Just to prevent an immediate negative reaction: I want the confederate flag to come down in South Carolina. I want it to come down from everywhere that is not a museum. Now, on to my problem with removing it.
For weeks the media have been consumed with this debate over whether the confederate flag should be removed from the capitol building in South Carolina. We've heard politicians, pastors, and passersby tell us their feelings about the flag. It's been called a symbol of southern heritage. It's been called a symbol of hatred and oppression. (I would note that those two are not mutually exclusive.)
All of a sudden, we are consumed with this other version of the red, white, and blue. Even the name of it has changed. It's no longer just the confederate flag. Now it's the confederate battle flag. Maybe they're hoping that by naming it for a specific purpose, instead of making it all-confederacy-inclusive, it will somehow become more acceptable?
Anyway, it's been a large part of our national discussion. And that's where my problem starts. The flag has started a discussion. It's the wrong discussion, to be sure, but it's something. We've been talking about it on TV, online, and in person. It has sparked conversations, whether they be genuine debates or folks on one the same side commiserating over why their point of view is not universally accepted.
When the flag comes down, the conversations will end. We won't talk about it anymore, and that's a real problem. Because this was a point when we could have turned the conversation to what really matters - the multiple and ongoing legacies of hatred and oppression that mar and make up the history of the United States.
The conversation about the flag was never really about the flag. The flag was the thing we could talk about instead of talking about race. Make no mistake, the United States has a racism problem. The United States also has homophobia, sexism, classism, and any other number of ism problems (the writer in me doesn't like that homophobia doesn't end in -ism. See? It's even a literary problem). The United States is all about isms.
The conversations we need to have about those issues are scary. They're downright terrifying. Because talking about the United States means talking about us. It's talking about you and me. We are the United States. A country is nothing but paper and ink without its citizens. The U.S. is us. That means the history of the United States is the history of you and me. And then comes the conclusion that we don't want to say: I have a history of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and any other number of isms. Even with as progressive and egalitarian as I try to be, I know that there are still ideas and preconceptions that I have, some unconsciously and some not, that are based on those ongoing legacies of hatred and oppression.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have it. As an individual, I can and do admit that I have these problems. As a country, we are still far too willing to look the other way and pretend it's not an issue.
So while I'm glad the flag is coming down, I'm also very disappointed that the conversation will be over before it began.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
My Impossible Body
Having a baby messes with your body. This much is obvious. Or, at least, I thought that was an obvious thing. But here is a rather unfortunate story in which I impute expertise to a person who really does not have any.
When I was about 8 months pregnant, right before we left Champaign, I went to the local Victoria's Secret store to be measured for my bra size. It had become apparent to me that the items I had no longer fit me, but I was totally clueless as to what size I should be wearing. I thought that the employees at a store that sells bras would be able to help me with my quandry.
I arrived, unfortunately, during their semi-annual sale. So the store was absolutely swamped with people. I headed straight for the fitting rooms and let them know I was just there to be measured. I did not need a fitting room, I really just wanted to know my size. So they had a lady measure me. For those who are unfamiliar with this process, it does not involve the removal of any clothing, just a couple of passes with a tape measure.
I was measured in the middle of the dressing area, outside the dressing rooms but not on the store floor. That's fine. I have no problem with that. My measurements resulted in the salesperson measuring me announcing that I needed a 40D. While I would have preferred for her not to announce that out loud in a volume that everyone could hear, I wasn't super bothered by it. It's my size, and the volume of her voice won't affect the measurement.
What did bother me is that she followed up the announcement of my size with, "Is that even possible?"
Given that she had just done the measurements herself, and that I was in fact a real-life person and not some sort of weird apparition, yes. That is even possible. To indicate otherwise means you either don't know how to do your job, or have done it very poorly. That's not even touching on how rude that statement is.
"Is that even possible?" Did you seriously just ask that question? Out loud? At such a volume and in such a tone that people waiting in line turned to gawk?
Yes, my body is possible. I am a human being. We tend to come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and dispositions. Which should be common knowledge to anyone who has ever interacted with more than one other human being. To assert, or even to imply, otherwise is to wave a giant banner indicating that you have some deep and serious misunderstandings about the species of which you claim to be a part.
I didn't say anything to that poor salesperson that day. Really, what could I have said? Any comments I could have made would have been for my benefit, to make me feel better. There's nothing that I could have done, at least not in the time allotted before the store closed, to really educate her on all the issues with her statement. So I left. I haven't been back since.
Silver lining? I now feel absolutely no interest whatsoever in shopping at Victoria's Secret, which I'm sure will save me money in the long run. Target lingerie section for the win!
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
When I was about 8 months pregnant, right before we left Champaign, I went to the local Victoria's Secret store to be measured for my bra size. It had become apparent to me that the items I had no longer fit me, but I was totally clueless as to what size I should be wearing. I thought that the employees at a store that sells bras would be able to help me with my quandry.
I arrived, unfortunately, during their semi-annual sale. So the store was absolutely swamped with people. I headed straight for the fitting rooms and let them know I was just there to be measured. I did not need a fitting room, I really just wanted to know my size. So they had a lady measure me. For those who are unfamiliar with this process, it does not involve the removal of any clothing, just a couple of passes with a tape measure.
I was measured in the middle of the dressing area, outside the dressing rooms but not on the store floor. That's fine. I have no problem with that. My measurements resulted in the salesperson measuring me announcing that I needed a 40D. While I would have preferred for her not to announce that out loud in a volume that everyone could hear, I wasn't super bothered by it. It's my size, and the volume of her voice won't affect the measurement.
What did bother me is that she followed up the announcement of my size with, "Is that even possible?"
Given that she had just done the measurements herself, and that I was in fact a real-life person and not some sort of weird apparition, yes. That is even possible. To indicate otherwise means you either don't know how to do your job, or have done it very poorly. That's not even touching on how rude that statement is.
"Is that even possible?" Did you seriously just ask that question? Out loud? At such a volume and in such a tone that people waiting in line turned to gawk?
Yes, my body is possible. I am a human being. We tend to come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and dispositions. Which should be common knowledge to anyone who has ever interacted with more than one other human being. To assert, or even to imply, otherwise is to wave a giant banner indicating that you have some deep and serious misunderstandings about the species of which you claim to be a part.
I didn't say anything to that poor salesperson that day. Really, what could I have said? Any comments I could have made would have been for my benefit, to make me feel better. There's nothing that I could have done, at least not in the time allotted before the store closed, to really educate her on all the issues with her statement. So I left. I haven't been back since.
Silver lining? I now feel absolutely no interest whatsoever in shopping at Victoria's Secret, which I'm sure will save me money in the long run. Target lingerie section for the win!
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Bikini Feminism
Last night the Pumpkin and I attended our first "Parent and Me" swim lesson. I had a blast and Theo did not freak out, which is about what I was hoping for from his first time in a big swimming pool with lots of strangers around. He even seemed to be enjoying himself by the end of the night, once he'd gotten used to things a bit.
So what does any of that have to do with feminism? It's in the details, I guess. Theo was wearing a new swim diaper with super cute swim trunks that we bought just for the lessons. The trunks weren't really necessary, but I couldn't resist buying them when I saw them in our local Once Upon A Child (second hand kid's clothing store). I was wearing an old racing swimsuit, as it was the only one that adequately covered by bust and butt. It was two pieces, and so of course I was completely freaking out about it. It showed off my pudge, my stretch marks, and my unshaven legs with aplomb. But it was either that, or I wore one of my other two swimsuits, both of which are noticeably too small in quite inconvenient places.
Why is that feminist? Because after my initial freakout, I felt pretty powerful. I was breaking pretty much every rule of stereotypical feminine beauty, but I'll be damned if I wasn't totally rocking that damn suit. The only downside is that it was designed with triathlons in mind, so it's padded in the butt. Which is great when you're transitioning from swim to bike. It's not so great when you're just hanging out in the shallow end of a pool with a baby.
Given that I still have quite a few pounds left to lose before I get into a healthy weight range, it felt pretty good to be able to forget about that and have fun in the water with the tiny human. Am I going to change the world by wearing a two piece swimsuit? Yes. Yes I am. I've already changed my world.
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
So what does any of that have to do with feminism? It's in the details, I guess. Theo was wearing a new swim diaper with super cute swim trunks that we bought just for the lessons. The trunks weren't really necessary, but I couldn't resist buying them when I saw them in our local Once Upon A Child (second hand kid's clothing store). I was wearing an old racing swimsuit, as it was the only one that adequately covered by bust and butt. It was two pieces, and so of course I was completely freaking out about it. It showed off my pudge, my stretch marks, and my unshaven legs with aplomb. But it was either that, or I wore one of my other two swimsuits, both of which are noticeably too small in quite inconvenient places.
Why is that feminist? Because after my initial freakout, I felt pretty powerful. I was breaking pretty much every rule of stereotypical feminine beauty, but I'll be damned if I wasn't totally rocking that damn suit. The only downside is that it was designed with triathlons in mind, so it's padded in the butt. Which is great when you're transitioning from swim to bike. It's not so great when you're just hanging out in the shallow end of a pool with a baby.
Given that I still have quite a few pounds left to lose before I get into a healthy weight range, it felt pretty good to be able to forget about that and have fun in the water with the tiny human. Am I going to change the world by wearing a two piece swimsuit? Yes. Yes I am. I've already changed my world.
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Just Drifting Along
Sometimes, I'm a bit slow on the uptake. For example, it took me until today to realize why failing the Texas bar exam may actually have been a Very Good Thing. To whit: It has forced me to stop and take a serious look at what the heck I want to do with my life.
I touched on this a bit the last time I wrote, which I know is now quite some time ago. But I've been really digging into it lately. When one spends all day having one-sided conversations with a 7-month old, one tends to get a bit introspective. I feel very much like I'm tired of just drifting along. I want some kind of purpose, or at least a list of goals. I want something to work towards; I just needed to figure out what that would be.
To be fair, just drifting along has been very very good to me. It has landed me the perfect husband, the world's most amazing baby, and three cats that don't always misbehave. I've traveled outside the U.S., run multiple marathons, saved Illinois high school mock trial, and done no small amount of good in the world. But currently, I've been feeling a bit... aimless.
Had I passed the bar exam, I probably would have just taken the first attorney gig that came my way. I would have done an acceptable job, but nothing to write home about. Unless I am really excited about something, I usually won't care enough to really invest myself in it. Then, I would have given it up without any sorrow when we moved away from this town and started the whole process over again, without ever really thinking about what I really want to do.
So what do I want to do? I want someone to pay me to do mock trial. Maybe I get a job teaching at some college and they pay me to coach their mock trial team. Maybe I get a job as the Director of Advocacy at some law school and I run their Trial Ad programs. Maybe I get a job running a state's high school mock trial program. Maybe I get a job running a national moot court competition.
I would jump at the chance to do any of those things. And I would be really freaking good at any of those things. Being away from mock trial has taught me that I need mock trial in my life. And teaching LSAT classes has reminded me of how much I adore teaching. I mean, seriously, the above list pretty much outlines my dream jobs.
Thus I have accomplished Step One in the Process of Realizing Your Dreams: Identify your dreams and write them down. It sounds much less inspirational when you get all business-like with it, but it does help the transition to reality proceed a bit more apace.
Now I just have to go about figuring out what Step Two is. If anyone has any tips, I would be more than happy to hear them...
Until next time, my friends. Take care, and I'll write again soon.
I touched on this a bit the last time I wrote, which I know is now quite some time ago. But I've been really digging into it lately. When one spends all day having one-sided conversations with a 7-month old, one tends to get a bit introspective. I feel very much like I'm tired of just drifting along. I want some kind of purpose, or at least a list of goals. I want something to work towards; I just needed to figure out what that would be.
To be fair, just drifting along has been very very good to me. It has landed me the perfect husband, the world's most amazing baby, and three cats that don't always misbehave. I've traveled outside the U.S., run multiple marathons, saved Illinois high school mock trial, and done no small amount of good in the world. But currently, I've been feeling a bit... aimless.
Had I passed the bar exam, I probably would have just taken the first attorney gig that came my way. I would have done an acceptable job, but nothing to write home about. Unless I am really excited about something, I usually won't care enough to really invest myself in it. Then, I would have given it up without any sorrow when we moved away from this town and started the whole process over again, without ever really thinking about what I really want to do.
So what do I want to do? I want someone to pay me to do mock trial. Maybe I get a job teaching at some college and they pay me to coach their mock trial team. Maybe I get a job as the Director of Advocacy at some law school and I run their Trial Ad programs. Maybe I get a job running a state's high school mock trial program. Maybe I get a job running a national moot court competition.
I would jump at the chance to do any of those things. And I would be really freaking good at any of those things. Being away from mock trial has taught me that I need mock trial in my life. And teaching LSAT classes has reminded me of how much I adore teaching. I mean, seriously, the above list pretty much outlines my dream jobs.
Thus I have accomplished Step One in the Process of Realizing Your Dreams: Identify your dreams and write them down. It sounds much less inspirational when you get all business-like with it, but it does help the transition to reality proceed a bit more apace.
Now I just have to go about figuring out what Step Two is. If anyone has any tips, I would be more than happy to hear them...
Until next time, my friends. Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
An Inglorious Return To Running
I have been waiting to get back into running basically since I finished giving birth. I don't know why it's taken me so long, but I have recently done the first two runs in a 5k training program. It is an immersive zombie adventure 5k training program, so it's a double bonus win! However, running after having a baby is in many ways a completely different activity from running before having a baby. As such, I have taken some of my major insights and listed them out.
1. All my sports bras are woefully inadequate
This tops the list as it's both one of the first changes I noticed and one of the most drastic changes. "Pump or nurse before you run," they said. "It'll be fine," they said. THEY LIED. There was way too much motion and so far nothing seems to contain it. Seriously, how do busty women deal with this? I'm not even that busty, even with mom boobs, and I still am having trouble dealing. Plus, sports bras are expensive so getting new ones is going to be a financial pain. Seriously. This is not cool.
2. Jogging strollers are awesome
My mother, despite any flaws she may have, is the most amazing person in the world for buying us a totally pimp jogging stroller. It may be the greatest baby accessory ever. It takes curbs like a beast and rolls smoothly even through the more deeply graveled parts of the jogging path I've been using. It is seriously amazing how much of a difference it makes in running with a baby to have the right stroller.
3. Running with a jogging stroller, no matter how pimp it is, is really hard
You're pushing a good 50-60 extra pounds in front of you with every step you take. Granted, those pounds are on well-oiled rugged wheels designed for beach/trail/whatever. But still, that is a lot of extra weight. Besides the stroller itself, you have the baby and all their gear, plus any water and/or carbs you may want to have. On the plus side, if I ever get the chance to run without the baby, it is going to be a breeze!
4. You suddenly have to pack before you run
Before, I would put my keys and phone in a pocket and head out the door. If it was a long run, I'd bring some water and a few chewy electrolyte calorie replacer thingies. Now, there's a whole diaper bag involved. Not to mention dressing the tiny human properly and incorporating sunscreen (for both of us!) and making sure you have enough toys that can be secured to the stroller and also amuse him for about 40 minutes of not having face-to-face Mommy Time. It. Is. A. Lot.
5. Running is no longer a luxury
It sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. This is the time when, more than ever, I need some sort of physical exercise. It helps drop the baby weight; it's an amazing stress release; it gets me out of the house; it allows me to set goals that are for me (and only me and have nothing to do with the baby).
Speaking of goals, I have a new running goal. I want to run an ultramarathon. That sounds really impressive, but it's really just any race longer than marathon distance (26.2 miles). So a 50k (about 31 miles) counts. However, being the nutter that I am, I would really like to do a 50 mile race. I've been looking into the training and trying to find a good goal race, so we'll see how this shapes up. But it's something I've wanted to do for a while, and I figure it's a good way to motivate me to really dig in now that I'm back in the game.
Then again, if the Pumpkin continues to insist on letting me get only 3-4 hours of sleep each night, this may not happen any time soon.
*sigh*
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon!
1. All my sports bras are woefully inadequate
This tops the list as it's both one of the first changes I noticed and one of the most drastic changes. "Pump or nurse before you run," they said. "It'll be fine," they said. THEY LIED. There was way too much motion and so far nothing seems to contain it. Seriously, how do busty women deal with this? I'm not even that busty, even with mom boobs, and I still am having trouble dealing. Plus, sports bras are expensive so getting new ones is going to be a financial pain. Seriously. This is not cool.
2. Jogging strollers are awesome
My mother, despite any flaws she may have, is the most amazing person in the world for buying us a totally pimp jogging stroller. It may be the greatest baby accessory ever. It takes curbs like a beast and rolls smoothly even through the more deeply graveled parts of the jogging path I've been using. It is seriously amazing how much of a difference it makes in running with a baby to have the right stroller.
3. Running with a jogging stroller, no matter how pimp it is, is really hard
You're pushing a good 50-60 extra pounds in front of you with every step you take. Granted, those pounds are on well-oiled rugged wheels designed for beach/trail/whatever. But still, that is a lot of extra weight. Besides the stroller itself, you have the baby and all their gear, plus any water and/or carbs you may want to have. On the plus side, if I ever get the chance to run without the baby, it is going to be a breeze!
4. You suddenly have to pack before you run
Before, I would put my keys and phone in a pocket and head out the door. If it was a long run, I'd bring some water and a few chewy electrolyte calorie replacer thingies. Now, there's a whole diaper bag involved. Not to mention dressing the tiny human properly and incorporating sunscreen (for both of us!) and making sure you have enough toys that can be secured to the stroller and also amuse him for about 40 minutes of not having face-to-face Mommy Time. It. Is. A. Lot.
5. Running is no longer a luxury
It sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. This is the time when, more than ever, I need some sort of physical exercise. It helps drop the baby weight; it's an amazing stress release; it gets me out of the house; it allows me to set goals that are for me (and only me and have nothing to do with the baby).
Speaking of goals, I have a new running goal. I want to run an ultramarathon. That sounds really impressive, but it's really just any race longer than marathon distance (26.2 miles). So a 50k (about 31 miles) counts. However, being the nutter that I am, I would really like to do a 50 mile race. I've been looking into the training and trying to find a good goal race, so we'll see how this shapes up. But it's something I've wanted to do for a while, and I figure it's a good way to motivate me to really dig in now that I'm back in the game.
Then again, if the Pumpkin continues to insist on letting me get only 3-4 hours of sleep each night, this may not happen any time soon.
*sigh*
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon!
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Yup, Failed the Bar Exam. And?
On Wednesday I got my results from the Bar Exam. I did not pass. I needed a scaled score of 675 to pass, and I got 667. So close, which kind of makes it suck even more. Sadly, I was sort of expecting that result. It was not the fault of my bar study program, or any lack of desire on my part to pass. It was more the fact that I was trying to study while dealing with a full-time job, and a baby who decided not to sleep through the night, and also still doing all my every-people stuff, like getting groceries and cooking dinner and doing laundry and every once in a while thinking about cleaning some part of my house.
At the end of the day, for what may be the first time ever, I had simply bitten off more than I could chew. That was a new thing for me. And, of course, it now leads me to the question of what I should do next. By which I mean, do I retake the Bar Exam?
I've actually been thinking about it far more than I thought I would. Mostly because of a conversation I had with Paul a week or so ago. He asked me, in a throw-away question kind of way, how long I wanted to be a stay at home mom. It wasn't a conversation of any particular depth, just one of many rushed moments when we could talk to each other without the baby awake. Neither of us appreciates those enough or works hard enough at cultivating them. I didn't think too much of the question right then and there.
Maybe an hour later, though, I thought of it again. Since then it's been rattling around in my head and I can't get it out. Because I don't know the answer. Trying to figure out how long I want to be a stay at home mom is like asking me to write out a detailed plan for "What I Want To Do With The Rest Of My Life", in 5 pages or less. Single spaced, with size 12 Times New Roman font. It's kind of an impossible question to answer, but here I am with my brain all abuzz trying to do just that.
Before I can even start on an answer to the question that was actually asked, there are several equally difficult preliminary questions that must be answered. How many kids do we want to have? What kind of career am I really interested in pursuing? Can I handle the bizarre guilt I feel at the thought of putting my kid(s) in daycare? What sort of work is worth it to not spend my time directly caring for my kid(s)?
It is all very seriously confusing. It's also a bit sad that I'm just now sitting down to do this. I always thought that, at 31 years old, I would know what I wanted to do. Or at least be enough of a grown up to suck it up and just find some kind of something to do.
That was a bit fatalist. Sorry.
Through most of high school and college, I had a very definite idea of what my life would look like at this point, and where I am is nothing like what I imagined. Which, to be very fair, is a really good thing. But it does leave one a bit adrift.
And right now it all seems to have been brought to focus by the question of whether or not to retake the Bar Exam. I probably will. It makes some sense to do so, and it keeps my options open. But that's part of the problem. Being a grown up means making decisions and picking one path from the many to walk down, at least for the immediate moment. And picking one path means you leave others behind. That always makes me a bit sad. I want to walk all the roads. I just do. Yet it seems that I am going to spend a bit longer stuck in the crossroads.
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
At the end of the day, for what may be the first time ever, I had simply bitten off more than I could chew. That was a new thing for me. And, of course, it now leads me to the question of what I should do next. By which I mean, do I retake the Bar Exam?
I've actually been thinking about it far more than I thought I would. Mostly because of a conversation I had with Paul a week or so ago. He asked me, in a throw-away question kind of way, how long I wanted to be a stay at home mom. It wasn't a conversation of any particular depth, just one of many rushed moments when we could talk to each other without the baby awake. Neither of us appreciates those enough or works hard enough at cultivating them. I didn't think too much of the question right then and there.
Maybe an hour later, though, I thought of it again. Since then it's been rattling around in my head and I can't get it out. Because I don't know the answer. Trying to figure out how long I want to be a stay at home mom is like asking me to write out a detailed plan for "What I Want To Do With The Rest Of My Life", in 5 pages or less. Single spaced, with size 12 Times New Roman font. It's kind of an impossible question to answer, but here I am with my brain all abuzz trying to do just that.
Before I can even start on an answer to the question that was actually asked, there are several equally difficult preliminary questions that must be answered. How many kids do we want to have? What kind of career am I really interested in pursuing? Can I handle the bizarre guilt I feel at the thought of putting my kid(s) in daycare? What sort of work is worth it to not spend my time directly caring for my kid(s)?
It is all very seriously confusing. It's also a bit sad that I'm just now sitting down to do this. I always thought that, at 31 years old, I would know what I wanted to do. Or at least be enough of a grown up to suck it up and just find some kind of something to do.
That was a bit fatalist. Sorry.
Through most of high school and college, I had a very definite idea of what my life would look like at this point, and where I am is nothing like what I imagined. Which, to be very fair, is a really good thing. But it does leave one a bit adrift.
And right now it all seems to have been brought to focus by the question of whether or not to retake the Bar Exam. I probably will. It makes some sense to do so, and it keeps my options open. But that's part of the problem. Being a grown up means making decisions and picking one path from the many to walk down, at least for the immediate moment. And picking one path means you leave others behind. That always makes me a bit sad. I want to walk all the roads. I just do. Yet it seems that I am going to spend a bit longer stuck in the crossroads.
Take care, friends, and I'll write again soon.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
You Know Who You Are
Yesterday was kind of a crappy day for me. I'm not even sure why. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and no matter what I did (hang out in the sunshine with the baby!) or what I accomplished (made seitan from scratch!), I couldn't shake the totally bummed out feeling.
It got to the point where I went ahead and slept on the couch, just because I felt like I needed some space. Everything was making me grouchy, and I didn't want to give myself the chance to take it out on Paul. Because sometimes, I'm just that guy. I was getting more and more upset with myself because I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but I was still grumped out of my mind. Fortunately for me, I checked my email before I actually fell asleep.
Mixed in with the usual junk emails was a message from one of my former undergrad mock trial students. She had taken the time to write to me and update me on her law school application process. She recently made her final choice on which law school to attend (she had been accepted to multiple) and wanted to let me know. She also asked after my family and hoped all was well.
That email probably took her maybe 5 minutes to write, but it absolutely made my day. Aside from the fact that I am ridiculously proud of her for all that she has accomplished, and for choosing a great law school, it was the subtext involved in simply sending the email that really made me happy.
When you send an email like that, the information in the email is almost secondary. The act of sending it, of having someone reach out to me and letting me know how their life is going, is something that humbles me on a regular basis. The sender of that kind of email is saying that they miss you. They wish you were around so they could tell you this information in person. They are thankful to have had you in their life and want you to know what is going on, because you were a part of making it happen. They have just passed a super awesome and important milestone in their life, and you are a person that they thought of in that moment and wanted to talk to.
Seriously, that kind of connection is a precious thing. I got so happy when I read her email that I cried. I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky as to have amazing people like her in my life.
I haven't written her back yet. Mostly because I had to process the awesomeness that was her email before I could really formulate a response. I'm getting all teary eyed again just thinking about it.
This is why I like teaching. This is why I love coaching mock trial. This is why I will continue to do both those things any and every time I can.
Take care folks, and I'll write again soon.
It got to the point where I went ahead and slept on the couch, just because I felt like I needed some space. Everything was making me grouchy, and I didn't want to give myself the chance to take it out on Paul. Because sometimes, I'm just that guy. I was getting more and more upset with myself because I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but I was still grumped out of my mind. Fortunately for me, I checked my email before I actually fell asleep.
Mixed in with the usual junk emails was a message from one of my former undergrad mock trial students. She had taken the time to write to me and update me on her law school application process. She recently made her final choice on which law school to attend (she had been accepted to multiple) and wanted to let me know. She also asked after my family and hoped all was well.
That email probably took her maybe 5 minutes to write, but it absolutely made my day. Aside from the fact that I am ridiculously proud of her for all that she has accomplished, and for choosing a great law school, it was the subtext involved in simply sending the email that really made me happy.
When you send an email like that, the information in the email is almost secondary. The act of sending it, of having someone reach out to me and letting me know how their life is going, is something that humbles me on a regular basis. The sender of that kind of email is saying that they miss you. They wish you were around so they could tell you this information in person. They are thankful to have had you in their life and want you to know what is going on, because you were a part of making it happen. They have just passed a super awesome and important milestone in their life, and you are a person that they thought of in that moment and wanted to talk to.
Seriously, that kind of connection is a precious thing. I got so happy when I read her email that I cried. I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky as to have amazing people like her in my life.
I haven't written her back yet. Mostly because I had to process the awesomeness that was her email before I could really formulate a response. I'm getting all teary eyed again just thinking about it.
This is why I like teaching. This is why I love coaching mock trial. This is why I will continue to do both those things any and every time I can.
Take care folks, and I'll write again soon.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Reading To My Son
I believe that books are important. I believe that books can teach you how to empathize with other people. I believe that books cane make people, and therefore the world, so much better. I really do. I firmly believe that part of why I am the person I am is because of the books I read. The courage of those characters, their strength in the face of world-ending catastrophes, reinforced my ideas of what it meant to be honorable and brave and loyal.
Which is why Paul and I read to the Pumpkin every day. We started reading to him before he was born. Sometimes, I would make Paul read to the tiny embryonic Pumpkin just so I could get the benefit of being read to sleep. What I never imagined before the Pumpkin was born was how hard some of his books would be to read.
The Pumpkin has plenty of safe books. Those are the ones that are easy to read. Thomas the Tank Engine, Frank and Ernest, ABC books. I don't have a problem getting through those. But some of his other books, I have to read multiple times to myself before I can even attempt them with the Pumpkin.
Have you ever read Guess How Much I Love You? Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare have a bedtime contest to see who can express a bigger love for the other. It's a simple and adorable story that should be a breeze to get through. But when I read it to the Pumpkin, I completely lose it maybe three out of every four times we read it. I start crying and my throat gets all tight and I just want to hug the Pumpkin until I get a grip.
It's like that with a lot of his books. I read those books, the ones that cloud my eyes and close my throat, and they take all the huge universe of love that I feel for my Pumpkin and they smoosh it all down into my body at once. Like every atom of everything that has ever been, is now, or will be, gets jammed through my pores and into my body until I'm overflowing with the heart of the universe and it's always almost too much. Every time I get so close to being overwhelmed, my mind and heart not sure that there's enough room anywhere, anytime, ever, for all this love. I have to close my eyes and hold my breath to cut off the exchange for just a moment, until I can pull myself together, find the room, remember how to live with so much absolute beauty.
And then I'm better. Crisis avoided, self in one piece, I finish the book. I kiss the Pumpkin. I breathe in the air around him and wish I could make a perfume of his smell, that perfect sweet baby smell. The whole crazed moment has only taken a second or two. The Pumpkin doesn't even realized that it's happened. It will probably be like that for the rest of my life, with me losing it in small doses and him oblivious to the entire process. I suppose it will be like that with all of the kids I have, since I do want to have more.
I'm going to keep reading those books. I'm going to keep falling in love with my kid(s) each and every night. And when they grow up, I hope that they keep reading. I hope that, eventually, they get to fall to pieces in the exact same way.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Which is why Paul and I read to the Pumpkin every day. We started reading to him before he was born. Sometimes, I would make Paul read to the tiny embryonic Pumpkin just so I could get the benefit of being read to sleep. What I never imagined before the Pumpkin was born was how hard some of his books would be to read.
The Pumpkin has plenty of safe books. Those are the ones that are easy to read. Thomas the Tank Engine, Frank and Ernest, ABC books. I don't have a problem getting through those. But some of his other books, I have to read multiple times to myself before I can even attempt them with the Pumpkin.
Have you ever read Guess How Much I Love You? Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare have a bedtime contest to see who can express a bigger love for the other. It's a simple and adorable story that should be a breeze to get through. But when I read it to the Pumpkin, I completely lose it maybe three out of every four times we read it. I start crying and my throat gets all tight and I just want to hug the Pumpkin until I get a grip.
It's like that with a lot of his books. I read those books, the ones that cloud my eyes and close my throat, and they take all the huge universe of love that I feel for my Pumpkin and they smoosh it all down into my body at once. Like every atom of everything that has ever been, is now, or will be, gets jammed through my pores and into my body until I'm overflowing with the heart of the universe and it's always almost too much. Every time I get so close to being overwhelmed, my mind and heart not sure that there's enough room anywhere, anytime, ever, for all this love. I have to close my eyes and hold my breath to cut off the exchange for just a moment, until I can pull myself together, find the room, remember how to live with so much absolute beauty.
And then I'm better. Crisis avoided, self in one piece, I finish the book. I kiss the Pumpkin. I breathe in the air around him and wish I could make a perfume of his smell, that perfect sweet baby smell. The whole crazed moment has only taken a second or two. The Pumpkin doesn't even realized that it's happened. It will probably be like that for the rest of my life, with me losing it in small doses and him oblivious to the entire process. I suppose it will be like that with all of the kids I have, since I do want to have more.
I'm going to keep reading those books. I'm going to keep falling in love with my kid(s) each and every night. And when they grow up, I hope that they keep reading. I hope that, eventually, they get to fall to pieces in the exact same way.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Customer Service Gone Right
Most of the time when you call customer service, things go horribly wrong. You're on hold for a bazillion years; there's some sort of phone system that leads you in a never-ending loop or automatically hangs up on you; or, my personal favorite, you speak to a series of people who have no idea what you're talking about no matter how often you ask to talk with a manager.
Recently, I have had two customer service experiences that have defied all expectations and have actually served me, the customer, in a positive and helpful way.
The first one happened when I was trying to resolve a prenatal charge from back in June of last year, when we were still living in Illinois. We had a fetal echocardiogram done to make sure that the tiny human, known at that point as Embry, didn't have any heart issues that we should be aware of. The claim was submitted to our insurance, which promptly denied the claim. They sent it up the chain at insurance for review, but to no avail. They kept telling me it was a routine procedure (um, very much no) that they would not cover. Well, as happens in these cases, I got a final bill from Carle telling me that I needed to pay them or I would be in trouble. I called Carle and thought I was going to have the usual awful phone experience where nobody helped me and I just got more and more frustrated and angry.
To my pleasant surprise, I wound up talking to a manager in Carle's Maternal and Fetal Medicine department within just a few minutes. This woman was a customer service goldmine. Not only did she listen to me and actually understand my problem, she then told me she would call our insurance company directly and give me a call back to let me know how things went. I was a little worried at this point, because usually "I'll call you back later" means "You will never hear from me again and I won't even note in the system that you called." This amazing woman not only called our insurance company, explained the problem to them, and immediately faxed them some documents to support our claim that the service should be covered, she then actually called me back. She explained what the holdup was on the insurance company's end (they didn't know I was pregnant, because "fetal echocardiogram" doesn't indicate pregnant...?), told me what she had done, and asked me if I had any questions or if there was anything else she could do. Seriously, I was blown away.
My second bit of awesome customer service relates to our stroller. So I went a bit extreme on the stroller I wanted. It's this amazing (and, unfortunately, expensive) jogging stroller that totally rocks. It's aggressive. It will roll over anything. It rides super smoothly. It has decent storage space. I love it. Unfortunately, the same stupid plant caltrops - goat's head thorns, which I now hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns - that ate my feet a few weeks ago have also destroyed the stroller's front tire. It wouldn't hold air and I really didn't want to have to pay the rather large sum to have new tubes and tires sent to me. So I called customer service.
I couldn't get through the first couple of tries, so I was starting to get worried, but eventually I got hold of an awesome person who helped with everything. He apologized profusely about my not being able to get through and explained that they were celebrating a co-worker's birthday, so folks were eating cake and bagels when they normally opened the lines. But, he then indicated that he would send me a free replacement tube for the front stroller wheel even though tubes and tires aren't normally covered under the warranty. Which is awesome, because I kind of live by that stroller. Recently, I've been using our Baby Bjorn to take the tiny human on walks, but the longer the walk the more intensely angry my back is at me when we get home.
Soon, I shall once again be the proud owner of a usable and intensely awesome baby jogger!!!
Customer service should be so simple. I should call a place, talk to a person, and get my problem fixed. If they can't fix my problem, they should apologize profusely, explain why, and patiently allow me to snidely berate their company. Okay, that last bit is a bit jerky, but that's one of the services offered by customer service: client venting. The two folks above are amazingly awesome, and I am planning on sending them cards. Seriously, it makes absolutely everything so much better when you can talk to a person and get the help you need.
So, my friends, may all your calls to customer support be as helpful and non-frustrating as these two were for me. Take care, and I'll write again soon!
Monday, April 13, 2015
Misery Loves Company
Unless the only company you can get is a baby. Then misery does not love company. Not at all. In that case, misery loves blessed solitude, silence, and two simultaneously free hands. This past week has been something of an endurance test. So I apologize for not posting this past Thursday, but I hope you'll understand.
When I got to law school and had my first apartment and was living on my own for the first time ever, I thought finally understood the crappiest part of being a grown up. Namely, being sick. It's seriously the worst part of not living at home. You're miserable, you're probably barfing out every five minutes, and there is nobody around to take care of you. You have to hold your own hair back when you barf. If you want saltines and gatorade, you have to dress yourself, leave your apartment, get in the car, go to the store, interact with a human being (unless they have self-check), and then somehow get back home before you can enjoy those little squares of salted cardboard redemption.
It's truly awful. But now I have found something worse. Far worse. Like a million orders of magnitude worse. So what's worse than being sick as a grown up and having to take care of yourself? Being sick as a grown up while having to take care of your 6-month-old kid. Who is also sick. While your spouse is out of town. And you live in a place that is at least 10 hours' travel from your closest relative. That, my friends, is the definition of misery.
The worst part was the poor baby boy didn't let me get to sleep until 11:00pm on Wednesday. We started bedtime a bit after 7:00pm. You know, when he seemed tired. He wouldn't go to sleep. So I tried feeding him. We read a few books. We did some tummy time to try and tucker him out. I fed him again. We walked around the house. We turned the lights on. We turned the lights off. We played soothing music. We rocked in silence. Finally, we drove around for about 45 minutes and he passed out.
On the plus side, I have discovered that I can get through pretty much anything. Also, I am a Bad Ass Mama Jamma. Seriously. I rock. Plus, Paul's home now so at least I have the option of passing off the Tiny Human if I need to sit down for a minute without a tiny being clawing my arm. He's recently gotten very into pinching and scratching. I very much hope that passes soon.
Also on the plus side, I managed to fix the comments issue that some folks were having. There was some kind of weird log in thing you had to do to comment, but that's turned off now and anyone and everyone should be able to leave a note if they so desire. In the meantime, I'm off to do some more LSAT training. I start teaching at the end of this month, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Anywho, take care and I'll write again soon!
When I got to law school and had my first apartment and was living on my own for the first time ever, I thought finally understood the crappiest part of being a grown up. Namely, being sick. It's seriously the worst part of not living at home. You're miserable, you're probably barfing out every five minutes, and there is nobody around to take care of you. You have to hold your own hair back when you barf. If you want saltines and gatorade, you have to dress yourself, leave your apartment, get in the car, go to the store, interact with a human being (unless they have self-check), and then somehow get back home before you can enjoy those little squares of salted cardboard redemption.
It's truly awful. But now I have found something worse. Far worse. Like a million orders of magnitude worse. So what's worse than being sick as a grown up and having to take care of yourself? Being sick as a grown up while having to take care of your 6-month-old kid. Who is also sick. While your spouse is out of town. And you live in a place that is at least 10 hours' travel from your closest relative. That, my friends, is the definition of misery.
The worst part was the poor baby boy didn't let me get to sleep until 11:00pm on Wednesday. We started bedtime a bit after 7:00pm. You know, when he seemed tired. He wouldn't go to sleep. So I tried feeding him. We read a few books. We did some tummy time to try and tucker him out. I fed him again. We walked around the house. We turned the lights on. We turned the lights off. We played soothing music. We rocked in silence. Finally, we drove around for about 45 minutes and he passed out.
On the plus side, I have discovered that I can get through pretty much anything. Also, I am a Bad Ass Mama Jamma. Seriously. I rock. Plus, Paul's home now so at least I have the option of passing off the Tiny Human if I need to sit down for a minute without a tiny being clawing my arm. He's recently gotten very into pinching and scratching. I very much hope that passes soon.
Also on the plus side, I managed to fix the comments issue that some folks were having. There was some kind of weird log in thing you had to do to comment, but that's turned off now and anyone and everyone should be able to leave a note if they so desire. In the meantime, I'm off to do some more LSAT training. I start teaching at the end of this month, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Anywho, take care and I'll write again soon!
Monday, April 6, 2015
The Cost of Delivery
People always say that having a baby is expensive. And they're right. From birth to college, adding a tiny human to your household can tack on an inordinate expense. I've seen estimates that, through age 18, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child. Given the number of activities my children will likely want to be involved in, I'm considering that an underestimate.
What people don't talk about, and what is currently infuriating to me, is the sheer bureaucracy underlying many of those expenses. I'm a very smart person. I am well educated. My husband is at least as smart as I am and has even more education. Yet between the two of us, we have managed to be confounded by medical billing since the Pumpkin was born.
The first thing that happens is simple enough - they send you a bill. You should just be able to pay it, move on, and have some ice cream. But we have yet to get a bill that we have just paid. Most of them come to us with some kind of problem, all of which have been related to our insurance. So once you get the bill, you have to call your care provider and have them remind you what in the bloody heck happened on June 14, 2014, that supposedly cost upwards of $2500. Once you know what they did (and assuming you haven't been mistakenly billed for something that never happened, or that happened to someone else), then you have to call the insurance.
The insurance people will go through a very long litany of introductory messages and notices, and after about 15 minutes you might actually be talking to a real person. Hopefully they are helpful. If they can't tell you anything more than, "My notes just say you weren't covered by our insurance," then you can feel free to tell them they are abysmally wrong and let them know that now you have to talk to a supervisor. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
By the time you're talking to a person who actually knows anything about anything, you can count it as the first miracle of your sainthood if you're not swearing up a storm and reminding them every third sentence that you are a licensed attorney who won't have to deal with attorney's fees when you sue them because you'll be doing all the legal work yourself.
At which point, your first step is to explain to them that you were, in fact, covered by their insurance at the time of service. Yes, I know it shows that I am not insured with you right now. But I was at the time of service, and that's what counts. Yes, you can check your system. Yes, I am correct. Yes, I'm still here after 5 more minutes of hold music. Yes, I have been through this before. Yes, I would love it if you would actually submit this information to your processing department so you can begin the long process of actually paying the insanely inflated bill for my flu shot (or whatever it was).
About a month or so later, you'll get the second bill from the medical folks. They'll tell you that they haven't been paid yet. They won't give you any additional information beyond that because they don't have any, no matter how many different people you are transferred to. None of them know anything. The CIA should take notes from these guys.
So you call the insurance folks again. After going through the first five circles of hell, they allow you to speak to someone who knows something about something, and you ask why they haven't paid yet. What you will likely find out this time is that the service was not coded properly. If the service code doesn't match the diagnosis code, then they won't pay. Yes, they will be happy to tell you what those codes are. Yes, they will be happy to repeat those 35 numbers for you a bit slower this time. No, they do not have any idea what those codes are or what other magic numbers your care provider needs to give them to make the money start pouring out of their tight little insurance fingers.
At this point, you wonder why you bother. Maybe you should just rob a bank. Or ransom some globally influential CEO or dignitary. Maybe you could even steal the nuclear launch codes and sell them to Greenpeace. Because all of those things (including Greenpeace somehow having the money to buy said codes) would be far less difficult than actually doing this over and over for every god blessed bill you get. Because, much like parenting, it's not one day or one bill that wears you down and makes you dream of changing your name and escaping to an uncharted tropical island. (No, I don't know how I will get there if it's uncharted. Yes, it's still easier than dealing with medical billing and insurance.) It's the thought that you have to keep doing it. Over and over.
With the billing, there will come a day when it's done. And I suppose with the children, there will come a day when they are out of the house and living on their own. But once you're a parent, that's it. You have forever changed the course of your life. No going back, no end to it. Ever.
Thankfully, that's the difference between medical bills and children. With children, you don't ever want it to end. Even when they're screaming, with weird gunk coming out of their eyes, nose, and some third orifice that depends on the time of day and cycle of the moon, you love them so much your heart feels like it's going to rupture right out of your chest.
Of course, you don't literally have your heart explode like that. If it did, you'd have to go through all that medical billing stuff again.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
What people don't talk about, and what is currently infuriating to me, is the sheer bureaucracy underlying many of those expenses. I'm a very smart person. I am well educated. My husband is at least as smart as I am and has even more education. Yet between the two of us, we have managed to be confounded by medical billing since the Pumpkin was born.
The first thing that happens is simple enough - they send you a bill. You should just be able to pay it, move on, and have some ice cream. But we have yet to get a bill that we have just paid. Most of them come to us with some kind of problem, all of which have been related to our insurance. So once you get the bill, you have to call your care provider and have them remind you what in the bloody heck happened on June 14, 2014, that supposedly cost upwards of $2500. Once you know what they did (and assuming you haven't been mistakenly billed for something that never happened, or that happened to someone else), then you have to call the insurance.
The insurance people will go through a very long litany of introductory messages and notices, and after about 15 minutes you might actually be talking to a real person. Hopefully they are helpful. If they can't tell you anything more than, "My notes just say you weren't covered by our insurance," then you can feel free to tell them they are abysmally wrong and let them know that now you have to talk to a supervisor. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
By the time you're talking to a person who actually knows anything about anything, you can count it as the first miracle of your sainthood if you're not swearing up a storm and reminding them every third sentence that you are a licensed attorney who won't have to deal with attorney's fees when you sue them because you'll be doing all the legal work yourself.
At which point, your first step is to explain to them that you were, in fact, covered by their insurance at the time of service. Yes, I know it shows that I am not insured with you right now. But I was at the time of service, and that's what counts. Yes, you can check your system. Yes, I am correct. Yes, I'm still here after 5 more minutes of hold music. Yes, I have been through this before. Yes, I would love it if you would actually submit this information to your processing department so you can begin the long process of actually paying the insanely inflated bill for my flu shot (or whatever it was).
About a month or so later, you'll get the second bill from the medical folks. They'll tell you that they haven't been paid yet. They won't give you any additional information beyond that because they don't have any, no matter how many different people you are transferred to. None of them know anything. The CIA should take notes from these guys.
So you call the insurance folks again. After going through the first five circles of hell, they allow you to speak to someone who knows something about something, and you ask why they haven't paid yet. What you will likely find out this time is that the service was not coded properly. If the service code doesn't match the diagnosis code, then they won't pay. Yes, they will be happy to tell you what those codes are. Yes, they will be happy to repeat those 35 numbers for you a bit slower this time. No, they do not have any idea what those codes are or what other magic numbers your care provider needs to give them to make the money start pouring out of their tight little insurance fingers.
At this point, you wonder why you bother. Maybe you should just rob a bank. Or ransom some globally influential CEO or dignitary. Maybe you could even steal the nuclear launch codes and sell them to Greenpeace. Because all of those things (including Greenpeace somehow having the money to buy said codes) would be far less difficult than actually doing this over and over for every god blessed bill you get. Because, much like parenting, it's not one day or one bill that wears you down and makes you dream of changing your name and escaping to an uncharted tropical island. (No, I don't know how I will get there if it's uncharted. Yes, it's still easier than dealing with medical billing and insurance.) It's the thought that you have to keep doing it. Over and over.
With the billing, there will come a day when it's done. And I suppose with the children, there will come a day when they are out of the house and living on their own. But once you're a parent, that's it. You have forever changed the course of your life. No going back, no end to it. Ever.
Thankfully, that's the difference between medical bills and children. With children, you don't ever want it to end. Even when they're screaming, with weird gunk coming out of their eyes, nose, and some third orifice that depends on the time of day and cycle of the moon, you love them so much your heart feels like it's going to rupture right out of your chest.
Of course, you don't literally have your heart explode like that. If it did, you'd have to go through all that medical billing stuff again.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Texas Hates Me
No, it's true. Texas may be an inanimate object/concept, but it really does hate me. Even the plants here are out to get me.
Thursday this week marked the first time in quite a while that I have been attacked by a plant. The last time it happened, I was very young and it was seaweed and I've been afraid of the stuff ever since. But yesterday, I discovered that there is a plant in Texas that makes caltrops. I am not joking. Texas makes natural caltrops, and they are in my backyard.
See, all I wanted to do was take some bits of asparagus out to our compost pile without putting on my shoes. Having been raised in the Midwest, I knew to be on the lookout for nettles and sticks and maybe even very dry clumps of grass, which can get a bit prickly. But this was a whole different level. This was not a minor annoyance, or some patch of ground that was slightly uncomfortable to walk over. I didn't really get stuck until I was headed back into the house, at which point I had almost Bruce Willis in Die Hard levels of ouch.
I was pretty sure I had stepped on a series of small nails somehow embedded pointy part up in the ground, or had actually wandered into a Bruce Willis movie and was walking on broken glass. But no. This was no man-made item, no accident of rental house repair, that had caused me such pain. This was pure hatred, growing from the dusty red dirt of Texas to stab me in the foot. This was nature at its most sweetly twisted, drawing my blood even as I tried to do the right thing and compost! This, my friends, was the evil heart of Texas, stabbing at me.
I don't know exactly what plant these things come from, but when I find them, I'm going to dig them out of the ground and then salt the earth where they grew. Because when I say it drew blood, I'm not kidding. I got stuck in the foot with these things on Thursday, and I was still picking bits of plant caltrop out of my foot just this morning. They stabbed deep enough that they made my feet not only bloody, but sore at each of the tiny wound sites. I love the planet and all, but I'll be darned if I wouldn't pour industrial strength weed killer over the entirety of my backyard just to be sure I destroy whatever is producing these things.
What's really awful is that, beyond killing my ability to walk outside barefoot, which is something I enjoy doing, these stupid things are also going to keep me from letting Theo play out in the yard. Sure, I can put shoes on his feet and make him wear long pants and long sleeves, but what happens when he trips? He's going to trip. And when he falls, he should hit grass. Maybe he'd get a bit grumpy at having not kept his feet, but I sure as heck don't want him impaled with tiny little plant knives every time he falls. Plus, they'd probably stab him through his pants and sleeves anyway. These things are frickin' serious.
So thanks, Texas, for producing these awful things. Whatever they are, my feet still hurt where they stabbed me and they have made a mockery of the already lame set of weeds that passes for a lawn out here. If tomorrow weren't Easter and everything in this god forsaken state weren't closed (including the grocery store for half the day!), I would be out planning my gardening revenge.
I guess my anti-plant rampage will have to wait. Until then, take care and I'll write again soon!
Thursday this week marked the first time in quite a while that I have been attacked by a plant. The last time it happened, I was very young and it was seaweed and I've been afraid of the stuff ever since. But yesterday, I discovered that there is a plant in Texas that makes caltrops. I am not joking. Texas makes natural caltrops, and they are in my backyard.
See, all I wanted to do was take some bits of asparagus out to our compost pile without putting on my shoes. Having been raised in the Midwest, I knew to be on the lookout for nettles and sticks and maybe even very dry clumps of grass, which can get a bit prickly. But this was a whole different level. This was not a minor annoyance, or some patch of ground that was slightly uncomfortable to walk over. I didn't really get stuck until I was headed back into the house, at which point I had almost Bruce Willis in Die Hard levels of ouch.
I was pretty sure I had stepped on a series of small nails somehow embedded pointy part up in the ground, or had actually wandered into a Bruce Willis movie and was walking on broken glass. But no. This was no man-made item, no accident of rental house repair, that had caused me such pain. This was pure hatred, growing from the dusty red dirt of Texas to stab me in the foot. This was nature at its most sweetly twisted, drawing my blood even as I tried to do the right thing and compost! This, my friends, was the evil heart of Texas, stabbing at me.
I don't know exactly what plant these things come from, but when I find them, I'm going to dig them out of the ground and then salt the earth where they grew. Because when I say it drew blood, I'm not kidding. I got stuck in the foot with these things on Thursday, and I was still picking bits of plant caltrop out of my foot just this morning. They stabbed deep enough that they made my feet not only bloody, but sore at each of the tiny wound sites. I love the planet and all, but I'll be darned if I wouldn't pour industrial strength weed killer over the entirety of my backyard just to be sure I destroy whatever is producing these things.
What's really awful is that, beyond killing my ability to walk outside barefoot, which is something I enjoy doing, these stupid things are also going to keep me from letting Theo play out in the yard. Sure, I can put shoes on his feet and make him wear long pants and long sleeves, but what happens when he trips? He's going to trip. And when he falls, he should hit grass. Maybe he'd get a bit grumpy at having not kept his feet, but I sure as heck don't want him impaled with tiny little plant knives every time he falls. Plus, they'd probably stab him through his pants and sleeves anyway. These things are frickin' serious.
So thanks, Texas, for producing these awful things. Whatever they are, my feet still hurt where they stabbed me and they have made a mockery of the already lame set of weeds that passes for a lawn out here. If tomorrow weren't Easter and everything in this god forsaken state weren't closed (including the grocery store for half the day!), I would be out planning my gardening revenge.
I guess my anti-plant rampage will have to wait. Until then, take care and I'll write again soon!
Monday, March 30, 2015
Generating Content
Throughout the week, I'm constantly thinking of topics for blog entries. On many occasions I have had the seriously brilliant thought that I should write things up as I think of them, and then publish them when my schedule (Mondays and Thursdays) demands it. I have yet to follow through with this genius scheme, which is why I'm sitting in bed on a Monday night, a large black and white cat headbutting my elbow for pets, trying desperately to recall the several very good blog topics I thought of earlier today.
As a smart and, in my opinion, quite funny human being, I'm often surprised by how slow and very very not funny I am on a regular basis. There are times when I'm "on", and I know it, and I can pretty much take over and rock any given social situation. Then there are times when I can't even serve a comeback when it's sitting in front of me on a silver platter. Why can't I be a genius on demand, for crying out loud? Why can't the amazing content just drip from my keyboard, like some sort of hilariously analogized tap of amazing content?
I suppose I could tell you that tomorrow morning I am going to meet with the Assistant Dean of the law school in charge of HR and lay out for him the reasons I'm quitting my job. I'm oddly nervous about it, mostly because it's an awkward topic and I'm not sure how to say it all without getting kind of mad. I don't want to come off like a bitter soon-to-be-ex-employee, but the whole situation has left a really bad taste in my mouth and that may wind up happening. So disappointing, since I'm trying to maintain the moral and professional high ground here.
Then again, I could tell you about the hour and fifteen minutes I spent in a Google Hangout (what a cool system!) with some other Kaplan teachers tonight and how awesome that was. The dude who was running it seemed like an awesomely crazy guy, which always makes me feel more confident in an organization. If someone who is nuts can be themselves, and express that to you from a position of authority/experience, and they are happy with their history with the company, then that is a very good sign indeed.
Alternatively, I could go on a rant about how much I dislike Sansa Stark, even if I must begrudgingly admit she's growing on me just a bit. Seriously, though, how stupid can you be? Although I kind of love her inclusion in the novels, since she's the stereotype of a female fantasy character, and thus serves as a sort of foil or counterpoint for all of the other female characters in the books. Which is why I am happy she's there, for all that she makes me want to tear my hair out every time I read her chapters.
But what I really want to say is that, no matter how insane my job is/was/will be, no matter my forthcoming results from the bar exam, and no matter how lame the town of Lubbock, I have the best little family ever. Even when the Pumpkin is screaming in my ear and will not go to sleep and Paul is in the living room playing Legend of Zelda, and I am frustrated beyond compare, I can't help but be heart-burstingly in love with my Pumpkin and his daddy.
I must have been hands-down balls-to-the-wall amazingly awesome in my past life to have earned such a sweet trip this time around.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
Thursday, March 26, 2015
BMI
Deciding to become a parent is a big frickin' deal. There are lots of changes that happen in your life. If you are the person whose biology makes it your job to physically grow and then give birth to the baby, then it's more than just your world that changes. Because the whole cycle of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood really does a number on you physically.
I'm not just talking about labor, although a little over 11 hours of physical exertion and pain without major pain medication (that's right, no epidural for me) will definitely mess you up. I'm talking about the stretching of your skin. The loosening of your joints. The sheer lack of muscle tone in places where you don't realize how important muscle tone is until after you've managed to push a baby out of your body.
For the first few weeks after giving birth, it felt like my legs had been taken off and then put back on by someone not quite familiar enough with the process to get it right. I still have moments where I'll stand up, take a few steps, and then realize that my hips don't quite seem to be fitting me properly. And let's not even get started on the decidedly prominent gut I now have. Instead, let's focus on how my feet are at least a half size bigger, show no intentions of going back to their previous size, and definitely do not fit into most of my dress shoes anymore. That is just not fair.
So what's a new mommy to do? Well, like any sensible person I should be eating healthy foods, watching my food intake, and getting some exercise. Surprisingly, given how oddly my body feels like it's fitted together, that last one is the easiest one to do so far. I've been walking over my lunch break or, recently, I've gone to the campus gym and done a few laps in the pool. Speaking of which, I should probably buy a new swimsuit. My old ones don't seem to fit me quite right anymore...
Aside from my newly oddly assembled body, my biggest problem is my weight. I currently weigh a lot. Like, an unhealthy amount. I'm about 5'9" tall. The USDA says that my weight should be somewhere between 128 and 169 pounds to have a healthy BMI. Unfortunately for me, my weight of 206 (BMI of 30.4) puts me in the obese category. That's right, mother lovers. I am obese. That makes me ashamed, sad, and mildly terrified.
The really sad part of that is that I suffer from classic human myopia. I'm mildly terrified (emphasis on mildly) because the heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases of the obese haven't affected me yet. I am, however, really ashamed and super sad that I can no longer fit into any of the nice clothes I used to wear. Which just goes to show you that human beings are kinda stupid in terms of what we let bother us.
I am really really hoping that once I don't have to work full-time anymore, I can fit in more exercise and take more time to eat like a person who gives a crud about their health. And I know that BMI is just one way to measure health, and it's not even the best way, but it is a pretty good gauge of whether or not you should be worried. And I should definitely be flippin' worried.
So what am I going to do? I'm going to focus on exercise, since that is the thing I like the most. I'm going to keep working hard to eat my three vegetables per day. I'm going to hope that I can lose the weight and get somewhere near that 128 to 169 weight range. I haven't had a weight in that range since law school. Early law school. And now I have to get back there.
This is not going to be easy. And I'm probably not going to like it all the time. I'm definitely not going to be able to eat cookies like I currently do. Sigh. I like cookies. I'm going to miss the cookies.
But here's to realizing my vision of the future, the one where I'm running marathons and hiking mountains again. Because as much as I'm going to miss cookies, I think I'd miss marathons and mountains more.
Take care, and I'll write again soon!
I'm not just talking about labor, although a little over 11 hours of physical exertion and pain without major pain medication (that's right, no epidural for me) will definitely mess you up. I'm talking about the stretching of your skin. The loosening of your joints. The sheer lack of muscle tone in places where you don't realize how important muscle tone is until after you've managed to push a baby out of your body.
For the first few weeks after giving birth, it felt like my legs had been taken off and then put back on by someone not quite familiar enough with the process to get it right. I still have moments where I'll stand up, take a few steps, and then realize that my hips don't quite seem to be fitting me properly. And let's not even get started on the decidedly prominent gut I now have. Instead, let's focus on how my feet are at least a half size bigger, show no intentions of going back to their previous size, and definitely do not fit into most of my dress shoes anymore. That is just not fair.
So what's a new mommy to do? Well, like any sensible person I should be eating healthy foods, watching my food intake, and getting some exercise. Surprisingly, given how oddly my body feels like it's fitted together, that last one is the easiest one to do so far. I've been walking over my lunch break or, recently, I've gone to the campus gym and done a few laps in the pool. Speaking of which, I should probably buy a new swimsuit. My old ones don't seem to fit me quite right anymore...
Aside from my newly oddly assembled body, my biggest problem is my weight. I currently weigh a lot. Like, an unhealthy amount. I'm about 5'9" tall. The USDA says that my weight should be somewhere between 128 and 169 pounds to have a healthy BMI. Unfortunately for me, my weight of 206 (BMI of 30.4) puts me in the obese category. That's right, mother lovers. I am obese. That makes me ashamed, sad, and mildly terrified.
The really sad part of that is that I suffer from classic human myopia. I'm mildly terrified (emphasis on mildly) because the heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases of the obese haven't affected me yet. I am, however, really ashamed and super sad that I can no longer fit into any of the nice clothes I used to wear. Which just goes to show you that human beings are kinda stupid in terms of what we let bother us.
I am really really hoping that once I don't have to work full-time anymore, I can fit in more exercise and take more time to eat like a person who gives a crud about their health. And I know that BMI is just one way to measure health, and it's not even the best way, but it is a pretty good gauge of whether or not you should be worried. And I should definitely be flippin' worried.
So what am I going to do? I'm going to focus on exercise, since that is the thing I like the most. I'm going to keep working hard to eat my three vegetables per day. I'm going to hope that I can lose the weight and get somewhere near that 128 to 169 weight range. I haven't had a weight in that range since law school. Early law school. And now I have to get back there.
This is not going to be easy. And I'm probably not going to like it all the time. I'm definitely not going to be able to eat cookies like I currently do. Sigh. I like cookies. I'm going to miss the cookies.
But here's to realizing my vision of the future, the one where I'm running marathons and hiking mountains again. Because as much as I'm going to miss cookies, I think I'd miss marathons and mountains more.
Take care, and I'll write again soon!
Monday, March 23, 2015
Sucks To Your Asthma
So I say that all the time, and nobody ever gets the reference. Which is a shame, really, because that book is wonderful.
In completely unrelated news, I gave two weeks notice at my job last Thursday. I despise my current job, and working there each day Monday through Friday was really not okay, especially when it meant having to put the Tiny Human in daycare and not being able to take care of him myself. But it still took me a month or so of agonizing over it to be able to leave.
It's also an utter shame that I had to leave. The job itself should have been perfect for me. It was basically networking, with some travel to visit employers, a dash of student counseling, and lots of event planning. I am good at all of those things! I should have rocked this job eight ways from Sunday! And yet, here I am, not even four months in and I've given notice. That is freaking awful.
Even having given notice, I'm still of two completely different minds on this. Part of me is ecstatic. I have a part-time job that I'm falling back on (teaching LSAT prep classes) and I get to spend the vast majority of my time raising the Tiny Human. The biggest perk is that I don't have to deal with my supervisor anymore, as my supervisor is the sole reason I am quitting my job. And, hopefully, I may even be able to find time to work on the projects that I've been storing up for a rainy day or twenty.
Then again, it means we are basically a one-income household with a tiny baby to support. It also means that I probably won't work full-time again, given the likely length of our stay in Lubbock, until we arrive at our next temporary permanent stop. That is uncomfortable to such a depth that it makes me a bit sick. That's two years without a full-time position on my resume, or with four months of a full-time position on my resume. I don't know which is worse. I also can't tell if I'm more terrified of the tight budget caused by the single income, or the long-term fear that my lack of work history will make me an untenable hire even once we find our next place.
It's too big to process it all at once. I have to think about it a little bit each day, talking with Paul and worrying out loud to him and writing. Lots of writing. It helps. I know I'll figure it out, but I want to be past the "what the freaking bleep did I just do???!?!?!?" stage and on to the "I am a calm, collected, and totally not insane person" stage.
And so, at the end of the day, I say to my unresolved mommy guilt and continually building ball of fear, "Sucks to your asthma." Maybe one day I'll figure out how to build, for my guilt and fear, a stick sharpened at both ends.
Take care, and I'll write again soon!
In completely unrelated news, I gave two weeks notice at my job last Thursday. I despise my current job, and working there each day Monday through Friday was really not okay, especially when it meant having to put the Tiny Human in daycare and not being able to take care of him myself. But it still took me a month or so of agonizing over it to be able to leave.
It's also an utter shame that I had to leave. The job itself should have been perfect for me. It was basically networking, with some travel to visit employers, a dash of student counseling, and lots of event planning. I am good at all of those things! I should have rocked this job eight ways from Sunday! And yet, here I am, not even four months in and I've given notice. That is freaking awful.
Even having given notice, I'm still of two completely different minds on this. Part of me is ecstatic. I have a part-time job that I'm falling back on (teaching LSAT prep classes) and I get to spend the vast majority of my time raising the Tiny Human. The biggest perk is that I don't have to deal with my supervisor anymore, as my supervisor is the sole reason I am quitting my job. And, hopefully, I may even be able to find time to work on the projects that I've been storing up for a rainy day or twenty.
Then again, it means we are basically a one-income household with a tiny baby to support. It also means that I probably won't work full-time again, given the likely length of our stay in Lubbock, until we arrive at our next temporary permanent stop. That is uncomfortable to such a depth that it makes me a bit sick. That's two years without a full-time position on my resume, or with four months of a full-time position on my resume. I don't know which is worse. I also can't tell if I'm more terrified of the tight budget caused by the single income, or the long-term fear that my lack of work history will make me an untenable hire even once we find our next place.
It's too big to process it all at once. I have to think about it a little bit each day, talking with Paul and worrying out loud to him and writing. Lots of writing. It helps. I know I'll figure it out, but I want to be past the "what the freaking bleep did I just do???!?!?!?" stage and on to the "I am a calm, collected, and totally not insane person" stage.
And so, at the end of the day, I say to my unresolved mommy guilt and continually building ball of fear, "Sucks to your asthma." Maybe one day I'll figure out how to build, for my guilt and fear, a stick sharpened at both ends.
Take care, and I'll write again soon!
Monday, March 16, 2015
Hours In The Day
I tend to have a lot going on in my life. Before I had a tiny human who depended on me for everything, I was working a full-time job, a part-time job, and had two more or less full-time volunteer gigs going on. It was nuts, but I loved it.
So when I decided to study for the bar exam on top of working full-time and taking care of a newborn, I figured I could handle that. And my first step was to find some hours in my day in which I could study. Surprisingly, there was a lot of time that I could use over the course of a day. If I studied while pumping, over my lunch break, and for two hours every night after the tiny human went to sleep, I could cram in between 3.5 and 4 hours of studying every day. Which is freakin' nuts.
Of course, those hours are only really helpful if you can sustain that kind of constant, intense, never-ending activity over a fairly lengthy period of time. I'm sure that there was a point in my life at whch I could handle that level of intense. In fact, I think that point in my life was probably within the last five years. But recently? Not so much.
What's really lame, though, is that sustaining that level of intensity is not the biggest problem. The problem is how guilty I feel when I don't put in that amount of time. See, once I realize those hours exist, I feel obligated to use them in as productive and efficient a manner as possible. And if I don't, then it's a source of massive guilt. Even if I use some of that time to be productive, and then just crash because I'm frickin' exhausted, that doesn't feel good enough. I have to squeeze blood from the stone or it's just not enough.
Which is why I'm sitting here, at almost 10:00pm, way past my bedtime, still worrying about whether or not I've been productive enough today. I don't even have to study for the bar exam anymore, but I know those hours are there. I know I can use them if I just have the energy. And if I don't have the energy, it's obviously because I'm not eating healthy enough food, or I'm not getting enough exercise, or I'm not doing something else that I logically should be doing for the benefit of myself, my family, and humanity. Right?
So here's the question, friends. Why can't I give myself a break? I know how smart I am. I know how successful I am, despite all the setbacks I've had a screwups I've made. I am really flippin' well off in life. So why can't I chill out about those 3-4 stupid hours?
I'm sure the answer is out there somewhere. But for now, I'm going to call this blog entry a win and sleep until the tiny human decides it's time for a midnight snack. Or at least the first of his midnight snacks.
Sigh.
Take care, and I'll write again soon!
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Regarding My Title
I renamed this blog when I decided to start it back up. "The Meowbrain Diaries" just didn't suit my subject matter anymore. But the new title, "Getting Back To Me", is more than a nod to my natural human arrogance.
Everybody who has ever had children will tell you that having a baby changes your life. Irrevocably, utterly, and drastically, your life will be altered in every regard. The people you have to worry about are the ones who believe they understand this before they can officially say they are a parent. The ones who will have it slightly better are, like me, aware of the fact that a total world overhaul is about to come, but grasp that knowing it's coming is absolutely nothing like living your life after it's arrived. I've been a mom for a bit over five months now, and I am still trying to figure out all the nuanced (and, to be honest, all the glaringly obvious) ways in which my life has changed.
There are now two distinct eras in my life. There is the time before the baby, and everything after that. I would also argue that there are two distinct versions of me, similarly divided into me before the baby and me after the baby. These two women are both me. They have things in common, like they both love cats and tea and get super overly excited about kind of ridiculous things. But they are also very, very different. I know who I was before I had a baby; I know the things I liked to do and what was important to me and how I spent my time. But I am only just getting to know the person I am now, the mom of a tiny, wonderful, amazing, sweet, terrifying human.
It's really weird to have to get to know yourself. You would think that living in your own skin and being inescapably inside your own head all the time for your entire life would make it easy to figure out who you are. But after the tiny human arrived, I was no longer just me, the way I was before. If I were just me, I would only have one name, one version of me. I'd be Marley and that would be it. But that one name isn't enough anymore. Now I'm Mom, too. And sometimes the two versions of me disagree, or the old Marley version wants something and the new Mom version has to tell her that she probably won't be able to have it.
Like when I put up a calendar my folks got me for Christmas. It happens to be the Runner's World calendar. And along with the usual holidays and daylight savings time reminders, this calendar also lists when popular races are occurring. Old Marley looks at that calendar and sees all the races she wants to run - half marathons with quirky and cool themes, and marathons that are nice and flat and cool. New Mom looks at those same race names and thinks about whether she could even get through a marathon without having to stop to pump breastmilk, the logistics of traveling and racing with a baby, and whether it would be fair to Paul to leave the baby home with him all weekend while I jet off on a quest for health and personal achievement.
This kind of thinking happens all the time. It creeps up on me and surprises me. It happens when I'm awake and when I'm dreaming. I'm assuming that someday it won't happen as much, because the Mom part will have taken over, but until then I'm planning on being regularly stunned by how often I have to rethink things that wouldn't have even given me pause before.
So this blog, Getting Back To Me, is about trying to figure out who I am. It's about sorting out the new version of me, the one with two names and conflicting internal thought processes and a frighteningly new world view. While I may be living with two versions of me right now, I'm hoping that writing about it and processing it and hearing from folks kind enough to read my posts will help me reconcile my two halves. I'm hoping to be able to give old Marley some of what she wants, while making sure that New Mom doesn't have a total spaz attack.
I hope you find this little quest of mine interesting. I know I certainly will.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Everybody who has ever had children will tell you that having a baby changes your life. Irrevocably, utterly, and drastically, your life will be altered in every regard. The people you have to worry about are the ones who believe they understand this before they can officially say they are a parent. The ones who will have it slightly better are, like me, aware of the fact that a total world overhaul is about to come, but grasp that knowing it's coming is absolutely nothing like living your life after it's arrived. I've been a mom for a bit over five months now, and I am still trying to figure out all the nuanced (and, to be honest, all the glaringly obvious) ways in which my life has changed.
There are now two distinct eras in my life. There is the time before the baby, and everything after that. I would also argue that there are two distinct versions of me, similarly divided into me before the baby and me after the baby. These two women are both me. They have things in common, like they both love cats and tea and get super overly excited about kind of ridiculous things. But they are also very, very different. I know who I was before I had a baby; I know the things I liked to do and what was important to me and how I spent my time. But I am only just getting to know the person I am now, the mom of a tiny, wonderful, amazing, sweet, terrifying human.
It's really weird to have to get to know yourself. You would think that living in your own skin and being inescapably inside your own head all the time for your entire life would make it easy to figure out who you are. But after the tiny human arrived, I was no longer just me, the way I was before. If I were just me, I would only have one name, one version of me. I'd be Marley and that would be it. But that one name isn't enough anymore. Now I'm Mom, too. And sometimes the two versions of me disagree, or the old Marley version wants something and the new Mom version has to tell her that she probably won't be able to have it.
Like when I put up a calendar my folks got me for Christmas. It happens to be the Runner's World calendar. And along with the usual holidays and daylight savings time reminders, this calendar also lists when popular races are occurring. Old Marley looks at that calendar and sees all the races she wants to run - half marathons with quirky and cool themes, and marathons that are nice and flat and cool. New Mom looks at those same race names and thinks about whether she could even get through a marathon without having to stop to pump breastmilk, the logistics of traveling and racing with a baby, and whether it would be fair to Paul to leave the baby home with him all weekend while I jet off on a quest for health and personal achievement.
This kind of thinking happens all the time. It creeps up on me and surprises me. It happens when I'm awake and when I'm dreaming. I'm assuming that someday it won't happen as much, because the Mom part will have taken over, but until then I'm planning on being regularly stunned by how often I have to rethink things that wouldn't have even given me pause before.
So this blog, Getting Back To Me, is about trying to figure out who I am. It's about sorting out the new version of me, the one with two names and conflicting internal thought processes and a frighteningly new world view. While I may be living with two versions of me right now, I'm hoping that writing about it and processing it and hearing from folks kind enough to read my posts will help me reconcile my two halves. I'm hoping to be able to give old Marley some of what she wants, while making sure that New Mom doesn't have a total spaz attack.
I hope you find this little quest of mine interesting. I know I certainly will.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Grammar Matters
We went to drop the Pumpkin off at daycare last week and there was a sign on the door. Apparently, it was the owner's 40th birthday. Of course, you would only know that if you ignored the rules of grammar and pretended to be a bit ignorant while you read the sign. The sign read as follows:
Lordy,
Lordy!
Look
Whose
40!
Of course when I read that sign, I did indeed wonder whose 40 it was. Then I wondered why you would have a 40 in a daycare. At 7:30am. Just in time for the big drop off rush?
The sad thing is, this is not the first time we have noticed an incredibly glaring error in grammar at daycare. We find them in letters sent home from the school. We find them in the notes his teachers attach to his daily record sheets (the tiny human "like swinging in the swing"). It's really disturbing that an educational institution, no matter how young the children, would allow such poor writing to be sent home to parents.
Because the children are who they take care of, but the parents are their customers. We are the ones who foot the exorbitant bill every month to have them take care of our children. Therefore, we are the ones they really need to keep happy. Of course, the primary way they do that is by taking immaculate care of our offspring. But they also need to prove to us (and by "us" I mean "me") that they're smart enough to guide the educational development of my five-month-old baby. They are falling rather short of that mark.
Then again, the poor grammar is only one of my issues with our daycare. I have to make a mommy confession and admit that I am no longer enamored with the daycare I chose for our little Pumpkin. I'll eventually enumerate the many reasons why I think they're not good (don't worry, nothing that would be considered bad for the Pumpkin, just stuff that's not great). But for now, I still feel too guilty about my lack of foresight to really tell the whole story.
We are looking for a new daycare, though, which makes me feel better. And there are some signs of improvement. But our current daycare is kind of dead to me, and I will feel much better once I am able to put the Pumpkin in a new place. Or, you know, quit my job and just take care of him myself.
But the quitting my job thing is a whole separate story for another day. For now, it is late and I hate daylight savings time, so I'm going to go to sleep.
You know, if the Pumpkin decides to really be asleep this time.
Take care, and I'll be writing again soon!
Lordy,
Lordy!
Look
Whose
40!
Of course when I read that sign, I did indeed wonder whose 40 it was. Then I wondered why you would have a 40 in a daycare. At 7:30am. Just in time for the big drop off rush?
The sad thing is, this is not the first time we have noticed an incredibly glaring error in grammar at daycare. We find them in letters sent home from the school. We find them in the notes his teachers attach to his daily record sheets (the tiny human "like swinging in the swing"). It's really disturbing that an educational institution, no matter how young the children, would allow such poor writing to be sent home to parents.
Because the children are who they take care of, but the parents are their customers. We are the ones who foot the exorbitant bill every month to have them take care of our children. Therefore, we are the ones they really need to keep happy. Of course, the primary way they do that is by taking immaculate care of our offspring. But they also need to prove to us (and by "us" I mean "me") that they're smart enough to guide the educational development of my five-month-old baby. They are falling rather short of that mark.
Then again, the poor grammar is only one of my issues with our daycare. I have to make a mommy confession and admit that I am no longer enamored with the daycare I chose for our little Pumpkin. I'll eventually enumerate the many reasons why I think they're not good (don't worry, nothing that would be considered bad for the Pumpkin, just stuff that's not great). But for now, I still feel too guilty about my lack of foresight to really tell the whole story.
We are looking for a new daycare, though, which makes me feel better. And there are some signs of improvement. But our current daycare is kind of dead to me, and I will feel much better once I am able to put the Pumpkin in a new place. Or, you know, quit my job and just take care of him myself.
But the quitting my job thing is a whole separate story for another day. For now, it is late and I hate daylight savings time, so I'm going to go to sleep.
You know, if the Pumpkin decides to really be asleep this time.
Take care, and I'll be writing again soon!
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Drowsy But Awake
I am a new parent, and like all new parents I work hard to find good advice and then put it into practice. I seek out people that I believe to be good parents and talk to them about things that are happening with my child. I have never gone to an appointment with the Pumpkin's pediatrician without a list of at least ten questions. Paul and I go to great lengths to be the best parents we can be.
But there are some things that just don't work. Like the sleep advice we got from Pumpkin's doctor. This is the same advice touted by the Mayo Clinic and Kelly Mom (a blog by a certified lactation consultant that I have found to be reliable). The advice they give you is to put your child to sleep "drowsy but awake". The idea is that they will then fall asleep on their own. This process will teach them that their crib is a place to sleep. This process will teach them to soothe themselves and go to sleep on their own without being rocked, held, nursed, sung to, or any of the countless other sleep mechanisms available to parents.
Drowsy but awake is not a good sleep process for our Pumpkin. It is more like a curse, hanging in the air and ruining an otherwise beautiful night. Bedtime is the worst time for Pumpkin. He hates going to sleep because he knows that Paul and I are still awake. He knows he's missing out on something and it just galls him that we could possibly even consider leaving him out. So he squirms and fusses and cries and generally fights going to sleep for as long as possible.
But bedtime never starts out bad. First step is the pre-sleeping phase. We'll give him a bath, which he usually enjoys. Plus, he winds up peeing in the tub so it means his diaper will stay dry longer. Then we get him in his jammies and read him a book or two or three or four. Baby books are very short.
Finally, we get to the stage where we actually try to get him to go to sleep. This starts out beautifully. You hold your shockingly adorable baby in your arms. You sing to him as you rock him gently back and forth. Many times, he smiles or giggles at you as you quietly hum his favorite song.
It's like the happy ending to a freakin' Disney movie.
Fast forward twenty minutes into the future. You're still rocking your baby, singing that sweet song, as he smiles and sometime giggles. Occasionally his eyelids will get heavy or he'll yawn, but he is most definitely not asleep. He barely looks drowsy. You, on the other hand, are definitely feeling the effects of singing for twenty minutes while rocking a nearly 16 pound child. Your arm and shoulder muscles are starting to burn, and your lower back definitely hates you. As you sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for the 97th time (you started counting, because what else can you do?) you realize that the words have lost meaning. You aren't sure if you're still singing it correctly. You wonder if anyone else would know what you were saying if they were to hear you right now.
But your child is not yet ready to be put in their crib. So you keep going. Another 15 minutes of rocking and singing and mild delusion occur. Right about the time when you feel like you're about to snap in half, and when you really do wonder if twinkle is a word anymore, your child's eyes close. They look so cute like that. It's possibly the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. So you find the strength to keep going for just another few minutes.
After 40 minutes of that god blessed star twinkling its little bloody heart out, you finally are ready to put your child down in their crib. You walk slowly towards the crib. You gently rearrange your hold on the baby, so that you have one hand behind their head. You lift the baby over the edge of the crib and lay them down, centimeter by centimeter, making sure not to jostle them or move too quickly. Finally, you make sure that their little head is facing the opposite way than it did yesterday, so they don't get a flat spot.
Then you stand up and stare down at your peaceful little angel, asleep in the crib.
As you stare, their eyes open. Their face squinches up into what can only be a pre-crying wind-up. Their arms start to flail in little windmills. Their feet start to kick. And they begin crying.
At this point, you have two options. One, you can call your spouse in from the other room and tag them in. After all, you've been at this almost an hour. It's their turn to directly suffer through the beauty of parenthood. Two, you can sit your butt down in the glider and nurse that baby to sleep. Option one has the benefit of involving your spouse in caring for the child. Option two has the benefit of being almost 100% guaranteed to get your baby to sleep. Of course, Option one will likely have the baby crying for another 20 minutes, during which time you won't get anything done. And Option two is startlingly controversial, which means you may not want to talk about it outside the home.
For now, dear readers, that is where I will leave you. Because I've put in my time tonight, my Pumpkin is asleep, and now it's my turn to get some shut eye.
How do you get your kids to sleep? How did you fall asleep when you were a kid? Leave a comment and join in the discussion!
Until next time, friends.
But there are some things that just don't work. Like the sleep advice we got from Pumpkin's doctor. This is the same advice touted by the Mayo Clinic and Kelly Mom (a blog by a certified lactation consultant that I have found to be reliable). The advice they give you is to put your child to sleep "drowsy but awake". The idea is that they will then fall asleep on their own. This process will teach them that their crib is a place to sleep. This process will teach them to soothe themselves and go to sleep on their own without being rocked, held, nursed, sung to, or any of the countless other sleep mechanisms available to parents.
Drowsy but awake is not a good sleep process for our Pumpkin. It is more like a curse, hanging in the air and ruining an otherwise beautiful night. Bedtime is the worst time for Pumpkin. He hates going to sleep because he knows that Paul and I are still awake. He knows he's missing out on something and it just galls him that we could possibly even consider leaving him out. So he squirms and fusses and cries and generally fights going to sleep for as long as possible.
But bedtime never starts out bad. First step is the pre-sleeping phase. We'll give him a bath, which he usually enjoys. Plus, he winds up peeing in the tub so it means his diaper will stay dry longer. Then we get him in his jammies and read him a book or two or three or four. Baby books are very short.
Finally, we get to the stage where we actually try to get him to go to sleep. This starts out beautifully. You hold your shockingly adorable baby in your arms. You sing to him as you rock him gently back and forth. Many times, he smiles or giggles at you as you quietly hum his favorite song.
It's like the happy ending to a freakin' Disney movie.
Fast forward twenty minutes into the future. You're still rocking your baby, singing that sweet song, as he smiles and sometime giggles. Occasionally his eyelids will get heavy or he'll yawn, but he is most definitely not asleep. He barely looks drowsy. You, on the other hand, are definitely feeling the effects of singing for twenty minutes while rocking a nearly 16 pound child. Your arm and shoulder muscles are starting to burn, and your lower back definitely hates you. As you sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for the 97th time (you started counting, because what else can you do?) you realize that the words have lost meaning. You aren't sure if you're still singing it correctly. You wonder if anyone else would know what you were saying if they were to hear you right now.
But your child is not yet ready to be put in their crib. So you keep going. Another 15 minutes of rocking and singing and mild delusion occur. Right about the time when you feel like you're about to snap in half, and when you really do wonder if twinkle is a word anymore, your child's eyes close. They look so cute like that. It's possibly the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. So you find the strength to keep going for just another few minutes.
After 40 minutes of that god blessed star twinkling its little bloody heart out, you finally are ready to put your child down in their crib. You walk slowly towards the crib. You gently rearrange your hold on the baby, so that you have one hand behind their head. You lift the baby over the edge of the crib and lay them down, centimeter by centimeter, making sure not to jostle them or move too quickly. Finally, you make sure that their little head is facing the opposite way than it did yesterday, so they don't get a flat spot.
Then you stand up and stare down at your peaceful little angel, asleep in the crib.
As you stare, their eyes open. Their face squinches up into what can only be a pre-crying wind-up. Their arms start to flail in little windmills. Their feet start to kick. And they begin crying.
At this point, you have two options. One, you can call your spouse in from the other room and tag them in. After all, you've been at this almost an hour. It's their turn to directly suffer through the beauty of parenthood. Two, you can sit your butt down in the glider and nurse that baby to sleep. Option one has the benefit of involving your spouse in caring for the child. Option two has the benefit of being almost 100% guaranteed to get your baby to sleep. Of course, Option one will likely have the baby crying for another 20 minutes, during which time you won't get anything done. And Option two is startlingly controversial, which means you may not want to talk about it outside the home.
For now, dear readers, that is where I will leave you. Because I've put in my time tonight, my Pumpkin is asleep, and now it's my turn to get some shut eye.
How do you get your kids to sleep? How did you fall asleep when you were a kid? Leave a comment and join in the discussion!
Until next time, friends.
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