kdiddy.org

So despite my unsettled feelings about religion, I’m a huge fan of Christmas. I imagine it pisses some people off to know that I secularize such an important holiday, but I can’t help it. It has all of the elements that I love: gaudy decorations, days off of work and school, pretty music, funny movies, hanging out with my family, presents, huge meals, cookies, candy, and really early acceptable drinking times. As long as I’m not actively being evil, I think I get to do Christmas until Christ Himself comes to my house and demands a birthday cake, at which point I will make Him such an awesome cake that He’ll drop and give me 40 rosaries and 10 Hail Marys right there.

Anyway, yes. Christmas. It was pretty good, but was generally kind of a bummer because on Christmas Eve morning, my grandfather fell. He’s 88 years old, in excellent health both physically and mentally, doesn’t take any medications, exercises every day, and still works 40 hours a week. That morning, he went for his constitutional, and tripped. He had to drive himself back to his house because no one was around and my grandmother doesn’t drive. When they got to the hospital, they diagnosed him with a dislocated shoulder and a black eye. Not the most pleasant outcome but definitely not the worst. During tests, however, they discovered an irregular heartbeat and informed him that he would need to be in the hospital for a few days to correct it. He came home yesterday and is doing well, but he had to spend Christmas in the hospital and my grandmother, being how she is, never left his side. I’m, of course, glad that he’s okay but it wasn’t the same not to have them around.

Despite that and a soul-crushing trip to Macy’s the week before, we gathered up all of our Christmas spirit and prepared to enjoy the shit out of some presents.

It helped that our tree this year is, I think, the best one that we’ve had.

It smells amazing and has barely lost any needles. I am now basically this lady:

Plus, we got some of those LED lights this year and they’re so pretty. I hope that they make up for the fact that we don’t have any decorations outside because the pre-lit garland things that usually adorn our front door became the focus of my attention after the aforementioned, ill-fated trip to Macy’s that made me hate everyone on the planet (more). The garlands are now sitting in a pile on the porch after they were ripped from their posts around the door for such crimes as, “Not keeping their green whore asses up where they’re supposed to,” and “HOW MANY OF THESE STUPID BULBS ARE BURNT OUT?!??!”

The baby had a pretty good Christmas, presents-wise. We are navigating the murky waters of whether or not to believe in Santa and his age being a weird, in-between one…too old for most toys but too young for just clothes and whatnot. We ended up giving him a lot of stuff that’s tied to specific interests of his, namely Monty Python, Star Wars, and WWE.

I think we’re sticking with Santa for now. If nothing else, he’s still fun to talk about.

And the cat was pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

The WWE thing is a fairly recent development that made both the husband and I scratch our heads. But I vaguely remember being interested in wrestling for about 20 minutes when I was his age so maybe it’s just a rite of passage for Western PA kids or something. He hasn’t even really watched any WWE on TV, but I felt the need to explain to him that it’s theater more than combat. Yesterday we ended up falling down this weird YouTube rabbit hole when I showed him how cleanly the wrestling matches were choreographed (“See how he’s not actually punching that guy?”) and then in contrast showed him a few clips of Mike Tyson doing various savage things to people who used to have names but are now just One of Those Guys that Got Knocked Out By Mike Tyson. Then I realized that it was kind of messed up to be showing him all of that. So, yeah, I apologize for contributing to the desensitization of the next generation. My bad.

Anyway, I shopped online for some WWE toys for him just a few days before Christmas and was just kind of blindly picking things. I got him this which he was pretty excited about:

But I imagine OSHA wouldn’t have very good things to say about that particular workplace.

My mother-in-law gave him this game:

The other night when my sister-in-law was visiting, we had this conversation:

Her: “Is that game…beer pong?”

Me: “No, it’s…well…yeah, actually, it is beer pong.”

Then later, the husband came home and said, “Isn’t this basically beer pong for kids?” Violence and drinking games…that’s the kind of parenting I provide.

We normally go to my grandparents’ house on Christmas Day but obviously that was out so we all gathered at my mom’s house. We have a tradition where we take a picture of all the guys and then all the girls. The Y chromosome is strongly represented in our family.

Way back in 2000, just a few weeks after the husband became the boyfriend, I came down with a really disgusting stomach virus. It was a total disaster because as poorly as I handle vomitous situations now, I was way worse back then. I wouldn’t calm down about what was happening and kept trying to find what I considered, in my no doubt delirious brain, the most appropriate receptacle for my stomach contents. Because I was sick and weak, I never made it to any of the arbitrary destinations I had in mind, and ended up throwing up all over the goddamn place. It was pathetic. I’m pretty sure that I begged to be taken to the hospital mid-heave on the dining room floor.

My mom had to come and help mitigate the situation, but the husband stayed right by my side the whole time as I ran from room to room, ruining carpets, and slept on the couch with me while I watched The Outsiders and clutched a bucket.

Ten years later, almost to the day probably, in some weird, messed up cycle, I came down with another bug. It wasn’t quite as intense as the original version and I’m slightly less of a baby about the whole thing. But…ugh.

I was fine yesterday, but in the car on the way home, my stomach felt a little uneasy and I suddenly became very sensitive to smells. “I smell burnt plastic,” I snarled, but no one else did.

When we got home, I headed to the kitchen to make dinner, but spun around and told the husband and the baby that they should dip into their soup reserves because I wasn’t feeling good and didn’t want to make anything. Then I headed upstairs because I needed to go to the bathroom.

I sat there, slightly concerned, but figuring/hoping that going to the bathroom would take that away. But then I started sweating out of nowhere and thought, “That…generally doesn’t happen.” And, of course, the baby was talking to me about…something through the door until I had to tell him to please stop because I was physically unable to talk anymore.

I stood up, flushed, and tried to evaluate the situation. “Yeah, I think maybe it’s going to happen. It’s okay. You can do this. Try not to think about what you ate for lunch today and how that will look in reverse. You don’t know how long you have at this point. Best to get ready. Take off your sweater. Secure your hair. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be–HHUUUUUUGHGHHGHHUUUAAAAAAAAHGHGHGGHHHH.”

The baby had still been talking until he heard the unmistakable noises of hurling. As soon as there was a break in the (very graphic…believe me I am sparing you SO MUCH detail) action, he sweetly called out, “Mum? Are you okay?”

“Bleh. Cough. No.”

Once everything had calmed down and I had cleaned up the bathroom, I shuffled into my room and changed into pajamas.

And so it continued for the next few hours, though thankfully not as dramatic as the initial episode. The husband and baby kept their distance, but brought me Saltines and ginger ale and the baby made me the sweetest get well card which he ended with, “P.S. Don’t throw up on this leter.”

It was much like this, but without the drinking and the shame:

So that short guy that I write about from time to time? The fruit of my womb? This one?

He’s NINE today. NINE YEARS OLD. And he’s all:

By the way, we didn’t spray-paint his friends’ faces in real life. Just protecting their privacy and whatnot.

Like last year, we had a roller skating party. It turned out to be a pretty great day. We stopped in Polish Hill to pick up one of his friends and then swooped through Lawrenceville to pick up one of our friends who was going to be attending the party. On our way to Lawrenceville, the husband said, “Hey, look. Beetlejuice. Driving.” What? We looked in the direction of his pointed finger and saw an old burgundy minivan and, no shit, this guy at the wheel:

Not Michael Keaton circa 1988…at least I don’t think it was him. But a guy dressed up as Beetlejuice. The costume was amazing and the makeup was incredibly detailed. We just, uh, weren’t expecting that. As Beetlejuice drove past us, he saw our stunned expressions and grinned. It was really bizarre.

After we had picked up our friend, we shifted seating so that he and the husband were sitting up front and then in the back it was me, the baby’s friend, and the baby. About halfway through our drive to the roller rink, the baby’s friend said, “You know, I get carsick a lot.” To which I replied:

But we made it to our destination without incident.

Once we got there, and my grandparents showed up, the party quickly reached Animal House levels of mayhem.

It was a small group, but the kids had fun. And nobody broke anything so I pretty much my crossed off my entire list of goals for the day. Our other major coup was bringing a CD that we burned of songs that the baby likes. He has some current mainstream favorites, ie, Rihanna, T.I., but a lot of what he wanted to hear was Kraftwerk, Common, Black Sheep, and A Tribe Called Quest. The DJ put the CD in and pretty much just let it play, which was cool with us but the other kids who came to skate in a circle to “Party in the U.S.A.” for the 500th time in a row were close to revolting. Around the time that “Trans Europe Express” came on, I looked over and saw a gaggle of tweens shaking their fists at the DJ booth. Fortunately, the CD started skipping so the DJ switched to Ke$ha. Yay.

We’re going out to dinner tonight with my mom to celebrate. In the meantime, I’m doing that “Nine years ago at this time, I was…” thing. As much as I can, anyway. I spent most of the day in a post-C-section morphine cloud probably saying stuff like, “What baby?”

(Psst! Today’s the last day to enter my 77kids giveaway!)

The baby and I did two unusual things two weekends ago: got up early on a Saturday and went to Ross Park Mall. Ross Park Mall is on the other side of town for us and we all know how I feel about sleeping, so you can imagine that whatever pulled me out there must have been pretty cool. The folks at 77kids and TheMotherhood invited me and a few other local blogger-types to see the new store out there, check out their cool winter displays and merchandise, and learn about their charity initiative.

We arrived before the mall even opened, so it was nice and quiet, aside from a few mall-walkers (those folks who powerwalk around the mall early in the morning for their exercise). 77kids launched about two years ago in Robinson and the Ross Park store is pretty new. The store itself was warm and cozily lit, which made it instantly comfortable. The baby made a beeline for the interactive photo booth display so that he could live out his Shaun White fantasies.

After oogling at his photo after it printed, we headed to the outside of the store to see their cool window displays. 77kids took a cue from the downtown department store window displays and had the 77kids birds skating around and skiing. The window is interactive and the kids were invited to race each other’s birds down the hill. I would have taken a picture of the race in action, but I was holding our coats and my coffee and a bagel and a DS and a doughnut. I managed to get a shot after the fact.

I had to stuff his bagel back into his mouth to free up my hands, though.

Back inside the store, we learned about Wish 4 Snow. In stores, customers can add a donation at the register that will go toward children’s hospitals all over the country. Online, you can play the Make a Snowflake Wish game. 77kids’ goal is to get 100,000 snowflakes made for their blizzard by December 14th. If they reach that goal, they will donate an additional $25,000 to children’s hospitals. AND for every snowflake that you make, you’ll be entered to win a $77 gift card to 77kids and a chance at the grand prize: a winter block party for you and 77 guests. You can click the widget over on the right to get to the Wish 4 Snow game. It’s pretty cool. I’ve made a couple snowflakes and they look WAY better than the ones I’ve attempted with scissors and paper, which tend to look like diseased Swiss cheese.

I had to drag the baby away from these huge pillow bean bag things to go look at clothes.

Can’t really say that I blame him, though. They looked extremely comfortable.

He made a beeline for this hat, which I unfortunately can’t find on the 77kids site anymore. I hope it’s not sold out completely!

After donning the hat, he was drawn back to the photobooth to play with the neat little DJ setup that they had. Since his dad’s a DJ, the baby is always trying to play around with records whenever he gets a chance, so he was really into this gadget.

He circled around the store one more time and grabbed some gloves, a pair of jeans, which are awesome because they have that adjustable elastic waist and my toothpick kid needs that, and these cozy pajama pants that reminded us a little of the Abominable Snowman. We’ve been pretty happy with all of these so far and that hat gets so many compliments, it’s ridiculous.

Now, here’s where the cool stuff happens for you. I’m giving away one $50 gift card to 77kids to one of you lovely readers. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post between now and Monday, December 6th. I will choose one winner at random and announce the winner here on Tuesday, December 7th. You could give the gift card as a gift to your favorite kid or parent or stock up on some duds for your shorty. You should also take a minute to go play that Wish 4 Snow game. Do it! It’s for the kids!

(Awkward full disclosure: I’m working with 77kids and The MotherHood on this campaign. For my efforts, they provided me with a 77kids gift card and a small stipend.)

“Alright, buddy, go upstairs and get dressed. We need to get going.”

Ten minutes pass while I make sure that lunch and piano books are packed. I head upstairs and foolishly expect to see the baby in some advanced stage of dressing, at the very least wearing pants.

Instead, he is crouched on the floor in his pajamas, reading a book.

“What are you doing?!!?!” I hiss. “We need to GO!”

“I couldn’t find any pants.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake…”

I rustle some clean clothes together and toss them in his room, explaining again that we need to leave in just a few minutes. I start getting dressed myself and poke my head into his room because I sense something off. Something procrastinating. He’s wearing pants, but no shirt, and is playing with some magnets.

“Dude. Seriously. Come on.”

“Oh, FINE!” he sighs, as though going to school is some inconvenient favor I’ve just asked of him.

Downstairs, he has not put on his shoes like I told him to, but is looking for the gloves that he threw somewhere in the house when we got home last night.

I finally get him out the door and hustle him to the bus stop, explaining along the way that he has to go to school so there’s no point resisting and when he goofs off in the morning we risk missing the bus, which would screw up everyone’s day.

“Understand?” I ask/demand.

“Yessssss,” he moans.

We stand and wait for the bus. He breaks the silence by innocently asking me, “Can you take heavy blows to the head?”

In non-bludgeoning news, my dad’s birthday was on Sunday and we had him over for dinner and cake. He brought Champagne. He’s my favorite father.

He’s getting ready to blow out the candles in that picture. He’s not overly excited about or terrified by the cake that I made despite how it might look.

By the way, that cake is this Chocolate Overdose Cake, which is some Serious Business.

Brownie, mousse, cake, ganache. Ya heard?

I’ve had two mostly low-key weekends in a row, which means I’m due for another whirlwind. Tonight we’re trying to go see the new Harry Potter movie. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be hanging out with some other blog types at 77kids to check out their holiday displays and to learn more about their charity initiatives. At some point, I need to bake some cookies because later in the day, I’m going to hitch a ride with Allison to Michelle‘s house for a cookie swap. Then I will ponder who I am, doing all of these nice, wholesome things. Sunday, my mom and I are supposed to do some hardcore cleaning at my house. I may have to drink throughout that process.

It occurs to me that a lot of stuff happened in October that I didn’t write about here. Nothing life-altering, but events that would normally go here if I had time to write about them. I was frustrated by my lack of down time, but it’s good in a way that I wasn’t able to document anything. I was too busy living.

So, back at the beginning of the month, Frank got married. I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I did take a grand total of two at the rehearsal dinner.

There’s the bride and groom, a large centerpiece, and the best man. I believe I took this during the father of the bride’s “toast,” which was more of an undulating monologue about his job and his recent birthday and I think snails or something. After meeting Andrea’s dad, the picture that she had shown me of him in which he had fallen asleep while repairing the kitchen sink suddenly made perfect sense.

The next weekend, my cousin Jeffrey got married. The ceremony was at Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Yes, I’m wearing the same dress that I wore to Frank’s wedding. It’s my new October Wedding Uniform.

I had never been inside Heinz Chapel before. It is indeed gorgeous. But I found that my attention span during Catholic masses is approximately the same as it was when I was six. I kept staring at the stained-glass windows and going, “Mom, look. Look. Look at those stairs! Mooooommm!” And then Jeffrey and Kristy were married.

Newton’s like, “Tsk! Stupid apple done messed up my coiffure!”

Their reception was in the Carnegie Museum Music Hall, which is also insanely gorgeous.

Carnegie may have been kind of a jerk, but he had awesome taste.

The next day, we celebrated my mom and grandfather’s birthdays.

My kid is so sweet.

The weekend after that, our friends Jwan and Karen got married.

It was a really nice time. Our group of friends doesn’t have a chance to get together that much anymore and the wedding was really casual so we spent most of the evening talking, drinking, and dancing. Afterward, we went to Jwan and Karen’s house were things got progressively sloppy.

That’s Jwan’s brother on the right, who is a very nice guy, but also very blunt. Late in the evening, he sat down next to me and explained that he could tell I was, “kind of insane.”

Tiny dogs attacked the husband and not long after this, said husband had some, er, digestive issues and we had to leave abruptly, though our buddy Alison protested vehemently. The sister-in-law and her boyfriend had to chase our car down the street. It was all very goofy.

Then there was another weekend, and I know we had some kind of social obligation but I can’t remember what it was at all. We also went roller skating. And I think this was the weekend that we made our annual trip to Trax Farms. I forgot to bring my camera so I don’t have any adorable pictures of my kid frolicking in a pile of pumpkins. I’m pretty sure that means my mommyblogger membership is revoked. However, Michelle was there at the same time and she took pictures of her cute kid. So I’ll just piggyback on to her post and say, “Yeah, us too. Also: petting goats.” I also forgot cash so we couldn’t buy a cup of feed to give to the animals in the petting zoo. We kicked it old school and just petted (is that the proper conjugation?) the animals. I want an alpaca. Aside, goats’ eyes, or their pupils anyway, are rectangular.

This kept freaking me out because goats and their rectangular eyes would silently appear beside me and, in the absence of the feed cup, would start gnawing on my hoodie or my purse or my hair. Surreal.

Then came last weekend. Saturday was the Halloween parade in our neighborhood. The baby’s costume was inspired by the hopping vampires in this old, Chinese vampire movie called Mr. Vampire.

Obscure interests much?

When the husband and the baby were in New York this summer, they visited Chinatown and found various elements of the baby’s costume. We basically just had to take care of some makeup and the little prayer sheets.

It turned out pretty good, though nobody knew what he was and…well, I’ll come back to that in a sec.

The other big thing that happened this past weekend was that I turned 32 on Sunday. We celebrated at my mom’s house Saturday night.

I got some really nice stuff from Anthropologie (swoon!).

And there was cake and champagne and then my dad made the most absurd argument about how people can’t truly enjoy sports if they haven’t played them because they don’t appreciate how hard they are and for some reason this leads my dad to dismiss the entire Pittsburgh Penguins’ fan base (but no other sport) because he believes none of them/us have played hockey. Does your brain hurt after reading that? Yeah, imagine hearing it live. I pointed out that I’ve never practiced medicine but I appreciate it any time a doctor, like, gives me an emergency C-section to save the life of me and my child.

Sunday morning at 8:30 am (ugh) the baby had his last soccer game of the year. His team has had a rough season, winning only two games. It was a tough lesson for them, understanding that if you don’t try (which they often weren’t) you don’t get the results that you want. However, they were awesome during their last game, and even though they still lost, they looked pretty bad ass.

Their coaches gave them all trophies for their hard work. And though they were disappointed that they lost, I was secretly pretty glad that we were done for the year.

Sunday night was trick-or-treating. Now, we didn’t expect anyone to know what his costume was and I was really apprehensive about the assumptions that people would make. A lot of people responded simply, “Oh. Okay!” when he told them he was a Chinese, hopping vampire. But plenty of other people took a guess and said…sigh…”Chinaman.”

I know people get all irritated about political correctness, which is stupid because political correctness is just an admittedly poor term for a good thing: treating people with a equal amount of respect and not calling them things that they don’t wish to be called. There’s no legislation, there’s no censorship, it’s simply, “Hey, could you do me a solid and not be a douche and refer to my ethnicity/sexuality/religious/etc group as…?”

So, really, if you weren’t sure, “Chinaman” is not okay to say anymore. So stop.

Anyway, trick-or-treating went well. We had a perfect fall night and we’ve all been gorging on candy ever since.

And that was October. The end.

The obvious answer here again is the baby. In a post that I wrote last year, I described the first time that I saw him thusly:

When I first saw him, it was like everything slowed to a complete stop for just an instant, but an instant that seemed to stretch on forever. Everything that I understood about life and time and love ended. And when the earth started spinning again a few milliseconds later it was in a new direction or had switched tracks. Even in the next few weeks, when things got really dark inside my head, that feeling was my touchstone.

I’m not going to act like I always have my priorities straight or that my perspective on life is always aligned correctly. But that moment has never dulled in my memory as the beginning of the life that I was meant to live. So whenever I’m stressing over something that I know really isn’t as life-or-death as I’m making it out to be, I call that moment to mind and things get a little bit clearer.

The husband also qualifies for this, but I’ll save most of that gush for a post that I’m working on for our anniversary. (Hint: get your barf bags ready because it’s going to make you sick. Plus, he’ll probably divorce me for posting something so Hallmark.)

But another obvious person who made my life worth living is me. I can get pretty down on myself, but every once in awhile, I recognize something good that I’ve done and I admit to myself that I’m a pretty decent person and perhaps the world is, in fact, a little bit cooler with me in it.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

My phone rang last week, displaying an unfamiliar number. I answered and was greeted by a representative from the baby’s school. He was a counselor heading up their new bullying prevention initiative. There had been an incident.

I automatically assumed that it was my son who had been at the receiving end of the bullying. But as I listened, it turned out that my son had been the bully and some other child his victim.

I couldn’t believe it.

I mean, my kid is an 8-year-old boy and obviously not the sweet baby that he was just a few years ago, but a bully?

The counselor explained further that the baby and another boy had created a game that involved smacking another kid, the object of which was for the smackee to stop the smackers in time. The boy who was the smackee asked them to stop several times. They did not.

I was somewhat relieved. This was not bullying as I understood it, someone with deep psychological issues who preys upon and terrorizes someone for arbitrary reasons, a behavior in adults we call stalking and harassment and sometimes even assault. I was even more relieved when the counselor told me that after the victim came to him to report the incident and the baby and his friend were called in to discuss the incident, the baby was very sorry and felt very bad about the whole thing and was very concerned about how much trouble he was going to be in with me.

I’m glad that the school has this program and that they’re encouraging children to speak up and seek protection when they’re being hurt. And I’m glad that the definition of bullying is broader than what I had assumed.

I told the baby later that I understood that he was not a bad person, that he had done something wrong but that I didn’t feel that he had set out to torment the child, who, in most other circumstances, is one of his school friends. I also told him about my experiences with bullying, that kids had picked on me for years because I was a small kid and because I was weird and because I was different. When he went back to school on Monday, he apologized to the boy and they made up.

As I was initially freaking out to a friend about this, she wisely told me, “I think it’s very easy for a kid to be a bully one minute, not a bully the next, the victim of bullying five minutes later, etc. I certainly played a number of different roles in the bullying landscape of school during my years in it…It’s complicated.”

“Like Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion?” I replied.

I remembered specifically my middle school experience, which was certainly the worst of my school years, I was picked on constantly, but I remember getting some sick pleasure of being mean to two other girls. One was the tall, fat girl, the other was the short, extremely smart and quiet girl who bent down to bring her mouth to her food and not the other way around. I made fun of them behind their backs. Doing so gave me a few moments of acceptance within the larger group, some relief from being the center of ridicule. I may have been weird, but I wasn’t them.

I can’t remember my mom or dad ever telling me explicitly to treat other people with at least a little bit of respect, to recognize that they’re human and have feelings. They might have or maybe relied on my Catholic education to take care of that aspect of morality.

I doubt that this will be the last time that my son is ever mean or crosses a line or hurts someone’s feelings. But I told him anyway, “Be nice to people. Think about how you would feel if you were in their position. Assume that they’re having a rough time and take it easy on them.” What else is there to do?

I’m just going to blurt it out: I hope I never have to bury my child. Anything else in the world I could endure. That…I’m not sure that I could survive.

Ahem.

Anyway, to try to push that out of my head, a close second to that is that I hope I never have to take a math test ever again. I thought I was in the clear after my sophomore year of college, when I finally passed the dummy algebra class after failing it twice. But then I had to go and apply to graduate school which required the GRE. I even ruled out a career as a teacher when I found out that there were hefty math requirements to get the bachelor’s degree.

Even though you generally take math tests quietly and on your own, I still feel like I’m having the mother of all naked anxiety nightmares when I have to actually DO math and then SHOW it to someone, since my computations generally look like this:

It’s not that I don’t respect math and all that is truly awesome about it. I just don’t get it. At all. I mean, I can drive a car better than I can do math and if you’ve seen me drive then you know how much of a dunce I must be about numbers. And I have always hated the reactions that I get from people when they start to grasp how little I understand math. Especially since people who have even a little understanding of it are so freaking smug about it.

So if I could avoid ever taking another math test, that would be wonderful.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Something you have to forgive yourself for…

There are a number of small silly things that I could put here. Not sticking to my Monday/Wednesday schedule for this exercise this week or standing outside of the bathroom plugging my ears while my kid puked on Monday, helpfully calling out, “Just let me know when you’re done, sweetie!” lest I hear, see, or smell his digestive malfunction and join him over the barf bucket. (By the way, the puking of Monday and the ensuing catch-up on Tuesday explains my truancy on my 30 days of truth schedule, so I figure that absolves me on that count.)

But there are, of course, some big things that I should probably tackle.

As horrible as this sounds, I need to forgive myself for having the baby. This ties in very closely with day 1’s truth.

Now, just to clarify, this does not mean, “How could I do this to myself?” This is about my insecurity as a parent and as a good person. Like I’ve explained (or at least attempted to) several times, my pregnancy was a pretty tumultuous time. There were countless reasons to not continue my pregnancy and they were all rational, good reasons. And given another time and another alignment of the stars, they probably would have prevailed. But I could not get my head past the fact that I wanted that baby beyond all reason and rationality. I wanted a tiny family with the husband and I wanted it to start right then and there. Mind you, this was not a Veruca Salt style, “I WANT IT NOW!” but just a certainty deep down inside of me that moving forward was the right thing to do.

But, as anyone who’s lived knows, certainty is a fickle bitch and there have been plenty of moments that I doubted myself. Pretty much as soon as I uttered the words, “I’ve decided to have the baby,” I started to have moments of panic because more than anything, I wanted to do right by the child that would have to live me and the husband as his parents. And I mean, really, how often would you look at these two people and willingly put a small child in their care?

Yeah, not so much

Those moments aren’t as intense as the first night we had him at home, which was one of the roughest nights of my life. I remember stumbling aimlessly around our apartment, exhausted from not sleeping in days, terrified at the weeks or months of sleepless nights stretching out in front of us, my body in pain and rebellion as things healed, swelled, bled, and leaked, and a tiny, squirmy child who needed every crucial thing in life and he needed me to give it to him. I remember sobbing, wondering who the hell I thought I was to thrust that poor kid into this mess that was my life, and volunteering for the immense duties of teaching him how to live and cope and be happy.

Now, I have some variation of that first night when I’m staring into our murky future, wondering how we’re going to make it, and letting the pressure and stress of that turn me into a madwoman. And I wonder what I was thinking to put him through this.

I’m not qualified to be his mother, but then none of us really are. And I need to forgive myself for that and keep on finding the joy in my absolute best goof.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself