Grateful

Last night we took our daughter to a Christmas party. It was all adults, all couples, so there wasn't really anything for her to do. And dinner wasn't even served until 8:30 pm, about half an hour after she's usually in bed. But she was soooo good.

I had brought a book and a stuffed animal for her, and after I read her the book once, she curled up on the sofa and quietly read it to her cat. Then she toddled around nestling up to various adults, talking to them about her cat, and giving them shy smiles. I was proud of her social skills. She sat next to me at dinner and tried a little bit of everything on her plate. Then she played quietly by herself the rest of the evening. At one point, one of the women at the party, someone she had never met before, was asking her interested questions, and after a short conversation with her my daughter smiled and said, "I love you." I gotta teach her to hold her cards closer to her chest. :)

Honestly, I have nothing to complain about. I have an amazing, dishy, multitalented husband who I was so lucky to meet and marry. I have a beautiful little girl who is just the light of my life. We have a lovely home, and general security, and we're all in good health. I am blessed.

Canine Phobia

I used to think, when I was a kid, that as soon as I was grown up I would fill my house with pets. I'd have dogs, cats, guinea pigs, birds of all descriptions - my house would always be full of activity and interest, and I'd never feel lonely. I guess my experiences with animals up to that point had all been pretty positive. My own pets could make me happy on the worst of days - so I didn't see why you wouldn't want to open your home to as many of them as possible.

Now I understand. It's not just the maintenance and cleaning that, as an adult, I'm now responsible for. It's also the experiences I've had with animals who weren't as friendly and loving as the ones I grew up with.

I have a regular route around my neighborhood that I like to run. On the course of this run, I'm routinely barked at by large dogs who lunge up against their fences aggressively. Even though I've learned where they live and am expecting it, it still scares me when a dog barks at me suddenly. More than once, a dog has jumped a fence or come through an open gate and come after me. I always stop running immediately, so I won't look like prey, and turn to face the dog and try to look alpha. Then I gradually back away until the dog appears to lose interest. I've never been bitten, but that may be just luck so far. I wish the owners would train them not to bark at passersby (our dogs never did that) or would make sure they couldn't get out and chase people. For the first time, since we've lived here, my dominant feelings about dogs have been that they are potentially dangerous.

I definitely don't want my daughter to feel that way or to realize that I do. When I'm pushing her stroller around the neighborhood and a large dog barks at us, I try to make light of it, saying "Hello dog!" So far, I don't think she's scared of dogs, but if one gets out and charges us when she's in her stroller, it will probably be frightening for her.

One of my friends also adopted a dog recently who is pretty much completely untrained and has a lot of energy. When we visit her, the whole time the dog is jumping on us, trying to chew on our feet, or racing around the room. It's difficult to have a meal there because the dog is constantly trying to get the food off the table and doesn't listen when my friend says "no." The dog also has growled at my child. After two visits, I don't feel safe taking my daughter over there any more. My friend doesn't use any discipline, beyond the occasional suggestion "please don't do that," which the dog totally ignores and probably doesn't even realize is directed to him. I feel like I can't visit my friend again until she either gets rid of this dog or it mellows with age.

I remember feeling total love for the dog I had when we were growing up - she was my best friend. But my daughter doesn't love dogs like that, and no wonder. I feel disinclined to get a dog as a pet in our family (even though I would train it, and wouldn't tolerate bad behavior), just because being around unpleasant dogs has soured me on the whole idea.

Another childhood dream, up in smoke?!

The Circle

Today I had the day off from work so I joined my mom at her weekly sewing circle - a morning in a comfortable room flooded with sunlight, chit-chat, and animated discussion of projects, grand-children, holiday plans, and other pleasures. We drank tea and ate cookies. We admired one another's quilts. I sewed a potholder. It was so pleasant and peaceful and full of good female energy. At one point, as the group discussed all the things they want to do and see, my mother said, "How could anyone ever be bored?!" and many of the others laughed in agreement. I can't wait until I retire so my life can be filled with mornings like that.

What's Gonna Work, Part II

I had a thought. I was reading about Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was married for eight years before having her first baby. She talked about how being with her husband for that period gave them time to grow and change together, so that they were a team when they finally had to deal with the stress and excitement of caring for a newborn. It sounds so sensible.

When I was younger, I always thought I would like to live with my husband-to-be for about five years before we actually got married, just to get used to being a team together. In the end, that schedule got compressed a bit. We weren't lucky enough to find each other until we were in our late twenties. I started to get scared that marriage would never happen, so I pushed for it to happen sooner, and then as soon as we were hitched I started pushing for a kid because I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to conceive.

Maybe some of the challenges that my husband and I have faced - the frustrations of not working together, not agreeing on priorities, not agreeing on whether to have a second baby - are due to us having a baby so soon after we got married. We didn't have a lot of time to just play around together - go on trips, learn about each other.

It was a relief to me when I got pregnant so quickly the first time - whew, met the age 30 deadline - and I have loved raising our daughter. But perhaps there would have been less stress and more teamwork if we'd waited. I often felt when our daughter was brand new that I had to shield him from the inconvenience or difficulty of the baby by handling what I could by myself. I did all the feedings, most of the diaper changes, all the laundry and planning and doctor's check-ups and scheduling and packing. He never had to get up in the night with her when she was little.

It wasn't until recently that I felt at all resentful of that - when I heard a friend who's expecting a child of his own soon mention confidently that he expected to take the late shift and feed the baby before going to bed, so his wife could go to bed early and catch up on her sleep. I felt sad that I didn't get help like that. (Realistically, I don't know how he could have helped, since I was nursing and didn't want to skip a feeding for fear of having my milk production drop. But I would have liked him to offer. Why couldn't he have magically read my mind and known to make such an offer so I could have refused it?)

Anyway. The thought was about how our lives might be different if we'd waited. Or if we didn't have children. Maybe we'd have more time for each other. Maybe we'd see each other more as partners in this whole endeavor. Maybe I'd feel more united with him and more trusting of his decisions. Sometimes I have the sense that everything (the joined lives, the house, the child) are my ideas that I've talked him into, and whenever it's not super-fun I feel apologetic. I promised it would all be great and I feel that it's my fault when it's not.

Is it too late for this to change, I wonder? Are my choices just to accept that he's the way he is, and not try to make him different, or to have serious conversations where I try to bully him into being different - is there no organic way for us to get there together?

Or are we just "in the belly of the beast" raising a small child, and things will all get easier as she grows older and more self-sufficient? Perhaps child-rearing is a challenge to the best of marriages, and there are better days ahead. Not that I think our marriage is strained. Just not as perfect as some other people's seem to be.

Priorities

There's some old poem about how your kids will never remember that your doilies were starched, but they'll remember the trip to the park one summer day, or some such thing. It always makes me feel obscurely guilty to read it. I do take my daughter to the park, and we bake cookies together and do fun stuff like that. Every Wednesday we go to storytime at the local library. Every Saturday we do arts and crafts at the local nature center. Pretty much my whole emotional being revolves around her and being her mother.

But I also spend a lot of time cleaning, and occasionally ignore her in favor of cleaning. There are days when she's whining for attention, dragging on my arm or whatever as I'm trying to dust, and I go on with what I'm doing or tell her "Play by yourself." At those times, I know I'm putting the cleanliness of the bookshelves over her immediate happiness.

One of my mom friends is kind of the opposite of me. I think this particular friend is awesome. I have so much respect and admiration for her, and also just think she's a really nice person. She has been so supportive of me during my hard times. She's different from me in that she has a hotshot career she's not putting on hold to do child-rearing; she basically single-parents her son most of the time while her husband is on frequent business trips, but she's also working full-time and a rising star in her field. She's also different in that she does not spend time cleaning. Their house is always kind of chaotic and filled with a million half-finished projects, lonely socks, dog toys, etc. - the kind of house where the clutter alone tells the story of artistic, energetic people who have better things to do than dust.

Sometimes I wish I was more like her. I'd like to send the message to my daughter (and anyone who might visit our home) that what matters most to me is the time we spend together.

Other times I think of justifications for my cleaning obsessions, like:
Keeping the house relatively clean helps justify my working only part-time. I'd feel bad if my husband came home after a long day and found the house a disaster zone.
This way, I can always find stuff - I don't have to hunt through clutter looking for those missing jigsaw pieces or my green earrings. Everything is pretty much back where it belongs, at the end of each day.
If visitors are coming over, I don't have to make a special effort to clean up.
I like doing it. When I'm in the midst of a routine yet satisfying cleaning job, I feel like I'm achieving "flow" - that state of total absorption where you don't really notice the time passing, that comes as near to a definition of happiness as anything.

I'm not sure I can turn it off anyway. Last time we visited my friend, I had to fight the impulse to start cleaning her house, even as we sat around and talked. If she went out of town for a weekend, I would love to go over there and just wash dishes, do laundry, glue broken toys back together, and sweep until the house was clean. It's sick, right?

Flakes

Why in the world are some people so flaky? I have a few old friends I'm trying to keep in touch with, who just aren't returning the effort. I email them from time to time, call and leave messages, but no response. One of my friends, an old college roommate who I haven't seen in a few years, actually stood me up at a restaurant where we planned to meet to have lunch. I was looking forward to catching up with her, but she never showed. I called her and got her voicemail as always. Later, when I emailed her to ask what had happened, she wrote back that she decided to take a nap instead. She didn't even apologize.

I tried to toss it off like it was no big deal. But I was so hurt. When I think about it now, I'm still hurt, even though this was some time ago. I don't think I've ever done anything to offend her or been anything but a loyal, fun friend to her. I guess she just has bigger fish to fry.

I have enough friends who do seem to care about me and whose company I really enjoy. For some reason I feel compelled to try to keep up the friendship with these few, however, who don't seem to be giving anything back. I wish I could just let it go. I'm like an ex who can't come to terms with the fact that I've been dumped.

What's Gonna Work? Teamwork!

I love the WonderPets. (My daughter's summary: "A piggie, a turtle, and a duck... go in a boat... and get lots of animals!" That's about as accurate a description as I could come up with.)

The first time I saw the series, the cutesy voices made me squeamish. The voices are done by little kids who lisp and say things like "We'we a gweat team!" But I've gotten past that and learned to appreciate the finer aspects of the show. Here's what I like about it:

1. The pacing. Each episode opens with a crisis - an animal's in trouble! - and the WonderPets have to go to the rescue. There should be an underlying sense of fear and urgency, what with the need to build the flyboat anew (from the pieces scattered around the classroom in unpredictable places), get to an unknown destination, and solve some puzzle to save an animal that's in danger. Each of those tasks seems difficult. But the WonderPets don't hurry, and they don't worry. They take their time discussing the situation ("A baby seal... stuck on a rock... this is sewious... we have to help her..."). Then they mess around in the costume chest looking for their capes, and slowly put the boat together. They don't worry about how to get there because the boat just finds its way magically right to the animal. They don't feel trepidation about solving the puzzle because they just know that they'll find the tools they need. They trust each other completely and know that they'll win. I wish I could approach unknown tasks with the same calm faith in my own success.

2. The solutions. The tools to solve each puzzle are always right there, often in the early experience of assembling the flyboat (if they have to use a flashlight to retrieve a piece from the closet, then it's a sure thing they'll need a flashlight later to rescue the animal). Other times there's a pile of bricks or a rowboat right next to the homeless animal or the river. There is always one right way to do it, and they always find it.

3. The simplicity of their enjoyment. They take time out from their rescue missions to giggle and try on other costumes, slide around on the ice, or dance their way through the forest. They don't fight or whine that they're tired, like real preschoolers, or argue about the best way to go, or complain that they're bored. They just seem to find pleasure in everything that happens.

4. The clues. The decorations in the classroom are always relevant to the later adventure - if they're going to be rescuing a frog, there will be pictures of frogs, a diorama of a pond, and stuffed frogs displayed around the room. It's fun to notice these things and predict the storyline.

5. Old-fashioned charm. The classroom is a one-room schoolhouse of the most comforting, archetypal kind - cupola with bell, flag, peaked roof, maple trees planted all around. Very New England. Each episode opens with the children's voices saying goodbye to the pets, cheerful and friendly. Compared to the way my daughter is often crying and fighting as I try to transition her from one activity to another, the simple good naturedness of the children as they leave seems idyllic.

6. The supportiveness. The WonderPets really seem to like each other. They're always saying appreciative things - "Great job Tuck! You're really good at swimming!" "And you really helped when you found the wheel!" They don't take opportunities to cut each other down like real people do when they're working on a team project. They are just constantly pumping up each other's self-esteem. I wish people were like that.

Breaking the Taboo

I'm in my first cycle of fertility treatment. I feel like trumpeting the news to everyone. For some reason, it seems to be kind of a taboo topic - other people who are having fertility problems don't seem to talk about it, and people who are not having problems don't seem to want to know. I have the impression that if I do talk about it, I will just make them uncomfortable. One person I told (over email) responded to every other part of my email except for that bit of news, and another person I told (at a group dinner; we were sitting side by side) immediately turned away and began a conversation with the person on the other side, as though I hadn't spoken. I have to just assume that the topic made them uneasy and they didn't know how to respond.

I think when I mention to people that I'm doing fertility treatment, it's akin to saying, "I'm in pain. I have this great sadness in my life, and I'm trying to get help to fix it." I think the ideal response would be to recognize that pain and to express some kind of support. I guess what I'd like to hear is something like "I'm sorry you have to go through that. And I wish you luck." That would be nice.

Of course some of my friends have been wonderfully supportive. They do me the favor of asking periodically how it's going. I feel sometimes that I'm desperate to talk about it, because it's a big absorbing thing in my life. It's affecting a lot of facets of my daily existence, what with the pills and the injections and the waiting and hoping, so it's such a relief to be given permission to talk about it. One friend even confided that he and his wife are having similar problems but didn't know where to go, and I was able to recommend the fertility clinic I've been visiting.

My strongest support and ally through this whole process has been my best friend, the one who went to the same clinic and is now pregnant. We're easily capable of talking about this stuff for an hour at a time. It's amazing how much we have to say to each other about it. I still wish we were pregnant together, but I'm hoping we'll still have young babies around the same time.

Halloween Finery

Last week I took my daughter to the Halloween parade at her daycare. It's one of those iconic traditions, like the first day of school or the first loose tooth. Just like when I was a kid, all the kids marched around the playground in their costumes, occasionally peeling off to grab their parents from the sidelines or chasing each other across the hopscotch markings. There was much carousing and fun.

Oddly, I didn't notice a single homemade costume. Some of them were dimestore-type Superman capes and plastic masks, while others were beautifully stitched Renaissance tunics with velvet boots, but they were all new looking and from a store. When I was a kid, I made my own costume every year. In fact, I had been thinking about sending my daughter in a cat costume. I made the ears using a black headband and pipecleaner wires, with black tights stretched over them. In the end, she went as a dragon instead, because I happened to have an old purple dragon costume someone had given us.

2) In my daughter's class of 15 kids, every other little girl was a princess. They were all wearing really pretty costumes, too - sparkly tops, tulle skirts, tiaras, magic wands, sashes. A couple of them had glittery fairy wings too. I watched her marching around rather grimly in her potbellied dragon suit - and then I saw the other little girls skipping and laughing together in their beautiful costumes, tossing their hair - and I felt such a pang for her.

She's only 3, but already I worry that she's going to be sidelined, ignored, or bullied by the popular girls in the years to come. There are a million reasons they might find for ostracizing her. She doesn't talk enough. She doesn't have "pretty" hair. All her clothes are hand-me-downs or from the thrift store. A fair number of them are actually things that I or my husband wore when we were little. She doesn't watch TV, so she doesn't have that pop culture connection. I keep the radio tuned to classical, so she doesn't know about Hannah Montana or popular music. She doesn't have a Barbie.

Most of the time I send her off to school wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, sometimes overalls, and sneakers. The sweatshirt is often something that a boy might wear. It seems like a practical, simple outfit, exactly what I would pick for myself. When I see the other girls at her daycare, though (on a regular day, not Halloween), that's not what they're wearing. They're all dressed in little skirts with tights, sparkly ballet-flat shoes, and Gap shirts. They all seem to have long hair that their mothers put up in bows or ponytails that cascade over their shoulders. My daughter's hair is a basic bowl cut, too short to put up.

I thought I had a few years before I needed to worry about her peer group, but perhaps at age 3 they're already noticing that she's different. I don't know how to equip her to deal with it. My own strategy was basically retreating into my own mental world, which was dominated with ancient Celtic mythology (Rosemary Sutcliff novels), horses, and fantasies where I had telekinesis. Whenever anything bad was happening to me, I just shrank away inside so it was almost like it was happening to someone else. Bullies eventually gave up on me because there was so little reaction. And the popular kids didn't notice me. That's not what I want for her, though. I want her to be happy in her own identity, and to choose her own friends - not just be stuck with whoever she can get.

Patchwork Quilt

My favorite part of the day is walking home from the train station. It's about a half-hour walk, through residential streets and across a park. This time of year, the whole way is carpeted with scarlet and orange maple leaves, and the trees lining the street are flaming, almost shimmering with color - gold and yellow and crimson and violet. It's gorgeous. It always makes me think of the Babes in the Wood fairytale where the forest birds cover up the lost children with a patchwork quilt of autumn leaves to keep them warm.

In a week, when the time changes, it will be too dark to walk home and I'll have to start taking the bus home (in the dark), which is kind of gloomy. And I'll miss the fresh air and exercise. The knowledge that my walks are almost over for the year makes them especially bittersweet.

But I can't complain... this has been the most lovely autumn in recent memory. We've had day after day of warm, 70-degree weather with blue skies and golden trees. Wearing short sleeves and racing through crunching autumn leaves is wonderful fun. When February is getting me down, I'll just have to remember how lucky we were to have this time.

Brought To You By Glycine Max

Tonight we had a really great dinner. Stir-fried vegetable dumplings, with just a drizzle of soy sauce, steamed edamame, and brown rice. Man, it was good. As I was eating it and enjoying it, it occurred to me how much of it was soy based. The dumpling shell, probably, and the contents, more or less, the sauce, and the edamame of course. And my daughter had fake chicken nuggets, which are also probably entirely made of soy. It's so versatile. It's amazing that you can get bread, meat, vegetable, and milk (not to mention ink, fiber, and probably other things) out of this one plant.

What is wrong with me that as I sat there thinking about soy, I realized I knew the scientific name of the plant?

How To Have a Great Funeral

I started thinking about this because we had a going-away party for a colleague at work, who was fired - or "let go" is the polite word for it. Her job position was eliminated. Anyway, she had worked for the organization for 10 years and was well liked, so a lot of people were at the party. We went around the table and shared our well wishes and our memories of working with her. One person spoke about her successes in her job, another about her warm and convivial presence in the office, someone else about her artistic talents (she does crafts, needlework, photography), someone else about her great sense of humor, someone else about how she'd learned a lot of botany from her, and so on. There was a great diversity in the comments and they seemed to build up a really nice well-rounded picture of a life.

It occurred to me that if I leave or am fired, I won't have a goodbye party like that because people at work don't really know me that well. I have lots of interests that are separate from my work life, but I don't really bring them up at work. No one there knows about my poetry or how I like to run or my interest in young-adult fiction or my loud bird or my projects around the house and garden. No one knows I used to be a competitive ballroom dancer or that I have tree-frog reveries. For a long time I kept my personal life so separate that no one there even knew I was in a relationship until I asked for time off for my honeymoon.

That's OK; I don't care about having a great going-away party. But it did get me thinking about how if you want to have a really good farewell - or, for the ultimate in farewell parties, funeral - , you have to have a life that's full of variety and interest. You have to connect with people on lots of levels. Otherwise no one will have much to say, and it will be kind of a dull occasion, the equivalent of a yearbook full of messages like "I didn't really know you that well, but you seemed nice. Have a great summer!"

So here are my suggestions for having a good funeral:
1. Be a pillar of the community. Have a career like pediatrician that touches lots of people, or even better orthopedic surgeon to an athletic team, so you get to meet lots of famous people. This will generate a lot of memorable encounters that friends can recall at your funeral.
2. Be talented at stuff. Sing, paint, weave, whatever - create things that are beautiful.
3. Be funny. Not in a weird quirky way like me, but in a way that will allow other people to share jokes that you made later, and that will get a whole room laughing.
4. Travel a lot and have a bunch of amazing life experiences like parasailing, skiing in the Alps, participating in a marathon or cross-country bike tour, etc.
5. Get married and have kids and grandkids so you will have a lot of family memories. It's ideal to have at least one child of each gender so no one will think you "missed out" on raising one type. Don't get divorced.
6. Write a book that touches a lot of people.
7. Have the kind of joie-de-vivre that makes people see you as an inspiration.
8. Stay in touch with childhood friends but make new friends wherever you go, so there will be people who knew you from all the different times of your life.
9. Be a joiner in the community - church, civic association, Girl Scout leader, etc. so all your neighbors know you.
10. Bake really great cookies that people will remember decades later.
11. Be musical. For some reason this really goes down well - and gets people smiling when they remember it.

That's all for now. Looking over this list, I can see that I'm really falling short so far. I bake so-so cookies, write short stories that I never let anyone else read, make friends easily but don't quite have the knack of holding onto them, and make a living by cobbling together office work and largely solitary freelance work - nothing spectacular. I don't have a very loud voice and people often don't hear the things I say. Sometimes I'm even being quite funny and no one hears me. Maybe that's why I prefer writing.

Perhaps it doesn't really matter, because after all I won't be at my own funeral. And the people who really know me will still miss me, so why try to impress those who knew me only peripherally? Still, it is something to think about.

Whimsy

I love my dad. I think we have a lot in common as far as personality - both of us a little high strung, a little prone to depression and social neediness, both introspective but thriving on friendships and being around other people. I think a few years ago he went through a low point of sorts when he was struggling to figure out what to do with his time - unable to find meaningful work or social contacts. Things seem to be looking up for him now.

The other night at dinner, he was being so funny - he had stuck a couple of little white dots on the side of his index finger and made a closed fist and then wiggled his thumb up and down so it looked like a little misshapen face was talking. He was using a funny voice for it too. My daughter was laughing like mad. One of the little dots kept falling off, so he stopped. Later in the meal, someone noted that it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and he said, "Arr, well in that case, ay'll just stick my one eye back on and..." and at that point I was laughing so hard I missed the rest of what he said.

To really get why this was funny, maybe you had to have known him a long time and known how he used to be (from my perspective, anyway) sadder and more emotionally fragile. I remember years when he was so miserable at his job, and other years when he was so miserable trying to find a job and not succeeding. To see him so relaxed and whimsical and able to be silly like that was wonderful.

Then later in the evening he was setting up my daughter's travel crib for her to sleep in, which is the kind that folds up into a bag, and my mom made some comment about how it was like setting up the Big Top, and he started singing this tweedling ridiculous falsetto circus music as he jiggled the legs into place. Which was hilarious to me all over again. I am so glad to see him happy like that.

Special-Needs Girl

I'm editing a book about special-needs kids and educational strategies. The whole process is presented as being very encouraging and caring - if Tier 1 strategies like working in small groups don't help a kid who's having trouble learning to read, then the team meets to develop plans for more intensive interventions, like working one-on-one with a teacher to practice reading skills. There's never a word about blaming the child. It's all very positive and geared toward just helping him or her get up to speed. The underlying theme is that if a child is trying and not succeeding academically, it's not a personal failing, it just indicates that the child would benefit from a little extra help.

I like this philosophy so much - it's really refreshing and I almost feel like I'm getting a bit of therapy on the side, just from reading it. Because I am so angry at myself and ashamed of being infertile. I keep blaming myself for it, half-hoping someone will say "It's not your fault," but no one ever does, so I go right back to mentally bashing myself. There are these messages floating around and getting into my head that if I just relaxed, or tried harder (whatever that means), or ate better, I would get pregnant like all my friends who get pregnant without even trying. Which boils down to my infertility indeed being my fault.

Anyway, as I'm reading this book I have such sympathy with the kids who are struggling to learn to read, a basic skill that everyone around them seems to be picking up with no problem, and I can imagine how frustrated and sad they feel, and how painful it is for them to judged "stupid" by their peers. And what a breath of fresh air, like a guardian angel, a reading therapist might be, someone nonjudgmental who knows that they're doing their best and can sweep in to help them before they really sink into the mire of self-hatred. That's what I need. An infertility therapist to come save me.

What Am I Doing with My Life?

I just spent an entire day indoors, working on my computer. A glorious late-summer day it was, too, in the 70s with warm sunshine and low humidity and brilliant blue skies. All day, as the time was passing, I was longing to be outside, and conscious that this day would never come again. And now it's gone.

The reason I was chained to my desk was that I stupidly said yes to a bunch of different freelance projects at different times, and they all arrived on top of one another and are due soon, so I'm pretty much working all weekend. Sometimes the freelance life really gets me down. It has allowed me to maintain a decent income after I cut my hours back to half-time at my regular job, and I get to spend a lot more time with my daughter this way, and we save money on childcare. But it often means that I don't get any time off. In the evenings when other people are relaxing in front of the TV with their feet up, that's when I have to go to work - even though I spent the day taking care of my daughter and cleaning the house and running errands and cooking, and I'd like to rest too. Sometimes I find myself really looking forward to the weekend just because the freelance work is piling up and it will be my chance to crank through some of it while my husband babysits.

I weigh this lifestyle against the alternative all the time. If I was a normal person, with a full-time job, I'd be enjoying a three-day weekend. I'd have gone out to spend the day with my husband and daughter - they rode the train, went to the playground, had lunch downtown. We'd have had fun together. Then we'd have come home and the two of us could chat, or read, or whatever while she napped. Then we could have a family dinner and go watch our Netflix after she was in bed. A great day.

Instead, I just worked on the computer for 12 hours more or less straight, with breaks to get a cup of tea or eat junk food. Once I went out on our deck and breathed in the sunlight and fresh air for a few minutes, leaning on the railing with my face raised, and tried to just absorb some of the day through my pores. Then I went back inside.

And for what? I don't earn very much freelancing, no more than I do at my jobby job. But once I've agreed to do an assignment, I have to follow through with it. And when I'm offered one, I'm always scared that if I turn it down, they'll never call me again. So I get myself into these fixes. Yesterday was like today, and tomorrow will be the same. All for a little bit of money, when I would rather have had the day.

Fongo Fever

I have discovered a new dish that I love. Last week, we took a quick vacation to Puerto Rico, and I ordered this every single night. It is

MOFONGO!

It's basically mashed, fried plantains stuffed with fried meat or vegetables. It's often served in a big wooden mug, like the kind of thing a pirate would sip grog from. It's kind of like baked potato, or yucca, or taro (all of which I love), but even better. Each night, I had a stomachache from eating too much mofongo, but it was totally worth it.

Yesterday I bought plantains and tried cooking them myself. My husband laughed at me as soon as he came in the door and saw me frying them: "Someone's got the fever for the fongo!... Haven't you learned your lesson?" But it would take more than a stomachache to deter me from eating this stuff.

As it happened, I bought the wrong kind - ripe ones; they turned out good, but they're sweet like baked banana. The starchy flavor and texture I liked was from green ones. So I'll pick up some more and continue my experiments in the kitchen soon. Wish me luck!

Happy Fifth!

Wow, I've been keeping this blog for five years now! I am amazed. I didn't think I'd stay interested in it that long. I figured either I would get sad that no one reads my posts, and give up, or I'd get nervous that too many people read my posts, and go silent. Well, I am a little sad that no one reads my posts (snif!). Except for my one loyal and awesome reader who knows who she is.

I wonder what the secret is for getting lots of readers. Maybe having a wild and interesting life? But some people just write about their kids and post pictures of the new lamp that they ordered from a catalog and get 1000 comments a day. Being terribly funny? That's beyond me, although I can be wry or funny in an unintentional, tripping over my own feet way. Emailing real-life contacts and asking them to read the blog? But then I wouldn't be able to write about them behind their backs.

Perhaps the secret is reading other people's blogs and posting comments on them. But I do that sometimes, and never get a return visit. Realistically, I will have to just keep deriving satisfaction from writing this blog and not from hopes of being "heard."

I read my first entry and had to laugh. I was being so coy. I don't have a sister! And my middle name is not even Phoenix, though it would be great if it was. Anyway, I look back on the person I was five years ago and I've definitely changed. As I read those early entries, I see how desperate I was to be liked. I was nervous that no one - my boyfriend, my coworkers, my friends - liked me enough and I was going around trying to be really sweet and appealing so that they would. I'm not so much like that any more. I feel stronger inside and more capable of shrugging things off.

There was also an element of hopelessness and fear in some of the early entries, because I wanted things (marriage, a house, kids) that seemed unattainable. And now I have them. I am just rolling around in those riches every day. Really, I am much happier for having them, just as I knew I would be, and the fact that I got the things I wanted so much makes me feel a bit more secure. Plus, motherhood has given me a self-esteem boost because I've learned how to do all these things I never had experience with before, and I'm endlessly capable and magic in my child's eyes. Even though I'm ranting and raving these days about being infertile, secretly it's not throwing me too badly. I feel confident that I'm going to overcome it and either manage to conceive or manage to be OK with a one-child family.

I wrote a lot more about what I was reading, back in the early days. I still find time to read nowadays, mostly on the train to work. I should write more about that. Right now I'm rereading Heart's Blood by Jane Yolen. I feel like she is really writing about a real place, the details are so well worked out. I can feel the hot shimmery desert sun, and see the fields of burnwort, and hear the dragons houghing and smell the heaps of fewmets the bondboys are shoveling. I wonder how much time she put into imagining all that stuff, before she even started writing the story.

I also used to write a lot about cleaning, and how guilty I felt for doing that instead of going out and being an interesting person. As though some invisible outside presence was going to judge me for not being well rounded enough. I don't worry about that any more. I still like cleaning, and I still spend way more time at home than I do expanding my horizons, but it's all right with me.

All in all, it's been a good five years.

Vicarious Happiness

My friend is pregnant! The one who has been going to the same fertility clinic as me. Back when I found out she was receiving fertility treatment too, I wrote that if only one of us could succeed, it should be her. And she's done it. She actually got pregnant just a couple of days after our heart-to-heart. When she told me today, I was so happy and excited I was jumping up and down. She's like a sister to me, and there's no one I know who's more deserving of the chance to be a mom. She's very worried that she'll miscarry and hasn't told anyone yet, besides her husband and mother. But I have this joyful, calm certainty that it will all be just fine.

I wish I was pregnant too. (Duh. That's like the duh statement of the year.) The day that I ovulated all on my own, back at the beginning of July, was the same day that I knew she was having her IUI, and I had this wild hope that we would both get pregnant on that same day and go through the whole experience side by side. I imagined raising our babies together and having them be like siblings, or at least cousins.

Now that she's succeeded, and I haven't, I feel like I'm watching her run away down a racetrack while I got left at the starting gate. I should be running down that track too. It feels wrong that I'm still stuck here and can't, due to various factors, even start my own treatment for two more months.

I was genuinely, thoroughly happy for her for about three hours, with not even a flicker of anything else - and the joy of her pregnancy was on my mind continuously during that time. But then around midafternoon I started to feel a sadness creeping up on me. I ought to just be simply happy for her. It's stupid to feel that twinge of sadness and envy. It'll be my turn eventually, I hope. But I want it now.

It's almost as though the universe was listening when I made my bargain that if only one of us could get pregnant, it should be her. Well? the universe is saying. You got your wish. And I feel greedy and selfish all over again because even though she did get pregnant, I want to be too.

Cutting Some Slack

Today I was thinking about that standard list of things that people say to women who are dealing with infertility, that are intended to be nice but are actually hurtful - you know, "maybe it's for the best," and so on. And the general gushing that people do who aren't infertile, basking in babylove, talking about how many children they will have, etc. It's hurtful because it's little nagging reminders of that thing that seemingly everyone around you can have, merely by deciding they want it, whereas for you it's out of reach and only obtainable (sometimes) if you spend a lot of money and time, and sometimes not even then. So fundamentally unfair.

But. Something it's important to remember is that the things people say are intended to be nice. People whose lives aren't consumed by infertility don't always realize what the emotional landscape looks like. I've been guilty of that myself.

Years ago, before I was even married, I was talking to a coworker who was trying to get pregnant and had so far been unsuccessful. "Maybe you're working too hard. You should just take some time off," I said. I was repeating something I'd often heard about infertility. Another friend who was with us said, "Have you considered adoption?" Our coworker said, "Maybe. And yeah, I've thought about it." Looking back on that conversation, I realize how stupid our comments were. Her infertility probably had nothing to do with working too hard. And yes, she had probably considered adoption. She didn't need us to suggest it. But the two of us, unthinking 20-year-olds that we were, thought we were providing support and suggesting helpful things she might not have thought of before.

Another time, a friend confided to me, soon after the birth of my daughter, that he and his wife had been trying to have kids as well, but she had had a miscarriage. I said, "Oh dear. I hope you'll have better luck next time." That comment haunts me - what a flip thing to say to someone who had been through the deep misery of a miscarriage. I'd probably be inconsolable if I actually got pregnant and then miscarried. And that I said it to him with my healthy newborn in my arms was probably the salt in the wound.

I want to cry out in protest whenever people say things that hurt me. Just today a friend sent me a video of her kids playing together (her daughter is exactly my daughter's age, and her young son was conceived right around when I wanted to get pregnant again and realized I couldn't). She commented, "They're going to be best friends for life!" That's what I want for my daughter too, and I can't have it. I felt so frustrated and upset as I watched the video. But true courage, I think, is cutting people some slack and just clamping down on that internal dialogue of pain - smiling and replying as though they said the right thing. Because they probably meant to.

Summer Is Over

It's only just turned August. But just now a cricket started piping under my study window. The sound conjures up so much nostalgia for me, it almost makes a lump come into my throat. Cool days, frost on the grass in the mornings, car doors slamming. Getting ready for school. Wearing a jacket with a hood in the morning, carrying it over my arm on the way home. Maple trees decked with sunset colors. Running from the bus stop to keep warm. I remember E.B. White's classic line in Charlotte's Web, the crickets singing, "Summer is over, summer is over, summer is over and gone." It makes me think of things quickening.

Happysingle

Today I was reading an article about happy singles - women who aren't searching for a mate, who are actually content in their lives, all by themselves. They distinguish themselves from the "quirkyalones" who are single but don't want to be. The quirkyalones keep posting personality profiles on matchmaking sites and recasting their personalities in hopes of attracting someone who will appreciate them. If I hadn't met my husband, I would be a quirkyalone. Occasionally, maybe most of the time, I'd stray into depressedandmiserablealone territory. I often think how lucky I am to have him and how my baseline mood is so much better than it used to be when I was single.

But. If I knew somehow that being married would never be an option for me, could I be happy?

I thought about this for a while and finally decided that yes, if the pressure of the search was taken away, I would be fine. I could create a nice life for myself, packed full of all the things I like to do: gardening, reading, visiting friends, travel, animals, camping, poetry. I'd take art classes and carry a sketchbook with me. I'd go on long tramps across the English countryside in knee-high boots for the mud, hopping over stiles. I'd probably get a PhD in ecology and have a career in academia, with no family longings to distract me or encourage me to settle for less. I wouldn't have to compromise on anything I wanted to do - no apologies that it rained during the camping trip I planned and really wasn't fun like I promised it would be. It would actually be fun, if I didn't have to take anyone else's feelings into account. I'd lie there Buddhalike listening to the rain and composing haikus, then warm up hot chocolate on my camp stove the next morning and go for a long hike across the dewy fields.

Thinking about this life in another dimension I almost wish it's the road I'd chosen. If only I could live my life again, and again, and do it in every way.

Bandwagon

I fell off the bandwagon. Quite a while ago, in fact; as it rounded a curve in the road, I just slid right off the tailgate and landed with a soft thump in the dust. Ever since, I've been sitting on the side of the road, eating the most delicious moist velvety chocolate cake with melt-in-your-mouth icing, while the strains of the band grow ever fainter in the distance. I can still glimpse the sunlight glinting off the saxophones and horn section when the wagon tops the occasional rise. I don't think they've even noticed I'm gone.

While I eat my cake, I've been mulling a few questions, including
- Should I try again, and see if I can be sugar-free for the month of August?
- Why is my willpower so damn weak, anyway? It shouldn't really be that hard to give up sweets. Millions, probably billions of people in the world live without sugar in their diets. But for me it seems to be this huge unconquerable mountain - I count the days, obsessing over what I'm not allowed to have and how much longer I have to do without it.
- That fact makes me feel like a terrible greedy slug. I ought to have my mind on higher things.
- For the first two weeks of July, I thought I might be pregnant, so it was easier to be pure. Then I found out in mid-July that I wasn't, and I was so disappointed, I binged on sugar just to try to stop crying.
- My husband isn't addicted to sugar. Giving up sugar for a month would be easy for him. He probably doesn't even realize that there are two Klondike bars in the right-hand side of the freezer, that have been there for a month, that are so prominent in my imagination it's like they're burning a laser hole through the freezer door and flashes of disco light are escaping into the kitchen from the party that they're having in there, and he walks right past the fridge like he doesn't even see it.
- My husband also doesn't particularly want a second child. Or increased family togetherness like I'm always trying to get us to have. Or better conversations. Or more emotional closeness. Or more travel to interesting places. Or more friends.
- What the hell does my husband want, anyway?
- Is this just how our lives and our marriage are going to be from now on? me always putting on a brave face and acting cheerful and trying to keep things lively, while he exudes inertia and spends the weekend in his computer chair if at all possible? Do other couples have to try this hard to find things to do together and to have fun together, or does it just happen naturally for them? I'm so grateful that we don't fight, that dinnertime is harmonious, that we are nice to each other. And underlying that, I'm so grateful to be married at all. But is that as good as it gets?
- Why doesn't he read my blog, anyway? He knows the URL. I was a little nervous about giving it to him, initially, because I thought that if he read it I'd censor my thoughts. Then I realized he never did, and was able to relax. Then I felt wistful, and wished he would, because if nothing else it's a good way to project, in a passive-aggressive way.
- If he had a blog, I'd check that thing every day, I'm that interested in getting a window into his thoughts. When we have nonconversations in which I come up with four or five things to say and he just doesn't answer at all, not even a grunt to show that he heard me, what is going on in his head? Is he lost in his own thoughts? Thinking about something completely different? Mulling over what I said? Not at all interested in what I said? How can you just not say anything when someone is talking to you?
- Being happy is something that you have to work at. I know that. And I never want to be one of those people who makes someone else responsible for their happiness, and who then gleefully blames them for failing. I've been on the receiving end of that and it's an awful thing to do to someone. So I do take responsibility for my own happiness. The day that I found out I wasn't pregnant, all I wanted to do was weep and lie around and be comforted, but I didn't even call a single friend, or ask anything of my husband. I came up with a plan that would get me up and out of the house all day with my child, to keep both of us occupied, and I pushed all the misery down inside. But. It would have been nice if he had noticed. Either the sadness or the way I dealt with it.

See, this is why freewriting can be so revealing. I started here thinking I wanted to write about my weakness for sugar, and I ended up talking about my relationship. I have probably written more than I should share. If he ever did read my blog, I know he'd be uncomfortable that I'm writing in this vein. But he doesn't, so he'll never know.

Living on the Edge

I just finished Mary O'Hara's wonderful trilogy about life on a Wyoming horse ranch. This is from the third one, The Green Grass of Wyoming:

He had a sudden strange feeling that things were all in one piece, not strung out in time. Life was like a patterned cloth being drawn over a knife-edge. The knife-edge was the NOW and what was happening now - but the patterns were there on the cloth, all the same, before and after it had run over the knife-edge.

Wow.

Aha

Finally got some answers! I had an ultrasound that confirmed that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. It was pretty clearcut - 16 follicles on each ovary, when I think the typical number is one or two. But the diagnosis is weird:

1. It's a kind of chronic long-term syndrome that usually crops up in early adolescence, not something that you develop later. But I had regular periods for years before I got pregnant the first time, and I didn't have trouble conceiving then. Why would I have developed this syndrome after my first pregnancy?
2. Often a pregnancy resolves the condition. In my case, it apparently triggered it, which makes no sense at all.
3. Some of the hallmarks of PCOS are being overweight, being diabetic or borderline, and having excess body and facial hair, acne, and painful periods. But those don't apply in my case (hmm, maybe the acne a bit, but it's not too bad). I guess I am an atypical patient.

At least I have a diagnosis. It was so hard not knowing what was going on and having to fend off suggestions like
"maybe you secretly don't want a baby, and this is your body's way of telling you"
"just adopt"
"maybe you're not trying hard enough"
"maybe you're trying too hard"
"maybe you're not 'doing it' right"
"oh well, it was easy for me"

The last is probably the one that drives me craziest. Some people have full, interesting, busy lives - they're advancing in their careers, traveling, doing home renovations, and still manage to get pregnant in their spare time without really trying. In my case, I've gone to soooo many doctors' appointments - expensive and time-consuming. I've been trying to relax, eat better, change my exercise routine, etc. all in hopes of improving my fertility by reducing my stress. And I'm still nowhere near the point where they'll be able to start treatment, let alone the point where I might achieve a pregnancy. It bugs me that some people have it so easy and apparently don't understand how hard it can be for others.

The standard treatment for PCOS is birth control pills (and as soon as you discontinue the pills, the syndrome comes right back). Obviously I don't want to do that. I have to do some more stupid tests now before I can schedule a consultation with my doctor and renew my requests for Clomid, the ovulation medication I've been asking for for a year. I hope he'll prescribe it. I read that patients with PCOS have a much harder time getting pregnant and have a 50% miscarriage rate (compared to the normal 15-20% rate), which is a bit scary, but I don't think there's much I can do about that. I just hope that in that area, I'll also be an atypical PCOS patient.

Update:
I talked to my doctor today. He said that the average number of follicles in a healthy ovary is 10-12, and that he'd rather see too many than not enough. So that makes me feel a little... well, closer to normal. Here I was thinking I was some kind of monster freak with my 16 follicles on each side.

I also underwent an HSG today (hysterosalpingogram), in which dye is squirted up through the reproductive tract to outline the uterus and fallopian tubes to make sure there isn't a blockage. Everything looks fine in my case. I was amazed to see that on the left side, the fallopian tube does a loop-the-loop! The doctor said that was perfectly normal and that the ovaries and tubes actually move around a bit in the pelvis and often are in unusual configurations, not just out to the side like the crosspiece of a capital T. Still. A loop-the-loop! Those little eggs have a long way to go on their roller-coaster ride to the uterus.

Bluffing

Today I took my daughter grocery shopping and we got one of those carts with the little plastic car built onto the front of it. She always asks to get one of those, but I usually refuse because they're so heavy to steer. Today I relented and she was beside herself with happiness, giggling the whole time we were shopping.

Afterwards, I loaded the groceries into the (real) car and then returned the cart to the collection area. When I crouched down next to the little car and said, "It's time to go home now. Come on, hop out," she said, "No, I'm going to stay here."

I said, "Right here?"

She said, "Yes. I'm going to stay here all night!"

I said, "Want me to come get you tomorrow morning?"

She nodded solemnly.

"OK," I said. "I'll pick you up before breakfast, OK?"

"OK," she said.

"Have a nice night," I told her. Then I got up and walked (slowly) away, straining every second for her to call out to me. When she did, I stopped right away. She was scrambling out of the car, saying, "No, Mama, I change my mind! I want to go home with you."

"Really?" I said, feigning surprise. "Well, okay." I picked her up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She was giggling with relief as I carried her back to our car.

As we drove away, I thought
1) how much I love her
2) how someday, probably sooner than I expect, she'll call one of my bluffs
3) how it was almost as though we were putting on a show of how perfect and cute we are together, for a stranger who might think, "What a great mom. What a great kid," when in reality I don't always know what I'm doing, and she has her difficult moods, and it's not always sunshine and roses between us,
4) but most of the time it is.

Gotcha!

Today I caught a rabbit. With my bare hands.

That's a lie, actually - I was wearing gloves. But still! I just reached down and grabbed it! It was like I tapped into some superhuman powers and moved so fast I was just a blur.

I was in my garden, staking vampires - I mean tomato plants. I lifted a leaf, and there was the cutest little coney hiding under it, with its ears slicked back along its back. Oh my gosh it was adorable. It was like the pictures of cute bunnies that artists do watercolors of for Easter cards, with huge eyes and plushy brown fur. Even as I was marveling at how cute it was, my inner farmer rose to the challenge and I cried, "What are you doing in here? Inside my garden? Git!"

I might note that the garden has no fewer than three types of fencing around it. There's a four-foot high metal fence (to keep out the groundhogs), a smaller-mesh plastic fence as an inside liner (to keep out the rabbits), and netting over the top (to keep the deer from jumping in). There are woods and fields and plenty of things in the vicinity for the local wildlife to eat, but they seem drawn to my garden all the same. Anyway, I have no idea how a rabbit got in.

I chased it into the squash plants. Then it slipped past me into the pole beans. Then I chased it into the Swiss chard. It ran back to its original hiding place and dove in there under the tomato leaf. Like I was going to forget about catching it if I couldn't see it. I lifted the leaf again, put my hand down, and just grabbed it.

It scrabbled in the air a few times with its hind feet, but I set it down inside a handy plant pot and put my hand over the top to keep it from jumping out. Then I carried it over to the woods behind our property and let it out. As it slid out, it seemed a little dazed. I thought, "poor thing, it's probably asphyxiating of fear." But after I'd taken two steps away, I turned to look back, just in case it was just lying there gasping. A blade of grass was swaying. The rabbit was gone. I had visions of it beating me back to the garden as I tromped back across the lawn.

Still don't know how it got in there. What do I need to do, dig a moat around my garden?!

P & P x 3

I read Pride and Prejudice again recently (as a prelude to reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; I felt like I had to refresh myself on the original in order to get the most out of the parody. Zombies actually turns out to be the exact same text as the original, with "and turning, she rapidly slew three zombies in succession" inserted here and there.)

The first time I read it was in high school. I loved it. I couldn't wait to get through my math homework each afternoon so that I could read the day's quota of P&P. It seemed to have such relevance to my own life; I was in love, and I didn't know how to approach him, and here was a book all about a girl my age, dealing with misunderstandings and hurt feelings and social intrigue and gossip and class consciousness. I wrote him a letter pouring out my feelings. A few days later, we got to the part in the book where Elizabeth receives "the electrifying letter" from Darcy. I felt like I was burning with embarrassment and excitement at the parallels in my own life. At the end of the book, of course, love triumphs. At the end of the school year, we graduated and I never saw him or heard from him again.

A few years later I read Pride and Prejudice again. I remembered it being so juicy and full of suspense. But the second time through it seemed just silly. I couldn't understand why the characters spent time chewing over gossip and conjecturing what things might possibly have meant instead of just talking to each other directly and straightening things out. Why didn't Jane get in touch with Bingley herself, instead of pining? Why didn't Elizabeth go out with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who seemed like the nicest guy of the bunch? I felt impatient for things to get resolved and kept flipping ahead to see how many more pages there were. The women's exaggerated ladylike frailty seemed fake (Elizabeth colouring up every time she heard anything interesting, having to retire to her room for half an hour to regain her composure, Jane being sick in bed for days after being out in the rain for just a few minutes). I was working a job, sharing an apartment with roommates, and paying my own way in the world. I didn't have patience with such silliness.

This third time through, however, I loved it again. Partly because of the rich and intricate use of language. It's wonderful to read it out loud; the sentences start out in one direction, then curve over their own backs and interweave into unexpected spaces like a vine weaving its way through the ironwork of a railing. Partly because Austen does such a good job of blackening Darcy's character that even though you know he's going to be redeemed, in the early stages it's hard to imagine how that will be done. Partly because it was relaxing reading about people who have no obligation to earn a living and so much time on their hands that they can just while away their lives with needlework, long walks in the countryside, and social visits. The girls didn't even have to fix meals or do any housework, all that was done by servants. Partly because now that I'm married and boring and all the heart-pounding astonishment of falling in love is behind me, probably forever, it was nice to read about people having crushes on each other and being thrilled with the slightest mark of regard, and wondering with fascinated passion whether the other person still liked them or not. I could relive my glory days a little.

P&P is the only one of Austen's books that I've ever read. I'm so uncultured, it's awful. I have to at least read Sense & Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, my mother's favorite.

So Far...

One week in, and being pure has been easier than I expected. I've resisted the cookies in the kitchen at work, the ice cream in the freezer at home, my favorite sugary yogurts, the cereals in my cupboard, even things like ketchup and popcorn seasoning that have sugar in them. The cravings haven't been too bad. I am letting myself have fruit, so in place of my usual dessert I just eat a handful of raisins or something and then I'm fine. I'm also trying to eat more greens and whole grains, and fewer fried things. I have this idea that the more I do it, the easier and more natural it will be, and the less I'll even want the junk. I even watched Julie & Julia - all those dinners smothered in butter, all that rich chocolate cake - without particularly wanting to eat anything afterward. The part of the movie I liked was her cooking the food, not the idea of eating it.

I slipped up just once so far - at a Fourth of July dinner party. My friend had made panna cotta (kind of lime-flavored mousse made with mascarpone cheese and topped with wild blueberries). It was chilled, in goblets, and they looked so pretty all lined up on the counter, cream and violet. She had already set one out for me and I wasn't going to turn it down. It was heavenly.

One week down, three to go!

A Month of Purity

Today is my last day of eating junk food for a month. I decided that my approach to my infertility so far (i.e., wailing and gnashing of teeth, getting angry at my body for being "wrong," and comforting myself with potato chips and ice cream) was not actually that productive. If I'm going to give myself a fighting chance, I really should be eating well so I am as physically healthy as possible.

Plus, this enterprising chick gave up eating anything produced by Monsanto for a whole month, which is way harder. Any processed food, anything with corn or soy, most vegetables, and most meats come from Monsanto or its subsidiaries, which doesn't leave a whole lot of options. She had to subsist on seaweed and nuts for a couple days until she found some suppliers of guaranteed Nonsanto food. In the end, she had a really healthy month - and she ended up pregnant! Which she seems pretty calm about, but for me it would be trumpets and banners and wild, joyful/tearful celebration.

Giving up the sugar is going to be the hard part for me. I crave sugar so much that sometimes when I'm reading a book or working on my computer I literally can't concentrate, my desire to get up and get something sweet is so strong. I can feel that 90% of my attention is devoted to wanting a cookie, and only 10% is on the task at hand. But I know refined sugar is bad for me. It ages the skin, it causes acne, it messes up the metabolism, it's hard on the kidneys, it's bad for the teeth, it's linked to various cancers, it makes one fat. I even made myself a list of 30 reasons why I should stop eating sugar. And I tried to give it up for Lent this year, but only lasted about a day. My willpower is incredibly weak when it comes to sweets. Last year I actually did successfully give up sugar for Lent - but oh, how I longed for it; it consumed my thoughts during the last few days. I stayed up the night before Easter and dug into a pie with my bare hands at midnight, and in the days after Easter I binged on sweets. Going sugar-free for 40 days didn't reduce my desire for it one whit.

Still. In the larger scheme of things, this should be an easy sacrifice to make. And I want a baby ever so much more than I could ever want a candy bar. So even if denying my sweet tooth can only distantly and very indirectly affect my infertility, by improving my overall health, it's still worth doing.

So, July is going to be a pure month for me. No sugar, no junk. And no whining. I will just think positive thoughts about my ovaries producing beautiful glowing white eggs.

At the same time, I am jumping through the hoops to get referrals and preauthorizations for treatment at a fertility clinic. Just passing all their diagnostic screening criteria to demonstrate that I have a problem (as if not having a period in three years wasn't proof enough) will take months, so it will be ages before I can actually get the treatment I need. But I'll try to be patient.

Last week I confided in a friend that I am going to this clinic. And it turns out she's going to the same one. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for a while now, and she's been working with this clinic for the past year. No luck yet. I wish I'd known so I could have given her some support. And I feel greedy, somehow, that I am trying for my second child and working myself up into knots of self-hatred and sorrow about it, when she doesn't even have one child yet. I thought about it and realized that if I somehow had the power to choose which of us would succeed in this endeavor, if it could be only one, I would choose her, just because that would be fair. I really would. So perhaps when I'm feeling particularly miserable about being infertile I can remember that and a buddhalike calm will come over me.

Somewhere Out There

Somewhere near my house, a fawn is having the worst night of its life.

I was walking home this evening when I came across a doe that had been struck by a car. It looked like she had walked just a couple of paces from the road and then collapsed right at the edge of the shrubbery in the park. Her forelegs were folded in and her head was tucked, the way our greyhound used to sleep. Her eye was liquid and dark and open. I stared at her for a long time, even though I was pretty sure she was dead, because I just couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for that eye to blink. I felt like somehow she couldn't be dead. One of her forelegs was scraped raw and bloody, but otherwise she didn't look injured. Usually when I see an animal by the side of the road, its eyes are just sockets, and it looks all mangled up and awful, but she looked like she was just lying down, waiting for me to leave.

I felt - not sad, but awestruck, I guess, at being in the presence of death. There before me was someone who had passed through that great and terrible experience that's waiting for all of us. I used to feel that way when I saw mothers with new babies - I'd think "She has been through childbirth," and I would wonder if it would ever happen to me. But death is infinitely more scary and you know it definitely will happen to you. It's too big for the mind to really process.

Then I noticed that her udder was swollen like a cow's. And I thought that she must have been returning to wherever her fawn was hidden, where it had lain all day, not moving, barely breathing, trying to be scentless and invisible. All day long it must have been getting hungrier and hungrier, waiting for its mother to return. Finally it was dusk and she was on her way. But she never made it back. And right at that moment, as I was staring at her, the fawn was somewhere hidden nearby, getting desperate with hunger, but perhaps still afraid to move. I wondered if it would eventually get up and wander somewhere, if it knew how to eat anything yet. I thought how I felt when I was nursing and away from my child, how as the hours passed I grew increasingly anxious to see her, how sweet and what a physical relief our reunions were - and how, if I were killed on my way back to her, my greatest sorrow would have been for her loneliness and fear, not for my own life unlived.

Humorectomy

A friend of mine has a theory that the act of getting married causes people to have a humorectomy. He noted how so many of his friends used to be interesting, spontaneous, funny, clever, etc. before they got married. Now they're just bland and never want to go out.

Another friend chimed in with, yes, not only is that true, but it happens, oddly enough, even to people who were living together and essentially married for years before they actually tied the knot. You'd think they wouldn't change, but they do.

Is it because they've "won," so they no longer have to act interesting and keep their beloved liking them?
Is it because they get caught up in nesting and don't care as much about the outside world?
Is it because they're following a standard behavioral mold set by those who have gone before (including, unconsciously, their parents)?

I'm definitely not as interesting as I used to be before I got married. I chalk it up to working too much (no time to read) and having a kid (no opportunity to go out). If I didn't have those things going on, I'd still be sneaking up forbidden spiral staircases in the cathedral at night, and rappelling down cliffs on weekends. I'd be going to Scrabble tournaments and entering strawberry shortcake contests and rehabilitating mourning dove chicks. I feel like the fun, slightly weird, loner-wild Erin is still in there, still inside me, just waiting until I have time in my life to be like that again. I hope she doesn't die. Hang in there, I want to tell her. I'm sorry I'm so dull right now, but I'll be you again as soon as I can!

Impasse

All this angst about not being able to get pregnant again, all these hours spent Googling "secondary infertility", all these doctor's appointments and blood tests, and in the end I'm no closer to knowing what's wrong... and it all may be moot anyway, because my husband doesn't want to have another kid.

All this time, he thought I was trying to get my period back just so I could be normal again. When I said, "no, I don't care about that, I just want to get pregnant again," he said he thought one child was enough. He pointed out how exhausting it is to care for her, how we're barely holding it together. It's true that our lives aren't peaceful and well-ordered like they were prekid. We no longer have the ability to go out in the evenings, do fun stuff together, meet friends for dinner, or plan trips. Because I can only get freelance work done after she's in bed, I'm scrambling to meet deadlines all the time, perpetually sleep-deprived, and frustrated that I'm never able to have time for myself. He pointed out that just putting her to bed is a hassle - she malingers so badly (and fights each step of the way). It takes forever and usually ends in her crying. Listening to him say this, a number of thoughts went through my head:

"Yes. He's right. We don't have fun any more. And it's putting a strain on our marriage. We used to look at each other with such affection - now we're too tired to feel anything but resentment, because we're convinced that being this exhausted means the other person must be slacking."

"Well, but he IS slacking. He's complaining about the hassle of her bedtime routine, but I put her to bed six nights out of seven. I do the morning routine, every day. I didn't even get to sleep in on Mother's Day, damn it - even though I was up late freelancing the night before, as usual, I had to get up early with her while he slept in until 10 am."

"Yes, but he's also working full-time at a demanding job and trying to launch his career in science. He works harder than I do, even if I work longer hours. He's just as tired at the end of the day as I am."

"Besides, if I want to convince him to have another kid, and the sticking point with him is how much trouble it is to care for her, maybe I need to take on more of that work. Maybe I should put her to bed every night, and not ask him to pitch in on the weekends."

"But how will I ever keep up with my freelancing if I never get a break from the childcare? There's a limited number of hours in the week and I'm already a zombie."

"Besides, is it so much of an imposition to ask him to spend some time with his daughter on the weekends? Shouldn't he want to do that?"

"If stress IS the reason I'm not getting my period, and if I try to do even more work, I'll never get it back."

"I still want another kid. Even though it seems totally illogical to want that."

"Maybe we don't deserve another one. Sometimes I run out of patience with her and I'm sick of her asking 'what?' ten million times and never listening to the answer, and I just feel like crying. If I can't do a good job with one, maybe we shouldn't have any more."

"But everyone else who wants two kids gets to have them, even if they're not perfect parents. All my friends are pregnant with or have already had their second. We're falling way behind the curve."

"At least once a day some well-meaning person asks me whether we're having another kid. I laugh it off with 'oh, maybe, we'll see, this one keeps me busy enough.' If only they knew how much it hurts me to be asked that question. Just today my mom was on the phone with a friend who asked her if she was getting any more grandchildren, and she had to laugh it off the same way. How can he be insensible to that kind of pressure?"

"If we get divorced, it will be much more difficult for me to find someone new if I've got two kids."

"Maybe having another baby would keep us together though."

"Does that ever work? Celebrities are always trying it, and it always seems to fall through."

"Divorce? What am I thinking? Surely things aren't that bad. That's like my worst-case scenario (after him or my daughter dying). I'll do whatever I can to avoid that."

"But what if staying with him means never getting to have another child - and what if I could get divorced and have another with someone else, someone who would pitch in more and be more affectionate?"

"I don't want someone else. I just want HIM to pitch in more and be affectionate like he used to be. Anyway, all our friends have these perfect marriages where they totally love each other. How could we stand the shame of being the first to fail?"

"Arggggh. This shouldn't be so hard. No one else has to fight tooth and nail to get their guy to propose, to get him to have the first kid, to get him to have the second kid. Why doesn't he just naturally want the things that I do?"

And so on. I didn't actually say any of those things out loud, and the discussion was never resolved. He asked me how bad I wanted another kid, and I said, "I really, really want another. If I never have another child, it will be something I'll always regret." Then I tried to convince him that it would be a good idea by suggesting that this time around we could try for a boy, and he got sidetracked into researching online whether you could time conception to increase the odds of a boy, and was reading scientific papers instead of listening to me. Displacement activity to avoid finishing the conversation. He was absorbed in his computer after that and I couldn't get his attention back on me. At some point he left and went to clip his nails, his other stock activity when he wants to avoid finishing a conversation. He will clip them nightly if necessary, and he will spend half an hour or more doing it. I waited for a while, then couldn't afford to wait any longer because I had a deadline, so I gave up and went to do some freelancing.

I wish things were different.

Freak of Nature

I went shopping for a new bra a few days ago, because none of mine fit any more. I used to buy B cup bras, the kind with stiff cups, just to look like I had a shape. They didn't actually touch my breasts, let alone support them - just curved stiffly around them. Then at some point I decided to embrace my natural flat-chestedness, and started buying A cups. But even my A cups don't fit any more. They just slide around on my flat chest and the straps are constantly falling down, like every five minutes. When I'm at home or on the weekends, I wear sports bras, which at least stay in place.

Anyway, I decided a racerback was what I needed, so off I went to the store. Alas, the bra companies of the world do not appear to make bras for people my shape. I need a racerback 36A, but A cups only come in size 32, which is much too small, and B cups are definitely too big. I would go braless if I could, but now that it's t-shirt weather I can't go around in public without one. I guess I'll keep wearing my old bras and pushing up the straps every few minutes.

I also was unable to find pants that fit when I was in a pants-buying flurry a few months ago. All the pants I tried on gapped in the back and looked egg-cuppy from the side. Size 2 is ridiculously tight, size 4 is tight in the crotch but gappy around the waist, and size 6 falls right down. I went to lots of different stores and tried lots of different brands, and they're all like that.

Between not being able to find clothes that fit the top or the bottom of me, and not having periods any more (my doctor is frankly confused and says she can't find a physical reason for it), I am starting to feel like a freak - no longer a "real woman." What is wrong with me?

My Kidlet

It's Mother's Day and I want to write about my daughter. So often these days I'm charmed at her perspective on the world, which is coming through now that she's got more language to express it - and surprised at how much she really does understand and remember.

Yesterday, she was eating a slice of cantaloupe. She bit it into the shape of a crocodile - with bumpy eyes and even a slit for the mouth. Then she made it lollop across the placemat toward me, saying "Watch out - aump, aump, aump!" (biting noises) I said, "Ooh, what is that, a snake?" She laughed, "Aaoh, nooo, Mama, issa cocodile!" And at once I saw that it was indeed shaped like a crocodile. She made it gnaw on my arm for a minute before she efficiently dispatched it.

She's potty trained now (although she still wears a diaper at night) - for a while I thought it was hopeless, until all of a sudden she got it. The key was just putting her in underpants, even though she didn't seem to be ready. Once she was wearing the underpants she learned very quickly what the point of the potty was. Anyway, she'll occasionally wake up in the night needing to pee and will call me. A few nights ago, at 3 am, I heard her calling to me, so I took her into the bathroom. She pulled off her diaper, which had Disney princesses on it, and chatted away quite gaily to me as she peed. My eyes were half closed but I did pick up enough to realize, after a while, that she was pointing to Ariel on the diaper and singing an approximation of "Under the Sea." She has seen the Little Mermaid (actually just the first half of it) only once, and it was several weeks ago. I said, "What are you singing?" She said, "Singing like c'ab. In the water! da, da, da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da..." I said, "Oh, you mean Sebastian, the crab? When he sings 'Under the Sea'?" She got a huge smile on her face and said, "Yes!" I couldn't believe she had actually retained that from the one time she had heard it, weeks ago.

Another time, when we were walking around on the deck outside, I was being cavalier and not wearing shoes, and I got a big splinter in my foot. She heard my indrawn breath and said, "Mama? Hurt cherself?" I said, "Yes, my foot," and sat down to examine the sole of the foot. The skin was broken and the splinter was lodged in it. She leaned over it and kissed the sole of my foot. "There - all better?" she asked. And it was.

I have so many hopes for her. I hope she'll grow up strong and healthy, and be surrounded by friends. I hope she'll be pretty, because life is easier for pretty people. I hope she'll find work that inspires her. I hope she'll be more ambitious and self-confident than I am - I feel so incapable of confrontation in its various forms, particularly managing and directing other people, that many career options are closed to me, and I don't want her to be limited like that. I hope she will love the outdoors and animals the way I do (although I worry that she might not - so far she is clearly more interested in tractors and trains than in living things). I hope the world that she grows up into will be resilient enough to survive the harms that human societies continue to inflict on it. I hope she will find a man who appreciates and loves her and whom she can love as well - and that they'll make me some lovely grandkids. Mostly, I just hope that I can keep her safe as she grows up - guard her from all the perils - so that she'll at least have the options to achieve her desires.

Screaming

I have a bird who is 20 years old. He's a gold-capped conure, which means he can live to 30 years or more. Sometimes that seems like such a long time, I wonder if I’ll make it to that point with my sanity intact.

The issue is that, being a conure, he screams. Piercing, deafening screams that ricochet off the walls of the room and make my ears ring. I think I have actually suffered some mild hearing damage from having him scream in my ear so much. He generally screams and bites me if he’s on my shoulder and I try to remove him. I can’t figure out a way to get him off my shoulder that doesn’t result in the scream-in-the-ear, so I try not to let him get up there any more, but sometimes he sidles up anyway.

Here’s advice to anyone who does not own a conure: For the love of God, don’t get one.

His screaming upsets me the most when I’ve just taken care of his needs and I feel like he should be satisfied for a while. I can understand screaming if he’s hungry or neglected. But after I’ve brought him out of his cage to share breakfast with us, petted him, cleaned the cage, fed him, left the cage door open so he can hang out on his platform if he wants, and given him some veggies or fruit to keep him busy, I feel like he has no right to scream. Yet he often does. Moments after I’ve left the room, he erupts in a volley of deafening shrieks.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly saintlike, I go back in the room and say in a gentle voice, “Please don’t scream,” and cover up his cage (even though he was just covered all night, and it seems ridiculous to be putting him back to bed just an hour after he got up). If I am feeling slightly more frazzled or my daughter is whining and pulling at me or we’re running late and need to get out the door, I close the door of his room as a way of at least muffling the noise so that we can carry on (though the screams through the door are still loud enough to make it difficult to hold a conversation in the house). Some days I just lose it altogether. I walk back into his room, intending to tell him nicely to be quiet, but instead I yell, “SHUT UP! YOU BASTARD!” and wish I could wring his little birdy neck. I feel really ashamed of myself after I've done that. He's just a bird - I shouldn't let him get to me like that. But oh - if you could hear the intensity of the shrieks and how difficult it is to accomplish anything else in the house while it's going on - you would understand.

It amazes me that I harbor such angry feelings for this bird. There was a time when he was the light of my life. When I got him, I was just a kid, and he was my best friend. He would sit with me while I did my homework after school. He was my baby. I really missed him when I went away to college and couldn’t take him with me. In those days, his screams didn’t bother me so much – what bothered me was that my parents would yell at me: “Can you do something about your BIRD!” I would defend him, saying that he didn’t know any better and was just trying to communicate.

Now I feel like I’m completely unable to see inside his birdy head to figure out what he’s trying to communicate. Why is he so ungrateful that immediately after I’ve spent time with him, he’s demanding more? Why can’t he understand that I can’t attend to him every minute of the day? There are times when he makes the house virtually uninhabitable. He screams so incessantly and so loudly that we simply can’t stay indoors – I hustle my daughter out the door and we go shopping or go to the park to “wait it out.”

A true animal lover and ethologist would look at the pattern of his screaming and develop a compassionate plan for teaching him to change his behavior. Hmmm, he generally screams at the following times:
- in the morning after I’ve taken care of him
- around noon during or after the two hours of classical music that the radio is programmed to play automatically for him
- when anyone comes home (it sucks to step in the door with your arms full of stuff, tired and looking forward to sanctuary, only to get screamed at)
- when anyone is trying to talk on the phone
- when my daughter is being rambunctious
- when he sees a shadow that he thinks might be a hawk, or possibly a leaf
- when we have friends over
- when it’s “too quiet”
- in the late afternoons when the sun is slanting into his cage
- when anyone walks past the door of his room
- in the early evening when he’s getting tired.

The screaming can be silenced sometimes by covering up his cage, but not always. He definitely knows I don’t like it – when he’s been screaming and I approach the cage, he scuttles back into it like he knows he’s in trouble. But why does he keep doing it then? The ungenerous part of my brain wants to interpret his behavior as malicious: doing something he knows is aggravating.

Maybe he is just lonely and bored. Maybe he screams more than he used to because he doesn't get enough attention. I feel bad about that - after all, he's my pet, and it's my responsibility to meet his emotional needs. But I don't see how I can give him more. Like I said, I'm trying not to let him get on my shoulder any more because of the inevitable scream-and-bite, and having him on my hand makes it difficult for me to get stuff done. And most of the hours of the day I am either at work, busy freelancing, doing housework, taking care of my kid, or running errands. If I had any extra time to sit around... I'd use it to sleep.

So it's tricky. Besides the time issue, I am not sure I can really work with him to teach him anything different. For one thing, it would require me to be in perfect control of myself as I respond to each of his screaming fits – and that’s a time when I’m usually feeling furious. For another, I don’t think he is smart enough to learn anything. The way he screams when he knows (or should know) by now that it’s not the way to get what he wants, and the way he still freaks out about hawks or imagined hawks or falling leaves (when nothing has ever hurt him), suggest to me that he’s not the brightest bulb in the light string. Also, I would have to be really consistent about my response to his screaming. And that’s exactly why his screaming upsets me so much. I can’t drop what I’m doing every second to attend to him – that’s what I think he is demanding with his screams, which is unreasonable and spoiled of him, and I want him to understand that he can’t have that. I will give him daily affection, keep his cage clean, give him fresh food and water, regular baths, time outside, and toys – but I can’t be at his beck and call every moment.

Of course, my unwillingness to try to change his behavior means that the only course of action is to wait it out. It’s another 10 years, or more, if I take good care of him. It feels like a punishment.

Let Me Go To Rehab: I Say Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

I was reading an article about women who have severe post-partum depression – like, really severe, to the point that they’re having suicidal thoughts and just can’t function. There are a few clinics around the country that specialize in that condition where women can check themselves (and their babies) in to get round-the-clock care until their condition resolves.

Then I started thinking about drug and alcohol clinics, and rehab in general, and… I don’t mean in any way to make light of how serious these conditions are – beyond anything I’ve experienced, for sure – but honestly, it just sounded… nice. I wish I could check myself into a clinic somewhere, to recover from life in general. Recently I’ve been staying up late to work– it’s the only way I can meet my deadlines, since I can’t do editing work while my daughter is awake. On the days that I go in to the office, my typical day goes like this:

7 am: get up and take care of her, feed the animals, tidy up, pack lunches, get ready for work
8-9 am: commute to work
9 am-5 pm: work at my jobby job
5 pm-6 pm: commute home
6-8 pm: fix dinner, wash dishes, put her to bed
8 pm-2 am: work at my freelance job
2-7 am: sleep

I am so drained and exhausted from the late nights. I nod off at my desk all the time, during the day. I’m falling behind on my work, despite my best efforts. On the days when I don’t have to go in to my jobby job, I just slouch around home like a zombie – trudge to the park pushing the stroller and sit glazed-over on a bench while she plays, scoop Spaghetti-Os out of a can for her lunch, participate in her games and potty training and other activities in silence and like I’m moving in slow motion. I have to use every minute of her nap time to edit, or I'll fall further behind – though what I want most in the world is to have a nap of my own.

To me, the idea of getting away to a clinic where I could sleep – sleep! – and someone would bring me meals, and people would talk to me about how to resolve my problems – it sounds heavenly. I have fantasies that the stress is the only reason I’m not menstruating, that if I could just get a little more rest, my fertility would come back, and my clear skin, and my shiny hair, and my husband would look at me with adoration again. But right now I’m on a treadmill and I feel like I'll never be able to get off.

Gettin' Served

Today I had blood drawn to figure out why, oh why, after all these months I am still incapable of getting pregnant again (no angst there), and then, because it was a fasting blood test and I was about to faint, I got an oatmeal at Starbucks. In both places, I had the sense of being cared for by efficient, warm, service-industry people who had to get through hundreds of transactions a day but still managed to be kind to me, the individual customer they might never see again. I've been reading a psychology book about people who have trouble interacting socially (diagnoses like autism and severe antisocial tendencies). I thought how, at a basic animal level, my psyche would interpret both encounters as random strangers expressing caring for me, and if I was antisocial, they might represent a small bit of progress.

The phlebotomist greeted me with a warm smile and asked me if I'd had a good weekend. While she was filling up vials with my blood, she said, "Doing ok?" She was calm and reassuring, the kind of person I could imagine coaching me through any painful experience. The Starbucks cashier said "Sure thing" when I gave my order. A few minutes later, another employee noticed me standing there, even though the place was crowded and busy, and asked "What are you waiting on, ma'am?" and when I said oatmeal, he pushed the bag that had been sitting on the counter (which I had suspected was mine but was too shy to reach for) over to me. I thought it was so nice that he even noticed I had been standing there for several minutes. He could easily have ignored me and focused on serving more assertive customers. I walked out with my oatmeal (delicious - warm, perfectly cooked - and it comes with a packet of brown sugar, some dried fruit, and nuts to mix in), feeling, even though I had just conducted business transactions with various strangers - loved.

Riddle-me-ree

Here are two riddles that my clever husband thought up.

Riddle #1:
"I look surprised, but I'm the one who shocks."

I guessed "electric eel," which just made him shake his head sadly. The answer is not electric eel. But it's something that you can guess, if you think about it.

Riddle #2:
"If there's just one, it's real, but if there's two, it's not."

This one is obviously impossible to get without a hint. So here's a hint: It has to do with Vietnamese cuisine.

And just for good measure, here is his all-time favorite joke (that I think he also made up):
"Why do giraffes make bad teachers?"










Because their explanations go over their students' heads!

Playing Her Like a Fish

Two thoughts about parenting.

First, I think since my daughter's birth I have frequently had the sense, in a pervasive but generally subconscious way, of being superhumanly patient with another person's rudeness. That's a blunt way to put it. What I mean is, despite knowing on a conscious level that a baby is just a wild and helpless, uncivilized little being, not responsible for its behavior, not in control of its feelings, and having expected that from the time before I became a mother, and being fine with it - on an unconscious level there is a feeling of forbearance as I continue patiently, calmly, cleaning up after and reassuring this little person who is screaming bloody murder in my face.

When she's pitching a tantrum or hitting me because she's frustrated and exhausted, my instinctive response is to give as good as I get. I'd like to defend myself and wallop her right back, but instead I talk to her in a soothing, gentle voice, helping her calm down, reminding her that we don't hit. When she's overtired, I put up with her shrieking at me and basically taking out her unhappiness on me, even though I did nothing to deserve it. As she throws her dish of vegetables on the floor and yells, "No Mama! NO broccoli!" I instantly tamp down the flicker of anger that flares up and respond in a measured, thoughtful way. As she whines and clings to my knee because she's bored, I would like to kick her loose, but instead I ignore her and continue wiping the kitchen countertop to show her that that's not a good way to get my attention.

I'd never put up with an adult treating me the way she does. Having spent very little time around babies before I had one, for many years I've been accustomed to civility and reasonableness. With a kid, I have to set aside those expectations and rise above it. I am getting good at it. I wonder sometimes if this daily repression of my true feelings is going to have any long-term consequences. Is it going to just make me a much more patient and nice person, willing to turn the other cheek when adults treat me badly too, just because I've had so much practice? Or am I going to erupt in craziness one day because I'm so fed up with responding to ill manners with graciousness?

Which is not to say that she's such a monster. 90% of the time, she is adorable and sweet and so good-hearted. She hugs and kisses me all the time. I love listening to her pretend to read out loud to her stuffed animals. Her giggle is my favorite sound in the world. It's just when she's overtired or hungry that she turns into a brat. Because she is so wonderful most of the time, it gives me strength to get through the difficult moments and to try to have sympathy for her feelings.

My second thought about parenting is that I often get a vision of myself playing a big, powerful fish on a line. When I'm trying to get things accomplished or to get her clean/fed/dressed/whatever, I have to be subtle about it. I watch for my opportunity as she flings herself around, then quickly reel in some line, then let her fight a bit more, then when there's a chance reel in a bit more. Like when I'm putting her to bed and she's resisting. You can't just march her through the steps. You have to give her a five-minute warning, then subtly get her down the hall to the bathroom, then into the bathroom (and close the door behind you or she'll run back out), then calmly put toothpaste on her brush as she hurls herself on the floor whining, wait for her initial fight to die down before you hand her the brush or she just flings it aside, give it to her at the right moment, etc. Walk her through the steps of toothbrushing, diaper change, bedtime story, and transfer into the crib. It takes some skill. She's strong enough now to resist, and it's not always possible to force her to do something, so we have to be smart about it.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sequence of events that has to transpire before we can get out the door and to a particular destination, but then I just shorten the focus to what's happening right now, and to the next step that I need her to take, and it becomes a simple decision: is she, at this moment, actively struggling while I wait for my chance, or is she resting and I can reel in some line?

These are not the kinds of thoughts I expected to have about parenting. Back when I was pregnant, I thought it would be all starry-eyed discoveries like "she can chew on her own toes!" and relating cute things my kid had said or done. Now I look at people I know who are less patient or less gentle than I am and wonder how they will manage when they have kids. It's both a bigger and a more interesting challenge than I expected.