Because It's There

My husband bought a large jar of Nutella to make sandwiches with, and put it in the cupboard. It turned out to have a really short half-life. I guess I've forgotten how good Nutella is, it's been so long since I had any. It is amazing. It's this creamy, rich, chocolatey, very smooth and velvety delicious wonderfulness that is like licking the best ice cream in the world. But better. I found myself completely unable to resist sneaking out to the kitchen in spare moments to eat it directly out of the jar. Who needs sandwiches? My preferred method is a spoon.

At last, thank goodness, the temptation was gone. The jar was empty.

Tonight my husband wanted to make a sandwich and was looking for it. I tried to play it off at first. "What jar?" Finally I fessed up. "You're looking for the Nutella? It's right here." - patting my stomach. He was mildly horrified that I had actually eaten all of it. "But the jar was almost full!" Yes indeed. And now my stomach is. Honestly, I made it last for most of a week. It was pretty good restraint, considering how yummy I find that stuff to be.

"Oh well," he said, and pushed aside some stuff in the cupboard and hauled out a second, secret jar that I hadn't known about. Aaah! Now that he's opened it, I've got to deal with the roaring temptation all over again! I want to chuck that stuff out the window. Or put it in the lunchroom at work. It's like crack to me. As long as that opened jar exists, I will be conscious of it and wanting it - because it's there.

At least I do have a plan for coping. Last spring, I gave up sugar for Lent. It was really difficult - turns out sugar, or its equivalent, is in almost everything. Some of my favorite foods that I had to forgo included peanut butter, jelly, yogurt, popcorn with seasoning, tea with honey, pancakes made from a mix, a lot of cereals, and of course anything of the cookie/cake/dessert persuasion. I craved those things like you wouldn't believe. At midnight on Easter, I was watching the clock in the car as we drove home from a party, and at 12:01 am I was ripping into a blueberry pie and eating it with my bare hands. I vowed that I would never be so foolish as to give up sugar again.

Anyway, my new plan is not to try to give up sugar, but rather to pay for it as I go. I have a routine involving crunches and other ab exercises, that takes about 7 minutes to do. My plan is that I have to do that routine at least once a day, and again every time I eat a serving of something dessertlike. I don't get away with it if I'm too busy one day or if I forget - it just gets added to my tab and I have to do it at some point.

Good idea, right? The first day I put it into effect, it worked. I was sitting in my chair thinking about getting a slice of banana bread to eat after dinner, and then I thought about all the extra crunches I'd have to do, and decided not to eat the banana bread. Yay!

The only problem is that due to a few nights of abandon I've now racked up a rather high tab. I owe (the universe? myself?) 11 exercise routines. Doing the routine more than twice a day is really difficult, I find - my muscles get so tired and shaky I can barely get through it. In order to catch up to where I'm supposed to be, I'll need to both avoid sweets and do extra crunches. Urgh. I must be kidding myself to think that I could ever get through natural childbirth, with willpower this weak.

Again with the Childbirth Stuff

What is it with celebrities? I'm convinced that they are able to defy the physical laws that govern the rest of us. I always figured that yes, they have the financial means to do whatever they like, and access to ridiculous luxuries that the common folk don't, and they live in some sort of exalted atmosphere where they all know each other and only date one another. But, I figured some things would still apply. Celebrity mothers who want to have their own babies still have to go through childbirth like the rest of us, for example.

But no. It seems that even there, the rules don't apply. I was reading an article about Gisele Bundchen's home birth (home birth, and especially natural birth, is very popular among celebs), and she said, "It wasn't painful - not even a little bit." That astonishes me. Childbirth pain seems to be a bit different in intensity for different people, ranging from "pretty bad but I could handle it" to "extreme torture and I wanted to die." But natural unmedicated birth not even a little painful? How is that possible?


And what's up with her modeling six weeks after the birth and apparently, being back in model-shape? How in the world could she get her flat belly back in that time? I'm 2.5 years post-partum and my belly skin still sags. My midwife told me not to do any kind of exercises (except Kegels) or housework for the first six weeks, to give my body time to recover and to avoid tearing the stomach muscles, which are all stretched out after delivery. Of course, models are used to just not eating for a few weeks at a time, which probably helps, but if you're breast-feeding, which she is, you have to eat. So how did Gisele do it?

And she's not the only one. I've seen pictures of Nicole Kidman two weeks after delivery, apparently wearing skinny jeans, and other celebrity moms like Jessica Alba who looked toned and completely flat while their babies were still only a few months old. I know they have access to personal trainers and special diets, but still! It seems miraculous. I have to assume that the same superior genetics that give them better than average looks also help them recover their prepregnant appearance so quickly.

Even the basic rules of biology don't seem to apply to them. I recently read that the "pregnant man" (Thomas Beatie) is expecting again. This will be the couple's third child in three years. That's a feat - bearing a child takes so much in the way of resources, it's impressive that he is able to do it back-to-back like that. My child will be three years old soon and I'm still not capable of getting pregnant again (sigh - the period I wrote about before wasn't for real after all). And he was conceiving and carrying to term in a body that had been confused for years by hormone infusions. It's surprising to me that after all those hormones (he has a beard, for goodness sakes!), his body still knew how to grow a child.

To top it off, his wife is breastfeeding each child. She was able to induce lactation with a combination of hormones and breast-pump stimulation, even though she didn't give birth. Lots of women who did go through pregnancy and give birth to their own children then find they can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. And here this woman who was not even pregnant is doing it like it's no big deal. I feel like less of a woman than either of them.

Birth

My midwife who delivered my baby a couple years ago just had her own first child. I knew she was due right around now and was checking her web site every few days, hoping for good news. She just posted the pictures of her beautiful daughter and a brief birth story. She had her baby at home, a water birth in her bathtub, with her husband to help her. I am so happy for her that everything went well and that she had the "right" kind of labor and delivery that she wanted.

I feel like the stakes were higher for her than for other people - she's assisted thousands of women with their childbirths (and is a staunch proponent of letting things happen naturally and avoiding unnecessary interventions), so I think people kind of had their eye on her - thinking, "so when it's her turn to be in labor, is she really going to decline pain meds?" Not that she pressured me in any way when I was in labor. At prenatal visits, I announced my intention to try for a natural birth, and she said she'd do everything she could to help me achieve that. After 20 hours of labor when I asked for an epidural, she didn't try to talk me out of it, just said "OK!" and turned to the nurse and relayed the request. Afterwards she said, "I'm usually anti-epidural, but I think in your case it was helpful."

All the same, since she's assisted so many births and studied the process for so many years, I think people expected her to really make her own childbirth an example, do it the way she felt was best for everyone. And she lived up to that. I can't imagine that having a 10-pound baby with no pain relief in your bathtub could be anything short of excruciatingly painful, but she did it, and didn't sound too phased by it in her birth announcement. I'm relieved, not just that the baby is healthy and she's fine and everything is going well, but that she has nothing to kick herself about now. She will know forever that when it was her turn, she did it "the right way."

It does make me feel - even though I'm not in a position where I need to be an example for anyone; I'm accountable to no one but myself - that if I ever have another baby, I should really try to do it on my own. In other words, at home without drugs. A lot of women who have epidurals the first time around seem to be able to manage without them the second time. Maybe because labor is typically faster, maybe because they have the simple confidence that they can do it. Obviously I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about not having done it naturally, my first time, and I would like to be able to manage better the second time. I can't explain why this is important to me. I don't really believe that the epidural was harmful to my baby, and I really was in agony when I requested it, and since the option exists it seems silly to decline it. Like climbing Everest without oxygen, when you could just as well take some and lose a lot fewer brain cells getting up to the summit and back. It's that purist, black-and-white, right-and-wrong mentality that I usually like to avoid.

All the same. There is something so warm and wholesome and family-oriented about the idea of having that experience. Of proving to my husband how strong I am. Of doing something together that will become a part of our family history - having those first moments belong to us, rather than to a hospital room.

Grasping Nettles

When I was a kid, I read a story called Grasp the Nettle Firmly, by Enid Blyton (1940s English author, par for the course - I read almost nothing but English children's books throughout my childhood). It was a kind of prissy, moralistic story (par for Enid Blyton, much as I love her descriptions of quaint WWII-era England) about how a boy named George gets in trouble by running away from his problems. He's washing his hands in the loo and the soap squirts out of his hands and flies out the window, and instead of immediately fessing up to the headmaster, he quietly mooches back to his seat and doesn't say anything. The next boy to use the toilet runs back and says, "The soap was gone! George was the last to use it, he must have taken it!" and everyone blames him. This is part of a sequence of incidents, each leading to the next; because George's hands aren't clean he can't eat his lunch, so the headmaster decides he's ill, so he gets sent home, etc. Everything just keeps escalating.

In the end he realizes that all the misunderstandings could have been averted if he had just faced the first one head-on and accepted responsibility. An old plowman tells him that if you grasp a nettle tentatively, it will sting you, but "grasp the nettle firmly and it can do you no harm." (I'm not sure that's true. It seems to me that the nettle's stinging hairs would puncture your skin no matter how firmly you took hold of it - you might avoid injury if you grasped it at a certain angle, or slid your hand onto the nettle brushing the hairs back as you went.)

Anyway, I was thinking about this story recently because I've had occasion to apply its lesson. At work, I had to get a bunch of participants conferenced in for a big meeting by phone, and I screwed it up. It was awkward, because everyone who was there had to sit around waiting while I got the folks on the phone, and it took some time. Even as it was happening, I knew my boss was going to take me aside later and have one of those talks with me, like she does every time I mess something up. I hate sitting around in dread, not knowing when she's going to call me in for it. My instinct was to just hide in the bathroom the rest of the day. But after the meeting, not giving myself time to even think about it, I went right to her office and proactively apologized for wasting people's time. I explained what I'll do to avoid the problem in future and explained why I had made the mistake in the first place (thought our phone system could do something it couldn't). I could tell she appreciated my forthrightness. I noticed that she had written on her to-do list my name and "find out why not prepared for mtg." I saw her cross it off the list as I turned to leave the office, and felt a rush of relief at having gotten it over with. Whew!

I've also been feeling upset and worried recently about a situation with some of our neighbors. The utility company cut a bunch of branches from one of their trees and left the branches in a pile on their lawn. We also had some big branches down after a recent storm, too big to get rid of easily. After the work crew drove away, I figured they would be back soon with a truck to pick up the pile, so I dragged my branches across the street and added them to the heap. I thought the pile of branches would get picked up within the hour. Instead, it just sat there all afternoon, and all the next day. I started feeling intensely guilty for dumping my branches on the neighbor's lawn. I finally went over to talk to them about it - they weren't home, so I left a note in their door explaining what I had done.

Later, the neighbor came over to talk to me. He was sort of nice on the surface, but veiled-threat underneath, said some things about how he didn't know me, and how it's not right to "throw trash on other people's property." I was very apologetic and said (about four times) that I would remove my branches, but each time he told me not to, and ended with "if you take those branches back, I'm calling the police to arrest you for trespassing." It seemed like it might have been a joke, except that he wasn't smiling.

The trash pick-up day came and went, and no one picked up the branches. After a week of stewing about it, I finally called the county to see if I could schedule a pickup, and was told that it's the homeowner's responsibility. I felt really stuck - wanted to fix the problem, but he had blocked my ability to do so by telling me not to take the branches back. I felt dread and guilt every time I looked out the window at that pile of branches, to the point that I wished we could move away.

I finally grasped the nettle today. I baked a loaf of banana bread and took it over to the neighbors. The wife answered the door and was perfectly nice to me. I apologized again about the branches and said that we would remove them. Then I got my husband to help me saw them up into small pieces, tied them in bundles, and put them on our lawn. They should be regulation-size now so the trash guys will take them. (I hope I don't get arrested.)

Once I was finally able to fix the issue, I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I know I'm silly to let such a little thing throw me. I just can't handle confrontation. The whole time the banana bread was baking I was trembling with nervousness and didn't want to go over there - afraid of getting yelled at. I just told myself, "Take your medicine!" and went through the motions, wrapping the warm loaf in tin foil, getting my daughter's coat on, carrying her out the door with me, until the whole incident was over and I could relax.

Hoping now that I won't need to grasp any more nettles for a little while.

McOuting

Today I took my daughter to McDonald's for lunch. We sat in a window booth looking out at the falling snow, eating chicken nuggets. She was totally happy, and, watching her excitement as she bounced in her seat, I felt happy too. It was like a bit of the American dream. I felt like I was buying into something fake and commercial and junk foody, the kind of thing that I'm supposed to avoid. (I should be feeding her organic apple slices, right? and encouraging her to play imaginative games with old-fashioned toys made of sustainably harvested wood.) But - sometimes I just get tired of trying to be responsible. And today's outing was so easy and fun.

One Sentence

Here's an interesting site: onesentence.org. The guy who runs it chooses the most interesting sentences that people submit to publish. I think he's eventually going to put them together in a book, which is an idea I wish I'd had. I submitted a few sentences but none of mine got chosen, so I'm going to publish them here instead. So there.

I should note that these may draw from an aspect of my real life but are not necessarily true to life.

In his own language my parrot screamed, "I am so glad to see you!" and in my own language I screamed back, "Shut up!"

No matter how many times I hit refresh, he didn't write back.

Just when I'd given up hope, I started bleeding.

I miss the afternoons when I would run home from school, climb the tallest tree in the back yard, and sit for hours in my favorite fork, being alone and wild.

Tousled and hot from her nightmare, she reached for the cup of water and murmured, "sank you, Ma-ma," making my throat clench up.

He thought it was cute when I got a nose ring and took up smoking, but he still preferred the girl in his punk band.

I was about ten when I realized that despite my daydreams, I'd never survive in the wild.

After I had a baby, I didn't love my body any more, so by way of apology I fed it chocolate.

If I die tomorrow, I will profoundly regret having spent today glued to a chair.

"Twenty years from now," he said as he held me, our hips pressed together in the cold October dusk, "I'm going to think, "Man, I wish I was back in that graveyard."

I wanted to live a short, intense, breathlessly vivid life, but instead I got glasses, read books and lived a long, indoor, safe one.

His nose was running and I felt the cool moisture trail across my cheek as he fervently kissed me, but nothing about him could disgust me, and that's when I realized that I loved him.

Reading my childhood journals just makes me sad because I had so much promise.

At Thanksgiving I gave thanks for good health and my family smiled, because they didn't know.

I thought I might be the boy-next-door's MILF, but instead he ignored me, just the way boys like him did back in high school.

Vampires and Body Image

I saw New Moon last night. My husband and his brother were going to see Avatar - which seems pretty cool, with the 3D glasses and all - but I wanted to see vampires & werewolves (and New Moon was my favorite book in the series) so at the last minute I went to that instead, by myself. I'm glad I caught it while it was still in the theaters. And I'm glad I watched it on my own. I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if I'd had to drag anyone who might find it less absorbing than I did.

For me, it was all about the fantasy that you can be unfriendly and mysterious and sit at a lunch table by yourself gazing out the window wracked with sorrow, and others will find that alluring. When I was in high school and didn't have friends, and was full of unrequited love, no one cared. Everyone was too absorbed in their own dramas to even notice.

I might sound critical, but I thought the movie was great. I was in it, from the first scene to the last, drinking in the beauty of snowy complexions and wind-blown hair, the tensions of adolescent romance, everything against a backdrop of magnificent pine woods and cliffs. I loved the werewolf fight. The soundtrack brought just the right element of pathos and intensity.

Afterwards, I looked at my body in the bathroom mirror and felt... ugly. My body sags in the wrong places ever since I had a child, and my hair is rough, not shining, and my skin is dry and ordinary. I wish I still looked like I was seventeen. I almost want to cry, thinking that I never will again. In New Moon, everyone loves Bella because she is beautiful and sad, but there is nothing lovable about being ugly.

Plans for the Perfect Family

Back in 2005 I started a draft of a post that I never finished. It has poignancy now because it's from the pre-kid time, even the pre-marriage time. Here it is:

Someday I want to teach the "when I first came to this land" song to my kids, if I have any. But I'll write new words so the guy will name his animals nice things (and he won't get to name his wife). The melody is really pretty and it's fun to sing. I would like to be one of those families where the kids sing and roll down grassy hills giggling and we all genuinely like each other.

So that I don't forget - here are some more basic things I want to share with my kids:

The Wishing Song ("Oh, I wish I was a hole in the ground...")
Books like The Ox-Cart Man, The Runaway Bunny, and Goodnight Moon
Sunday walks and the Path Pioneer tradition
Corn shucking, leaf raking, and other excuses to be outside
How to interact with animals and read their body language
Making popcorn on the stove
Howling at a full moon
Saying "rabbits" first thing in the morning the first day of the month
Making a wish when you drive under a bridge that has a train going over it (you also have to grab a button and take your feet off the floor as you are wishing)
Listening to classical music
Having tea after dinner while watching PBS or Mystery, like my parents do
When a family member comes home, meeting them at the door and hugging/kissing them

So, that was the draft. And now I really do have a family and a kid I can share some of these things with. I do read the three books that I mentioned to her. And we do make popcorn together, listen to music, and hug and kiss each time one of us leaves or comes home. So that's all good. The Path Pioneer tradition is one that I was thinking about resurrecting just recently. It would be easier if she could walk further - right now we're pretty much limited to routes that are paved so I can push her stroller. But we'll get there. Soon enough, I hope, she'll be darting through the woods ahead of me, spotting bracket fungi and pointing out birds and collecting leaves and rocks for me to carry and urging me and my husband to hurry up.

Chopped Liver

The train was crowded as usual on my way home this afternoon. I was standing in the middle of the train car, gripping the bar above my head with one hand for balance and holding my book open with the other, crammed up against strangers on all sides.

As we pulled into one station, the guy sitting in the seat slightly to my left stood up and made his way to the door. I glanced at the man next to me on my left, checking to see whether he wanted the seat before I took it. Instead of meeting my eyes, he looked past me to another woman who was standing a few feet away and said, "Would you like a seat?" She smiled at him and said, "Why yes, thank you." She had to push completely past me to get to the seat. I had a moment of brief outrage when I almost said something. It's not that I wanted to sit down so badly. I just didn't understand why he had done that.

First I thought maybe he wanted to flirt with her. She was a bit younger than me. But she wasn't noticeably more attractive than me, and wasn't pregnant, carrying any bags, or otherwise in need of a seat. And the guy didn't speak to her or look at her again the rest of the ride, so he apparently didn't offer her a seat in order to strike up a conversation.

It was easier to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened, and to keep reading my book, than to speak up. I don't know what I would have said, anyway. "Hey, I'm right here!" was what I really wanted to say.

I guess that balances out the time in the train a couple weeks ago, when a young soldier hit on me. He was making eye contact from the time we were standing on the platform together, commenting on the crowd and the trains, though I tried to ignore him. Then when we stepped onto the train he started asking me about the bus schedule and I answered so as not to be rude. Before long he was talking about his time in Iraq, showing me a picture on his cell phone of his 6-month-old daughter (with an already-ex-wife), and telling me about his midterms. He was so forward. I wasn't being encouraging at all, not volunteering anything, just answering the bare minimum to not be mean. I did mention that I too had a daughter, thinking that would put him off. He scribbled his name and email on a piece of paper and gave it to me. He was obviously barking up the wrong tree, chatting up a married woman who's ten years older than him, but I couldn't help feeling a little "still got it" glow that someone noticed me.

A Period of Celebration

I started my period today! Yay! I am ridiculously happy about it. It just feels so good to be normal again, at least for a little while. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up, or if I'm just having this one period and then won't get another for another six months. I have been thinking of it in terms of a mental struggle, like it wasn't happening for me because I didn't want it badly enough (but I did want it!), and it won't happen again unless I really concentrate and try (but I don't know how to do that).

It shouldn't be like that. Most women don't have to concentrate and will their periods to happen, they just happen all by themselves. I guess it's mental for me because that's the only way I can have any control over it - I can't physically flex a muscle to make it happen - and because periods are responsive to your state of mind sometimes. Last time I talked to my obgyn about it she asked if I was worried or stressed out, implying that my period was missing because of my state of mind. I felt like she was one step away from saying, "It's your own fault that you're not getting your period. You must subconsciously not want to have another child." But I do want to have another child. It's been so frustrating and saddening to me not to be capable of that, when my first child is two and a half already, and all around me the mothers who had babies around the same time as I did are now having or have already had their second.

So, in short, I wasn't worried or stressed out before, but having this mysterious thing wrong with me was starting to make me that way. I've spent the past few months beating myself up mentally because I wasn't menstruating, and being angry at my body for being wrong and abnormal. Now, as relieved as I am that I am once again back in the realm of the normal people, I am full of fear that I won't be able to keep it up.

Well. For now, everything is fine. I will celebrate my normalcy and try not to think about whether it will continue.

Coffee, Carbon, and Climate

Today I drank three large cups of coffee. I never drink coffee. Hours later, I'm still feeling the effects - I feel a little queasy, a lot nervous, and my hands are shaking. I think the coffee is partly to blame for me picking a fight with my husband about global environmental change when I got home. The day of lectures on ecology and climate change that I attended, which inspired and depressed me, is more to blame, however, and is also the reason for the coffee. I'm so perpetually sleep-deprived these days that I didn't want to nod off and miss anything, so I kept slurping coffee in between talks. Maybe now I need a shot of whiskey to sober up.

The overriding theme of the day was that catastrophic change is, at this point, inevitable. All day long we looked at graphs of carbon dioxide levels rising up from 280 ppm in the preindustrial era, past 350 ppm (the limit to the "safe" range to which our environment can be expected to adapt), to 390 ppm today, on its way to 450 ppm in just a few years. Ecosystems all over the world are poised on the brink of a tipping point beyond which they can't be brought back. The Amazon rainforest generates a large proportion of its own rainfall, for instance, through evapotranspiration. The percentage of deforestation beyond which the region will be unable to generate this moisture and will steadily head toward desertification is 20%. Currently, we're at 19%. This was just one of many terrifying statistics I heard today from the top experts in the field, who are certainly in a position to know.

The comment that touched off the argument with my husband was something the keynote speaker mentioned. Someone asked him about the prospects for future life on earth. He said, "Oh, the planet will survive, of course. It will even recover its biodiversity to current-day levels. It will just take a long time. Our species will not be around to witness it." That concept really struck home with me.

On the way home, I listened to NPR, and the day's top stories were all about the situation in Afghanistan, and the Fort Hood shooter, and the politics of human societies seemed so petty in contrast to the enormous environmental spasm our planet is undergoing. I felt irritated that our political leaders were being distracted by these stupid trivialities when they should be focused on climate change, exclusively. It's like someone said, "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." It's so frustrating that the political will to change is so weak, and most people are so clueless and ignorant about what's happening. The argument started because my husband suggested that if I knew anyone involved in the Fort Hood incident, that I'd rate that as more important. And I just don't think anything is more important than climate change. Period. How could the deaths of a few people, or a few hundred, or a few million, be more important than the certain extinction of most of the species on earth, including our own?

I felt like there was a handful of climate scientists and ecologists who understood what was happening, and the rest of humanity was either blissfully ignorant or willfully in denial about it, and I wanted him to be with me in the handful.

And It's Not Even Thanksgiving Yet

I've cheered up. I never seem to stay down for long. Today a friend and I were counting our blessings, and we just kept thinking of more and more. She's a social worker so she sees a lot of people who are in desperate straits financially and don't necessarily have support networks to help them out - so one illness, one accident, or one downsizing is all that stands between them and ruin. We're so lucky that we're shielded from that kind of poverty, that we have families we could always go back to, that our options for employment are varied. Losing our jobs wouldn't be the end of the world for us. We're young and in good health. We both have the babies we always wanted and dreamed of having, and husbands we love dearly who cherish us. Neither of us has ever lost a parent, a sibling, or a close friend. The world is full of perils, but we're insulated from the worst of them. As we talked together, we felt better and better.

It's funny because we started out talking about all the things we're scared of - H1N1, rape, random violence. But then we just deliberately started thinking about how, more than likely, the worst wouldn't befall us. Which is not to get cocky about it - you never know what fate might have in store for you. But it is better to live appreciating your relative good fortune from day to day, than to live in fear of a multitude of disasters.

Whine

Today I'm feeling terribly down on myself. I'm trying, but somehow I'm still letting everything slide. I make all these brave resolutions about eating well and staying on top of things and getting to bed at a decent hour, and they all come to naught. I end up staying up till 1 or 2 am, night after night, eating chocolate just to keep myself awake, working on things that were due yesterday. My willpower is weak and I self-medicate a lot to get myself through. I'm feeling frumpy and bulgy. My hair looks witchy. I'm so exhausted all the time and vaguely resentful that other people get to sleep and I don't. Sometimes, when I finally do get to go to bed, I waste the first half hour just lying there feeling sorry for myself, because I know I'll have to get up again in just a few hours, and it's not going to be enough. I wish I had my mom's ironclad willpower - she can resist anything - and my elf-friend's trim little figure - and my daughter's sleep schedule.

Love in the Time of the Brunch

Yesterday I sorted through a drawer of mementos that I kept from a particularly turbulent time in my life (and threw out most of it). There were poems written by The Wrong Guy, cards and love letters, ticket stubs from concerts I went to with The Right Guy, the receipt from our evening at a coffeehouse together, cartoons we drew together, a short story he wrote, and much much more. Also a lot of angsty lists of things relating to the Wrong Guy relationship and things that he wanted me to do differently. We were in crisis all the time. Reading it all reminded me vividly of how awful it was being with him. He really tore me up. I still haven't and probably won't ever forgive him. I just invested so much into trying to help him and in return I got all this emotional misery and blame and anger pinned on me and he made me responsible for everything that went wrong - including things that I obviously had nothing to do with and couldn't change - and he was vicious to me when I couldn't fix those things. He would scream at me until I was crying and physically knocking my head against the wall and he still wouldn't stop. I am such a calm, reasonable person normally, but if I'd stayed with him I would've been suicidal - it was only a matter of time. I do remember crying hysterically nearly every day during the two months that we dated. I am still astonished at myself for getting into such a hurtful relationship. I lost a lot of trust in my own judgment because of that.

Anyway, I came to my senses and got out. And now I'm with this guy who is just a model of normalcy in comparison. He's loving and sweet and emotionally whole and never tries to hurt me. Our daily life is serene. Just reading over some of my journal entries from the earlier time was making me start to hyperventilate, and I felt so frickin grateful that that's not my life any more.

But at the same time I got glimpses - especially in the journal entries from the early days - of the good stuff that lured me in. Early on, he seemed like just the type of person I was looking for. He was artistic and creative and took a real interest in my poetry. He encouraged my writing. I felt like, "Ah! Here's someone I can share all those types of things with." We had these intense, philosophical, all-night conversations and we read Thurber's The White Deer aloud to each other and sang old English madrigals together. He liked all that stuff just as much as I do. We would both get lit up about the same intellectual things. Tracking down one literary reference would remind us of another, and so on. We could spend hours just reading snippets of things to each other.

I miss that. There isn't much that my husband and I can share like that. I've tried to get him to read books aloud with me - one of my favorite things to do, and I think it's so romantic. I am actually really jealous of couples that do this. It's not something he enjoys. Today I mentioned the short story he wrote, the only one he's ever written to my knowledge. It's an incredibly good story. I told him again how much I liked it and said he should do more fiction writing. He just shrugged and said he doesn't see the point of fiction. He didn't even consider doing it.

Lately I have been doing a lot more of my own creative writing. I've written a few short stories. Nothing much good, so far, but the process is fun. And I know I will get better as I get my writing muscles back. I thought he might be interested or curious in what I was writing and ask about it, but he hasn't. So I haven't even had the chance to say "it's not good enough to show to anyone." He hasn't even asked me, broadly, what I'm writing about. I was thinking that if I could work up his interest in writing again, we could have our own little writers' club and share stuff with each other. I would love to read anything he wrote. And being accountable to someone else would keep me producing. All my writing in the past has been done for creative writing classes or for writing clubs that I started with friends. I seem to need to feel accountable, to someone, or I just don't write. (All the writing clubs ended the same way, with the other members flaking out.)

Anyway, I got pretty much a non-response when I brought up the idea. It was part of a larger idea of mine, really, that we should go out for brunch at a local restaurant every Sunday. There are so many good restaurants in our area that I'm interested to try. I also think going out for brunch is a real treat - it makes me feel excited and happy to think of it, like a kid. I thought it would be good for us to establish a tradition, because then we can start to anticipate and wonder during the week, "where will we go next?" and save up fun stuff to tell each other at brunch, and so on. At home, we often are like ships passing in the night. I'm busy feeding the baby and myself or doing chores, while he's tapping away on his laptop, not even in the same room, and sometimes it seems like we don't even make eye contact all evening, let alone have a conversation. I thought a weekly brunch when we could reconnect and talk about our relationship, plans for the future, etc. would be good for our marriage. It would be like therapy, except without the therapist - our time to work through stuff together, with a side of home fries and toast.

So today was our first brunch outing. I loved the restaurant that I picked for our inaugural brunch. The food was delicious, the atmosphere was good, I was feeling chipper. He was more or less like a block of wood through the whole meal. I kept chatting away, holding up my end of the conversation and more. I brought up my sharing writing idea, and how many kids we might want to have, and our friendships with other couples, and our plans for the landscaping around the house, and a book I've been reading, and my plan to enter some 5K races this fall. He hardly said anything the whole meal. I would introduce a topic of conversation, and say a few things, unhurried, open, warm, and invite his comment, but he would just sit there. So after a while I'd say a little more, give a slightly different perspective or ask if he thought such and such. He would shrug, or look down at his food. I would think of some more things to say, and say them, with appropriate pauses in between and more invitation of his opinion. He didn't even look at me throughout most of the meal. I was doing all the work. I had energy to do it, but I also felt saddened that he wasn't making an effort.

It's unfair of me to write in this vein, because he wasn't feeling well. Halfway through the meal I decided to call a spade a spade, so I came right out and said, "OK. It's your turn to think of a topic of conversation now." And I just waited and smiled at him. He seemed to be tuning in from a long way away. He looked at me (finally!) and said, "Actually, I'm feeling a little woozy." He's been having weird health issues lately, episodes of dizziness. I said, "Do you want to lie down or something?" He said, "Maybe." So he went out to the car to rest, while I ate the rest of my meal and supervised our toddler's meal and paid for the food and got a box for his and collected the diaper bag and coats in one arm and picked up the kid in the other arm and picked up the food bag in my teeth and went out. I felt sorry that he wasn't feeling well, particularly that it was a feeling-woozy kind of not well, because I know what that's like and it's so unpleasant. (He perked up later in the day.)

I had flashbacks to The Wrong Guy relationship, though, because he had so many health issues and was always needing to be cosseted. I think part of my impatience now with people who are sick or fragile is a reaction to that. It's like the takehome message I learned from that relationship was, don't cosset people. Because they will just make it all your fault that they're feeling poorly, and throw it back in your face if you're unable to help them. If I could go back in time I wouldn't buy into his manipulativeness; half the time I don't think he even was feeling bad, just trying to get my sympathy. And using it as an excuse so the attention would be on him and we could work on helping him with his issues (again), shelving mine (again).

So deep down inside I have this little warning voice telling me that my husband was just trying to get sympathy and to get out of having to talk with me. The one time we had all week, our therapy time, and he played the not-feeling-well card to get out of it. I know it's completely unfair of me to feel that way. He has been having these mysterious episodes, and it's a bit scary that we don't know what's causing it.

To be honest, though, even though it's unfair to feel this, I was annoyed that he was so unresponsive and wooden. He is like that a lot, even when he's not feeling woozy. It's a basic aspect of his personality. Back in the turbulent time a few years ago, I loved it that we were so stable together. We could just sit and watch a movie together and not fight, and it was bliss. It was actually possible to enjoy aspects of life when he was around, whereas with The Wrong Guy everything had to be about our drama-filled relationship, and he was quite willing to scrap the evening's entertainments in favor of raking me over some coals.

But I do wish my husband would make a little more effort sometimes. It's like riding a horse with a hard mouth. You have to haul around on the reins to get them to even notice. The Wrong Guy was a feather touch. Especially if I wanted to talk about our relationship, he'd give me his full, intense attention and be ready with all this touchy-feely emotional psychotherapy. He was always interested in sharing our feelings.

I love my husband to pieces. I'm grateful to have him, and I know that what we have together is good in so many ways. My whole baseline level of happiness is way higher than it used to be. In fact, just the other day we were riding somewhere in the warm car, with autumn foliage outside, and a great song playing, and I was so happy to be with him. I thought, "This would've been an oasis of joy, at other times in my life. Now, it's just normal."

So, I'm not having marriage-questioning doubts or anything. Just recognizing that yes, that woodenness that drives me crazy sometimes is here to stay. And if I want a literary/inspirational conversation, I'm going to have to find someone else to have it with. And if I want to feel supported or encouraged about my writing, I will have to find that within. No matter how much French toast we order together.

Four Years Old

My blog's birthday was August 5 and I missed it. Four years old - how amazing! I haven't been writing much lately, for which I have lots of excuses... Want to hear?

1) Life is busy. There's so much work to be done around the new house. Unpacking, cleaning, organizing, yard work. Since we're starting from scratch getting the rooms in order, there's a kind of compulsion to do it perfectly - as in, don't just put the chair there, but take the chair apart and clean it and, after much hunting for the missing screws, reassemble it, all of which takes a while.

2) Life is rich. In my spare moments when I'm not looking for missing chair screws I have been reading like mad. It's because we finally have space for bookcases and I was able to bring over all my boxes of books from my parents' house, plus a friend lent me a bunch of her books. Reading is one of my absolute favorite things to do, and having one whole wall of the living room devoted to books is like being a chocoholic and living in a Cadbury factory. Because I am also a chocoholic, or at least borderline, lately I have been staying up until the wee hours combining these guilty pleasures. My waistline is bound to show the sad results soon.

3) Life is serene. I always write more when I'm upset about stuff. I wrote a lot when I was afraid my now-husband would never want to marry me, when I was trying to talk him into having kids, etc. Now, happily married with a beautiful toddler, I don't have any angst to pour out. I am finally in the warm place I've been striving for since I was a teenager. Alas for my readers (reader?), it doesn't make for interesting blog reading.

Anyway, that's why posts have been sparse. No worries, just happy.

Adventures in Bleach

The previous owners of our house were clean freaks, I've concluded. They left a lot of their cleaning supplies stashed under sinks and in cupboards - jugs of bleach, industrial-size refill containers of antibacterial soap, Windex and wood floor cleaner and Chrome Sparkle Enhancer. I didn't even know half those products existed. I've never used any of it before in my life. The only cleaning products I've used up till now have been Seventh Generation dishwashing liquid and laundry detergent. I read about environmental toxins all day and then I come home and I'm scared to touch that bleach bottle. I'm scared of the antibacterial soap too. What if I breed a new resistant superbug by washing my hands with it?

But, there it all is, and I hate to waste it. So I've cautiously been using it. For the past five years, we've been taking laundry over to my parents' house every week. Now, to my extreme delight, we have the capacity to wash clothes in our own home. I actually fall asleep grinning about this, it makes me so happy. Yesterday for the first time in my life I separated my laundry and did a load of just whites, and put a bit of bleach in with the detergent. I felt like such a typical suburban American as I did so - just freewheeling and not even worrying about the environment for once.

Gotta say I was underwhelmed with the results; my clothes came out clean, but not bright white like I was hoping. The socks in particular still looked kind of dingy. And all the clothes reeked of bleach, even after I put them out to dry in the sun for hours. I felt like my lungs were corroding with the fumes coming off them. But now I know. Reduce the bleach, and the expectations.

Our new home is a doorway to other "typical" experiences as well. When we lived at our apartment, I would put the baby in the stroller, sling a few canvas bags over my shoulder, and walk to the grocery store several times a week. Each time the amount I bought would be limited by what I could physically carry while pushing the stroller back. Now, because we're not walking distance to anything, I load the baby into the car and do a week's worth of shopping at a time. I push her around the store in a cart instead of a stroller. I wheel the whole cart out to my car to transfer the groceries. I almost feel like the rules don't apply, and it's okay to buy junk food and processed CheeseZips and so on. I have to mentally slap myself. No! Just because you're using fossil fuels just to GET to the grocery store does not mean you can throw nutrition out the window too!

On the positives list, we have a dining room now. Instead of balancing plates on our laps on the sofa, my husband and I can now eat dinner together at an actual table. We have conversations while we eat. It's such an improvement.

Not at Home Yet

I wonder how long it will take to feel at home in the new house. When we first moved into our apartment, I remember I didn't want to spend any time there unless my then-boyfriend was there. I would come home from work, tired after a long day, but within moments of stepping in the front door I would think, "I just want to leave." He usually didn't get home until 8 or 9 at night. I would grab an apple and turn right around and go out for a walk, or sit in the park across the street - better to be obviously not home, than to be in this place that was supposed to be home and wasn't.

Right now, the new place doesn't feel like home. All our stuff is there, but I feel like spending as little time there as possible. I just want to get what I need and get out. Will it take months, like it did last time? Will it take having friends over and cooking a few big messy meals before I can feel like we've staked our claim? Even though the new place is good for so many reasons and I'm very happy we got it, I miss the comforts of our old apartment.

It must be even harder for our daughter, who's never lived anywhere else and who wasn't involved in the decision to move. For her, it was just a giant uprooting and upheaval. For the first time now she's sleeping in her own room instead of with us, and she's lost her neighborhood, the streets, parks, grocery store, and playgrounds with which she was so intimately familiar. The new house exists in a void because there aren't shops and such within walking distance - it's like opening the front door and finding that we're floating in outer space. You have to use the car to get anywhere, which is like a wormhole, so there's no connection or continuity to the geography.

To top it off she's starting daycare for the first time in her life soon. It will be so scary for her. I feel really sorry for her that everything is so new and frightening, and I wish I knew how to make it better.

Attitude

This morning as I was riding the bus to work there was a huge thunk that made everyone sit up and look nervously around. An SUV had smacked the rear corner of the bus as it cut over to change lanes.

The driver immediately said, "Ah, man, why do people do that? Why, why? Did you see that? She just tried to cut across three lanes of traffic to make her turn." Sticking her arm out the window to gesture, she said, ostensibly to the driver of the SUV, although the driver couldn't have heard her, "Yeah, you DO need to pull over!"

Moments later, with the bus and SUV pulled over to the side of the traffic circle, the two drivers conducted a short conversation through the opened bus door. The SUV driver was inclined to be hostile, but the bus driver was in the better position. She was seated, looking down from a much larger vehicle, in uniform, with the trappings of authority about her.

"Honey, you hit me, it's your insurance that's gonna pay," she said, unperturbed. "It's all on camera. It's on camera. It's on camera. You can stand there and argue all day. It's on camera what happened. Now you give me your license and registration, and I'll give you mine."

The SUV woman told the bus driver to get out and follow her to get the information. "Oh no, that's okay, YOU can bring it back to ME," the driver said. The SUV woman said something snippy that I didn't catch. "All right, and that's how you wanna be, I hope you have a great day," the driver said in a mock-sweet voice. The SUV woman - a sharp-dressed professional in a power suit - stalked off, but she complied and brought the insurance info back. I was deeply impressed.

Here's how it would've gone down if I was driving the bus.

thunk

Erin: "Oh no! A car hit me! Ahh!... Oh I hope she pulls over. Oh, phew, she's pulling over."

I would then probably open the bus doors and hurry over to the SUV to conduct the conversation looking in her window from the sidewalk.

SUV woman: "What the hell were you doing?"

Erin: "I was just driving around the circle. I didn't change lanes or anything."

SUV: "You're an idiot. This had better be reimbursed." (gesturing toward her scraped front bumper)

Erin: "I'm sorry. Do you want to exchange insurance?"

SUV: "Yeah, you bring me yours."

Erin: "OK! Can you wait here?" (scurry back to the bus)

It's ridiculous, because even as the real-life conversation was going down, I was thinking how differently (and how badly) I would have handled it. I have one technique for dealing with authority or anyone aggressive: get really submissive and eager to please. It often works because people realize there's no point bringing out the big guns for a softie like me. They lighten up and get what they want without yelling. I can't handle yelling - it just destroys me.

Actually any kind of confrontation can leave me shaken up and replaying the incident in my head for days. When I do run into the occasional person who realizes they can jerk me around and I'll just go more and more belly-up, it's a bad scene. I wonder if, pushed far enough, I would be able to find the words to fight back. It's not that I don't want to. It's just that I go into such extreme "flight" mode in stressful situations, I can't even think what I should have said until hours later.

"Yeah, you DO need to pull over!" She was awesome. I should take lessons from her.

?, but no .

I haven't had a period in three years. It seems astonishing when I look back on it. My last period was in August 2006, just a few months after we got married. It started on my birthday, a day that we spent hiking with friends in the mountains. I remember retreating into some shrubbery off the trail at one point to change a pad. (No, I didn't litter - I took the old one with me, wrapped up.) That seems like eons ago.

I've done some reading online about amenorrhea. It could be primary ovarian failure, a scary thought considering that I was hoping to have a second child someday. Could my ovaries really be puttering out, when I'm only 32 years old? Or it could be a thyroid disorder. Or it could be a pituitary problem. Or it could be an ectopic pregnancy. For brief moments over the past few months I've wondered if it was a real pregnancy - that would explain the gut that I don't seem to be able to get rid of - but the gut hasn't changed in all that time, and we use birth control. And honestly, I just don't feel pregnant. Now that I have been, I would know if I ever was again.

A friend chuckled when I confided in her that I no longer have periods, and said, "You're lucky. Enjoy it!" I did for a while, but at this point I just want to be normal. I feel like some kind of anomaly in the world, cut off from the cycle of reproduction in my prime reproducing years. I feel the way I did at 14 and 15 and 16, when all the girls I knew had started their periods, and I hadn't. As convenient as it is not to menstruate any more, I know it means there's something wrong.

Yes, I've been to the doctor. I've had blood drawn. I'll find out the lab results soon. I hope it will be an answer I can live with.

Labor

I visited my friend today and got to hold her brand-new, six-day-old baby. The baby was adorable with her little grunts and snuffles, and her wonderfully expressive face. Even though I had one of those myself not too long ago, I forgot how tiny they really are. Her arms and legs were so fragile, they were like wrinkled red little twigs. Her triangular little face registered first doubt, then annoyance, then confusion, melting into a thousand-mile stare. She frowned as she stared up at me.

My friend was equal parts lit up about this baby, just besotted with her – and rightfully so – and shell-shocked by her labor experience. It sounds like she had a truly terrible time. She was in labor for 30 hours, including about six hours of transition labor (the worst, most intense stage, where you're basically having a contraction for 60-90 seconds during every two minutes). She begged for an epidural and got one but it didn't take on one side of her body, so she was still feeling every contraction. When she was finally ready to deliver, her doctor had gone home for the night, and refused to allow my friend be delivered by the doctor on duty at the hospital – so my poor friend had to wait, blowing through every contraction in an effort not to push, for an entire 90 minutes before the doctor made it back to her side. She described it as "torture." I asked her how she coped with the pain, and she said, "I screamed. I was screaming so loud with every contraction, I thought the other women in labor must be terrified listening to me, but I couldn't help it." I felt like crying for her that she had to suffer like that.

I've never experienced pain on that level before. When I was in labor, it was the worst pain I've ever experienced, and I remember feeling desperate for relief, and doing a lot of loud groaning. Luckily, when I got an epidural it worked. Up to that point the worst pain I had ever experienced was a urinary tract infection that made me whimper audibly. I remember feeling astonished: "Wow, that hurt so much I made a noise and couldn't even help it." Maybe I'm just really afraid of losing control, but I tend to not make noise if I can possibly help it when I'm hurt. The embarrassment of making a sound seems worse to me than the pain. For something to hurt so much that I would actually scream out loud – I can't even really comprehend what that must be like. I guess if I ever have a natural childbirth, I may find out. Anyway, my friend is the same way. She's a quiet, mild sort of person, not given to dramatics and never wanting to be the center of attention. I can't wrap my mind around her screaming, or the degree of pain it would take for her to make noise.

My friend said that she is still feeling so traumatized by the whole experience that she is considering getting therapy to help her work through what happened to her. She's having PTSD-like flashbacks, feeling terrified of ever being in labor again. (Fortunately it hasn’t prevented her from bonding with her baby.) In the pictures of her and her husband holding their newborn moments after the birth, they look wan – smiling, but haggard. She looks like she's just been through hell. He looks like he just watched his wife go through hell.

It makes me wonder: how come some women have – not an easy time, necessarily – but a manageable time during labor, whereas others don't? I've read birth stories about mothers who calmly walked during their labors and pushed their babies out with little fuss; mothers who rocked and moaned quietly and were in control of their experiences. That's what I’d want, if I went natural – but I'm scared I'd end up like my friend, screaming and out of my mind with pain, and not in control at all.