Better

I'm feeling marginally better now.

I was able to get shit done today.  The weather is gorgeous so I took to the outdoors to paint.  I painted the front porch.  The back steps.  The picnic table.  Most of the trim around the windows (until I ran out of paint.  Plus my ladder wasn't tall enough.  And despite Charlie's mad spider monkey skills, there is no easy way to reach the top of the second story windows without a tall enough ladder.   Cause I ain't about to be hanging out of a window with a bed sheet tied around my waist and a bed frame or some such craziness.  Though I will admit that the thought crossed my mind...Charles did come home to find me on the roof of the entryway to the basement so really not too far of a stretch...)  I then came inside and started to paint the living room.  I chose the wall with the big window on it, mostly so I can get my curtains hanging back up because by God, I want to be able to parade around naked in my living room without being the peep show for the whole neighborhood.  At least the free peep show.  Perhaps if there was a $5 cover charge...

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 Ignore all of the crap on the couch.  Normally it would be hanging up, but I had to take the hooks down to paint.  Eh, who am I kidding?  That couch will still look like that even after I hang the hooks back up because it apparently takes way too much effort to hook a book bag on a hook...

I did miss going to see a friend who was in the state, but that was because my van is an asshole and decided to need new brakes.  Not like they were metal on metal or anything.  Next thing you know the fucker is going to demand gasoline because it is SO NEEDY like my children who demand things like food and immunizations and absolutely refuse to get gainfully employed.  Slackers.

Basically, I got my to-do list done today (that is now on my iPhone vs my desktop; gotta love technology).  Very different from last weekend when I was dying.

Granted, my fingers are as swollen and stiff as can be.  I am sure I will be sore as hell tomorrow from all of the squatting and bending over and reaching from the painting.  My house is currently in shambles from moving shit around so I can paint coupled with my children's complete inability to put anything away, ever.

But I got shit done.  And I was able to spend time with the two little girls, at least (Elizabeth of course wants nothing to do with me as I am the devil.)  We spent a fair amount of time outside.  Alexis played on the trampoline and helped me paint while Charlie napped.  Charlie then woke up and did whatever secret op stuff the government has her doing currently, then came out to play with Alexis. (She can't tell me or she'd have to kill me.  And I'm pretty sure she carries a shank strapped to her ankle so I'm not pushing the issue.)  They actually got along for once so I am assuming the mission went well...(so I definitely decided to make a blog post tonight so I'd have record of this.)  It was a good day.

This is how it goes with me.  I am at the mercy of what my body decides to do.  If it is going to be nice, then great!  Shit gets done.  If it decides to be an asshole...then I'm dying.  I would swear I was bipolar if I knew that I didn't get the wonderful benefits of being manic like not needing much sleep.  Perhaps my body is bipolar.  Can one diagnose one's body with a mental illness but not oneself?   And if that is the case, can I then involuntarily commit my body to a really nice mental institution?  Preferably one with a gourmet chef and a private whirlpool....

Body

I currently hate my body.

Not in the "OMG I am so fat and society hates me!" (though I am not going to deny there is some of that going on as well...)  It is more in the whole Sjogren's Disease is taking over my body kind of way.

Charlie was recently so nice as to share a stomach bug with me.  Sweet, huh?  It was a 24 hour deal for her.  And for my mother-in-law, with whom she also shared.  It took me twice as long to recover.  Hell, I am still not fully recovered but I am pretending that I am because if I don't I will just break down and cry.  Again.

I hate my body.

I hate complaining about my body.  But by God, I almost never do so I am going to do so now before I lose my fucking mind.

I hate that the medications that I take to keep my immune system from attacking my body are the same ones that lower my immune system so that I can't fight off illnesses as effectively.

I hate the judgement that I get from my boss every time that I call off because I am fucking sick.  Again.  Getting points, and possibly written up.  Again.

I hate that I now have to, at the ripe old age of 33, get FMLA papers filled out for a health condition.

I hate that I go into work when I shouldn't, that I push myself beyond what I should, and pay the price later, because that judgement does not just come from her but from others around me and people think I am whining when I describe the throbbing joint pain.  The unrelenting fatigue.  The stomach that occasionally will decide to throw a fit and rebel against everything that I eat, even in the absence of micro-organisms that cause this.  The not being able to eat much gluten because it makes it that much worse.  And do you know how many things have gluten in them?   The irritated, dry eyes that never really feel like the sand comes out of them.  The dry mouth that makes the three hours I am at the jail for work, where I am not allowed to have anything to drink to relieve it, sometimes a unique hell of its own (aside from the whole, hey I am locked in the jail at the mercy of the officers to let me out thing.) The dry skin, and, ahem, other areas.  The tingling and numbness and coldness that comes with Reynaud's, that is secondary to the Sjogren's.  The fear of getting a blood clot, again, related to a condition secondary to Sjogren's.  The very real fear that no matter how well I take care of my teeth, that some day I might lose them.  The very real fear that the next time I go back to the rheumatologist, this is going to be the time she tells me I have Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Or Lupus.  Or some other kind of autoimmune disease, because let's just see how many I can acquire because I apparently have nothing more to do than to add to my list of diagnoses and medications...

The very real fear that some day I might die like my father did,  drowning in the fluids from the lungs.  I joke about my cat-like fear of water; it is quite ironic that this could realistically be the way I died some day.

I hate the fact that to complicate all of this, I am now having some problems with my reproductive system and am losing, at certain times of the month, the equivalent of two+ pints of blood over the course of a week (and yes, I am able to quantify this.  Diva Cup)  Totally helpful for the fatigue.  Oh, and the calling off sick thing because I have had to leave work because I was bleeding so much that the front and back of my pants were soaked through.

TMI?  Probably.  But I am describing that to describe the hell that it has been to be me lately.  I don't want my children to remember me as being sick. Or my employer.  Or anyone. I don't want to be sick.  I did not ask for my body to turn on itself.  For my uterus to decide to turn the crimson tide into the crimson tsunami.  For my life to be run by physical limitations that only I can feel.

I want to go back to the time where I could abuse my body and know it would spring back.  Where I had unlimited, boundless energy.  Hell, I want to go back two months ago when things were somewhat under control.

I can wish in one hand and shit in another.  Wonder what will fill first?

Fundraising

It's getting to be that dreaded time of year.  The catalogs start coming home.  Brightly colored, glossy pages filled with crap that you are paying 100 times what it cost to make so your school can get 40 cents from the sale.  Order forms that come in triplicate and dripping with guilt and shame if you do not sell.  Calling in favors from coworkers, relatives, and neighbors to "support the schools" when in reality their money would be better spent buying a lottery ticket.

Fundraising.

That dirty little 11 letter word.

It is a necessary evil, I know.  Schools are underfunded.  Teachers are spending their own money on classroom supplies.  "Extras" like art, music, and gym are being cut because teachers have to teach to the tests given and their raises, which will go towards supplies for the classrooms that are underfunded anyways, do not make up for having to deal with my little *ahem* angels all day long.

Fuck.  If I could get a three month vacation from my children, you better believe I would be all over that.  Totally don't blame them at all.  Of course, I am the opposite of an educator, so maybe there are people who feel differently.  And I am also a pretty crappy parent, so there may be other parents who feel differently as well.

(Who am I kidding.  I might make it a week.)

Anyways.

Supporting our schools.  Yes.  Why does it always have to be with shit made in China?  With wrapping paper that you will be lucky to be able to wrap a ring box?  With a 6 oz box of chocolates that you spent the equivalent of a 12 pack of really good beer on?

There is an idea.  Alcohol.  Evenings away from children.  Adult conversation.  I would support the hell out of my school, and any other in the area, if we could provide that as a fundraiser.  Grown up things.  A chance to remember that I am a person outside of a parent of school aged children.

Or chocolate.  Give me a box of candy bars and I could sell the crap out of them.  We need to market to the vices to benefit our children, dammit.  Haven't the schools learned anything from Vegas?  Life lessons, bitchez.

Quickly

Last weekend, Charles and I took the little girls on a bike ride.  It was the first time that we were able to do this with Charlie, as she has really progressed nicely with riding her bike without riding it into a telephone pole (i.e., she is able to look up while pedaling).  Elizabeth was working, like she has pretty much all summer because her employer has a pretty flagrant disregard for things like child labor laws, so it was just the four of us.

We were riding through the streets of our town, and Alexis asked to decide which way we turned.  I had an intense flashback to riding the bike with Elizabeth, before Alexis was born, and even after with her in the trailer.  I remember the thrill, the freedom, that a child experiences with riding a bike.  I remember the sheer innocence of getting pleasure out of such a simple activity written all over her face the way it was Alexis's and Charlie's.  Those twilight rides, taken in that sweet time between the end of summer and the beginning of fall, are some of my favorite memories, with all of my girls.

It struck me how it seems like just a few summers ago that we were doing this with Elizabeth.  It does not seem possible that she is 16, going on 17 in a few short months.  I am keenly aware that soon she will not be living with us; that she will be moving on in life to start her own.

It really highlights the struggle that I have with having a family with such a drastic age difference.  It was part of why I was OK with Charlie being our last.  That 13 year age difference is a lot.  Elizabeth no longer enjoys the bike rides with her parents.  Hell, she avoids her parents as much as she can, except when she needs something signed or money.  And that is OK.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  Parenthood is working yourself out of a job, or at least a full time job.  You never really retire from parenthood, just semi-retire.  And when people tell you to enjoy it, you simultaneously roll your eyes because, quite frankly, we all retain a little bit of adolescent attitude and don't want to listen to our elders.  And because you know.  The baby comes home from the hospital, and all of a sudden they don't fit into their newborn clothes.  Overnight.  (Or in the case of the gargantuan babies I birth, the 0-3 months clothes...)  It does go so quickly, yet you are suffering from no sleep and the house never being clean enough and never having time to yourself and never pooping alone and planning dates around nap times and soccer games and sex what the hell is that...?  And hearing that is not what you want because you have so much guilt anyways that you aren't enjoying it enough.

I want to hold on to those memories, though, even as I have to let go.  I want to remember that little girl who called Charles Spike.  The girl who used to fight naps like they would kill her.  The preteen with the braces, who then moved onto the requisite heavy black eyeliner that almost every girl does at least once in her life.  The woman who stood before me in her prom dress and made me cry. (Four times.  This will happen four times because she will be going to prom all four years in high school...)   I want to remember all of this as I see the absolutely amazing woman that my daughter is becoming.  I am sure she does not feel amazing.  16 sucks.  It is a swirling shitstorm of emotions and insecurity and a stunning combination of naivete and wisdom, all wrapped into a body that is likely to be the best you have ever had in your life.

Every parent says they are proud of their child.  And every parent is.  I strongly feel that it is a testament to who Elizabeth is as a person that she is not completely fucked up, given the crazy that is her mother.  It will be a testament to Alexis, and to Charlie, that they managed to survive in spite of my best efforts to emotionally scar them.  I consider less than ten years of therapy apiece to be a success story.

So far, they are all at least smart enough to hide the bodies.  It's the small things, really.

Adult

I sometimes feel like I spend the vast majority of my free time grocery shopping.  I don't necessarily enjoy this activity but I do it because not feeding your children is usually frowned upon.  It is one of those incessant, unrewarding activities that no one tells you about when you are a child.  I mean, seriously, if they did tell you about all the shit you have to deal with as an adult, no one would grow up.  And then who would change the diapers and watch really crappy reality TV and manufacture alcohol?  It's really better that we are kept in the dark.

I sometimes, though, feel as though I skidded around the corner of adolescence into the hallway of adulthood, with lipstick on my teeth, staggering in my heels with my skirt tucked up into my panties.  All of the stuff that goes along with being a grown up is sometimes overwhelming.  Paying bills, providing necessities and hopefully desires for your family, feeding, cooking cleaning laundryoilchangestaxesmortgagesplanningforretirement....it all sometimes melds into a big ball of overwhelming-ness and stress and anxiety and I wanna curl up in the fetal position-ness.

If I ever invent time travel, I am going to invest heavily in the benzodiazapine business.  I get their appeal, really I do.

I also get why grown ups seemed so stressed when I was a kid.  I get why that kind of information is hidden from children.  If I, with my alleged adult capabilities and sensibilities, find all of the responsibility to be paralyzing, I could only imagine what a child would think.

I don't know that it will ever get better.  Mostly because I am pretty crazy and tend to beat myself up and I never feel that I am good enough or doing enough.  Does any adult not have their issues, though?  Maybe childhood isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Maybe the real good time is adulthood, where you have access to self soothing and vacations and rational thought.

Or maybe the real fun is when you are elderly and can say whatever the fuck you want and blame it on dementia and drink as much alcohol and eat as much chocolate as you can because "we don't know how much longer we will have her with us."    In fact, that sounds so super good to me that I can't wait until I'm like 80.

I'm totally going for the benzos then.  Just because I can.

Random V

Me: (wincing as I write out the check for daycare)  I think we need to just find a hobo off the streets to live with us and to watch the little girls.

Charles:  Riiiiight.....

Me:  It would be educational, right?

And philanthropic. 


Working with the mentally ill has given me numerous really really good stories.  Most of which I can never ever tell.  It helps to have really good coworkers to be able to share some of these gems.  It also leads to a kind of gallows humor that is exclusive to therapists and people working in the mental health field.  For instance, it is not unusual for this conversation to happen in my office:

Me:  Do you hear voices?

Client:  (hesitates).....Yes.

Me:  Are they telling you to not talk to me?

Client nods.

Me:  Have you ever tried to tell them to shut up?  What is their response?

Normal people don't think that way.  Normal people would freak the fuck out if a voice was in their head telling them what to do, or if someone told them that they were hearing voices.

Additionally, normal people don't sit around at lunch and in between talking about our weekends and whatever news is hot debate what kind of psychosis you would be likely to have.  Delusions of grandeur?  Paranoia? Hallucinations of Jesus coming back?   My luck would be that I would feel water all over my skin because that would be its own special kind of hell for me.  I would not be a happy psychotic, I fear.


I have recently decided to do some rearranging in my house.  Cause I don't have anything more to do, like working 7 days a week or actively giving my children mommy issues to discuss with their future therapists.  I am stuck on what color to paint the living room, though.  I just recently bought new curtains and new slipcovers and now I am really regretting jumping the gun on that decision because I feel like I am committed to a certain scheme now.  My ODD (oppositional defiant disorder, for you non mental health professionals out there) is kicking in and I am really bitter that I have backed myself into a corner here.  I, of course, am blaming everyone else but myself for this decision.  I might even throw a temper tantrum or two about it.  Hell, if those kids are gonna need therapy, by God I am going to make the sessions interesting!

Conversations XII

Elizabeth:  So my aunt Jenn is going to give me her turtles when she dies.

Me:  Well, that is kind of a crappy thing for her to leave to you.  "Sorry I died.  Here's a turtle."

Charles:  Wait...how big will they get?

E:  They are the really big ones.

C:  Well, sweet.

Me:  I don't particularly want turtles here.

C: Well, I was more thinking turtle soup...

E:  You will be dead by then.

Me: (mishearing her) They will be dead?  That is even more crappy!  "Sorry I died.  Here's a dead turtle for your inheritance."

E:  No, HE will be dead.  And those things live for a really long time.

C:  No, I'll be alive.  Assholes live forever.  And remember, you said you wanted another 100 years of marriage with me.

Me:  OK, first of all...what makes you think you will last another 100 years without me killing you first?  And second, not all assholes live forever.  I feel like Hitler was a bit of an asshole, and he is not alive.

C: Well, he killed himself.

Me:  Oh, I see.  Premature termination.  Makes sense.

E:  Don't talk about Hitler like that.  He had Daddy issues.

Me:  Like his Daddy didn't hug him enough?  Or too much?

E:  Oh.  My.  God.

C:  Maybe there wasn't enough hugging, but too much cuddling.

(Elizabeth shakes her head and walks upstairs.)

Me: (yelling after her)  Not everyone enjoys spooning, Elizabeth!  (To her boyfriend, who is still in the kitchen listening to the entire conversation)  Explains so much, doesn't it?

Health

I have been told by my teenage daughter that it is next to impossible to eat unhealthfully in our house.  I was actually kind of relieved as I  have made a concerted effort to cut the crap from our diets.  Except of course for the massive amounts of wine I take my Xanax with.  And the chocolate about once a month.  Those are actually survival needs.

Mostly for my family.  Ahem.

So...cutting the crap from our diets.  Yes.  My fears about the Dukan diet were totally founded.  I did put some of the weight I lost back on once I started to eat grains again.  It pains me to admit that.  I worked so hard.  Re-introducing grains was my undoing.  I am like a toddler.  I need the rules and limits.  If you let me take an inch, I will try for the mile.  Especially when it comes to sweets made with lovely bleached white flour and high fructose corn syrup.  Two of the devil's inventions.  Along with eggs and coconuts, but for different reasons.

Really, do I need grains in my diet?  My research has pointed me slightly in the direction of no.  The response my body has to them tells me no.  Yet...the opiate like effects on my brain continues.  Plus, it is so much quicker to just grab something grain based and to go.

I hear all about prepping veggies before hand.  Into little baggies.  Salad in mason jars with the dressing in the bottom.   Precooking chicken and steaks to have to grab.  All little things I could do to eat better and make it easier to make healthy food choices.

I have started to work at a private practice part time.  In essence, I am now working 7 days a week.  In the long run, it will be worth it.  I will be happier.  In the short term...I no longer have the time to do the crazy insane shit I used to like make home made bread and granola and to experiment with quinoa flour.  To pre-prep veggies and fruit to have readily available.

So in the short term, my health is going to suffer. It pisses me off that this is the case.  I can't do it all.  I take care of everyone but me.  Business as usual.

Physician, heal thyself.

Right?  Easier said than done.  I preach day in and day out self care to my clients.  The importance of taking care of your physical health as well as the mental health.  Granted I still am running.  I still take my meds.  I still have the MHPMHD's.

I can't do it all.  And it bugs me that I feel like I have to try.  And it bugs me that this is the thing that has slipped, and that this is the thing that bugs me.  It feels like self sabotage almost, along with internalized fat hatred.  Like I am afraid of feeling good or looking good.  Because if I am feeling good, then I am not working hard enough.  If I am looking good, I have to deal with the male gaze.  How's that for rape culture speaking for me?

When the fuck did I develop this complex?  When did wearing the horsehair shirt become my thing?  I feel like those monks on Monty Python sometimes.  I keep expecting someone to accuse me of turning them into a newt.

(If you don't get that, I am not sure I want you reading my blog.)


Seriously, if you don't know what I am talking about...just go watch the movie.  It's pretty sad when I can say I have seen a movie.  Because I don't watch them usually.  I haven't even seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which apparently in this country is akin to admitting that the English had every right to fight the Revolutionary War because they were the ones being wronged.

Maybe I've turned myself into the newt.  I can't say yet that it got better.  It's still a work in progress.

Closets

Charlie has recently taken to turning the light on in the small linen closet in our bathroom.  Now, I am not one to complain if it means that she will go in there and just poop.  When that child needs to poop, she is as stinky as all get out.  Her farts rival that of the dogs.

I tried telling her that she did not need the closet light on to go to the bathroom.  That the four lights across the medicine cabinet, coupled with the overhead light and the bright sunshine streaming in through the window...they all provide a more than adequate amount of lighting for all of her powder room needs.  She remains unconvinced.  Why I am surprised, I don't know, as this is the same child who demands proof that jumping off of the front steps onto a concrete walkway will hurt.  And then proceeds with the experiment to prove exactly that.

Why have I not been to the ER more with her?  Her guardian angel has to be speed balling.

When it comes right down to it, she needs to have the darkness lit up and what is hiding there revealed for her to see.  Even if it is just towels and toilet paper and extra toothpaste.  The hidden corners of the bathroom need to be illuminated so her overactive mind can rest for a minute.  At least long enough for her to pinch one off.

I can appreciate that kind of anxiety.  Hell, I live with that kind of anxiety.  The kind that my meds will never completely eliminate.  The kind that tells me what is hidden and unknown is to be feared, while I rationally know that this is a load of bull crap that my mind tries to play off as the truth.

What's in the dark closet that I am so afraid of?  What prevents me from moving forward, from being all that I can be?  Monsters?  The maniac who will stab you to death with a Q-tip?  My past?  What is so terrifying in that closet that it can't be faced?

You go ahead and turn that light on, little girl.  I don't want there to be any scary stuff that you are afraid to illuminate.  Face your fears head on and barrel through them, Charlie style.  Grab a hold of them with both hand and kiss them directly on the mouth to tell them to fuck off.  Don't ever lose that passion to find out why because of being afraid of what is in the dark.

Good

"You're doing good."

I heard that frequently in the days after I had my son.  When we went to the funeral parlor to make arrangements, the funeral director expressed surprise at how "good" I was doing.  The basis for this?  I guess I was not crying hysterically in his office.  I was numb, shocked, grieving.  But it was all inside.

Society's standards for acceptable grieving are just that.  Keep it inside.  You are doing "good" if you are able to function.  Forget that my entire world was just turned upside down.  Forget that instead of bringing a baby home from the hospital, I got a box of ashes and a death certificate.  Forget that instead of celebrating the anniversary of his birth, I get to remember the anniversary of his death.

Fuck that.

I didn't want to have to do "good".  I wanted to post the funny shit he said at Facebook.  To mock my parenting and all the ways I was surely screwing him up.  To debate the years of therapy he would need.

All of the stuff I will never have.  A mother/son relationship.  A little brother for Alexis and Elizabeth.  A big brother for Charlie.  A nephew for my siblings; grandson for our parents.  In an instant, it was taken from all of us.

And I was expected to do "good".

I take July 2 off every year.  I can't work that day.  I just can't.  Yet I was asked when I thought I would stop doing this.

Because I am doing "good".

I didn't ask for good.  I didn't sign up for this.  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  I wish that I could make this funny; that I could laugh this off like I am able to do with so many things.  Humor has saved me on more than one occasion.

And you know what?  I can do good 51 weeks out of the year.  I can walk around and pretend like a part of me did not die that day.  That I won't sob tomorrow, clinging to his blanket and his hat and looking at the really shitty picture I have of my son.  Reading all of the cards we got.  Re-experiencing it like I do every year.

That is about as good as it gets.