kdiddy.org

The other night, I had just drifted off to sleep. Our cat was curled up against my tummy, purring away and giving me some extra warmth. I was reaching that really good point of sleep when a small, familiar voice woke me up with a phrase that always makes me panic:

“Mum. I don’t feel so good.”

It was the baby, obviously, and his stomach was upset. He’s never been very good about describing his symptoms, but from what I could gather, he’d just experienced one of those vomit-burps. I’m sure you know what I mean. It starts out as a burp and then takes a frightening detour and though you emerge with your digestive system intact for the moment, it freaks you out. Am I getting ready to spew? Or was it just a slight malfunction? I need to know how much I need to dread the next few minutes/hours and whether or not I should move my operations to the bathroom.

I felt my stomach drop, particularly when the baby squeezed out a few tears and rested his head on my chest (partially because I felt bad for the little guy and partially because if there was going to be spewing happening, I did not want his face mere inches from mine).

I interrogated him on the state of his stomach (“Do you think you need to barf? Have you pooped today? On a scale of 1 to 10, how gross does your stomach feel?”) and urged him to try going to the bathroom. I gave him a Tums, even though I wasn’t sure he was old enough to have one yet, and after a few minutes he declared that he thought he was okay.

He climbed back into bed and I asked him if he wanted a bucket, just in case. He did. I climbed back into my bed and stared at the ceiling and waited and listened.

Though I’ve gotten better at handling digestive eruptions since I’ve been a mom, I’m still prone to panic at the thought of one of us coming down with any kind of stomach bug because I can’t deal with vomit. And, of course, because I’ve turned overthinking things into a sport, I’m sure that this speaks volumes about me as an adult and a parent.

I can remember at least two occasions in which the baby has puked and I have handed the reigns over to another parental figure with shaking hands. Once was when he was about a year old and we were living with my mom. It wasn’t the first time he had been sick, but for whatever reason, I stood in the doorway of his room, wide-eyed, unable to move, and asked my mom to please clean him up for me.

Another time was about a year ago and we had made the unfortunate decision to eat at Wendy’s earlier that evening. Regurgitated chicken nuggets are, I’m pretty sure, the scent of Hell. I couldn’t deal and the husband heroically did all of the dirty work.

Because of our recent crushing blows, I’ve been really upset. Like, really upset. And I’m questioning every aspect of my life and how I’m doing. My evaluation of myself results in pretty low marks and my inability to deal with vomit or even the threat of vomit threw me.

I don’t remember my mom ever having trouble taking care of me. I can distinctly recall a particularly nasty stomach bug that I had in third grade that seemed to go on for days and had me spending my nights in my parents’ bed, next to my mom, and when I had to get sick I would KICK her. She would wake up and hold back my hair and direct me toward the bucket. Calm, sleepy, unfazed, and certainly not dry heaving behind me.

I don’t know that I could do that and it’s just the latest in a long list of things that I’m feeling…incapable of. I’m having trouble going to sleep at a reasonable hour, getting up at a reasonable hour, doing laundry, participating in any cleaning activities, exercising, dieting, getting lunches and clothes ready for the next day, figuring out what I want to do about job stuff, raising a man, being a partner to a man.

Am I just overwhelmed? Or am I just incapable?

It began to snow.

— Blankets

One night, a few weeks ago, when the snow was still above my knees, I walked to the corner store to get something to drink.

On the short walk home, I became so sad that when I got to my house, I had to stop at our front steps. Something was gnawing at me.

I walked around to our backyard and stared, marveling at how alien the landscape looked, white and soft but dead. I spooked the neighbor’s dog who was out for his constitutional in his yard and he began to bark frantically. His mistress popped open the screen door and squinted at me.

“I think I startled him. I’m sorry. I was just taking a look out here.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said, apparently mostly sure that I was who she thought I was. I walked back to the front of the house since I figured continuing to just stand in the back yard late at night might concern her.

It was so quiet. The only sound was the whir of a dryer vent somewhere near by, shooting Bounce-scented fumes into the night.

I turned around and looked down toward the main street and decided to lie down. The snow was high enough that I could easily sit without having to go very far. I plopped down and back and spread my arms out.

The sky was too cloudy to see the snowflakes falling from it. Instead, they appeared to materialize out of nothing a few inches above my face, narrowly dodging the steam from my nose.

I closed my eyes and listened and could hear the tinkling of the flakes crashing into one another as they landed, discharging static.

After a few minutes, I got up and went inside, back to my boys.

Perhaps I had felt it coming that night. A few days later, we got the news that the husband’s job, the one that was so perfect, the one that was going to allow us to march forward in life, had fallen through.

This little corner of mine has been quiet because I’ve been so sad. And my sadness has a way of rotting and becoming so ugly. I’ve been so nasty and doing what I can to make anyone who has the audacity to come in contact with me feel at least a little bit as bad as I do.

I know it’s not the end of the world and I know that things will get better someday. But we were right there and we were so cautious to get excited about it until we were sure that it was going to happen. And then when we were sure, or so we thought, we started making plans and getting ideas. Now we’re back where we’ve been. Static. And there’s a lot of sighing going on.

The husband and I are not big Valentine’s Day people. Sometimes we do stuff to mark the occasion, but usually we don’t. This year, we had some tentative plans, but we got some bad news a few days beforehand and were just too bummed out to care.

For whatever reason, the past few years, I’ve started to develop really strong opinions and feelings about holidays and how people view them. Around Christmas, I kept getting really irritated with Christmas haters. I know Christmas as an institution creates expectations about really heavy things like family, joy, and the like. And I know that a lot of people have shitty things happen to them in life that make the Christmas microscope on those heavy things way too much to deal with. I just…I don’t know.

Valentine’s Day also has me cranky.

The baby’s school was closed all last week and I haven’t heard of any plans that the school has to make up any Valentine’s Day celebrations. That bummed me out. I always really liked making my Valentines box and as long as no one is excluded from Valentines, it’s fun having a party with your classmates.

I think that’s telling. Perhaps Valentine’s Day, to me, is more of a kids’ holiday, even though kids aren’t (or shouldn’t be) big on the romance. The cutesyness of it makes me think of crushes and puppy love and passing notes.

Anyway, I think I’ve nailed down a list of behaviors that people exhibit around this holiday that drive me bonkers.

– Being super into Valentine’s Day. “I got roses and a four-star meal and a beautiful, heartfelt card and breakfast in bed and diamonds and wee!” No, I know. You like doing something special. Cool. I think this is more me bristling at how Valentine’s Day is another arena for public displays of affection, which make me very uncomfortable in almost whatever form that they take. One of my biggest regrets about Facebook is that I sometimes catch, via my news feed, whatever moronic baby talk people I know and (used to) respect say to each other. I’ve seen whole arguments and make-ups (though not the sex, thankfully) take place on wall-to-wall interactions and I don’t get it. Why do that? And if Facebook is your main communication tool, why not message your significant other? I’m not going to act like I’m totally private about my relationship. I write some mushy stuff here and, heck, our wedding was one big make-out fest. But for the most part, I feel like constant PDA signals some degree of insecurity in the relationship and a need for outside validation.

– Being super anti-Valentine’s Day. Granted, the previous group is hard to take, and if you are less than thrilled about your romantic status, Valentine’s Day can be just another obnoxious obstacle to getting on with life. People can be very idiotic. And if you find the super-pro-Valentine’s crowd to be indirectly antagonistic, do your best to ignore them. They’re suckers.

– Complaining about how commercial it is. Um, unless you live in a society very different from ours, everything is very commercial. For every single aspect of our life, there is something you can buy to aid or commemorate it. Find something interesting to gripe about.

– Stating that, for you and your wonderful schmoopie, everyday is Valentine’s Day and/or lecturing people that everyday should be Valentine’s Day. I don’t understand this assertion. Valentine’s Day should be more like any other day? Or every day should contain some worship of how awesome you are? Nah. Shit happens and some days you are so thoroughly OVER your significant other because life can be really trying sometimes. And, really, unless there’s something seriously wrong, don’t lecture people about how they should carry out their relationship or how it should be more like yours.

– Sending flowers to the workplace. Yawn. Also, it has this…sinister undertone to it. Because while it may be partially intended to brighten your loved one’s day, the other motivation is to make co-workers jealous and, really, why are you thinking about how others perceive your expressions of love? Grow a pair.

Last night, I told the husband, “Whoa, work is closed AGAIN tomorrow!” marveling at the effects the recent fubar weather conditions had had on the city in general. As a result, we’ve been in the house mostly non-stop since Friday.

A few hours later, he said, “So, do you have work tomorrow?”

I thought for a minute that maybe I was in Mulholland Drive.

“No, I already told you I didn’t.”

“Oh. That was today?”

I knew what he meant. What day was it? How long had we been here? Where was everyone? Perhaps the news reports were all pre-recorded to dull panic and the Snowpocalypse had actually been the Apocalypse. And everyone important was sealed in a bunker somewhere. And the real panic wouldn’t set in until we realized that there were no more french fries anywhere. French fries could be extinct right now and we wouldn’t even KNOW.

These past few (I’m not going to attempt a guess at the precise number) days have been pretty wild. I don’t remember much about the last time that we had really significant snowfall like this, which was back in 1993. I only remember that it hit on a Saturday and my mom and I drove into town anyway for my ballet class. There were about 6 other people there total, when normally there would have been a few hundred cycling in and out throughout the day. We couldn’t generate enough body heat to make the cavernous ballet studio not tortuously cold so we all went home, which my mom tells me was a harrowing drive.

This morning, I looked outside and had to laugh. It’s like we’re living in some CGI movie. And everyone seems to be acting correspondingly daffy.

For instance, a woman parked in front of our house Friday night. Saturday morning she came by and tried to dig it out but just couldn’t and I told her it was fine to leave it there until she could come get it because our car was still stuck at my mother-in-law’s house and it would be a day or so until we could park our car there.

At some point on Sunday, she came and got her car but put a chair in the space. In front of our house.

This seemingly innocuous act made our heads explode. If you’re not familiar with the Pittsburgh Parking Chair, I direct your attention to this timely article in the Post-Gazette.

Technically, she did dig out the spot and under a more liberal jurisdiction she would have claim to the space. BUT she KNEW it was not her space to have because we talked about it and we permitted her to leave her car there. If I had known she was just a space pilferer, I never would have agreed. I would never move a parking chair, because I am not a jerk, so she had essentially check-mated me into giving her our space.

This snow is turning people into lawless savages. Today it’s the parking space. Tomorrow she’ll probably try to eat my brains.

There have been other signs that people are collectively losing their shit. Yesterday a woman knocked on the door and we had the most bizarre conversation. She asked which car was mine and I pointed to ours, which was resting in our horrendously angled driveway that the husband had to shovel out because SOMEONE had taken the space in front of our house. (Getting the car to the house was a whole separate ordeal that took several hours and resulted in two flat tires and a close brush with frostbite. I don’t want to talk about it.) After we established which car was ours, the woman proceeded to pepper me with non sequiturs to the point where I was questioning the sanity of both of us.

“Did you see the woman?”

“What?”

“With plastic bags?”

“Um…no?”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Under the best of circumstances, I have a sinking feeling that life is but a slowly unfolding zombie movie. When you throw in three feet of snow, it doesn’t do much to comfort me.

It’s also been really disheartening to listen to everyone whine about the effects the storm has had on city operations. I just don’t understand the outrage. I am not the biggest supporter of Luke Ravenstahl’s administration, but I don’t see the city’s response as “dropping the ball.” These are not normal conditions. These are quite exceptional conditions and would bring even the wealthiest cities to their knees. Under normal circumstances, I think the city’s response and road clearance rates are pretty decent. But there’s an ENORMOUS amount of snow out there. Just figuring out where to put it must be a logistical nightmare.

The public transit system has a Twitter account that has been absolutely amazing keeping riders informed of route changes and delays and as far as I can tell has responded to everyone that has thrown a question at it. Not only that, the people running the Twitter account have been extremely courteous to abuse thrown their way. I understand that it sucks standing outside in the cold, waiting for a bus, and then being stuck on that bus for hours, but please. Look around. Road conditions worsen faster than they can be improved and everyone’s impatience to get back to normal doesn’t help. Is it really any wonder that navigating buses through that is a losing proposition?

The only way through this is with cooperation. If you can stay inside, do so. If you’re an employer, don’t pressure your employees to risk everyone’s safety by making their way into work. If you have to go out, assume that everyone is doing everything that they can to keep you safe and to keep life functioning as normally as possible and respond accordingly. Don’t bitch.

Although, all of that hot air might make the snow melt faster…

It’s just disheartening to see people not sucking it up. For every Good Samaritan tale of people helping each other out or forging their way to work so that we can buy milk and bread, there is a huge chorus of whining that makes it not seem worth it. I would hate to think that we would need to experience a REAL disaster to gain some perspective.

Hello, from the paralyzed tundra formerly known as Pittsburgh. I won’t bore you with yet another series of pictures of people standing waist-deep in snow, because, really, there’s no new ground to break there. It’s snow. It’s white. There’s a lot of it. I will insert a little slideshow that you can view or not at your leisure. No pressure.

So, my big emotional post the other day about how our new life was starting today? Yeah, it’s been put on hold a bit. Not from the snow, but from some…I don’t know…HR matter that pushed back the husband’s start date a week. No biggie. And because I am paranoid, I verified with the husband that this was not some passive move. And it worked out well, because my work is closed today (unheard of) and the baby is off of school at least today and tomorrow. Aside from slight cabin fever, it’s been pretty nice to stay holed up the past few days, cuddling and watching TV and whatnot.

Really, I don’t know when things are going to be normal around here, especially since there is more snow coming down the pike. I’ve never seen anything like this.

On the upside, it was kind of fun exploring everything on Saturday. A lot of people went out for walks, taking advantage of the fact that you could just march down the middle of the mostly useless streets. We saw a few ATVs, a snowmobile, and one guy on a snowboard. We stopped into the new coffee shop on Brookline Boulevard, Cannon Coffee, and I nearly died from happiness. I’ve been moaning since we moved here that we needed a good coffee shop and now we have one. With pastries and sandwiches and excellent beans and cozy places to sit and wireless internet. I see myself spending some serious time there.

One of my quirky pet peeves is inefficiency. Specifically, inefficient packaging. As insignificant as a concern as this may be, I think it will start to have significant consequences as people rely more on e-commerce and shipping in terms of costs, both financial and environmental.

So, for the baby’s birthday, I ordered (shh, don’t tell) this safety knife set because he always wants to help me cook and I want him to have 10 intact digits. Like I said, I’m quirky.

Today, the knife set and the other gifts that I ordered arrived and I gleefully set about opening boxes. I couldn’t quite remember what was due, so when I got to the biggest box, I wasn’t sure what was inside.

I offer my foot for scale, if that helps. I wear a size 8, 8 1/2.

Another shot of the impressive box, complete with my stained shirt. (My grandmother gave me four shirts for my birthday. I’ve worn three. I’ve also stained three. Eff my life.)

At this point, seeing the cooking.com tape, I’m figuring it’s the knife set, but I’m not yet concerned about the size because I didn’t check the dimensions when I ordered it. Maybe that makes me a bad consumer. I don’t know.

Ooh, looks enticing.

Dig, dig, dig. “Any minute now,” I say to myself, “I’m going to reach the gift. Sweet!”

Eventually, I reach China this:

I know what you’re thinking: SRSLY?

Srsly.

I estimated this to be 27 feet of Fill-Air. TWENTY-SEVEN FEET. All for this.

And, look, I get it. I ordered this around the busiest shopping time of the year. I can only imagine the fatigue that the shipping staff of cooking.com and amazon.com were experiencing and I’m sure they were experiencing packaging challenges that would make me barf. But this is really ridiculous. It’s inefficient and wasteful and frankly I expect better.

Hi. I’ve just returned from the ridiculously overpriced on-campus convenience store where I procured Pepto Bismol because things have gone all wrong in my stomach. I’ve been grappling with what I can only describe as extreme hunger since early this morning and the only explanation that I can come up with is that since I’ve spent the last four days eating (and doing little else), I’m on some weird new digestive schedule. If the Pepto doesn’t help, I may have to call my HMO to see if they will cover an IV of liquefied mashed potatoes.

I could tell that this mini-vacation was going to be rad when my son came downstairs Tuesday night looking like this:

And said, “Take my picture in this outfit and put it on Facebook!” Um, no. But I will put it on my blog. This is why I don’t really let him on the internet and as far as he is concerned, the series of tubes begins and ends at cartoonnetwork.com.

Wednesday, I got out of work early and the dudes and I went to the museum to see the whale exhibit, which features a replica of a blue whale’s heart and apparently blue whales are really big because the heart was the size of a Volkswagen. Kids were able to crawl around in it and the baby invited me in. Because I possess the ability to identify Spaces In Which I Will Get Stuck, I declined but stuck my head in to take a look. From what I could smell, someone in the recent past had not made it out of there in time to make it to the bathroom, which is probably the only instance in life where you could close your eyes and be unsure of whether you were on the bus or a plastic blue whale’s heart.

After that, we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was pretty great and then rushed home because I had pie-making and potato-mashing duties to tend to.

Thursday morning I made the executive decision to make 5 more pounds of mashed potatoes and this made the husband very nervous. But I don’t have time for girly-men when it comes to Thanksgiving, so I shushed him and we piled into the car and headed to my mom’s.

YES.

My dad and his cancer-free ass showed up to bring the appropriate level of cheer to the event.

If you ever wondered where I get my sunny disposition, look no further.

This portion of Thanksgiving went off relatively without a hitch, and I couldn’t help but think of one Thanksgiving in 2003ish, during which we got into a huge fight about I don’t even remember what and all of the pictures feature my red eyes and puffy nose because I don’t understand why you have to be such a bitch MOM. Anyway, the only tense moment was when I realized that my grandmother and I had both made pumpkin pies and my grandmother said something about passing the torch and I detected a note of bitterness.

Look at her giving me the stinkeye. Your applique sweater fools no one!

After we were adequately stuffed, we rolled out to my mother-in-law’s house for the second shift. That culminated in lying on the couch, groaning and farting, while watching The Godfather on AMC. This is a torturous activity because The Godfather is several hundred hours long as it is. When you add 300 commercial breaks, you begin to have the urge to shoot Vito and blow up Appollonia yourself just to get on with life.

I am pleased to say that spending time with my family and getting to visit with Frank over the past couple of days has greatly improved my mood. I’m still sad about stuff a lot of the time (which has had the fortunate side effect of a clean entryway), but our people really do rally around me and my little family and they’re not going to let us smack the bottom. They’ll at least help us to land softly.

The next week and a half is going to be an exciting one. The baby turns 8 (EIGHT!?!?!) on Sunday and then next Tuesday I give my final presentation as a graduate student. Effectively, I will be done with my MA a little over a week from now.

Also, I made the executive decision that the husband and I needed to re-watch The Wire from the beginning. I think he was a little surprised, especially since we just started watching Deadwood (a couple of years after the fact, but whatever), but he didn’t really resist. Being able to watch the whole thing over again is so fun. I highly recommend it.

Here’s the after to this before:

And, no, the books are not piled up out of frame, they are now stacked in the handy little nook of the nightstand.

I think the fact that the books are crooked bothers me only slightly is a sign of serenity. Go me.

I am (still) having a rough go of it, emotionally. Today, when my mom came to pick up my kid to take him to Oakmont’s light-up night, I was crying a little bit because it seems I have a daily quota these days. She told me to do something that made me happy while they were gone, like laundry.

On the surface, this might sound horribly condescending. “Buck up, wifey! You’re neglecting your womanly nature by pursuing a career and having thoughts and stuff. Take a valium and dust and you’ll feel right as rain!”

Unfortunately, there are no valium here. But it is true that in fits of rage or depression, I’ve pulled myself up slightly by taking action in the one area of life that I can control. So I decided to tackle the area by my bed.

I have, I think, an understandably shitty attitude toward cleaning my house. Its run-down and just dirty looking, no matter what, so even basic maintenance often seems pointless. Combine that with the fact that I’m naturally a messy person and things like this happen.

See if you can spot your favorite book! And I’m sure Tracey will be touched to see the pictures of M scattered in with the debris.

So, I’m about to go to town on this sucker and will be back in a few hours (hopefully) with an after picture.

One of the things that I sort of committed to doing and have been pretty successful at so far is getting more sleep. I’ve always considered myself a night owl and up until recently, I’d been doing a fair job of functioning on little sleep. This was often out of necessity, what with school and all, and out of sheer defiance, my reasoning being that I had so little time to just do what I wanted, that I was damn well going to stay up until 2 a.m. on weeknights watching TV.

But a combination of my schedule easing up a bit and, I think, just getting older made me start falling asleep earlier and getting into a better rhythm. I’ve going to bed by 11:30 most nights for a few months and it’s pretty fantastic. I can’t say that my mood is greatly improved because there are a lot of other factors at play there, but I’m at least not as tired and can get up earlier.

I’m also noticing that my dreams have been getting weirder.

Last night was a particularly unrestful night of sleep. I was woken up by the husband climbing into bed after his DJ gig and reeking of stale cigarette smoke, by the cat who was looking for the perfect position around my head and kneading the pillow and pulling my hair in the process and purring incessantly, two or three sneezing fits that were probably a result of the cat sleeping on or around my face, and a nightmare.

The nightmare woke me up and when I finally settled down enough to go back to sleep, the narrative of the nightmare picked up roughly where it left off and I think there are few things more upsetting in life than not being able to shake a bad dream.

This particular nightmare was obviously influenced by me joining the viewership of the new series V and by dousing myself in super-depressing stuff like The Road. But it was a classic anxiety-horror dream in which the world was being colonized by aliens and as eye-roll-worthy as that plot would normally sound, my kid was involved and it took a turn for the terrifying.

All of the children were taken from their parents and surreptitiously replaced with doubles. And what made it weirder was that the doubles didn’t know that they were doubles. The child who had inhuman insides clung to me as he got sick and called me “Mum” and when he spotted my actual son in whatever holding area he was in, he whispered, “There’s a little boy who looks just like me!”

It was terrible, holding and nuzzling this creature who was a perfect facsimile of the person that I love most in the world, realizing that he was not, in fact, my child and that this creature would eventually come to destroy me and everyone else in the world, including my actual kid.

When I fell asleep again and the nightmare returned, it was later in the ordeal and the husband, who was very ill at this point, and I were desperately hiding. But some horrifically loud machine started pulling at the building that we cowered in. We didn’t scream, though, because neither our child nor his sinister double were with us, indicating that we had already lost everything.

When I woke up, I realized that I had accidentally shut off my alarm and slept in a little, which meant that it was a little too sunny and quiet. I couldn’t shake the dream for a long time, and when I stood with the baby at the bus stop, I had to keep blinking to understand that the world was still more or less the same as it was yesterday.

I don’t subscribe to any theories about dreams having real meaning. But they do come from the subconscious. And, if we are indeed made up of the same material as the stars and the planets, making us as much a part of the infinite as the Sun and the Moon and the bizarre and wondrous nebulae, perhaps dreams are just our brains running through all that is possible, having a break from our daily rational existence in what is probable.