Still kickin it

2012-01-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day that I feel human in almost a week. Sometime on Sunday I started experiencing dizzy spells, chills and body aches. On Monday when I woke up, I felt like I'd been punched in the throat. The bottoms of my feet hurt, my toes, ankles, hips – oh hell, my whole body just plain ached. When my stomach started churning, I knew. I was in for something horrendous.

I'd already agreed to host a playdate for a friend of 4's. As I dragged myself to the phone to cancel, the doorbell rang. Too late. I had to make the most of it. I set out to distract the boys with anything I could think – playdoh, matchbox car tracks, Thomas train tracks, crafts (paint, glue, pasta and paper), movies, puzzles, etc. The boys were really good and stayed out of my hair. I gave them a wide berth and used my hand sanitizer every chance possible. By the time 4's friend's mom came to pick him up, I was so exhausted. It only took me a few minutes to get into PJ's and climb into bed.

Tuesday morning when the alarm went off, I couldn't believe how terrible I felt. I honestly don't think I'd ever felt worse in my entire life. Rampant body aches. Wracking chills. Nausea. The pressure was so intense. I don't know how I did it, but I dragged myself through the shower and got the kids fed and off to school. Then I lay in my bed and just sobbed. My husband was so concerned that he stayed home with me. I begged him to check me into the hospital, convinced that was the only way I'd survive the day. I thought for sure I was dying.
He tucked me into bed, fed me copious amounts of water and ibuprophen and made me choke down a few bites of buttered pasta. And then I slept. For hours. I slept and slept and slept and slept and when I woke up I was a tiny bit better. Just a tiny bit – enough to stop sobbing as long as I was awake.

The kids came home and I told them how bad I felt. They were incredibly sweet about it. They both got into their pajamas and climbed into my bed with me. We watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and cuddled, gently, because Mama was still hurtin' lots. And then they went off to bed without a fuss. WITHOUT A FUSS!! If you know 4, you know that's momentous.

Wednesday, I didn't feel much better at all. But I had to drag myself to work. There were things waiting on me that couldn't wait anymore. I was grumpy and tired and angry at the world. Somehow I made it through the day, and the next, and here I am today. Still kicking it.

You're Ruining My Life!

2012-01-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

4 threw a tantrum of epic proportions last night. One that made any previous tantrums pale in comparison. He was just SO upset. I don't even really understand why. It didn't matter what I said to him. If I spoke in his general direction, he'd throw his hands up, give me an exasperated ragey frustrated growl, then stomp off to the living room to throw himself face down on the couch. The whole thing made me giggle, inwardly you know, because us parents have to keep our shit together in front of the little people. But as long as he was in the other room, 8 and I hunched over to conceal our grins and silent laughter. "Isn't he CUTE?" 8 whispered. "SO cute!" I responded. "Little Dude has FEELINGS." And he did.

Around the 3rd or 4th go at this, things started to get ugly. He stomped off to the couch, threw himself down and proceeded to yell, "I hate my life! I have a TOUGH LIFE EVERY DAY! And you make it so bad! You RUIN MY LIFE EVERY DAY! I have a horrible life!!" Said with much feeling and emphasis.

Hey, hey whoa whoa whoa HEY… What? Suddenly things weren't so funny anymore. Did he really just go all tweenager on me? At 4? That was unexpected. And, considering I'd just told him not to pick his nose and eat it meant I was ruining his life, I figured the boy needed a little bit of an intervention. I thought about all the times my mom tried to make me see how lucky I was compared to how I felt. She often used stories of homeless and starving children to get me to stop pouting. How lucky for us, in 2012 to have the use of Google and visual aids! Can I just say, that 4 was decidedly happier after we sat down and looked at a few pictures? Of course it's not something that I'll be able to use often, but I think this time it was rather successful.

I'm ready for a New Year

2011-12-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

My 32nd birthday was a few days ago. I don’t fret about birthdays much, nor do I freak out about getting older. I actually like getting older. I try not to have too many expectations. It’s just my birthday, right? But, 3 days later, I can say that my expectations were highly exceeded this year. I was humbled and brought to tears by some of the cards, emails, facebook messages and calls I received on that day. I guess I had a little bit of a Sally Field moment... “You like me, you really like me!” because up until then I thought, well.... I thought maybe you didn’t.

I don’t know. It’s hard for me to accept praise or compliments, or even heartfelt birthday wishes, I guess. It's like growing up when you never feel good enough, except that never went away. I took away so much love from that, though. I felt like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes. It’s so important to surround yourself with positive, cheerful, life-loving people. I strive to be like a lotus - always float to the top of the mucky-muck.

I didn't plan any spectacular birthday parties this year, like years past. Typically, I celebrate my too-close-to Christmas birthday with my friend Craig, who suffers the same plight, although mine is before and his is after the big day. This year, he moved to Minnesota with his fiance'. I miss him, my kids miss him, my husband misses him. So to be honest I didn't really feel like celebrating without him. And, I’m really feeling the weight of holiday stress this year, so to add some sort of Big Deal birthday party might kill me dead. Xanax should not be synonymous with the holidays, no? Except that would be a brilliant marketing strategy for them (You're Welcome, makers of Xanax, I'll take a free sample, please)! We had tossed around a few ideas - spa days, gambling at the casino (both personal faves) but ultimately ended up with Big Fat Nothing.

My two adorable kids (8 and 4) wanted to go to dinner for my birthday, though. I usually opt for Japanese on my birthday, but someone (4) mentioned a certain seafood restaurant, and because I adore that his tastes are so similar to mine, we headed to Red Lobster for my birthday dinner. We take the kids to Red Lobster a few times a year. I wouldn't say that it's an extremely fancy restaurant, but it's nicer than say, Perkins, right? I save my fancy dinners for nights when I have a babysitter - so please don't think I'm expecting a stellar fine dining experience. But, you're going to have to imagine my surprise upon being seated in the (what I called and pardon my ignorance) "Ghetto section" instead of the regular seating that we're used to. I wasn't even aware that Red Lobster had such a section - but they do! See, the regular seating (at least what I am used to) is carpeted, has nice lighting, and is a somewhat private dining experience. Being that it was my birthday, I was expecting such. However, immediately upon entering the restaurant, we were greeted and seated in the non-carpeted bar area where they had about 7 or 8 booths piled on top of each other - right near the entrance. Weird. Weirder still, was that before we were even seated, our waitress came over to hand us our menus and was all up in our business. I mean, my butt hadn't even graced the lovely pleather squishy seat before she had asked for our drink order. My hackles were raised. But, while I struggled to get my coat off and stuff my purse behind 8, I tried and tried and tried to be patient with over-exuberant Server Girl. She said she would let us get settled (HA!) but even when she saw me fighting to get 4 to seated and tearing his jacket off without knocking off the 5ft swordfish off the wall in the process, she continued to stand there spouting off specials and asking if we wanted Raspberry Lemonade for the kids. Finally, after grabbing both of the stupid paper menus out of my kids hands to save my ears from the incessant flapping noises, and while ripping open the plastic crayon wrappers with my teeth, I told her, "I am not ready to make any orders just yet." This was me, being polite. My husband, ever clever, did not get the hint. Of course, he was able to just sit down and take his jacket off and even had a few minutes to browse the drink menu, while I ~~had seizures~~ took care of the kids.

And, of course, he did this with ease, because he has "A Drink". A signature drink that he always orders, one that he always knows and is universal to both him and every bar known to man. His drink? A simple, eloquent "Captain and Coke". Ha. Ha ha. I, on the other hand, do not have "A Drink". I like “drinks” but I don’t have “A Drink”. I don’t think shots of Patron can be considered your Signature Drink, can it? I like a good Caberbet or Shiraz, or if its a fun afternoon I’ll take a Sangria. I had a short run of ordering Grey Goose Martini’s with a twist, and more often than not I will go for a regular Margarita on the rocks, no salt. But, I wasn't feel Martini or Margarita-like at all. I wanted something special. You know, like a Special Birthday drink. (Did I say that I don't fret about birthdays? Well I might have lied!)

So, while awkward server-girl stood there (this process lasted at least 5 minutes), I opened the drink menu and began to peruse. Server girl offered to bring us water in the meantime, which I pleasantly accepted. But, did she leave, allowing me a few moments to collect myself (mop up the sweat) and look through the drink menu??? Not a chance.

She never stopped offering drinks and appetizers and menu items - she was just talkingtalkingtalking, and you guys, I’m not made out of patience to begin with. So, take it upon yourselves to try to be understanding when I tell you that I turned to that poor girl with Devil’s Fire in my eyes and said in my worst, “I am so serious, this is not good, you’re in big trouble now,” voice that I usually save for the kids when they are on my last nerve and said, “Can I have a flipping moment here? I said I wasn’t ready.” You wish you could have seen the look on her face. You do. But, awkwardly (I mean, why change something that’s obviously working for you, right?) she just stood there. And then she slowly backed away, as my husband chastised me for being so horrendously rude. Me, rude? Frankly, I think she was being incredibly rude and she wasn’t catching any hints or direct inputs from me when I was being nice, so she got me being Not Nice.

It worked.

Because she didn’t return to our table for another 10 minutes. It was just to do a driveby with my husband’s drink and the water. Another 5 minutes passed before she had enough courage to face me to ask for my drink order. This time I was ready, because I had some time to sit and ruminate over the drink menu and fiddle with the paper on my straw like I like to do before I make Big Decisions. We ordered our meal and drinks all at once and remarkably, it was a smooth process. See how that works? Give the customer a little bit of time and Things Work Out Just Fine! Although the rest of the meal was spent complaining about our seating arrangement, the overcooked lobster, and shitty drinks. Oh and that creepy ass swordfish. 4 loved that thing, he wanted us to take it home. Regardless, I think we’ll have to find another kid-friendly seafood restaurant because this just felt like a disaster. And she totally spit in my food.

Along with the stress of the holidays, birthdays and bad servers, I’ve been busy trying to heal up my heart after an extremely difficult year. We lost a friend in a tragic accident, had a dear friend move away, and we’re dealing with a sticky situation involving kids, divorce and just extremely shitty circumstances.

My husband and his brother have a very close relationship. My brother in law is going through a difficult divorce (are any of them NOT difficult?). This past summer, BIL and his 2 young daughters (5 and 9) were essentially blindsided and abandoned by my ex-sister in law. My husband and I took on much of the care of the girls, as well as supporting BIL through this process. Collectively, our summer was extremely stressful – we’ve housed, fed, and grieved with them. The summer was a blur. The details are too much to into, but believe me when I say it's soooo UGLY.

As well as dealing with the anger and sadness and the shock at the abrupt end of this marriage, I am also dealing with some sadness and anger from losing ex-SIL myself – granted, I never cared for her much, but she was in our lives for the last 16 years. I tried for many years to be “sisterly” towards her, to involve her in my kids lives (she is afterall, their "aunt"), to be a friend to her – although my attempts were in vain and never once returned. I made myself a fixture in my niece’s lives - this relationship was important to me - but I was never able to make myself a fixture in HER life. And now she's gone. It's a weird sad hole, one that I can't really explain. Left in her place is a lot of anger. A LOT of anger. For years I watched her be a terrible, inept mother. Somehow her leaving has compounded all of this into a seething rage. I guess I thought while it sucked that she was such a bad mother before, at least she had BIL there to make sure the kids stayed alive, at least. And now that they have split custody? Well. There’s not enough I can say about that. Nor am I happy about having to split special occasions and holidays with my nieces. I’m not kidding when I say we’ve been so close with them that they are basically My Kids. My kids, but I have no control over how they are raised.

I think the part that hurt the worst, while SIL was busy falling in love with someone else and tearing her whole family apart in the process, that she never once stopped to think how any of her actions would affect anyone – anyone at all. I've cried tears she'll never know about, held my nieces in my arms night after night and she doesn't even care. My kids are question-zombies who got a fast and hard lesson on Shitty People who do Shitty Things. I’m working on letting this all go and being at peace with the whole thing. I can’t get my summer back or undo the damage it’s done (I get plenty sick of hearing MY kids ask me if their dad and I are going to get divorced when they hear us bickering... “Who burned the bacon? Not me!” “OMG ARE YOU GUYS GETTING DIVORCED NOOOOOOOO.”) Yeah, I don’t really know how to explain this to my kids – she left THEM too, without so much as a goodbye. But then they’ve called her 5 and 9’s mom for years as opposed to Aunt, so, the connection was weak at best. Basically I feel like she is unfit for adulthood and needs to go back to infancy and start over, but that is not in my control.

That aside, we’ve also had some positive things happen this year – we celebrated our 10th anniversary as an old married couple – we’ve made it 17 years as a whole. We’ve weathered a few storms, some of them pretty cataclysmic (the burned bacon, for one). But all in all, we’re so committed to this thing. In September, we vacationed with our entire family – my parents, grandma, my husbands parents, BIL and his daughters and our 2 children – together for the first time, in what I hope will become a tradition. We’re shooting for Costa Rica in a few years. Though getting my mom on a plane to a foreign country is going to be a feat.

All in all, 2011 is wrapping up and for that, I am glad. I am happy to put this year behind me, to start a new year with new, fresh thoughts and feelings. I’ll take with me the good parts – I’ll try really hard to remember how I felt on my birthday – cherished and loved – I’ll take all the positivity with me, but leave all of the negativity and the bad memories behind.

Cheers.

By The Seat

Still kickin it

You're Ruining My Life!

I'm ready for a New Year