thing goes for telling each other "I love you".  Every phone call ends this way.  Every morning my husband tells me this (again, debatable if it counts because of my non-conscious state...).  Every night before we fall asleep this is the last thing I hear from him.  And countless times in between.

Some will say that by kissing so often and by saying those three words so often, we are rendering them meaningless.  I would disagree.  Physical affection is important to a marriage.  If I am going to have to have sex with the same person for the rest of my life (though there are those who say you don't have to do this, I am not going there...), you better believe that I am going to have lots of it as well as lots of physical touching.  If I am going to have to be with a man that I will see at both his very best and his very worst, I am damned sure going to affirm every single fucking day that I love him.  It is a reminder for me and for him as much as it is meaningful.

So do we do roses and candlelight and satin sheets?  Nope.  Do we kiss and fuck and laugh and encourage each other a lot more than most people I know?  Yep.  You better believe that I am going to brag about this.  After all that we have gone through together in our short 7 years of being married...from the truck on the honeymoon, to my dad dying, to our son, to me going through school....we survived it.  And if we did this by not being traditionally romantic...I will take it.

Guilt

School is starting soon.

Alexis will be in Kindergarden this year.  She will likely be the youngest in her class.

I want to say that making the decision to send her was hard, but it was not.  It was a combination of finances (won't have to pay daycare and preschool for her anymore...), her academic progress (which has been GREAT over the past year.  She would be bored in a third year of preschool.), and the advice of her teachers (who I most definitely leave the educating to.  I make a lousy teacher...I subbed for a year and that is a year of my life I will never get back.)

Despite the fact that I am solid on this being the right decision, I feel guilty.  As though I am taking my very very anxious child and throwing her to the wolves (appropriate for a blog called "Sheep Among the Wolves, I guess).  I feel as though I am forcing her to grow up faster than for which she is ready.  I feel as though by sentencing her to be the youngest in her class, I am sentencing her to a life of always playing catch-up.  That she will somehow be even more disadvantaged in life.

I have been feeling this more and more lately.  I even mentioned to some friends how I sometimes feel guilty because we can't afford all kinds of private lessons and whatnot for our kids.  Hell, at this point we can barely afford our bills because my hours have drastically reduced at work.  I always, constantly feel as though I am somehow shortchanging my kids.

It appears to me, though, that a lot of mothers feel this way.  It is damned if you do, damned if you don't.  Put your kids in activities?  You are overscheduling.  Don't put them in?  You are going to turn them into obese couch potatoes who just sit and vegetate in front of video games all day.  Start your child in kindergarden?  You are damning them  to a life of constant catch-up.  Hold them back?  You are giving them an unfair advantage and making them be bored for the next year.

When will it ever be good enough?  When will we ever be able to accept that parents do the best job they can?

Retarded

I was reading back through some of my old posts the other day, chuckling at the antics of my children and imagining them in therapy griping about how their mother posted ALL of their humiliating moments on TEH INTERNETS, when I was startled to find that in not one, but two posts I had used the word retarded.

Some people would say that that is not a big deal. Some people would say that is just a word.

But...words hurt.

I have been, at various points in my life and by various people that I love and that I thought loved me, been called all of the following:  Stupid, worthless, a slut, a bitch, a whore, a fucking bitch (distinct from just a bitch, mind you), cold hearted, evil, soulless, selfish, lazy, unmotivated, white trash, fat, and dumb.  And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Harmful words, sometimes spoken with the intent to hurt; sometimes just carelessly tossed around.

Words hurt.  I should know.

That is why I am ashamed that I used that word, to imply something that is less than.  Something stupid, not worth my time, not normal.  I should know better.

I want really badly to go back and erase the evidence that I did that.  I have chosen, however, to leave it as is.  To remind myself of my growth as a human being; to show myself that yes, I have made progress.  I can always be more compassionate.  My awareness can always go up.

I like to call myself a feminist.  Feminist issues ARE everyone's issues.  The mistreatment of a person with limited capabilities is no less discriminatory than the mistreatment of a woman.  Words hurt and matter just as much in either situation.  It is not being hysterical or overly sensitive or not being able to take a joke.  It is being aware that we are not isolated islands.  As hokey as it sounds, we are all interconnected.

Everyone has the right to dignity and equality.  Words do matter, and I need to start being more careful with mine.

Big

It happened overnight, I swear it.

Alexis is a big kid.  She has magically started to have the characteristics and mannerisms of a school kid and not a preschooler.  It was really the little things that I noticed....things like her asking me, "Mommy, do you realize that I have TWO glasses of milk in the fridge?"  (Do I realize...WTF?  Who taught her to talk like that?); things like her earnestly explaning to her father what was going on during Spongebob so he would be up to speed; things like her not needing her potty seat to poop anymore and wanting to wash her own body in the bathtub.

She still drives me nuts.  Out of my three girls, she is very definitely the most challenging.  She tests me at every turn; she does not perform up to what I think she should sometimes; she constantly turns over on their head all of my expectations and dreams that I have for her.  Yet, I also have had the easiest time in other matters with her.   She will avoid new experiences like Michelle Bachmann avoids acknowledging that conversion therapy is crap, yet she was so easy to potty train.  She has constant, sometimes debilitating anxiety about social situations and change, yet I never really had to baby proof the house because she never got into things she was not supposed to.  She constantly challenges my rules and the lines I try to draw for her (when I tell her we are going to clean the toys up then go outside, she ALWAYS says, "How about we go outside first and then clean?"  Always...) yet she desperately wants to please me and her father.  She is a bundle of contradictions and always will be...but before she did it in a way that was so young.

Now she possesses a maturity that sometimes astounds me.  She tries so hard to overcome her fears.  She tries so hard to be a helper and loves her baby sister with a ferocity that astounds me.  The things  that come out of her mouth...I had someone recently tell me that they love my Facebook updates because of the shit I put on there that she says.  Everyone who meets her adores her and says she is so cute and funny.  And all of this happened overnight.

I swear.