The phases of motherhood

Just read another blog article about motherhood. (Link if you're interested. It's cute.) I could kind of relate to it, but not really. Because I no longer am a new mom of a newborn; motherhood changes after the first year. Instead, what it brought up for me is how very different life is pre-baby, post-baby, and once the new-baby smell wears off.

(Why doesn't that smell last longer? It's one of the best parts of the newborn phase. Now my kid smells like whatever she ate last, plus the things that are sticking to the residue of whatever she ate last.)

Pre-baby, my life was pretty chill. I stayed up too late, dragged myself into work, dragged myself home, and spent hours doing things like cooking and working out and watching Netflix and reading books. I had time to be bored. My house was always clean. I ate well-rounded, nutritious meals on a regular basis. I had a closet full of nice clothes, none of which had stains. I did not lead the single life most mommy bloggers I've read describe; I'm more of a homebody, and I've never had much of what you'd call a social life. I didn't realize I had much of a life at all, to be honest, until it was gone.

Post-baby was chaotic. Post-baby is, I imagine, always chaotic, but less than two weeks after giving birth by surprise c-section, we moved an hour away to be closer (next door) to my parents. Roughly six months after giving birth, I ditched my office gig (which now came with an hour commute) to work from home part time, making up the rest with freelancing gigs while my partner tried to find a job out in the boonies (where we now live). The first year of my daughter's life is thus a blur of stress, pain, financial hardship, and indescribable joy. Also desperation, both quiet and not. The highest highs, the lowest lows...all the cliches. You learn who you really are in times like that. (I'm not always a nice person, but I get things done.)

After the first year, things settled down somewhat. Slightly lower levels of stress, pain, and financial hardship. But the joy is still there, so they seem even lower yet. With each passing year, I prove that I can indeed keep this child alive, so I relax a little more. (I don't even bat an eye when she rubs the stall door in a public restroom anymore - just wipe her hand with a wet wipe and keep going.)

Still, it's amazing the impact one little person has had on my life.

Pre-baby: I read books -- at least one a week. Sometimes two or three at once. When the urge struck, I reread old favorites.
Post-baby: I squeezed in a book here and there, but had to be very careful about the subject matter; Sarah's Key had me sobbing for 6 hours into my baby's sparse hair. I started rereading books I knew did not depict sick, injured, or dying babies to keep myself from reading anything emotionally distressing. Mostly, though, I was too tired to drag my eyes across a page. I watched a lot of reruns.
Now: I occasionally get to read a book. My kid peels book covers like some kids peel wings off flies, though, so mostly I read on my phone. Still, my reading time comes in short jags, so I read more blog articles than books. I miss books.

Pre: I kept up with current events through office scuttlebutt.
Post: I have no idea what happened in the world for the first year of my child's life.
Now: I keep up with the world through Facebook and Twitter.

Pre: Outside my social circle, I wasn't much of a talker; I could go all day without saying a word, and often did. My social media use was me ranting about work. I had a few close friends I kept up with regularly.
Post: I'd talk to whoever would listen about my baby. Including my baby, once the postpartum loneliness set it. My social media use was me posting pictures of my baby. I kept up with friends sporadically through email and text. We mostly talked about my baby.
Now: The only time I get to be silent is while I work. Aside from the internet, all of my conversations are with people to whom I am related. My social media use is almost exclusively pictures of and cute stories about my kid. I keep up with friends through Facebook, where we like, and occasionally comment on, each others' pictures.

Pre: I tried, and failed, to blog -- I just didn't have much to say.
Post: I was too sleep deprived to blog.
Now: I'm reattempting blogging so I have somewhere to put my thoughts, because I no longer have time for philosophical conversations with friends and my family is tired of being my only sounding board.

Pre: I did not own enough jeans to pack for a week's vacation. I made up the difference with dresses and cute skirts. I wore yoga pants to do yoga, and occasionally to sleep in.
Post: I lost the baby weight quickly, but was stuck in yoga pants for months thanks to post-operative pain. After returning to work, I tried to wear only things that hid spit-up well. (The stain, not the smell. Nothing hides the smell.) Skirts and dresses were out because wearing them requires shaving, and shaving while sleep-deprived is inadvisable.
Now: I wear mostly yoga pants, hoodies, and sneakers; jeans are dress clothes. My main criteria when shopping for clothes are that they hide stains (now stains usually come with food coloring, so I wear a lot of black) and be easy to run in. Wearing skirts is still out because it's too hard to keep from showing the world your underwear while wrestling a flailing toddler from the supermarket floor.

Pre: Sneakers lasted for years, because I wore mostly heels. Even shopping.
Post: Sneakers became my shoe of choice because I was too afraid to carry the baby while wearing heels; what if I tripped?
Now: I'm lucky if sneakers last a year. I'm considering a second pair just for working out, so I'll have a "nice" pair. I have trouble walking in heels. Hell, I have trouble walking in flats.

Pre: My purse was pretty much a wallet on a string. In it were my wallet, cell phone, keys, and lipstick.
Post: My purse was a backpack; when the straps on that broke (within the first year!), I switched to a weekender tote bag. In it was a disaster survival kit, with gear to deal with any problem that could possibly arise with a newborn. Plus enough formula, diapers, and changes of clothing to last several days in the wild. Yet almost every time we left the house, we encountered a situation for which I was totally unprepared. (My stuff could still fit in a clutch purse.)
Now: I am relishing my post-potty-training freedom by once again carrying a tiny purse. In it are my wallet, cell phone, keys, lipstick, plus little toys, crayons, and toddler snacks.

Pre: I pursued hobbies to pass the time.
Post: Hobbies? I was lucky to shower twice a week.
Now: I pursue hobbies so I can occasionally talk about something that is not my kid.

Pre: I planned menus two weeks in advance, carefully read labels in the grocery store, and cooked everything from scratch. I made my own peanut butter.
Post: I ate only things you could eat one-handed. Once I even tried my daughter's formula. It was awful.
Now: I save recipes on Pinterest that I will never fix. My daughter is happier with steamed veggies and mac and cheese anyway. I eat a lot of granola bars. Store-bought ones.

Pre: I wore makeup on special occasions.
Post: I wore makeup when I left the house, because I wanted to feel like an attractive human being on occasion.
Now: I wear makeup for the sunscreen, and because it makes my daughter happy.

Pre: I went for long drives when I was upset, needed time to think, or just to try out a new CD.
Post: Commuting was my only alone time.
Now: I am not allowed to go anywhere alone. If I want to listen to music, I take a walk. At 4 a.m., while everyone else is sound asleep.

Pre: I pictured parenthood feeling like a stronger version of what I felt holding other people's babies, because that baby would be mine. I couldn't imagine ever wanting someone else to hold my baby.
Post: What I felt towards my baby involved more panic and exhaustion than I anticipated. I gladly asked other people to hold her so I could do things like pee, shower, and sleep.
Now: I would throw anyone, up to and including her father, under a bus if it meant ensuring my child's health and well-being. I hold her as often as she'll let me, dreading the day when she no longer wants me to.

I have no illusions that adding a second child to the mix won't change things; I imagine some day I will reread this post and laugh at what I thought was chaotic. Still, this is quite an impressive impact for someone who's barely over 3 feet tall.

The Santa thing

I just reread this great blog post on Semiproper, and it got me thinking. I was an extremely literal child who did not comprehend things like "good" lies (I'm not sure why I put that in past tense). And when I learned the truth about Santa (and the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy, because I was also a pretty smart kid and knocked them out in one sweep of logic), I felt betrayed.

My parents, the people I trusted above all others, lied  to me. Repeatedly. With malice aforethought. (I was wounded, I tell you. And I made sure they knew it.) Mom was crushed. She knew some day I would discover the truth, but she'd hoped for a few more years.

For my part, though the presents did help take the sting out of it, Christmas never quite recovered. (I didn't quite mind the loss of the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy, but Santa was a blow.) And I never quite trusted what any adults said again. Not because I thought they meant to hurt me, but because deep down, I just really can't understand why anyone would ever lie to someone, ever. I see no point in it. Either tell the truth or say nothing.

Yet I've told my kid about Santa. Hell, I've told her we're in email contact. I take pictures of things she wants so I can send them to him. (I take pictures of present ideas for everyone, because I am forgetful when it comes to things like that, but she's 3 and hasn't caught on to that yet.) We're also friends of the Bunny. We haven't gotten to the Tooth Fairy yet, but I'm sure she'll stop by our house, too.

I had never intended to perpetuate these stories, given my experience. And it's not required, as Roo's post shows. Plus, the ruse only lasts a few years; this is the first year she's really old enough to understand what's going on, and if she's anything like me, she's got about 3 years left before the jig is up. So why did I do it?

Not because I can't have difficult conversations with my kid. I'm an atheist in the Bible Belt; we've already had the discussion of God and religion, and I imagine we'll continue having that discussion for the rest of our lives. (Especially since her grandparents are decidedly not atheist; I expect some messy talks once she gets older.) We've had talks about who can and cannot touch her in certain places. We've talked about Stranger Danger. She knows where babies really come from. I pull no punches with this child.

After a lot of thought, I've come to the conclusion that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I still believe in Santa. Not in the sense of "fat guy doling out materialistic rewards for good behavior." But in the sense that, at least sometimes, my fellow humans are capable of great magic and wonder and goodness. Especially around Christmas. And I want her to have that sense of magic and wonder and goodness from a young age.

I am not a big holiday celebrator. I don't wear red, white, and blue for July 4. I don't drink green beer on March 17. Until I had a kid, I hardly dressed up for Halloween. But even when I was single and hardly had anyone to buy for, I put up a Christmas tree. (Even the year I was living with a pagan so against Christmas that I had to sneak it in the house.) I baked for my coworkers, when I worked in an office, and my (then) husband's employees. I may not be a Christian, but I love every part of Christmas -- the music, the parties, the food, the lights, the TV specials, the presents, the cards, the charity, the extra thoughtfulness that abounds. Christmas has never been a holiday for me; it's a season which lasts from Thanksgiving until January 6. And I have the shirts and jewelry to prove it.

I may lean towards the misanthropic side of things, but around Christmas I love my fellow humans. We all get a do-over, and we choose to do good. (Or maybe I just choose to see good, but the warm-and-fuzzy is the same.) Santa is real in the sense that love is real, and we see him when we express that love for each other.

I am Santa.

And once she's old enough, my daughter will be, too.

The M word

I read "Our 'Mommy' Problem" a while back, and have been mulling over the implications of the issues it brings up. In fact, what I think about it has changed over the course of composing this blog post. It's not as simple an issue as it seems.

In fact, it's taken me so frickin' long to wrap up this post that I had the chance to read this before publishing. And I'm glad I did. At least one other person cops to the sorts of things I'm talking about here.

I suppose I should open with the fact that I began the mommy problem article prepared to be indignant about the contents. Being a mommy is pretty much my raison d'être. I tend to look upon people who say things like "I don't want to be just a mommy" as ungrateful at best, because I waited years to be a mommy and would love nothing better than to focus all my attention on the little people in my care. Honestly, I can't think of a job in the world more important than raising a member of the next generation. These people are the future of the human race. (At the very least, these people will be picking our nursing homes. Respect them.)

But then I read the article, and it makes some good points. Sure, I've rolled my eyes at the exact stereotypes the author calls out. I just don't think one's breeding status is the issue here. Rather, the use of "mommy" as a derogative term is the grown-up version of "like a girl." I grew up defying my femininity because of such thinking. And I know we've come a long way, but such sexism is still rampant. (I've conducted a few not-so-scientific experiments to see if my gender helps or hurts me, professionally and personally, and the bias is still alive and well. In women as well as men.)

To be a mother is to be female. And to be female is still not something to aspire to. It's scut work. In order to be admired these days, women have to "have it all." With great hair and a smile.

"Hell, send me back to the 50s," I've said on several occasions. (Okay, grumbled.) "If I didn't have to earn the money and manage the finances and stay on top of things like home and auto maintenance, I could easily keep the house spotless and have dinner on the table every night at 6. In high heels and pearls, even."

But those would be the kinds of things "just" mommies do. In order to get respect these days, you have to be a mother and a career woman and produce Pinterest-perfect crafts for your kid's class and volunteer -- all while looking ten years younger than you are, working out five days a week, and serving your family politically correct, nutritionally sound organic meals three times a day.

And you wonder why those mommies need a night out?

But I'm going to go a step further and say that we bring this on ourselves. We buy in to this idea. It's one thing to strive to do better; it's another to set standards no one could possibly meet. (The people who appear to? They pay people to do most of that.)

The issue is not whether or not a woman has a child. (Though I acknowledge that it's expected; childfree women are regarded with a wary eye, like they might suddenly turn cannibal at any given moment.) The issue is what we define as ideal womanhood, and the end result is no more realistic than a magazine cover. Even in my longed-for 1950s existence, life wasn't that simple. My grandmother did not have a dishwasher, a microwave, a Roomba. She did not have Netflix and the internet. What sounds like a productive morning for me took her all day. No, the issue is that the motherhood-related tasks are not glamorous. Men don't aspire to them, brag about them. They're girl things. And nobody wants to do things like a girl.

I grew up in a time of transit. Women worked, but it was still kind of a novelty. Their incomes were viewed as supplementary at best (even when they weren't), and their careers were ones that could be set aside for child rearing (even when they couldn't be). When I think back to career-oriented women in the 80s, I think Enjoli ads and Virginia Slims models. If you were a career woman, you could (and should!) also be sexy...but you likely weren't a mommy. The Enjoli jingle does not mention changing diapers and wiping runny noses while frying that bacon.

I think the reality was closer to my mom. She considered her career and her role as my mother equally important, and imparted that message to me. She wasn't perfect. She did some things better than other mothers, and others worse (or not at all). But she didn't try to do it all. She spent her time on the things that were important to her, and let the rest slide. As I imagine most moms did. We were a generation of latchkey children, and there were pros and cons to that. But did we really suffer from the absence of Mom in an apron with a plate of homemade cookies when we came home?

Apparently, we think we did. Except we've set our sights a little higher than homemade cookies. We still bring home the bacon, but instead of merely frying it up in a pan, we're molding it into mini-quiche crusts and feeding it to an intimate gathering of 50 close friends in our sophisticated, spotless, yet child-friendly great room that we cleverly remodeled and decorated over a couple of weekends with handmade, on-trend touches crafted from recycled pallets and twine. After working an 80-hour week in some high-profile career helping the less fortunate. Without mussing our salon-fresh blowout or wrecking our manicures, both documented in adorable selfies.

If that's the ideal, I'm proud to be an abject failure. I'm tired of being measured by someone else's ruler.

I consider it my job to give my child a realistic role model to look up to. Someone who screws up and drops the ball but keeps trying. Somebody who knows what is, and what isn't, important to her, and who makes choices instead of making herself (and everyone around her) crazy. Someone who doesn't require Red Bull and Ritalin and the misplaced admiration/envy of others to function.

I'm not the kind of mom you see in Better Homes and Gardens. I game. I'm into sci-fi and horror, not chick lit and rom-coms. I'd rather my gifts come from ThinkGeek than Kay. My clothes are more hoodies, less haute couture. What effort I put into my appearance is to please my daughter, who is more fashion-conscious than I remember being at 3. (Or 13.) Her father has longer hair than I do, and wears skirts more often. (Manly skirts, but still.) I am the sole income earner, depending upon my partner to provide child care, cook, and clean while I work full time, run a part-time freelance business, manage the finances, and keep everything on schedule. I clean and organize and cook and craft when I get a moment, but not at the expense of down time and family trips to the park. (Lately, naps are a high priority, because I am 6 months pregnant.) And I'll be honest -- I let a lot of stuff fall through the cracks. I do my best, but there is only so much I can do in a day.

No, this isn't the motherhood I pictured. And whatever the feminine ideal is these days, I'm not it. But I think I'm closer to the norm than the glossy lifestyle mags would have us believe. I don't know why we pretend otherwise, to be honest.

Especially when the end result is so inconsequential. Twenty years from now, nobody will remember if I miss a deadline or a bill payment. Nobody will know or care if my house was clean, my hair was frizzy, my cabinets full of orderly rows of neatly labeled mason jars. Nobody will give a rat's ass what my annual income was. But my child will remember if I made time for her. If I laughed a lot. If we took walks and made cookies and snuggled on the couch. Think back to your own childhood, and tell me what you remember.

That's what I thought.

"Just a mommy," indeed.

Helping my child find her words

I've known for a while that my daughter has trouble communicating verbally. If I were totally honest with myself, I've known something was up since she was a baby, and called me "Mumma" instead of "Mama." Babies say Mama. It's in all the books. But I thought it was cute, and chalked it up to the amount of BBC we watch.

Plus, she did say a few words early. Once, when she was 4 or 5 months old, as I kissed her goodbye to go to work she said, "Bye-bye, Mumma." She never said them again. But I was just amazed that she said them in the first place.

Still, though, when she started calling everyone, including me, "Dada," I should have spoken up. But my pride was wounded. I carried her in my body. I was the one who walked the floor with her for hours, until the pain from my c-section incision made me cry, when she had colic. I was the one who couldn't be parted from her for a few hours, let alone overnight. I upended my life for her, and she called me Dada.

Eventually, she did start calling me Mumma again, so I relaxed. But she didn't say much else. Her father was a late talker, though, so I let it slide.

For about three years.

There were signs, of course, that something was amiss. Doctors spoke to her like she could respond. (Why are you asking her? I'd think. She's a baby. She can't tell you.) A study we participated in diagnosed her with a verbal delay of a year or better. Kids in stores -- younger kids -- would talk to her in complete, coherent sentences. But Anya was silent.

Not that she couldn't understand us. She understood every word we said, sometimes when I wished she couldn't. Spelling words out in front of her didn't even work; she learned very quickly what C-A-N-D-Y and N-A-P spell. But she mostly communicated with us using gestures and grunts.

She's an only child, I told myself. Surrounded by doting adults. She doesn't talk because she doesn't have to.

She's been an overachiever and a perfectionist pretty much since birth (oh, the temper tantrums she threw while she was learning to roll over!), so I figured she was waiting until she knew she could speak perfectly before she even tried to speak. That she'd start out talking in complete, grammatically correct sentences.

They say Einstein was a late talker.

Still, red flags were starting to go up. Strangers were starting to treat her like she had some sort of developmental delay. Or worse, like she was just a brat. Other kids would shy away from her, sensing something was up. She started throwing tantrums when she couldn't make us understand her.

She's tall for her age. People are judgmental assholes. Those kids' parents took the "stranger danger" thing a bit too far. Toddlers throw tantrums all the time.

Then we concluded the study, and the researchers urged me to get her into speech therapy. The words "special education" were bandied about.

Stupid scientists. Kids are not machines; they develop at different rates. She's so advanced in other areas. So what if she's slow to talk? Her father learned how to talk without any special intervention, and now you can hardly shut him up.

But I couldn't ignore it any longer. My child was nearly 3, and just...didn't talk.

Also distressing to me was her attitude towards books. I've read to her since she was in utero. When she was a baby, she loved it. She'd listen to me read four, five, six books in a row, those bright, alert eyes never leaving my face. But as she got older, she started shying away from books. Then outwardly disliking them. Not just books, either. Flash cards, coloring books...anything and everything bearing the printed word elicited anything from disinterest to an outright tantrum.

I started speaking at 6 months. I learned to read at 3. I wrote my first story at 7. In high school, I wrote thousands of pages of fiction (all crap, but still). I've worked as a writer and editor since I was 25. I read Kindle books while I walk, even after editing for 10+ hours a day. Words are my thing.

I do not understand why my child tantrums at the suggestion of snuggling up with her mother and being read to. But she does. I do not understand how my child can say a word once, then be unable to repeat those same sounds, but it happens all the time. And it's terrifying.

So I made an appointment with a speech therapist, and she was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech. Which basically means that while she has a vocabulary of hundreds, thousands of words, she doesn't say them because she has trouble remembering how to make the sounds.

I had never even heard of this issue before, but the diagnosis fit. She was talking a little more, but still tended to call everything "dat" (like she used to call all of the adults in her family "Dada"). The words she would actually say were more rote phrases (Mumma, Daddy, please, thank you, welcome, bye-bye, bless you) that she'd heard us say a thousand times; however, though she mimicked our inflections perfectly, she usually garbled the enunciation: "please" became "eese" and "thank you" became "dank oo." When she attempted spontaneous speech, it came out as gibberish.

Still, it wasn't an easy diagnosis to swallow. We really couldn't afford the therapy, and I'd just found out I was pregnant, to boot. But could I sit idly by, knowing what I now knew? Would she ever speak normally? Would the world ever see her as I see her -- sweet, brilliant, kind, fierce, beautiful -- or would they just see her as "special," with all its stomach-churning implications?

Part of me was tempted to just work with her myself. I am a communicator. I have two college degrees that say I know my way around the English language. Plus, I'm intelligent; I can read up on this stuff, the theories and techniques and strategies. Nobody is more motivated to help my child than me. But I still had that nagging doubt: What if therapy were the only thing standing between her and a "normal" life?

So despite my misgivings, she began twice-weekly speech therapy. And at first it was wonderful. She really clicked with her therapist, and looked forward to sessions. She didn't seem to be making a huge amount of progress, but enough that I couldn't justify quitting.

Then her therapist left the clinic, and we went through a series of substitutes until a new one was hired. But these sessions rarely went smoothly. She just didn't seem to click with these other therapists, any of them. She began dreading the sessions, and throwing tantrums that wasted most of the allotted time. Even more worrying was that she seemed to be backsliding -- losing words she'd acquired, and resisting our efforts to get her to talk. Finally, I couldn't justify the expense any more. Financial hardship that leads to improvements is one thing. Financial hardship that seems to actively be doing harm is stupid. I cancelled her standing appointments.

And then the most amazing thing happened: She blossomed. Overnight, it seems. Every day, she talks more and more, and the words are clearer and clearer each time. Not just single words, either, but complete sentences. Grammatically correct ones. It's still a little fuzzy around the edges, but it's speech -- speech that is in many ways more advanced than her peers.

Not that she doesn't still have some issues. Consonant clusters are hard for her: the lk in milk, for instance, and the pl in please. She usually just drops these syllables. But we're working on it. And she's working on it. It still comes as a shock when she comes up to me and starts talking; after all this time, it's incredible for me to finally know what's going on behind those gray eyes of hers. To hear her sweet voice. There is no sound more beautiful than that.

Such a wonderful feeling, to finally have a conversation with my daughter.

Bucket lists

Know how sometimes all it takes is one thing to throw a wrench in the whole works? You're running along full speed, and the toe of one shoe catches the heel of the other foot and you go tumbling down?

My grandfather died.

He died on a Saturday. The first of November. We found out on Sunday, drove up Monday, attended the funeral Tuesday, and drove back Wednesday. I've been chasing my tail ever since, trying to take care of the things I was supposed to do those few days. Which didn't really seem like that much until I didn't do it.

I haven't even had time to process how I feel about losing Pop. I'm awash in deadlines and bills and the holidays and busy work. It's all just frickin' busy work.

This is not how I want to live my life. Not that I want to do nothing -- quite the opposite. But to feel like I can't take a few days off, to grieve or travel or just hang out with my family a bit, without having to run double-time to catch up afterwards...well, it makes taking time off seem not worth the effort.

A while back, I wrote this:

So I just read this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/15/forget-the-bucket-list-these-are-the-things-you-should-avoid-before-you-die.

Here's a list of things I still want to do anyway:
* Learn to play an instrument. (Actually two.)
* See Stonehenge.
* See the Blarney Stone. (Not kissing it, though, because ew.)
* Visit Paris. (Though it's not as high on my list as Stonehenge...or even the Blarney Stone. If I were honest, however, I'd probably be happier visiting a less populated area of France.)

Nothing else listed was on my list in the first place, or if it was, it no longer is. One of the nice things about getting older is you can be more realistic about yourself. (I would, for instance, hate Burning Man. I might not hate it quite so much if it were nearer to civilization and not out in the desert, but I would still hate it. Crowds are not my thing. The desert in the summer is not my thing. And camping? Forget it.)

There aren't a tremendous amount of trips on my bucket list. Because while I would like to see certain places, I hate traveling. Mostly what's on my bucket list are things I want to learn and do. And someday I'll get around to writing it all down.

But the bottom line is, I don't let lists like this inhibit me because we're all different. One person's dream is another's personal idea of hell.

I really meant to revisit it, polish it up and maybe expand upon the train of thought. But it never happened. Because I can't think that far ahead. Right now, my priorities are more like this:
* Make the minimum amount I need to pay bills next month.
* If  I do that, and still have time left before invoice, I try to make enough to maybe pay for some of the prenatal care fees.
* If I do that and still have time left, I try to squeeze in a little extra work so maybe I can buy Christmas presents.
* Spend time with my family.
* Take a nap.
* Maybe clean a little, wash a load of clothes.
* Go for a walk if I have the energy.
* Work on a project.
* Fret about all the things I'm not doing.

Long-term, I'm plotting how to afford nursery furniture for the baby, and trying to come up with ways I can cut corners financially so we can start saving up for a house; the kids can share a room for a while, but in a few years they will likely start to protest.

That's it. That's all the further ahead I can think. And all I can manage to worry about are the basics; bucket list items aren't even on my horizon.

Even still, things fall through the cracks. Like the letter I'd meant to send my grandparents, with recent photos of my child. I finally decided to hold out until I had the sonogram, and send those pictures too. My grandfather died the day after I had the sonogram, though, so that didn't happen.

But perhaps the point I should be taking away from all this is that I'm focused on life. My life, right now. My daughter's life. My partner's life. The life that's growing inside of me. Not what I want to do before I die, because I don't plan on doing that for a good many years.

I really don't have time for it anyway.

What I need to do is start finding ways to take care of the essentials that will leave me time to enjoy the stuff I want to do, too. Because there's nothing that makes time feel wasted like pointless busy-ness. If I were to die tomorrow, that would be my regret. Not the big things I didn't do, but the little things I missed.

It's a hood on kinda morning

http://instagram.com/p/udPnlsr0bW/

Neurotic Monday morning

I'm not sure where the first half of October went. I've been busy with work, but my paychecks don't think I've been that busy. I've had a few doctor appointments, done some craft projects, went to a conference, and somehow the month's half gone.

I have spent a fair amount of time feeling guilty for not being busier, though. Like this morning. I didn't want to get up at 5 and freelance, so I lay awake just long enough to justify staying in bed. Basically what I came up with was this: I likely would not have taken on anything I could finish by tomorrow, which is the last day before invoicing. Conversely, my daughter was snuggly and my son was wiggly, and my opportunities for cuddling them both simultaneously are numbered. (I just have this feeling that she's not going to want to sleep in our bed once he arrives. She may not want to sleep in this house for the first few months. Just a hunch.)

Unfortunately, by the time I justified sleeping in, I was awake. So I lay awake, cuddling my kids and thinking thoughts. Many, many thoughts. Enough that I wonder if I was truly awake for all of it. I finally decided that I must be; I don't worry about the kinds of things I worried about this morning while I am asleep. In my sleep, I worry about exams in college classes I didn't know I was enrolled in, or exes that pop back into my life for no reason whatsoever. I don't worry about professional stagnation, or neglecting my side interests, or missing out on my kids' toddler years in my dreams. But I'm certainly good at fretting over them while staring at the ceiling at 5 in the morning.

So I decided I'd get up and blog about it. At least that's productive fretting. Right?

I just feel like I've dropped the ball on everything. In trying to do everything I want to do, I'm accomplishing nothing. And it feels like half an effort is worse than none at all.

And then I remind myself that I am pregnant. I really should cut myself some slack.

It's actually nice in a way, all this worry. Keeps me preoccupied, so I don't fret about the baby so much. He's not as wiggly as his sister was (yet, my mother says), so it's easy for me to jump to the conclusion that there's something wrong. If I had more free time, I'd probably sit and stew about that all day. As it stands, it's more of a passing thought in the ocean of panic.

Sometimes I wish I could harness this nervous energy and do something outstanding with it. Seems such a waste to burn it all worrying.

But the extra snuggle time with Anya was nice.

Okay...maybe not ALL the things. But many of them.

Organize.

http://instagram.com/p/uB3ppJL0c_/

All.

http://instagram.com/p/uB3s-Cr0dH/

The.

http://instagram.com/p/uB3x7fL0dV/

Things.

http://instagram.com/p/uB31bTL0dd/

Mini-project: Spice cabinet

Before:

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After:

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Daddy told her to say cheese

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More thoughts on jogging

I've always known I was fairly unathletic, but I assumed it was my fault somehow. Like, I didn't care enough to do what other people do, so over time, I became unable to. Or something like that.

But I mean I could never do what other people can, physically. Even as a kid. And watching my kid (who is perhaps a bad example; if she doesn't get enough exercise that day, she literally jogs around the couch), I realized that the fact that I couldn't do what others my age could do as a child was a pretty big indication something was up.

This morning, I was editing some nursing questions about the circulatory system, and saw the symptoms of exertion in someone with mitral valve prolapse. And realized that's exactly what happens to me when I run. Now, I'm not in the best shape -- I'm not even in my best shape -- but I'm not sedentary. I have a 3-year-old. Who is over half my height, a quarter of my weight (and I'm 4 months pregnant!), and runs around the couch for fun. I'm doing okay. But let me run a quarter of a mile, and I literally feel like I'm dying. I can't catch my breath. I pour sweat. And it feels like my heart may just pound right out of my chest.

What made this so shocking is not the realization that those symptoms are related to mitral valve prolapse, but that I forgot I had MVP in the first place. I used to worry about it, shortly after I was diagnosed as a teenager, but I've had so few problems related to it that it just dropped off my radar. Instead, I blamed my allergies, which are usually uppermost on my mind when it comes to chronic health issues. (If you woke up congested 365 days of the year, allergies would be your go-to explanation, too. I don't have "seasonal" allergies...I have all-year, everything allergies.) Or my desk job. Or (gulp) my laziness...if I really pushed myself, I could run, too.

Well, maybe not.

I'm not entirely giving up. I've watched me do things I never thought I could do. Like touch my toes. (I can't do it right now, obvs, but I could before my belly popped out to say hi. Really, I could!) And tree pose. And get up at 4 a.m. to go for a 5-mile walk and like it. So I may still jog someday. It just may take me longer to get there than most.

That's okay. I'm patient.

She wears sick better than I do

http://instagram.com/p/tEFiegL0Tz/

Small comforts

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Busy-ness

If there's anything I rail against as a mother, it's busy-ness. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. It leads me to mornings like this:

in which I nestle the kiddo in my office recliner with a pillow, blankie, tablet, and sippy cup while I tackle the day's 10 hours of work. I work from home so I can spend more time with her, and sometimes she insists that time happen while I work because...well, because I work most of the day.

So she watches Barney. And I work. And also knock out some personal business (appointments, requests for freelance gigs). And eat breakfast. And shave my legs left-handed with an electric razor while editing points on a graph in PowerPoint with my right hand, because we have to leave for an appointment immediately after I get off work and I look like a yeti. I do anything I can do sitting at my desk, so I can maximize my working hours. All in the hopes that later I might have uninterrupted time with her.

After a while, she gets tired of Netflix and breaks out the washable markers. I allow this because a) washable (I learned the hard way), and b) it keeps her happy, which allows me to get more work done.

(Yes, she gave me tiger stripes. And growled at me after she did it, so I knew they were tiger stripes. Can't say my kid's not awesome.)

Soon, we'll have lunch. Then I'll work some more. After work, we'll drive an hour to speech therapy, and an hour back, and spend at least half an hour there. Last Monday, we were there an hour and a half because they were running late. That's a long time for a 3-year-old. So I take plenty of kid-amusing gear, but also brace myself for the fact that afterwards, she may be too grumpy for quality time. Which is fine, because I'll likely be too tired. I am 4 months pregnant, after all, and work 60-hour weeks.

I think fondly back on my life before I worked from home, where I had a clear division between work and personal time. But then I realize I'm painting those days in rosier tones than they deserve; sure, I only worked the one job, but it was way more taxing mentally and emotionally than my current job, and it often took a full 8 hours to decompress from it -- 8 hours I didn't have, because I was commuting and then playing catchup with laundry and dinner in the few remaining hours before bed. The work I do now, while there is way more of it, is far less stressful. It's mostly the amount of it that bothers me. The number of hours a day I must function at full speed.

And don't even get me started on what I'm not doing. I've not done a single sensory play project with my kid, her whole life. I have Pinterest boards full of projects I've yet to attempt. I just finished my first book of the year. I got it for Christmas. I haven't plucked my eyebrows since 2013.

Part of me wishes, deep down, to be "just" a mommy. For my job to be cleaning and cooking and snuggling my kid. I don't want to work and freelance and network and stay on top of the house, my family, my hobbies and interests. I'm tired. I'm pregnant. And my kid won't be 3 forever; soon she won't ask me to lay down and cuddle her back to sleep anymore.

Why must we all be so damn busy all the time?

Pet peeve

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Out with the old

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The sky's awake. So I'm awake.

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Tools of choice

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My blankie

Story on Instagram.

Working in the junk drawer

My office, the house junk drawer: http://instagram.com/p/smpftML0VP/

I spend most of my waking hours in...this. I should do something about it.

Documenting my world

I've decided to take on an Instagram project: Documenting my world. A photo a day of...well, stuff in my life. I'd like to say I'll do this for 365 days, or that all of the photos will be meaningful, but I'm not making any promises. I'll try, though. Because that sounds like fun. I just remember what life with a newborn was like, and know that there will be days when I won't find time to brush my teeth, let alone blog.

Anyway. First installment: Reading glasses

Labels

I am not good at labels. Back when I wrote extremely vague, emo poetry, I almost never titled my work, because I suck at titles. (Conversely, the title to my master's thesis is embarrassingly long and awkward. I guess since I was forced to give something a title, I decided to title the hell out of it.) I find titles too confining. That's why the title of this blog is so vague. I don't know what kind of blog it is. I don't even know what kind of blog I want it to be.

It's not a mommy blog. It seems to me that mommy blogs are about explaining how to handle this or that parenting situation. There's some takeaway, some nugget of advice. I have no advice for anyone. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. And right now, those pants have a cream cheese stain on them.

I do, however, talk about my kid a lot. I can't help it, though. I waited a long damn time to have kids; it's all I ever really wanted to do. And I thought for a while that I would never be able to do so. So I'm pretty excited about the whole parenthood thing. My daughter is my greatest achievement, my favorite person in the world, and the reason I get out of bed every morning. That I've managed to get and stay (knock wood) pregnant twice seems like an embarrassment of riches.

However, though my focus is mostly on being a mother, I do more than mommy. And while I track most of my progress at PopClogs now that 43t is defunct (sniff), occasionally I feel things require more elaboration than I feel comfortable putting into such a forum. These tend to become blog entries. (Or will, once I find the time/energy to write them all down. I've been writing this entry in my head for a week.) I have a host of projects and goals that I will begin to address once I can stay conscious more than two hours at a time and stop feeling so violently seasick. Until then, I'm just surviving.

But it's not just a self-improvement blog. I want to start focusing on my career at some point (right now, it's mostly just a way to keep the lights on). Over the years, I've amassed a variety of related but distinct skills that I would eventually like to package into a service, because I really have no intention of returning to the office. I like working from home. It suits me.

That's part of what this blog is all about. I have no official writing samples in my portfolio -- nothing I'm proud of, anyway. Nothing I feel is special, or indicative of my voice. And the informal writing I've done is all over the place -- entries on this site or that site. I wanted to create a place where I could showcase my best work, and also get back into the writing groove. Part of being an editor is being a good writer, but it's been so very long since I wrote anything more than a few paragraphs that I'm not even sure I remember how.

And I miss writing. I used to write every day, just for fun. Now I barely have time to respond to email. But I want to make a point of writing, to feel comfortable calling myself a writer again.

So...here I am. Welcome to the pile. It's sure to be a mixed bag, but I'll try to make it an entertaining mess, at least.

I'm still here

There goes another month. This one's been a haze of nausea and exhaustion. The first trimester is hard enough without 60-hour work weeks, but with them...well, let's just say that it's a good day when my shirt's on right side out.

Unless I'm suffering from selective amnesia, this pregnancy is harder than Anya's in terms of morning sickness. I haven't vomited (I'm not a puker), but the food aversions are brutal this time. (And when I say that, know that I lived on cheese and crackers for the first three months last time around.) I have days in which I can maybe choke down the equivalent of one meal. So I also have headaches. And exhaustion is just par for the course.

Things have also been crazy lately. In a few days, my baby turns 3, and won't be such a baby anymore. The preparations for her celebrations (yes, plural) have just added to the hectic pace of my life. Today's pretty much booked from morning through bedtime, and I'm not convinced I'll get it all done. I have the possibility of pockets of free time over the weekend, but I can't count on them. 

And this is how the last few weeks have gone. Occasionally I get a free afternoon on a Sunday, but most days I get perhaps a couple of hours of downtime, total. It's wearing on me.

So I was pretty cranky last night. We were folding laundry at 9:30, just so I'd have one less thing to do today. And I was snippy, and I knew I was being snippy, but I was just so tired and sick and stressed out that I could not stop.

All Anya wanted to do was play. But her play was undoing the work I was doing faster than I was doing it, so I snapped at her.

She kind of steered clear of me the rest of the night.

My time with this child is too short as it is; I don't want to waste what time I do have.

So I gave myself the next few days off of freelancing. Being short two articles this month isn't going to make or break me financially, and the extra hour's sleep this morning took the edge off the headache I woke with.

I need to make more of an effort to give myself time off. Yes, we need the money. We will always need the money. But I need to take care of myself, too. It's all too easy to let that slide until the damage is done.

Radio silence

I'm not good at ignoring the elephant in the room. Or small talk, both the in-person kind and the bloggery kind. I find silence easier than pointless nattering. So I haven't updated this blog in nearly a month.

This happened with my last blog, too. For the same reason, it turns out.

I'm pregnant.

This information isn't exactly public yet. But I figure the five of you reading this can keep it on the d/l.

The reason it's not public is because I'm worried it won't stick. I've had a heck of a time getting to this point. We were going to start trying in January...and then I missed three periods. It's hard to make a baby if you don't have menstrual cycles; ovulation is kind of required.

They gave me something to start me, and we tried again. Chemical pregnancy. Then another. And for a while, it looked like this would be number 3: two pregnancy tests, both negative. But I didn't start, either, so I tried one more test. Then ran out and bought another box just to be on the safe side. (These tests are still sitting on top of my medicine cabinet. I can't bring myself to throw them away, gross as that sounds. I worked too hard to get those results.)

This past Friday, I confirmed with my OB/GYN: There is definitely a passenger in my abdomen.

We're being extra cautious because, including the two miscarriages I had before I got pregnant with my daughter, I've had six pregnancies. That's not a stellar success rate. So I get the impression I'm going to see a lot of my doctor this time around, at least in the beginning.

Anyway, now you know why I haven't been posting. I've been a little preoccupied. Sorry about that.

Small changes

Lately, my left shoulder has been pins-and-needles numb. The affected area extends from my shoulder blade to my elbow. It's not painful, or even overly bothersome -- just curious. I couldn't figure out at first what could possibly be causing it. Onset was sudden, and no amount of wiggling or massaging it brought relief. It just went to sleep and didn't wake up. It's made me nervous about carrying my daughter; I haven't lost sensation completely, but who's to say I won't?

Eventually, through trial and error plus some judicious Googling, I realized the tingling was the result of leaning on that elbow while I work. Apparently doing so brings on a repetitive stress response. Once I noticed it, I realized I've adopted this posture in front of the computer for years; the recent increase in my working hours called it to my attention.

I tried to fix the issue in the usual way -- changing positions, rearranging my desk, adding a stretch routine. Nothing helped. The minute I let my guard down, I was slouch-leaning again. (Have I mentioned I have horrid posture in front of the computer? It's atrocious. And apparently incurable.)

Then I lowered the left armrest on my chair to the lowest setting. Bingo. It's now far too uncomfortable to lean. I won't say I'm sitting straight, but I'm not resting my body weight on one elbow any more. And while the tingling isn't gone, it's improved. Just in a couple of hours.

Little things can have a large impact. And little changes can bring about huge improvements.

How many jogs make a jogger?

I've been wanting to get into jogging for a while now. I work ten hours (sometimes more) a day on weekdays, and at least four hours every Saturday and Sunday. I have a toddler, a partner, and a house that does not clean itself. (R tries, but it's a lot for one man to handle while simultaneously watching a 2-year-old.) I also am trying to get back into cooking actual food at least one meal a day. And I need to sleep sometime. So my free time is, suffice to say, limited.

Which is where jogging comes in. I can, and do, walk for fitness, but even at the (fairly fast) pace I set, it takes a while. Jogging can net me more distance in less time. It also provides a greater bang for my buck, exertion-wise. So I'm definitely interested.

I'm also recovering from injury (sprained ankle), have a bad knee (for which I've done physical therapy in the past, and therefore don't want to anger again), and have endometriosis -- sometimes walking is the best I can do. I get that. But I am trying to work in more jogging. On my good days. Just to start building my stamina.

I've now jogged three times. Roughly half a mile each time -- nothing big. (I also walk a mile or three on these outings; I don't just do a couple laps and call it a day.) Does that make me a jogger now? Or do I need to jog a few more times? If so, how many? Will it ever stop feeling weird to use the word "jogger" in association with myself?

Perhaps this will influence my jog cred: The other day, I slipped out while my child and her father napped to squeeze in a jog. Today, I got up at 4 a.m. to do so.

I'm not sure what I think about that.

But working out at 4 a.m. makes sense in the same way jogging makes sense: It saves time. If I save my workout for the evening, I have to contend with my child, who has been without me all day and is ready for some Mumma time. Even if I can get her to play at the playground while I work out, she usually wears out before I do. If I do it before she wakes up, she never knows I'm gone. And I can still start freelancing at 5 a.m. as usual.

So I do understand the early-early-morning joggers. I'm sure their circumstances aren't much different than mine. I'm just not really sure how I went from computer chair potato to someone who goes jogging in the middle of the night.

The very Anyaness of her

I've always been fascinated by genetics. How traits are passed down from the mother and father, and even distant relatives. How eye color can skip generations. Things like that.

One of the running jokes in my family is my obsession with my nose. But seriously -- I don't know where my nose came from. It's not quite like my dad's, and not quite like my mom's. It's almost, but not entirely, an amalgamation of the two.

I can tell you where I got everything else. My hands, my chin, my teeth, my hair, my knees. The one hazel spot in my otherwise gray eyes (I had to go to a family reunion for that one...my grandmother's sister, apparently, has the same eyes). But my nose is a mystery.

One thing I never gave much thought to was the passing down of personality traits. Sure, I share my mother's love of books, my father's love of rocks. I'm obsessed with clean, like my mom. A loner, like my dad. I figured these things came from observation and imitation. The parts of me that are not like either of them -- my love of singing, my creativity, my love of making things from scratch -- these things I just accepted. They never struck me as weird until I had a kid of my own, because I never thought you could inherit who you are as much as you do what you look like.

Anya has my eyes. Her father's forehead. My thumbs. His feet. My thighs. But she also so obviously inherited portions of her personality. She's more like her father than me -- all hot temper and gregariousness and affection. They are athletic. They make friends wherever they go. And they love openly, freely. She's fearless in ways I don't think I ever was.

But she's also got a flair for fashion that came from neither of us. A love of dancing. A need to perform and entertain. She's way girlier than I could ever be. And she has an appreciation for 40s music that neither of us really understand.

From her first month of life, she was struggling to scoot off our laps. Then she was wiggle-worming out of her carseat. She crawled early. Walked early. Ran. Now it's climbing. She needs to go, move, do, reach, with an urgency neither of us ever exhibited. She will run laps around the couch if she has to.

I'm in awe of these things because they prove that she is far greater than the sum of her parts. She is not simply Mumma + Daddy. She's something more. And I am captivated by the differences, the innate Anyaness of her.

Letter to my 18-year-old self

This week looks to be fairly crazy, so instead of a blog entry, here's my latest Cowbird entry: To me, on the eve of my high school graduation.

Change

Change. The bane of my young life. I shed bitter tears over change more often than I welcomed it. As an older child, I was nostalgic for my carefree early grade school days. (I'm not kidding. I was that kind of kid.) As a college graduate, I mourned the loss of my college years -- even though they were largely miserable. The devil you know is often less scary than the devil you don't.

Then something happened in my 30s: I started initiating change. Seeking out change. It was terrifying and liberating, and oddly boring at times. (Yeah, yeah, new thing. Been there. I guess everything can become routine after a while.)

The birth of my daughter brought about the biggest changes of all. First and foremost, baby. Nothing changes your life like the addition of a helpless, squalling infant. But at the same time, my relationship with her father and my parents underwent drastic, irrevocable changes. (Some good, some bad. Mostly just different.) I also moved, from my home of 10 years to the house next door to my parents, in the town where I went to high school. And shortly after I gave birth, I left my job of 12 years for the opportunity to work from home (and a much rockier financial outlook).

Change, indeed.

Possibly due to my age, I'm suddenly fascinated by change. I drive through old neighborhoods, picture them as they were when they were new, and wonder what happened. I try to see the young person in older people. And I find myself thinking fondly on the persons and events that made up what I still contend were the worst years of my life. It's enough to make you question your sanity at times.

But I think it's natural to look back as you move on to something new. And I'm entering a new phase of my life now. It's just that, for the first time, I'm aware of it as it's happening.

I'm also far more accepting of change. I won't say I welcome it; change is still scary, even when it's for the better. But I'm getting better at making room for it in my life, and letting go of the old. Do I still mourn vinyl? Sure. But my music library is exponentially larger now that it's all electronic. So my daughter won't discover music in record stores (!!!). She'll find way more music than I ever had access to on the internet.

I can't compare her childhood to mine, any more than I can compare my childhood to my parents, or grandparents. Because things change, and because we're all products of the time in which we were raised.

However, we can adapt and fit into the world as it changes. All we have to do is be willing to keep up. I'm doing my best.

Because change can also be a lot of fun.

Parenting is teaching

I teach my kid every day. Not just the alphabet and how to count -- all her toys do that, anyway -- but how to manipulate objects in her environment, how to treat people, how to deal with new situations and things outside our control.

On his Facebook page, Joe Hedges summed up teaching like this:

Hey, check this out. Isn't it cool? Now you try it! Yeah, pretty good, but I bet you can do better. No, you can't leave early.

That, to me, is also how you parent. (Though that last item is sometimes replaced by "Yes, we have to leave now.")

I'm teaching her about the world so that in a few (way too few) years, she'll know enough to go live in it. Which is what school tries to do, too. But I think something gets lost in both parenting and school (at least, I don't remember there being a tremendous amount of emphasis on it when I was growing up): Those first two sentences in Joe's summary.

Hey, check this out. Isn't it cool?

We assume kids will find their own cool stuff on their own -- and if not, the TV will show them what's cool. But there is so much more to life than what comes through the television. Fireflies and fingerpainting and flowers and fireworks. (And there are 25 other letters in the alphabet -- this could go on for years.)

So I'm making it a point to incorporate discovery into our daily lives. I might learn something, too. Which would be cool, because I also love learning new things.

To be

“We all know people…who are at loggerheads with existence; unhappy people who never get what they want; are baffled, complaining, who stand at an uncomfortable angle when they see everything askew. There are others again who, though they appear perfectly content, seem to have lost all touch with reality. They lavish all their affections upon little dogs and old china. They take interest in nothing but the vicissitudes of their own health and the ups and downs of social snobbery. There are, however, others who strike us, why precisely it would be difficult to say, as being by nature or circumstances in a position where they can use their faculties to the full upon things that are of importance. They are not necessarily happy or successful, but there is a zest in their presence, an interest in their doings. They seem to be alive all over."

- Virginia Woolf, “The Narrow Bridge of Art”; emphasis mine.

The text above, particularly the bolded portion, is what I aspire to be. Everything I do, and everything I do not do, filters down to that one thought.

I was in pain yesterday, so I did pretty much nothing. A short grocery run and dinner, preceded by naps. Plural. And it was nice, being lazy. I'm not often lazy. But I also felt frustrated because I was wasting my day. I have so very many things I want to accomplish, and so few hours in which to accomplish them. I'd rather not waste those hours sleeping, or playing games, or watching TV.

I want to be. And I want to do so to the best of my ability, over and over until I get it right.

Time

I've been meaning to have a little crisis over turning 40, but I haven't had time. Which has led me to put a lot of thought into how I spend my days. And I've come to the uncomfortable realization that I've wasted most of my adult life doing things that didn't really get me anywhere. Cleaning and gaming and watching TV and obsessing over dumb stuff. That's pretty much the past 20 years in a nutshell.

I'm not saying this is a new, startling revelation. Or that no one else staring down 2 x 20 candles never felt that way. Just that, as I am realizing this, I'm thinking it's time to make some changes. For me, huge frickin' changes. Like this:

• I'm going to work on my dirty-house issues. Having a dirty/cluttered house makes me uneasy. Jumpy. Which makes me most unpleasant to be around. I don't have time to clean constantly, nor do I want to. And no matter how much I clean, or how much my loving babydaddy cleans, we simply can't keep this house as clean as I was able to keep our apartment pre-toddler. Keeping the house the way I want it would get in the way of the life I want to lead; I'd pretty much spend every free moment cleaning up after the kiddo, and it still wouldn't be clean-clean. So I can either hire a housecleaning service or get over it. And I can't afford a housecleaning service.
• I'm going to stop wasting my time doing nonproductive things. Sure, I enjoy playing video games, but that time would be better spent working towards my goals, playing with my kid, or even sleeping. 
• Similarly, I need to get over this feeling that I have to stay completely up to date with social media. There's too much, and I'm doing too much already, and really, is my life enriched by the content posted there? I'm going to narrow my focus, designate a time to check, and otherwise leave it alone.
• I can't say I'll cut down on the amount of TV I watch because I generally only have it on as background noise. But I do think I'll stop thoughtlessly turning the box on. Instead, I'm going to work on fleshing out my Spotify library and turn it on instead. I'd rather my life be filled with music than television.
• Within reason (I am not what I earn, after all), I'm going to try to foster hobbies that might generate income.
• Rather than doing the same things all the time, I'm going to seek out new experiences. These do not necessarily have to cost money. Something as simple as taking a new route home keeps things interesting.

I'm sure there are other ways I could make better use of my time, but this is a start.

Letting go

Last night I learned that my favorite social networking site, 43 Things, will be shutting down July 1. And I am in mourning.

When I discovered 43t, I was in a dark place. My marriage had imploded, as had an ill-advised relationship with my best friend that left me both single and mourning the closest relationship of my young adulthood. I was alone, directionless, and utterly lost. 43t gave me focus, friends, and hope. I am honestly a different, and better, person because of that site and the people on it.

Mine is not a unique story; other 43t-ers say the same. Only the details vary.

We are losing something very real. And while we are trying to recreate it, it won't be the same.

Life's that way. It changes. We change. That's how growth happens. It's just that growth hurts, and change is scary.

I have never been good at letting go. Even when the letting go was a blessing. Even when I initiated it. I'm more of a white-knuckle kinda girl.

This time, though, I'm going to do my best to honor 43t, its people, and my transformation because of them both by letting go gracefully.

Thank you, my friends, for being there for me these 8 wonderful, terrifying, crazy years. With any luck, I'll be able to stay in touch with many of you.

Thank you, Robot Co-op, for creating this site. Your work has meant more to more people than you can probably imagine. No grudges from me; I'm just grateful we had this time together.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

My lioness

Because I suspect my daughter inherited my allergies, I take her with me to get my weekly allergy shots. I make an outing of it; after my shots, we do a little shopping and eat out. If her father is at work, it's a girls' night; if not, it's a family outing. And they're usually a lot of fun, except for the shot part.

It really distresses her to see me get shots. It hurts her more than it hurts me--no lie. And, being my daughter, she's ready to do battle with the nurses who give the shots.

This week, I tried leaving her and Daddy outside. It was a beautiful afternoon, and what 2-year-old can get enough time outside? No dice, though; as soon as she saw where I was heading, she followed me in.

Mayhem. She tried to bodily drag me from the room, scolding the nurses as we went. Her father had to come collect her before she had a complete meltdown.

And then she was mad at me! I suppose it's too much to ask that she'll outgrow these allergies without incident.

At first the nurses found her distress charming. When stickers and candy couldn't assuage her angst, though, their patience wore thin. Now I think they wish I wouldn't bring her.

I know she can be frustrating. I've carried her kicking and screaming so many times that I have perfected the hold that prevents her from kicking me in the head. But part of me is pleased she's so passionate and fierce, that she fights to protect her loved ones. That she remains unresigned. These are desirable traits in an adult. They're just not terribly convenient traits in a toddler.

Making a home

For several reasons, money not the least among them, I've done little in the way of turning our current house into a home. I was in my last apartment for 10 years. I had plenty of time to get things just as I wanted them. Here...well, I'm doing good to stay on top of the laundry and dishes. Even when we clean, it usually only stays clean for about 5 minutes. It's not shocking, then, that decorating just hasn't happened.

The bad part is that I only spent a third of my waking hours in my apartment. I spend all of them here. And the room in which I spend the most time, my office, has received the least amount of attention. (The room that has received the most is my daughter's. She occasionally plays in there, and every now and then she sleeps in her own bed. But it looks great.)

Though we do eventually want to buy a house, we plan on being in this one for a few years yet. I would enjoy those years more if we put some effort into making this place a home. I've started by working on the common areas (kitchen, living room, bathroom, hall), but it occurs to me that I should not skimp on "my" room--this office. Partly because I tend to ignore my own needs in favor of everyone else's. And partly because, deep down, I know neither of my housemates care about this as much as I do.

So I'm using my Pinterest account for the first time since I created it nearly 3 years ago. And am open to suggestions for good design idea boards, if you have any.

What's a mother for but to suffer?

I can now say I have had a first-degree burn on my boob. And like many other injuries, it came from my kid.

Ever since she hit me in the eye with a spiky light-up ball when she was 6 months old, my darling daughter has inflicted injury upon me. More than anyone else in her life, I have been slapped, kicked, bitten, punched. She's thrown things at my head. Kicked my c-section scar. Smacked me so hard I lost a contact lens. Punched me in the throat. Now we can add "doused me in hot tea" to that list.

Some of the assaults, like the tea incident, are accidental. Klutz happens, and she's a bit too young to think through her actions. Others, like the biting, are deliberate. She pulls her punches with everyone else, but not me.

She's always sorry afterwards. Ashamed. And I comfort her, reassuring her that nothing will make me stop loving her.

I think that's why she doesn't pull her punches with me: She knows that, of everyone in her life, I will always be there. No matter what she does. It's an indication of her faith in our bond that she feels safe enough to push limits with me.

As crazy as it makes me sometimes, I love that she trusts me that much. I consider it part of my job to ensure she always does.

Art therapy

I need some creativity in my life.

I have several craftsy hobbies, but I also have a 2-year-old who wants to meddle (steal my stuff) every time I break out the supplies. So that's out. I've not had a design job in close to a year, so that's out, too. And I don't have time (or a project, really) to design for me. So my creative outlet has been toddler-safe items like crayons and Play-Doh.

It helps, but it's not enough. I edit science and medicine for 10 hours a day. I need ART, dammit.

So I signed up for a class. In what, I am not sure. It came up on my latest meetups email, and I said "Why not?" Something called Zentangles. I dunno. At this point, I'm willing to try almost anything.

Because I also need friends. I really, REALLY suck at making friends. I'm more awkward than Sheldon, highly introverted, slightly antisocial, and have roughly 90 seconds of free time per day. Even if I manage to hold a conversation, someone has to really work to get on my radar. But lately the only people I talk to without an internet connection are related to me. I'm not sure that's healthy.

We'll see how it goes.

Perspective

Today has been an exercise in perspective.

1. Last night, I broke a crown. Eating popcorn -- the fluffy part.* So not only do I have to take time off from work (of which I have little, thanks to this spring's sinus plague) and go to the dentist (never fun), but my regular dentist is out for the foreseeable future due to shoulder surgery and his temporary replacement was maybe 2 when I got this crown in the first place. (She also, I've learned, doesn't believe in letting anesthetic kick in before beginning work, which is the real source of my hesitation. Dental work is traumatic enough as it is.) So I'm going to an out-of-network dentist an hour away to get this crown replaced. And paying for it up front. Mere months after taking out a loan to help me pay off the credit card I'm about to charge back up.

Perspective, though. This crown lasted nearly 20 years. If I get it fixed right, I'll be 60 before I have to deal with it again. Worth it.

2. My major freelance client is offering me additional work. Lots of up sides here: It's a compliment to my work -- an honor to be singled out and recognized this way. The first project is small, so it's easy to squeeze in. It's not much by itself, but it could lead to more work. More lucrative work. And while I'm stretched translucently thin as it is, this is one more step towards freelancing full time, on my terms.

So I'm not looking at this small (less than $100) payment in terms of the large ($1300) payment I'm about to make. I'm looking at it as an investment. Like the crown, spending more now will benefit me in the future -- time, in this case, instead of money. My goal is to eventually freelance exclusively, working 6 hours or less a day, so I can spend more time being a mom. Taking on jobs like this will go a long way towards that goal. So even if I have to lose a little sleep, it's also well worth it.

Not so long ago, I would have been fixated on that $1300; everything else would be echos in the tunnel. Now I'm more concerned with the upsides. I don't know if this is age or wisdom, but I'm happy for it either way.

UPDATE: Turns out I didn't have to get the crown replaced after all. A chunk is missing, but it's "in the best possible place," I'm told. So he smoothed out the jagged edge...for free. I'll have to replace it eventually, but not now. Maybe not for a few years.

Suddenly freed from the $1300 I had expected to spend, I took my family out for ice cream and a play session at the park. Because I am a firm believer in celebrating the little things.

*Popcorn is not my friend. I swore off it for years after an errant hull led me to gum surgery -- in this exact same tooth. I just started eating it again a month or so ago. Now I'm thinking I should swear off it again.

Popcorn communion

Anya asked for popcorn last night. It's one of the few foods she'll ask for by name: pop-pop. The rest she requests through a series of points and grunts, as I'm told her father did at her age. (Except for chocolate milk; chocolate milk is "pleeeeeeeeeease?") So I made her some.

She's extremely interested in cooking lately, so I allowed her to stand on a stepstool next to me and watch. It's part of the process. She's 2; we do not vary processes, ever. (I'm a bit OCD, so I'm cool with that. Routines comfort me, too.)

While the popcorn cooked, we did our usual song and dance. No, really. We stand there going "pop-pop-pop-pop" and making popping motions with our fingers, plus the occasional snap (from me) and tongue click (from her). Like we're trying to conjure popcorn. Oh, and butt wiggles, for sizzling oil. It's a lot of fun.

When it was ready, I put the popcorn in the usual bowl (stainless steel with a rubber coating outside to make it easier to grip) and set it on the floor in the living room. She sat down before it, like kneeling before an altar, and patted the carpet next to her. I wanted to sit in the recliner and elevate my sprained ankle, but I sat next to her for a moment. She immediately tried to feed me some popcorn.

"No, baby, Mama's too full," I told her. Dinner was a calzone roughly the size of my head. I'm still full.

She looked puzzled. We always feed each other popcorn. It's part of the ritual. She tried a few more times, hoping I'd change my mind. I fed her some instead.

I went to take a shower. When I returned, she resumed trying to feed me popcorn. Again, I politely declined. Again, the confused face. Finally she gave up and settled in with the bowl and The Last Unicorn. After drinking a cup of tea, I went to bed.

This morning I noticed that, while she and Daddy made a dent in the popcorn, there was more left than usual. And I realized that she hadn't asked for popcorn just because she wanted some, but because she wanted to share it with me. It's one of those things we do together, like clean the house and go shopping on Saturday. It's a bonding experience.

I understand communion a little better now. Motherhood, too.

What's my age again?

In 18 days, I'll be 40. I don't feel 40. Usually I feel about 25, though sometimes my kid runs me until I feel more like 60. Still, my middle-agedness tends to take me by surprise.

Like the realization that Dave Matthews Band is oldies now. I have no problem thinking of Guns N Roses as oldies/classic rock, because that was high school and high school was forever ago. But music from my college years is still contemporary, right?

Here's the problem with waiting to have kids: I consider music from the 70s old, but not that old. I remember listening to Tom Jones and Carly Simon and Helen Reddy with my mom. They're classic rock. The Beatles, the Stones, Elvis -- those artists predate me. They're true oldies. (Listened to on a Victrola, for all I know.) Well, by those standards, everything I listened to in college falls under the "true oldies" label. Gin Blossoms. Counting Crows. Goo Goo Dolls. DMB. All elevator music now.

Almost every song on my Spotify playlist predates my daughter by roughly 20 years. (And almost every one is tied to a boy or a broken heart, but that's probably  more indicative of my life at the time than the songs themselves.) I wear out-of-style clothing -- in fact, now that I work from home, it's mostly Mom yoga pants and 10-year-old t-shirts. I haven't changed how I wear my makeup since the current crop of high schoolers were in diapers, and my hair is hopelessly uncool.

Gray hair? Pfft. I started graying at 16. Fine lines? Whatever. This is the stuff that makes me feel old.

Also having to explain to my baby daddy what a B-side is, because he's too young to really remember vinyl. But that's a story for another day.

Focus

I need some.

I feel like I'm being pulled in a thousand different directions. I have all these things I'm trying to accomplish, and my efforts to organize and streamline my efforts just seem to be creating more work.

Like this blog. I've been wanting to write more. I joined Cowbird, but don't have time to do the level of thinking required to write entries to my own satisfaction. I tweet, mostly because I love the challenge of keeping posts to 140 characters or less. I participate in other social media. But there's no site that I can point to and say "That's all me. This is my work. These are my thoughts, my projects." So I created this blog. Whether I can  keep it up to date remains to be seen; I'm falling down on the projects I have going already.

I'm not sure what I'll put here. I have a site I go to for updates on my ongoing goals and projects. I may move some of that here, but I'd like to keep using that other site -- I go way back with it, and I love the community there. I don't see myself doing a diary site; I got bored with LJ too quickly. And I don't have a specific topic in mind, like my endo blog. I have too many interests these days to focus on just one.

I have a vague idea that this blog will be part mommy blog (I waited a long time to have a kid, and she's the center of my universe -- deal), part Happiness Project, part ramblings too long for Twitter. With some Etsy shilling, should I ever find more than 5 minutes to craft.

What it will become is anyone's guess.

Hello world!

So I've been meaning to start a new blog for a while now. At one point in time, I had much to say about endometriosis, but since I had a baby, there's not enough going on in my abdomen to center a blog around. Besides, I have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about. Rather than start half a dozen blogs, I thought I'd put everything in one place.

Hence the generic title. Sorry about that. I'm too tired to be witty. And not all that witty even when I'm well rested.

Anyway. I didn't mean to imply that I had something pressing to talk about right now. I don't. I just wanted to set up a soapbox so when I do have something to spout about, I don't have to shoehorn it into any of my other social media sites.

In the meantime, watch this space. Wait. Don't do that. That's too much pressure. I'll, uh, see you around. Maybe.