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.

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.