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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.