The Saddest Sad Bastard of All (Ode to Beverly D'Angelo)

Fourteen years into marriage is like two 7 year itches combined into one wool sweater ant party. Even the extra strength balms (wine, frosting) don't offer much relief. At this stage of life, the stress is real and the responsibilities are not sexy. We used to be so into each other and look for excuses to get inside one another. Now, any person-in-person action is strictly for prostate health. 

Recently, my barely sexually-maintained husband of 14 years told me about a dream that he had. Him sharing this dream with me is still one of the greatest moments of my life, so now I will do you the courtesy of sharing it with you. (You're welcome). Since hearing it, I have affectionately been calling him, "The Saddest Sad Bastard Of All."

Apparently he'd been hoping to have some sex when he came to bed that night, and I was, uninterested, as usual, and instead had homelessness or the plight of the sea turtles or something awful on my mind. So we talked tragedy until we fell asleep. Still somehow, with the fortitude of a horny army, he must have fallen asleep with sex on the brain and had a sex dream. 

It wasn't just any sex dream. It was a sex dream about Beverly D'Angelo, in her prime. He kept saying "in her prime" as if knowing that it was the bodysuit and big hair-wearing Beverly D'Angelo from the 1980's would somehow explain everything. 

He didn't know why he had dreamed about Beverly D'Angelo, in her prime. We hadn't seen anything out of the National Lampoon vault in ages. I mean, obviously, anyone who grew up in the '80s watching 'Christmas Vacation' and who has seen the deleted scenes from 'High Fidelity,' has a healthy appreciation for Ms. D'Angelo (in all her eras), but we don't have a poster of her above our marital bed or anything. 

Yet. 

He went on to say that the worst (read: best) part of his dream was that he could tell Beverly D'Angelo, in her prime, wasn't really into it. She wasn't entirely comfortable in the position they were in and she kept trying to change it up and it just...didn't go well. 

So, he woke up, unsatisfied, having unsatisfied Beverly D'Angelo, in her prime. 

After I stopped pointing and laughing at him, I started to reflect. Why would he be having dreams about bad sex with '80s icons? Clearly this was due to our current infrequent and unenthusiastic sex life. There's not a lot of intercourse happening fourteen years into marriage. When there is a miraculous hour when the children people are asleep in their assigned beds and the adult people are awake in ours, then the pressure of being expected to have intercourse is just too great for me. I find myself stalling by checking the news and Facebook on my phone, and before I know it, I'm mired in the world's pain and angry about the treatment of women, saddened by inequality, and disgusted by whatever it is they put into chicken nuggets. My poor husband just wants to get a little nookie, and I'm crying, yelling, and wiring money around the world.

I remember back to when we used to be so hot. Now we're so, so old and tired. Where we used to have room for spontaneity and endless time together, now there are big bills to worry about, maniacal children to prevent from maiming themselves, endless meals to make, and Louis CK shows to watch. These all trump reserving time and energy for intercourse. We used to want each other NOW. Now a million other things NEED us NOW, and I kind of just want to be left alone.

Where did we lose our sense of urgency for one another? I don't think it happened all at once. I think it was the slow, pernicious, draining of life force that is adulthood and parenthood. There was a time when we bragged like real assholes about how strong and dynamic our marriage was. Even at the 7-year mark, when we were supposed to have the famous itch, we really didn't. We had no children at that point, and hadn't tried to procure any. We were living across the country from our families and were sexy and adventurous, alone against the world like pirate queen and king. (Actually, that sounds more exotic than it was. We mostly exercised and went on weekend trips with our friends, piling 6 high into $40 hotel rooms and drinking local beer that wasn't "craft" yet.) 

The next 7 years, adulthood fell hard on us. We moved home, bought a house, got more education and big kid jobs, and then struggled to have two kids. So now, we have two marvelous children, a mortgage, careers and a fledgling business that allows us the thrill of trying to avoid bankruptcy.

Kids pulled our focus off of each other completely. They say that they will, and "they" are right. Children are fierce competition for the romantic marital relationship. They require all our time and energy, affection, and selflessness. All that love and energy that was once directed toward each other is now taken up by the kids. Intimacy through conversation has suffered, too. Now, instead of having soul-enhancing, deep discussions, we only find time to talk life logistics. We're always running out of toilet paper, but somehow have 14 mustards in the fridge. Things like that. There's little poetry in it. 

  

Also, if romance requires any thread of mystery, having children burned that to the ground. My husband knew exactly what pregnancy and delivery did to all the inside and outside parts of my body because I articulated them to him or he saw them first-person. I didn't hold anything back from him because I figured that if my body was on loan for our family's child production, he sure enough was going to witness the graphic demolition of it. 

Somehow, despite all that and my compulsive insistence that he regularly check my IUD string like my gynecologist, he STILL wants to have intercourse with me. And Beverly D'Angelo, in her prime. But mostly me. 

This is why he's the Saddest Sad Bastard of All. The pressures of life haven't completely crushed his libido as they have mine. For me, having kids took over everything. I was their comfort, their food, their Elvis, their everything. It was intoxicating, but it was also exhausting. That level of need from the kids, as well as a full time job, left very little time to tend to my own mental or physical health or creative pursuits, and really no energy remained to focus on intimacy. 

It's taken me several years to realize that I need to put some of me back together again. I am still goofy for my kids, but I think I have finally learned that I truly can't give them more than I have. I need to keep some back for me, and maybe for my husband, too. Besides, even if I do try to give my kids everything I have, they will just take it and spill nachos all over it. They will take it and STILL complain. I'm still learning this lesson.

So, while the details of the dream were endlessly amusing to me, I was not at all surprised that The Saddest Sad Bastard of All is having dreams about being sexually unfulfilled. It probably reveals insecurities he's having about our sex life. My lack of interest in sex may be hurting his feelings. That's not great. I want him to be confident and safe and feel wanted. 

In an effort to give him something back for sharing that wonderful, terrible dream with me, I've been making an effort to be nice to him, to engage in real conversation, and to show him some affection. Maybe I'll even stop bossing him around while I'm oil-pulling so he doesn't have to see me drool coconut oil out the side of my mouth. I'll commit to putting away my phone at night so that the miseries of the world won't join us in bed. I'll work on the hard task of diverting some of my energy from the kids back to him, to me, to us. 

I'm making a genuine attempt to have more interest in sex and to 'throw him a bone' more often. Maybe he doesn't have to be 'The Saddest Sad Bastard of All' anymore. 

Of course, now I might have to start calling him "Sparky" instead.

I'm Turning 36 y/o This Week, Here's What I Know About Person-ing

I'm 36 years old now, and here's what I know about being a person/dealing with people.

1. Everyone is crippling insecure and tripping on ego. Some fake it better than others, but I talk to successful, driven, powerful people who admit that they're just all the time afraid of being 'found out.' We all have that insecure kid in us who is too ugly, fat, dumb, or scared. Who is afraid they're not worthy of friends or jobs or compliments or love. Anger, bullying, shitty behavior usually is rooted in wounded pride, fear and insecurity.

2. Everyone is self-focused and weird and boring. Thanks to social media, we now get insight into the inner workings of all our acquaintances and even celebrities, and wow what giant disappointments we are! I guess. Or, what a giant relief it is to know that everyone is equally simple. We're all just obsessed with the monotonous minutia of our own lives. That's how it goes. Glamorous moments are brief and mostly fabricated- basically we're all just wearing sweaters, sitting on our couches thinking about what to eat.

3. There has always been pain and poverty and inequality and there always will be. There will always be death too early and injury and loss and loneliness. Some people are born into unfair, impossible, violent, scary, uncomfortable lives. Some people were never told they were amazing or lovable or given what they needed to grow and thrive. Some people have terrible, shattering things happen to them and have to figure out how to limp through. It's hard to person in the best of circumstances, but sometimes it's near impossible.  We're all obsessed with our own stuff (see #2) but those of us who did land in solid families who were able to house, feed, educate and love us have to try to help those who weren't. When the chips are down, we have to ask for help and we have to give it freely and happily because I think making life a little less impossible for one another is kind of our chief planet purpose.

4. People are way more alike than we are different. Breaking up into groups is as harmful as it is natural. We're afraid of things not like us, so it helps to find the ways that we're the same, so we're all "us." The more we can stay away from "teams," the more we are united as one and trying to help instead of hurt each other. I know I'm a hippie and my advice to "bearhug the world" might sound trite, but you know, it's my birthday. Shut up and try it.

5. If you can find the humor in it, you can survive it, even if the only thing left intact is your wit. It's something. Comedy is a universal language. It's a gift we can freely share and a balm that does heal.



That's it. Just those 5 things. That's all I've learned, but they took some work.

Communication is the Key to...Stop Giving Me Advice...I Wasn't Giving You Advice...Oh. It Sounded Like You Were Giving Me Advice.

Do you ever feel like you're talking to yourself? Not in the good way, where you share a private joke with yourself that all the other jerks aren't classy, funny, or pretty enough to understand. I mean, in the way that you have repeated yourself over and over again and no one in your family seems to hear you? Makes you feel invisible?

Yes, well. Me, either.

We've been talking a lot about communication lately in our house. Teaching the kids (again! still!) that they need to acknowledge us when we word in their direction with an Ok/Got it/Will do/Ahoy, Matey, whatever. Something to let me know I'm not actually living in a solitary white room in my head yet. It's a matter of respect, obviously, and courtesy, and sometimes safety.

There are times, also, that they're hearing me but just not receiving my message as I sent it. I ask them a question and they don't answer it at all how I would expect them to. As if I asked one thing and they heard a whole other thing.

It's incredibly maddening, but it may also be what's actually happening. It's possible we don't speak the same language and I'm not properly translating my questions to their language. If I'm patient and I go down to them and clarify what I said, or they explain what they understood me to say, we can usually find common ground and move forward.

This parenting insight brought to you by a fight the adults in the house had recently where we (again! still!) discovered that WE don't always speak the same language. Sometimes we really, truly aren't trying to slowly kill each other, we just communicate differently and so are kind of sliding right past each other with our intent/meaning. It's miscommunication but it feels like fighting. Or it starts as miscommunication but it doesn't get named as such, so it ends as fighting. So if WE grown people who have been trying to talk to each other for some 20 years still can't get it straight, how can we expect these short newbies to always be getting it?

Another lesson in grace and patience, I guess. In case you're unfamiliar, the definition of "grace" is admitting you are stubborn and dumb and the definition of "patience" is waiting for that to stop.

October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

A lot of my friends are "celebrating" by remembering and reaching out with and for support. I love that they're talking about it. That kind of intimate loss leaves a dark stain on our hearts, and it's really good to show it to others. It's not unusual, and it's nothing to be ashamed of, and we learn that by making a community.

I think I've talked about the grizzly math of being a woman before. In obstetrics, we refer to women's pregnancy/delivery history as "G's" and "P's" or their 'gravidity' (# of pregnancies she's had, regardless of outcome) and parity (# of pregnancies that she carried to a viable term and delivered).

Your Gs and Ps can say a lot about what you've endured. I've known a G8P1 who had had so much death inside of her, so much blood, so much hope swallowed up by grief, before she finally got her daughter to survive pregnancy. I've known a G2P0 who had two traumatic, terrifying pregnancies in fallopian tubes instead of the uterus, and with her pregnancies, she lost those tubes, and almost her life, from sudden massive blood loss. I've known a G8P4 who has four, healthy, amazing children, who are probably hanging off of her right now in happy chaos, but she also carries around her neck those 4 losses, like a heavy locket she can't remove.

I've known G1's who have G'd all the way up to nearly full-term and then too early, too small, deliver a baby who could not survive. I've known a G1P1 who lost her tiny infants to SIDS. This baby she had been hoping and planning for, and whom she'd just met and fallen in love with. A would-be life. I've known women who have lost one or more of the twins/triplets in a pregnancy and have to forge on with optimism for the potential baby who remains alive inside. And I've known G0's, with years of failed attempts, and each failed month seeming like a tiny death. I've known those who have had adoptions fall through and felt the pain of that loss like something was stolen out of their bodies.

I want to quickly point out that all these women I know not only survived these horrible traumas, but are fucking killing it today. You'd think that having death inside of you or pain that severe might leave a person empty, bitter, unbalanced, or non-functional. You'd be wrong, because we're talking about women. Women can somehow both handle all the weirdness and wildness of life inside them, but can survive the death of someone so intimate and precious. I don't know how. It must be evolution or something, because we've been losing our babies since the beginning of time and somehow are still able to run businesses and families and go on to love the snot out of our other children.

It helps to lean on each other.  We've coined membership in this club, "the crappiest sisterhood of all." I hope anyone reading this who's not already a member, never has to join. But if you do, we're here. We'll help you walk when you think you can't. We'll help you figure out how to put your shoes on and hug your dog and your spouse and your other kids and we'll hold your hand until you feel steady on your own feet. And you will, someday.

I'm a G4P2, with 2 early miscarriages and 2 live, full-term (thank you, Jesus) deliveries. I had 2 babies who survived pregnancy, and I had two tiny deaths inside me. I'll never forget my 4 pregnancies. I'll never forget crying in my driveway after the OB appointment that confirmed that i was officially empty. I'll never forget being certain that I would never have a pregnancy that ended in a baby. I'll never forget picking apart everything I'd done during those ill-fated pregnancies trying to find the blame that was surely mine. I'll never forget being terrified every day during my two successful pregnancies, that it so easily could slip out of my fingers. Of course, I'll never forget when my two wonderfuls were born and that when they were out and healthy, I realized finally someone else was on the hook for helping to keep them alive. If you want to read my experiences with the losses and fertility efforts, go back to my posts in 2009 and 2010. My first successful pregnancy ended in birth in June, 2011.

If you're grieving, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you have this ache, this emptiness. You're definitely not alone. If you're brave enough to talk about, and I encourage it, you'll find shared experiences, other members in the 'crappiest sisterhood of all.' Suffering like this leaves a stain, a mark, and you can usually find it in their eyes.

You will survive it, one way or another. These beautiful G's I was talking about earlier have all gone on to biologically conceive and/or adopt amazing families, and they are stronger, bigger, bolder women for their time dragged through hell.

All my love.

Lay off Me, I'm STARVING.

Of all the things you give up as a parent, I think the sense of control is the hardest. Plans never go as you expect, nothing stays organized or cleaned long enough, there's never enough time or energy to properly complete any task. Months float by with unfinished projects and unrealized goals.

It's disheartening. Kids are little science experiments and their pressing concerns change rapidly, so trying to "get a handle" on it is like trying to catch a greased pig. Everyone is filthy and panting by the end of it and no one is eating bacon.

I try to apply a fucket attitude and stay "present" and "grateful" in my chaos. I totally get how blessed we are, and I'm trying hard to remember that and enjoy the messiness.  I do alright, but it's hard. The sense of being buried up to my nose holes is real. I want to sit serenely amid the sticky clutter and actively engage my offspring through their disagreements and meltdowns over which water glass is the right water glass for the use case, but I get overwhelmed by it all. I want to be comfortable knowing that this phase is the 'messy, unproductive' phase, and not feel an urgent panic when the to-do list is growing. Unfortunately  (and, fortunately, in other capacities like school and work) letting go and chilling out are counter-intuitive to me. Although being present and grateful and calm align with my personal goals, and are qualities I admire in others, my version of zen is always oddly intense, and my meditation chanting tends to be through gritted teeth.

I'm working on it. Twitch, twitch. I really am. It's better than it used to be...but I also am just copping to the fact that some of this is just me. I feel better with more control and less uncertainty.

Since the kids are such...children right now, and since we're embarking on this new business venture that is just a big bag of unknown, I'm trying to find ways I can gain control of some tiny corner of my world.

Fitness and diet are what I've landed on. I can control my own body, more or less.

It dawned on me a while back, while I was chasing some french fries with a brownie and my fifth coffee of the day, that maybe I could be a titch healthier. I KNOW what it takes to be healthy. I've done it before a lot.  I was just on hiatus. I had myself convinced that all the stress of life gave me a free pass to enjoy whatever food/drink I want. I just had given up on making good choices for my body between busy life and trying to eat cheaper and being a garbage rat parent, plate-diving for leftovers all the time while standing over the sink. While on hiatus, that little reasonable angel on my shoulder with her talk of healthier choices was threatened to back off or I'd cut a bitch. Now I realize that I should have been listening to her. Eating garbage and not exercising was making me feel worse- groggy and anxious and bleh.



So, I asked a friend of mine to help me be accountable, and bless her, even though she knows I am a hangry, mean person, she agreed. So, for the last week, I've been tallying everything I eat in the My Fitness Pal app and I've exercised 3 more times than usual! (So, 3 times. I've exercised 3 times.)

Just this little bit of progress, of gaining authority over this part of my life, has helped me feel calmer and better able to handle the rest of the mess. The goal is to drops some lbs, but more than that, it's doing something consistent and reliable for me. I dig it. I'll keep you posted.

14 Years is the "Animal" Wedding Anniversary, So We Stalked and Killed a Wild Boar Together, for Bonding.

I've been trying to find words to explain where we find ourselves on our 14th wedding anniversary this year, what the state of our marriage is this far in....but all I keep coming up with are loud mouth fart noises. I wasn't sure how to spell them, so it was a relief when Robb posted this on the facebooks yesterday. He more sweetly and eloquently expressed what I've been thinking. 

"today marks 14 years of marriage. it has been the most difficult and the most rewarding year of our marriage. this year we have had the kind of deep conflict that most marriages go through, but which i had begun to believe we were immune to having avoided it through geographical relocation, school, career and job changes, and having two children in the preceding 13 years. but we both took steps to make ourselves better people (for those that know us both well it's no surprise that i had more work to do than she did), and we put significant effort into making our marriage more healthy and relevant. we talked about it. we talked about how we talk. and then we talked some more. i'm excited to begin year 15 with the only person who exhausts the superlatives i can use to describe love, trust, joy, struggle, and accomplishment." 

I know, right? Isn't that lovely and honest and generous? I didn't even add the self-deprecating or complimentary parts- that was all him. It made me cry at work. Bastard. 

I don't have much to add, since he worded so good here. I will say that I now understand when people say they "grew apart" and how hard it is to stay married long-term. Even without the devastation of addiction or infidelity or abuse, and having all the resources that we have, it's hard to stay married. We've fought a lot over the past year- I guess we fight because we both still care? That has to be a good sign that we're not giving up on this union. We're still working our way through it, even when we want to just punch it in the throat.

I think marriage by design is kind of an insane ask of two people. I don't regret it, and I don't discourage people from doing it, and we're fighting for ours. But I think it's OK to acknowledge that it's totally bonkers. I mean, just being a person is hard, each of us is a constant flux, with periods of growth and stagnation and falling and rising and learning hard lessons and taking risks and rebounding or changing course....it's not linear, and it is challenging. So, when two people are doing that simultaneously, it's so easy for them to veer in different directions or be in different phases of the process, or to not like/understand where the other person's process is taking them. I get how you could not recognize the person you married, because either you've changed so much you're looking out of different eyes or they've changed or remained in ways you don't understand. 

All of this self-reflection and learning is supposed to occur while still managing all the things of work, home, kids. Really. But we've learned that you have to! If you put yourself off for too long, you get miserable and sick, so you have to find a way to tend to your internal growth. We've been just barely keeping our heads above water with all the life things as it is, and then we added big personal changes on top of it. Oy. Does anyone feel like they're getting this right? Seriously. If you do, tell me how. I don't understand being an adult. Should it really be this hard? (Acknowledging now and always, how easy my version of life is, relative to most). 

Anyway. We've each been working on being brave this year. Being brave means doing scary, stressful things. I started writing a lot and went to therapy, and came out of that with a voice I want heard. It's great for me, but means testing my newfound confidence, and also higher expectations and demands on those around me, on my marriage. He found enlightenment about job satisfaction and insights about personal and professional growth and made a major career change to do something more in line with his values and hopes for his future. That's so brave, but so scary, and obviously places certain demands on me. 

I guess all that is to say, after 14 years of marriage, I still feel like we're making it up as we go. We have a basic level of like, love, and respect for each other, and a stubborn commitment to staying married, and we talk. Like he said, we talk. We talk. We talk. It's not always friendly. Sometimes it's downright...unfriendly. We try to play by the rules of discourse, but sometimes we fail. Sometimes when we're trying really hard to listen, the sound of each other's voice just sounds like PFFFFFFFFBLLEHEPPOO (fart noises).  

We laugh when we can. 

The biggest luxury of 14 years of marriage is that we've been through ups and downs before and so have some reason to believe we'll pull through this low time. It's getting better already. We can see some sun through the clouds. 

Happy Anniversary to my love, my support, my shithead and frustrator. I promise to not stop talking to you and to listen to at least 40% of your words. I promise I will love you from the me that I am today, in the best way I know how, always authentically.

Is It Really So Great to Be Grown?

Kids are forever being rewarded for being "SOOOOO big." 

When we say, be "big" we really mean "grown." We want them to act mature, responsible, respectful, quiet, to make good choices, take risks that pay off, to do things independently. You get dressed by yourself? You're such a big boy! You crapped in your pants again? That's not what a big girl does. It goes like that. 

We think that being "big" is the highest praise we can give children, because we foolishly believe growing up is their goal for themselves and not just ours for them. Youth is a slow, inevitable ascent toward adulthood, but hastening kids toward adult-type behavior is mostly for our own convenience. They should hurry up and learn social norms, we think. Fall in line, because it's annoying for us to have to keep leaving line to go get them.

But what's so great about being an adult, anyway? 

Kids are curious and not self-conscious when they don't know stuff and have to learn. Kids see all people as potential playmates or buzzkills based on how the people treat them, not how the people look. They don't understand that we've stratified society based on arbitrary human characteristics.  Kids are honest and straightforward. They believe in big, grand, cool, exciting things like miracles and magic. Each day is a chance to learn more stuff instead of a burden to get through the day's chores.

Adults who have child-like characteristics- aren't cynical enough, don't speak primarily in sarcasm and hostile humor, who take people at face value or are *too* enthusiastic, are suspected of being mentally ill or cognitively delayed or naive. To be fully "grown" you have to assume things are terrible, it seems. You have to look for things that differ from your expectations and scrutinize them, hate them. You have to practice being nonplussed in the mirror, because if you're plussed too much, people will think you're weak. I envy my kids because they don't know yet that they're supposed to face each new situation suspiciously. They just take it all in and try to figure out what part of it might be a snack. 

I've been thinking about the whole internet troll thing lately and reading and listening to conversations, both in my head and out in the world, and realize we're all trolling all the time because we've trained our knee-jerk reaction to be skeptical and negative. A new song, a new show, a new proposition, a new person. We look for flaws first. How might this thing hurt me or make me feel small or not be what I expected? 

I think we're trying to protect ourselves from being hurt, disappointed or being taken advantage of. We're protecting our most precious pink part- our ego. You can't get into adulthood without having been knocked around some (or a lot, for many people), so we try to avoid all things with the potentially bad results, and end up avoiding all things. If the most desirable thing a kid can be is an adult, than the biggest criticism you can give an adult is they're immature, but I don't agree. I think being child-like is wonderful and should be more emulated. 

Adults are tripping over their ego all the time. Kids aren't. Adults deal in insecurity and fear of failure, struggle for power, desire to be loved but not willing to say it out loud, stuff like that. It's a real bummer. We can't just lie down on the ground and admit that we feel left out and lonely, instead we lock up, act vicious, act arrogant and mean.

Plus, grownups do some really weird, actively lame things that kids would never do:

-Eat chicken (that's not fried, obviously)

-Have hairs waxed/plucked off their bodies on purpose

-Celebrate drinking as if they invented it

-Wear ties

-Be obsessed with sex, but unable to talk about the penis or vagina (kids are great at this latter bit, mine do it all. the. time.)

-Spend all this time making their bodies thinner and more "perfect" but not getting any better at being a ninja or better able to outrun their friends or a dragon

-Caring about famous people they'll never meet but not caring about next door neighbors

-Being quiet all the time and trying to seem as small as possible, unless they're drinking 

Actually, maybe we drink to let ourselves temporarily feel more child-like. Things slow down a bit, our expectations for ourselves are lower, we can be sillier and less perfect, more honest. Maybe drinking feels like freedom because we can throw off our self-conscious tethers for a while and just...be. It's a relief. 

Everything is complicated when your'e an adult. Even the word "big" can't really be used to mean you're successfully grown. It implies an elevated BMI or maybe bulky muscles or too much breast. There will come a time when my daughter will be discouraged to be too big, too muscular, too fast, too tall, too loud and too seen. If she follows the rules enough, she'll be expected to stay "toned" but not obviously strong, because being strong is an unattractive (threatening?) trait in women. She'll be expected to wear clothes and shoes that will make running fastest impossible. 

This picture of me initially struck me as "my shoulders are too broad, it's not feminine enough." I'm a large lady and I schlep around 30-50 lb children every day and do a very physical job that requires strength, why WOULDN'T and SHOULDN'T my shoulders be big? I hate that my first reaction was shame. Blerg. I don't want that for my kids.  (She was also riding me at the time, calling me a "cow." I'm choosing not to take it literally/personally, although in her short life so far, that's a fair assessement of my position on earth). 

So, anyway, I hesitate to push my kids to be "big" too much, too soon. They need to follow directions and rules and be respectful and polite, but I want them big-eyed and excited as long as possible. Ideally, always. 

So, as the kids grow up, I'm trying to grow back down a bit. I'll encourage them to mature as they should, but if I can save them from hardening so much they crack, I will. And I'm going to try to go a month not being snarky or negative. I'm assuming it will feel like constipation and my eyeballs will eject from their sockets from the strain of not rolling them...but I'm gonna try. I can't turn off all the trolls, but I can subdue my own and see what happens. 

I'll keep you posted.