Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean Your Children AREN'T Trying to Destroy You

i had to laugh to myself while watching two fully grown parent-people scowling at and arguing with the contents of their tandem stroller in the middle of the sidewalk at the zoo today. 

i've been there. a lot. daily. not always at the zoo. but often. and chances are good people have laughed at my negotiations escalating into full-on breakdowns (mine) with the pint-size dictators whose heads don't even reach over the top of my stroller.

why do we let these people WHO NEED US TO PUSH THEM AROUND AND WIPE THEIR ASSES control our moods and plan our lives? here's my guesses: 

**i should say this may not be a universal experience. some people don't argue with their kids, they are just the bosses and the kids get that they are...not. this may be unique to my family. or, maybe my family and that family at the zoo. and most of my friends' families. or maybe the white modern american family? boy, the pendulum has swung far from my "children should be seen and not heard" German/English heritage to now the children's screams are all you hear in my house while the parents cower in the corner, rocking and sucking their thumbs. (this may be a small exaggeration. we usually cower in the bathroom, pretending to be pooping)

anyway. why do rational adults let kids get them all riled up: 

1. our kids' actions/inactions gravely effect us. it's hard to just let their behaviors slide. eg: if they don't eat a meal at meal time, WE have to deal with it later in the form of either endless arguments or making endless snacks. because they can't STARVE, for God's sake (90th% weight, both of them). and they can't reach anything or be trusted with knives. so after we made a big dinner that was resolutely condemned as garbage, we then immediately are expected to clean up that whole mess and make them new, different, better food. with the associated bloody knuckles from slicing up apples and neck pain from shaking head, denying inquiries for more valentine's candy. 

2. they lack empathy. but it's really easy to forget that they don't develop that solidly until much later (you hope!). so when it seems like they don't give a shit about us, they truly do not. i mean, they love us, they just can't feel our pain. our needs don't occur to them. eg: when i'm leaving school with them, carrying 17 bags and 400 beautiful new pieces of art that can't be wrinkled or #tears, it doesn't occur to them NOT to ask me to throw away the tiny piece of garbage they collected. while they're leaning against a garbage can. empathy is a skill like any other that has to be built. if they don't end up themselves in the trash can first.  

3. their judgement is piss-poor and our job is to get in the way of them offing themselves. what SEEMS to them like a good opportunity to demonstrate independence, is to us them walking directly into traffic. again. see, it's just a matter of perspective. and opportunity for a fight.

4. we parents are human and our feelings get hurt. we get tired and hungry, too. it is irksome when it feels like no one hears you when you're speaking. we sometimes just want to curl up and cry or punch the sidewalk or go pout in our rooms. 6 months ago i would have said, "but we're adults and can't do those things" but now i'm learning to fucket, and i'm doing all those things. i'm working up a good hissy fit right now as i type this, actually. 

5. and, lastly, they're really, extremely cute. and we like them because #biology and because we have invested all this time and energy and pain into them, so we truly want them to be happy. (there is no reverse on that, see #2). so we try to do what they want. even when it's terribly inconvenient or difficult or painful for us. BUT, the more sacrificial you are in those moments, the more you get to bitch to your friends over drinks about how hard it all is. 

so, there are pay-offs. 

anyway. solidarity, man. i think i'm going to make some greeting cards that i can pass out in public when i see parents experiencing things like that stroller stand-off today at the zoo. 

"Hang in their, champs. We know that yesterday he loved carrots and today he is full of lies." 

"You're doing a great job, parent! It's not a reflection on you that she is so, so mean. Here, have a cookie."

"If you need to go punch a park bench or something, I can totally watch your kid for a second. It's cool. I definitely won't kidnap your little bastard. I have plenty. " 

who else has ideas for cards we should pass out? 

Not Having Kids is Way Better When You Have Kids But They're At Grandmas

we've been just us two grown people for the past 4 days. my saintly parents took the kids to give us time to try to shuffle all the rooms in our house around. and to, like, breathe for a second. 

breathing is good. 

we cooked. HEALTHY food that everyone ate and no one said LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE. we exercised together. we ate when MY hanger became too much to deal with, not anyone else's. which is back to how it should be. we went out for sushi and got none avocado in our noses or hair. 

we went shopping for home goods at a certain enormous swedish box store. usually that place puts me into a real panic because all the people are standing directly in front of me. all of them. and also because fake flowers. and also because happiness/cleanliness/godliness built from a box for just $250 and also because the whole place smells like adrenaline and cinnamon rolls. and that just confuses me. but this time, without the childrens, my panic was *less" and my threats of violence were casual. lazy even. ('yawn. we should burn the whole place down because consumer bullshit. ooh. grab some coffee. and what a hassle this whole thing is- i think we need more of those round foam things. i hate everything. and i guess we should buy 5 or 6 light fixtures just to have back-ups. sigh. what was i saying?')

and we got a ton of stuff done around the house, including the chores of marriage if you know what i mean nudgenudgewinkwink i mean sex. 

we were wholly connected and relaxed. it was easy. we finished every conversation we started. no one interrupted us. we slept. 

and HOW we slept. i'm almost (not at all) embarrassed about how much we slept. i look like i took vitamins and mood enhancers and got an eye lift. we got about 9 days worth of sleep in 3 days. 

we kept turning to each other like, "is this what it was always like before kids?" and "i don't....remember....but it must have been." 

but it kind of wasn't because now we're treating each moment alone together like it's sacred and then we were just living. and also for the last bit of our lives alone without kids we were grieving losses and pining for kids. so this. this thing where we have these miracles who live in our house but ALSO get to kick them the fuck out once in a while. THIS thing is the best thing. 

upon their arrival home, we were, of course, thrilled to see them. they bring all the goof and cheeks and laughter. and within 7 minutes of crossing the threshold, someone bit someone and that same first someone took down all the pictures i had just carefully put up while i was decorating like i forgot i have kids. 

my mom is a damned miracle marriage savior mary poppins type and she's agreed to keep them again a few times in the next few months so we can repeat this grown-up happy time. i cannot repeat enough how grateful we are. she can have our kidneys if she needs them, or just wants them for the hell of it. like for souvenirs or paper weights or whatever. 

full house, full heart. full belly (they brought animal crackers and veggie sticks home). hashtag blessed. 

Happy Valentine's Day to The Guy I Live With Still and Probably Always Will Because It Just Seems Like Too Much Paperwork to Get Out Of It

it's valentine's day. so i guess this weekend married people are having begrudging, obligatory sex, and single people are wondering why they haven't found that special someone to begrudgingly have obligatory sex with. 

i'm joking. kind of. i never have begrudging sex. i just make it very clear that i'll be owed for my efforts. 

long-term committed relationships are fucking hard. all the fuzzy pink messages on love around this holiday just seem lazy and hollow. i'm feeling cynical this year. like a grizzled old veteran confronted by eager young recruits.

after 13 years of marriage and all the pressures and stressors and changes in life, i can think of more appropriate love notes i'd like to send my husband than the generic ones i've seen full of empty promises and droll poetry. robb and i wrote these together. not, like, in the same room or anything. through texting. but still. united as one. also it was mostly me. because i do most of the work: 

1. you've seen all my real weird stuff and you still show up. nice. 

2. remember that one time i shaved my legs and put on that fancy outfit to impress you? haha. me, neither. 

3. we've seen all the same movies, so we can talk in quotes and not bother with original thoughts. thank God. 

4. you're a great dad. and i don't say that lightly. because i'm for sure watching for anything you're doing wrong and will point it out. not sure if you noticed. 

5. you're my human. don't blow it. 

6. because i love you, when we fight, i will not only criticize WHAT you're saying, but HOW you're saying it to me. i'm just always trying to make you a better person and you're welcome. 

7.  this valentine's day you let me sleep in until 8:30am. that's so much better than diamonds. plus, you know, no one died in a cave or whatever. 

8. just because i fall asleep during date night or intercourse doesn't mean i 

9. sorry. what was that? what were we doing?

10. i'd take a bullet for you. i mean, like, if someone was handing one to you and you didn't want to carry it, i'd put it in my purse. 

11. i appreciate all the bread winning that you've done for our family. but perhaps you can find a donut contest next time?

12. (robb's, to me) my favorite thing about you is that even though you're funnier than me, you only tell me about it all of the time. 

13. if you were ever arrested, i would probably bail you out, but only if you agreed to let me lecture you a lot. 

14. i love how we fit together. not as much on the couch as we used to, but still generally, in the same town?

15. i love that you're willing to laugh with me through the scary, sacred, and awkward moments of life.

i love you. for realsies.

Pour Yourselves a Drinks, Folks. Cuz We're Going to Talk About Pubic Hair and Power.

i'm going through this major personal change right now. it's (terrible) exciting and i'm (completely worried) thrilled to see how i will turn out at the end of it. 

i'm trying to empower myself and figure out the ways in which i shrink from my full, emboldened self. i know it sounds like a Cathy cartoon where i just end up eating ice cream out of the carton in high shorts. i hope it's not. 

one of the first things i find, as i look under the middle school rocks and behind the fear files, is this complicated theme of how my being female impacts my identity. how my perception of what it is to be female, what it is to be feminine, how society now and through time has looked at females, impacts how i see myself. 

uf, right?

what does it mean to live in a female body? to have a female voice?

doing my research of reading, listening, living and observing the world and my/women's place in it- there are days i want to give up and sit down and be quiet. and i think even now, here, there is a strong, persuasive argument that it's best if women just do that. that my voice should be meek or apologetic or quick to demure to stronger voices around me. 

there's also a strong impression that my sex, my parts, my body, my 'honeypot' is the most valued or important part of being female. (did she just say honeypot? gross). but 'valued' isn't really the right word. neither is 'important.' those words signify a characteristic that will have an effect on success, survival or well-being. the 'value' placed on my parts by the world is by it, not by me. my value in them is rarely discussed. 

like shakira said, i like my shapely legs because they help me run fast. i like my breasts because they helped me feed my kids and also because they hold up my shirt in a cool way. i like my GI tract because it is very efficient. i like my pale blue eyes because they are lovely and sometimes they freak people out. i think sometimes people assume i'm a sorceress and i am WAY ok with that. 

it's easier for me to tackle the things i think are more mind over matter. the issues of feeling unsafe/threatened/despised simply because i am female and acknowledging that there are (a lot) of people in the world who are looking to assault or omit me on those grounds- i don't know what to do about it except be sort of jumpy and paranoid and mad. and i can easily get bogged down by the inequality in the world against women and feel like it's a lost fight before we start. 

but. i'm doing what i can, in my head, twisting how i view me. i'm planning on 'owning' my female body and my voice and not letting them get owned by others. in really, really tiny baby steps. prepare to be not impressed at all. 

i suspect that our conditioning to believe that we never look pretty, thin, princessy, enough is a great tactic to slow us down and keep us worried about all the wrong things. i have always assumed Cosmo magazine is written by men who are threatened by what women could do if they had time to stop worrying about new pubic hair removal systems or men's orgasms. 

sorry. i should have started this whole thing with, pour yourselves a drinks, folks, cuz we're going to talk about blow jobs and pubic hair. but not, in, like, a fun way. so you'll actually really need that drink.  

i'm still doing things to my body that are expensive and time-consuming, uncomfortable, and possibly even toxic, because they are socially expected for females (and not males). i spend time and money unnecessarily removing my mammalian body hair,  i wear long, inconvenient head hair, i do lots of skin treatments, i wear makeup, i keep my eyebrows (mostly) separate. but i've gotten to the point where i refuse to wear uncomfortable clothes. i won't dye my hair and plan to stick to that when i go gray/white because jamie lee curtis and gloria steinem and helen mirren told me to. i don't cry over my gut that i have as a 35 y/o mammal who's unloaded two human childrens out of her body. i certainly won't complain about it in front of my kids. 

i'm excited for my wrinkles because they're in the places where my face folds when i'm thinking hard or listening empathetically. they show my time, my wisdom, maybe. they make me seem more legitimate, perhaps. there's inherent added weight and dignity to aging because we learn some things over their years.....men, historically get this privleged status and older women not so much. i assume it's because there's SUCH a cultural focus on young female bodies, that old female bodies and their owners are seen as less good. 

absolutely fuck that. old women can be brilliant and powerful and don't have to care about the stupid stuff anymore. what a relief it must be. i'm getting there. 35 years old now. come on, 70! 

(i will fart so much and not care).

it's not about being like men. it's about being like men in that we have respect and power without having to fight for it or shrink from it. our bodies are not what make us good or bad. 

and our bodies are not just baby incubators. that's another way that i've found some freedom and power. it was very cool what all my body could do while carrying and delivering my kids. amazingly cool. i'm so grateful. but now that i'm done with that use for my body, i don't want to deal with it anymore. i've got shit to do. so, i don't have periods and i don't have to worry about pregnancy any more because of my progesterony IUD (intrauterine device for contraception). it's not for everyone, not everyone has those results, etc, etc. but for me--i have visions of a 6' tall version of it and i holding hands and skipping through sunny fields together. i want to mouth kiss the scientists who came up with this gorgeous little T sitting in my uterus. seriously. mouth kiss. this has been the great equalizer. for the first time in my life, i can live my whole month without blood coming out of any part of me and without thinking about birth control. just like men have, for their whole lives. that's kind of huge. 

so much more could be said about our lady parts. but you're probably already 3 drinks in and i don't want to lose you completely yet. i'll get there in a later post (ooh. can't wait. will you talk about endometrial lining more, please? it's so so fun)

anyway.  i try to maintain that my mind, spirit, personality is way more valuable than my body/face/shiny shiny hair or reproductive organs.

if we women are not busy depilitizing our body hair (that's a word, shut up. who's writing this? not you) and decorating ourselves and we're putting the rest of our person forward first, how much more can we accomplish? and how much less will we feel invisible or imperfect or used if we're standing in judgement for our ethics, our humor, our intellect instead of our skin suit? 

and people will judge me for how i look, but i don't have to care. that's hard but real. 

for people to know the other stuff about me- that i'm kind, funny, smart, etc...is that i talk. i talk and i talk and i talk and i write. and i stop apologizing or wincing at having the floor or being trusted for my input. and that's hard. it's not instinctive. i do the whole, "well, it's just my opinion, but..." and shrink from eye contact less than i used to, but it's still there. i'm working on it.

i've typed all kinds of retractions and caveats along this post that i've then deleted. i don't want to step on toes, but i also don't want to be afraid to put my foot down. you know? 

one last thing before i go pluck my eyebrows and cry over white wine...we're all trying. these are the things i've figured out so far. i have great days where i feel like i'm discovering new things about myself, taking great risks, being very brave. and then i have days where i feel small and hopeless and old and fat and like any change i make is either going to inconvenience/freak someone out, or it's never going to be enough. 

i just want to keep on.  i hope you're doing your own thing to make yourself a little braver and fiercer and better able to identify who the voice in your head is, telling you what's good/bad about you. is it yours yet? or is it 'the world's' or an ex's or a parent's or...whomever. i'm, like, 60/40 in favor of mine now, and it feels AMAZING. and i'll take suggestions if you've come up with something really good. 

smooches. 

And This is Why I have 7 Mustards and No Toilet Paper

i have all these blog posts in the works about big topics like 'what it is to be female' and more personal reflections on sex relations and my place on the planet, as a woman, and respect and power and....

....my life gets in the way of me finishing a thought.

and then tonight i made this cocktail with, like, whiskey and bitters and orange juice and all my smartin' is off the rails.

so, fucket. for now i'm just dealing with the fact that the work-mom complex is all i did today and that i'll try to find time for creative dissection tomorrow.

i took the children to the market tonight after i picked them up from daycare after work.

(it was a grocery store, but sometimes i like to pretend i'm in old english novel).

so, we went to the market and i giveth the children some fruit roll-ups straight from the not-yet paid for packaging to try to keep them contenteth whilst we shopped.

it worked very temporarily and then anna kept screaming. she screams that scream that sounds like a tea kettle is being axe murdered in an abandoned cabin in the woods and for some reason a car alarm is also going off nearby. and they're both asking for everything they see. like they haven't eaten in a month and simply can't live without...those 2-day old discount cinnamon rolls, or whatever. not that i blame them on that one because they probably are perfect sad food.

fellow shoppers look toward me with flinching, disappointed faces, and then pretend they don't see my distress. i'm never sure if strangers think i'm under or over-reacting. i'm a messy combination of bribes, threats, and twitching.

it's not great.

i had a grocery list when i got there. at least i think i had a list. i've no idea. one of them may have eaten it. all's i know is that when i got home, we had something like 47 different kinds of pretzels, multiple chocolate bars, and every snack-sized applesauce on the market in the bags. i think i must have gone into a fugue state. by the end of it, they could have yelled at me to put the cashier lady in the trunk and i would have loaded her into the honda feet-first.

sigh. this HAS to get better eventually. they won't always be this shrill and demanding (and delightful, and sweet, and tiny and cute, i know, i KNOW), right?

meanstwhile i need an applesauce pretzel cake recipe.

i'd eat that. i'd eat the whole thing in one long sad shoveling motion. my tears moistening it like the hotdog contest eaters with the buns.

ah, shit. i forgot hotdog buns.