Bryan got a new job. Shhh! According to him, if we talk about it out loud it might not come true. Even though he signed his employment letter thingy and passed a drug test and background check (whew! Those aliases really come in handy when you’re living a life of crime) we’re not supposed to say anything about it until he’s been working there for, like, 20 years. (more…)
Happy birthday, Bryan! (See father’s day post for mushy gushy love stuff.) You rock. I’m lucky. Glad you were born, blah, blah, blah. Super glad, I swear. It’s not my fault you were born so close to father’s day and now I can’t think of more good stuff to write so quickly.
Super Cute.
Watching Bryan become a father has been one of the highlights of my life. The first time he changed a diaper was when Lena passed some meconium in the NICU within her first hours of life and the nurse just handed her to him and walked away. It was fricking sticky meconium and the man just figured it out on the fly. Sink or swim. I remember when my now 10-year-old niece was born and we visited her together for the first time. We had been married for almost 2 years and we were on our way to being ready to start trying to have a baby. I thrust that 3-day-old baby at him despite his desperate protests of, “I’ll practice holding my own kid!” With my sister videotaping the scene, Bryan just kind of let the baby flop around on his chest and, if you watch that video, you can hear me saying shrieking, “She’s gonna cry, Bryan! Hold her up, Bryan! Get her comfortable, Bryan! Watch her neck, Bryan!” Sure enough, the baby wailed and Bryan failed the test. It was a silly test, but I couldn’t help but wonder.
If I knew then what I know now, I never would have had a doubt. Those first days and weeks and months he was thrown into the thick of things and he picked up all of the essential skills with ease and grace. Those skills that we can measure are one thing, but seeing him develop all of those intangible good-father skills has been the most amazing thing. And he treats me pretty well, too. I’m sure treating the mom right is an essential component of fatherhood that will come in so handy for these girls when they’re older.
Happy father’s day, Bryan. You have truly mastered this gig. I couldn’t be prouder to call you my husband, and I couldn’t be happier for the girls who get to call you daddy.
The gov’mint’s about ta give us a check, y’all!
We’re going to West Virginia unless our van costs a billion dollars to fix. Melissa, I know you’re worried about us getting accosted by some hilljack iff’n our van busts up on the way, but don’t worry. We’re taking precautions. First, we’re going to stop off at a gas station about an hour east of here where we’re sure to be able to find a Bush/Cheney ‘04 bumper sticker as well as any number of these awesome bumper stickers. If we break down in the hills, we’ll slap those puppies on real quick-like. Also, we’ve been watching Squidbillies enough so we will be able to affect a native accent and attitude if need be. And the most important thing that will keep us safe? The fact that Bryan and I could pass for brother and sister. Nothing puts a god-fearing hillbilly at ease like incest.
Typing all that makes me wonder how my brother and sister-in-law have survived there. Tracy, do the people know you volunteer for Hillary’s campaign? Watch yourself.
Happy birthday to lots of people today. I know 5 people IRL who have a birthday today, so I assume that most of you who read this have a birthday today, too. Happy birthday!
It could be guacamole. God bless avocado season. I regularly pay $1.50 for avocadoes, so I’m in heaven when they’re 66 cents! Or it could be frosting from my birthday cake yesterday. My lovely husband and children baked me a white cake with chocolate frosting. My favorite. I’m special. I’m 33 now, which is how old Jesus was when he died, in case you were wondering. I could be at risk for crucifixion. I could be. You don’t know. I’m definitely at risk for leaving the house with frosting or guacamole on my face. That’s a given.
I had a good birthday until my stupid van started smoking. Effin’ machinery. Pontiac piece of crap. We’re supposed to go to West Virginia this weekend to visit my brother and his family and see The Weber Brothers
play. For free. They played at my brother’s wedding. I have a picture of them, but I can’t make it show up in my stupid blog. Effin’ blog. Do you hear me, Dawn? I say, I can’t get a picture to upload. I was yelling that, but I didn’t put it in all caps. Just trust me. So, we assume the mechanic will want to be paid for fixing the stupid van, which might mean no free Weber Brothers for us since we’ll have to spend the billion dollars of gas money that we were saving for the trip on fixing the stupid van. I hate budgets. Except for the part where they help us be debt-free, budgets suck. And they’re lame.
Now I want more guacamole and I’m going to have some because our budget allows for unlimited avocadoes when they’re 66 cents each.
This morning as cd 101.1 was playing Yellow Ledbetter as the soundtrack to Maya’s snack time, I listened from the kitchen as she sang along. *sniffle* A little tear ran down my cheek as I whispered, “That’s my girl. That is my girl.” Though, I don’t really know what she was singing since the lyrics are famously indecipherable.
I spent much of the 90s trying to find the lyrics to this song. You know, before the internet and before Eddie Vedder would ever talk about any song. Ever! What does it mean? What is he saying? It was tough to sleep at night. I was certain the lyrics would give me a peek into the pain that made Eddie Vedder so damn irresistible. See, he mumbles because of the pain. The pain that could be healed by me, if only he’d let me. Left unsatisfied, I decided to get a tattoo of that little guy from the Alive single in order to experience physical pain that would match Eddie’s emotional pain.
I’m sure Maya knows on some child-like enlightenment-type level what that song is all about because she was actually at a Pearl Jam concert in utero. It was July 2003. I was 8 months pregnant and after 11 years of trying and failing to get tickets to a Pearl Jam concert, Bryan and I finally got some tickets. General admission lawn tickets, but still. I didn’t care that it was going to be outdoors in the sweltering Michigan humidity, with a bunch of sweaty, smelly idiots who were all so young that they didn’t even have one single piece of flannel hiding in their closets, and were only going to the concert to be all retro and stuff. Their favorite PJ songs were probably Alive and Jeremy and Black. Ugh. I hate those songs, like any true fan would. If it’s been played on the radio, then we don’t like it. We don’t. Because we’re better than the radio. Just ask us, we’ll tell you.
No, I didn’t care that I would have to share the hill with pseudo-fans. Well, I didn’t care until we actually got there and they took our blankets at the door because, “Pearl Jam concert goers tend to start fires so we don’t want blankets in there being piled on the fires,” and I looked at the huge, smelly crowd of people standing on the very steep, very muddy hill and said, “Huh.” I couldn’t imagine any scenario in which I would be able to lug my giant belly up that very crowded hill. I could, however, imagine that once I got up there it would only take the wind from a pothead’s exhale to send me tumbling through the crowd to the bottom of the hill, with my considerable girth leading the way. I said, “I’m not doing that. No.” And then we found a bouncer and told him that I was told on the phone that I’d be able to sit in the handicapped section. They slapped a handicapped bracelet on our wrists so fast, we didn’t even miss a single opening mumble. Eddie came out on stage and said, “Hey, mmbl fuble phrmbl DETROIT!” and we were there, in the comfort of folding chairs on level ground, in the very last row of real seating, 20 yards in front of the stupid hill! It was awesome! I felt like such a rebel and I decided that it was just as exciting to dupe the bouncers as it would have been to be in the mosh pit with a bunch of flannelless teenagers.
If you weren’t given the gift of lyric deciphering in utero by the gods of grunge, please enjoy this person’s guess. I think they’re as close as anybody can get:
Now watch this one and tell me you don’t want to lick the sweat off of his face. Ok, now I’m walking away from the computer because I just spent 2 hours going, “Watch this one you guys!” and Lena and Liberty are going to kill me. I’m going to go find my copy of Singles on VHS and rewind the scene with Eddie, Stone Gossard, and Jeff Ament in it over and over and over again.
And gets very giddy when she’s about to lay a Draw Four on your sorry ass. I know you can’t hear it, but she’s giggling like one of those viral video giggling baby things. This child is never happier than when she’s causing an opponent emotional pain during a heated game of Uno. Even if she doesn’t win, it’s enough that she made you draw, or skipped you, or reversed it away from you. And then you will hear about it for the rest of the day. “Remember when I skipped you? That was a good play! You couldn’t even go!” And when the tables turn, and you think you’re getting one up on her by giving her a Draw Two, she says, “OK, but you have to smell my feet!” She will punish you. She will punish you so hard.
Lena and Liberty and Bryan are all sick sickies today. Send patience. And listen to Handlebars by Flobots. Yummy for your brain.
I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. I can’t remember the last time I had a fever, but it must have been in the 80s because, darn it, this fever has set off such a hankering for peach Hi-C. A hankering that is destined to go unsatisfied. Unless somebody out there has a bomb shelter set up with all kinds of Hi-C and Spam and whatnot. That would be awesome.
My mom didn’t usually buy Hi-C or anything fun like that when I was growing up, but when I was sick, she would buy me a giant can of my favorite peach drink. That, and a can of Planters cheese balls. Or cheese curls, depending on which texture I was after. I can still remember the smell of those cheese balls when I peeled the foil back. Yum.
I’ve been dreaming about peach Hi-C in a can, opened on 2 sides (to avoid the glugging when it’s poured) with that little thing that used to put triangular holes in the many varied tin cans that held our liquids in the 70s and 80s, and popsicles for my sore, sore throat. I called Bryan at work this morning at about 7:00 and tried to communicate to him with my nearly non-existent voice that I would need him to bring me some popsicles on his way home or else he shouldn’t bother coming home. Only I couldn’t really talk that much, so I didn’t get to threaten him and be all dramatic. So I just used my scary voice to say, “Redrum” over and over and he got the hint. Then I staggered back to bed and dreamed that he couldn’t find any popsicles anywhere because they stopped making them when they stopped making peach Hi-C. After waking up from that nightmare about 23 times, he finally came home with my precious yum yums.
So sad that I’ll be missing the Chair is Art show at Gallery 202 tonight. Bryan will be there with the girls because Liberty worked on a couple of chairs with her art class. Some of our friends also have chairs in the show. It will be fun and I hate to miss the fun. Boo.
Aw.
Three days after Lena and Liberty were born, Columbine happened and I thought, wow, these kids are seriously f*cked, what kind of a world is this?
Happy Birthday, Lena and Liberty! And since you don’t read this blog because Mommy swears in it, let’s talk about me now.
Birth story alert! If it had a title, it would be called “Why I Chose a Homebirth the Second Time Around.”
Lena and Liberty were born 4 weeks early after 8 weeks of bedrest and many, many lies by my perinatologist. He was a gentle, grandfatherly type who never wore his scary white coat and always sat down next to my bed instead of towering over me. I loved him and trusted him instantly. He was a big fat liar. Baby A (Lena) was head down, engaged in the birth canal ready to go, which usually indicates that a vaginal birth is a definite possibility. Baby B (not Lena) had a little bit of a problem in that her esophagus didn’t go all the way down to her stomach. Scary, but fixable I was assured. The perinatologist used this little defect to convince me that I should have a c-section: “You know, sometimes these babies also have a tracheal problem and if you give birth by c-section, I’ll be able to keep Baby B connected to you by umbilical cord long enough so we can create an airway for her. Otherwise, she could die.” Sign me up. I didn’t even question why the pediatric surgeon or the neonatologist didn’t tell me about this little piece of information. Are you wondering why they didn’t? It’s because it wasn’t true. I didn’t find out that it was a lie until I was strapped down on the operating table waiting for the gas to put me under. Dr. Neonatologist came to my bedside and said in his broken English, “I here to see what wrong with Baby B-if she need surgery today or can wait a few day, or if she have no airway, Baby just die.”
‘Scuse me?
“If there no communication between trachea and lung, nothing we can do, Baby just die.”
Mmkay. I’m not leaving this hospital without my Baby B’s airway, does everybody understand that? Let’s just forget for a moment that the whole reason I consented to this c-section was because Perinatologist told me that if there wasn’t an airway, the c-section would allow time for Neonatologist or Pediatric Surgeon (or maybe God? Now I don’t even know who he meant was going to fix this if it happened) to create an airway. And what about poor Baby A? She has been a very good girl, getting herself into a perfect position in order to come through the birth canal. She was planning on coming through the canal! She could have gotten herself all jumbled up and flipped breech or transverse or any other way that pleased her, but she listened to her mommy all those months and put her head right on my cervix like a good girl.
I didn’t say any of those things. What I really did was cry and yell at everybody to just stop, stop, stop. “She’s alive right now. Let’s not do the c-section! We don’t have to do it right now. I’m not really in labor right now!”
(Here’s a secret: I wasn’t really in labor, but I was so sick of being in the hospital that I just wanted it overwith. I had been contracting every 2-3 minutes for 8 weeks and they weren’t getting more intense and they weren’t changing my cervix; I just had an irritable uterus that wanted to contract constantly so as to throw everybody into a tizzy and make us all think that I should stay in bed. Forever. Perinatologist told me that when the contractions changed and became painful that I should let my nurse know and we would then do the section. On Friday, my ultrasound showed 2 healthy babies who were “both around 6 pounds” [more lies]. On Saturday, I was 36 weeks along and sick sick sick of being in the hospital, and fairly confident that my babies would be healthy so I lied to the nurse, “Um, I think I can feel these contractions now.”)
Again, I said, “Stop! She’s alive right now! Let’s just keep her in there.” Then they ushered in Grandmotherly Nurse to pat my hand and tell me that it would all be ok. My arms were strapped all the way out to my sides, crucifixion-style, so this move meant to comfort me was a bit of a stretch. All it did was remind me how f’ed up the whole thing was. So she patted my hand, 2 feet away from me, and then she put a mask over my face. I remember thinking that the mask would give me oxygen: They think I’m hysterical and I’m going to pass out if I don’t have enough oxygen…Is oxygen supposed to make me this sleepy?
I woke up several hours later in a lot of pain, with a lot less blood, a scarred uterus, and no babies by my side. Oddly, my first concern was the placenta, “Did they remember to send the placenta out to get tested?” Heaven forbid we didn’t find out if our girls were identical or fraternal! My second thought came immediately, “Is Liberty alive? Does she have an airway?” Yes, they assured me. “And Lena?” Yes, yes, yes. Both of them had a bit of trouble starting to breathe because of a lot of fluid in their lungs (stupid c-section). Liberty was on a ventilator. I couldn’t even think about it.
People were telling me how beautiful they were. My sister, my mother, my husband. A nurse brought me a Polaroid of each of them with their names, weights, and lengths written on the bottom. Lena was 4 lbs. 12 oz., 18 inches long and Liberty was 5 lbs. 1 oz., 18 inches. Um, ultrasound? You suck at guessing weights. I think a carnival worker could’ve done a better job. If not, I at least would’ve gotten a stuffed animal if the carnie was as far off as you were.
Honest to God, when I looked at those Polaroids I thought, “How in the hell does anybody know how beautiful they are? They have tape all over their faces, holding tubes in their mouths. People are lying to me again. I have ugly babies and nobody wants to tell me.” Then I realized that it was only Liberty who had a tube. I had looked at the same picture twice. Lena’s picture was grainy, but everybody was right, she was beautiful. Once I could look around the tube, I could see that Liberty was indeed beautiful too. The tube pissed me off because things that scare me tend to piss me off, but if it was helping her breathe, then fine. After looking at the precious Polaroids I went back to sleep.
It would have been a good sleep, too, if not for Resident who kept coming in and pushing on my stomach. Didn’t she know I just had abdominal surgery and she was very rudely putting way too much pressure on my wound? You would think that medical schools would teach people something like, “When a patient has just had surgery, try not to put pressure on the body part that was recently cut open.” Absurd. I was hooked up to a button that would deliver 1 shot of morphine every 8 minutes or so. Each time Resident came to push on my belly, I clicked that morphine button a hundred times. Resident kept telling me that it would only work once per 8 minutes, but I was banking on it malfunctioning. I made a deal with it that if it would just deliver 8 shots of morphine every single minute then I would love it forever and buy it anything it wanted. ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick.
Resident didn’t like the way my uterus kept gushing blood all over the place. No wonder I was so sleepy. Blood loss kind of takes the wind out of your sails. She gave me 2 transfusions and called it good. Could I see my babies then? Sure, but I had to be careful not to touch them. Fabulous. They’re lucky I was high, or else I would’ve really been rude.
Nurse wheeled me and my stretcher into the NICU where I called both my babies by the wrong name. I said, “Hi Liberty,” and Nurse said, “That’s Lena.” Oh. On the way to Liberty’s isolette I concentrated so hard, telling myself that I should really try to call the next baby by the right name. It was about a 20-foot walk and I think I fell asleep on the way. At any rate, I said, “Hi Lena,” and Nurse once again corrected me. Oh. I think the reason it’s called General Anesthesia is because you Generally have no idea who you are or where you are until it wears off. I don’t know, but that’s what I believe. Maybe it was the blood loss. Or the morphine. I don’t really know for sure, but my brain did not work well until all of my drugs wore off. Maybe 6 years later.
So Different Nurse then wheeled me back to my room, where she actually expected me to hoist myself up off of the stretcher and put myself in my bed. Ha! ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick. I got myself into my bed and then I promptly asked for something in which I could vomit. I did not want to vomit. I was in quite a lot of pain and I did not, did not, did not want to use my stomach muscles for the purpose of hurling into a tiny vomit catcher. I didn’t know I had any will power because when I’m doing something I shouldn’t do, I always say, “Gee, I wish I had will power so I wouldn’t do these things,” but I’m telling you when that puke was on its way out of my stomach I forced it all back down by the sheer power of my will. That might have been the happiest moment of my life.
Nurse left my husband and me in my room all by ourselves. It was about 7 hours after Lena and Liberty were born and I was still feeling guilty for faking real labor. I told my husband the truth and I asked him if he was disappointed in me. I can’t really remember what he said, but I know that he usually knows the right things to say so I have supreme confidence that he assured me that he was indeed proud of me and not at all disappointed, for Heaven’s sake. Or maybe he said he really had a lot of yard work to do and that would’ve been a nice way to spend a Saturday. Either way, I don’t remember.
After Bryan left, I started to talk to my belly because that was what I had been doing every night for the past eight months, and then I remembered that my babies weren’t with me anymore. And I wondered if they realized that I wasn’t with them. And then I cried and cried and pushed my morphine button until I finally fell asleep, which probably took about 10 seconds, but it felt like a long time.
And I wouldn’t change a thing. Except for the whole birth story/birth defect/scary/sad/angry stuff. Other than that, I wouldn’t change a thing. These girls have been amazing and I’m truly lucky to be their mother. If time could go more slowly, I would be ever so grateful. Nine years went by in a blink. Another 9 years and they’ll be 18. Where’s my morphine?
Happy anniversary, baby! Even though we are born of 2 distinctly different kinds of crazy, I’m thrilled to say we’re making it work. One of us was born into the solidly passive/aggressive kind of crazy, where a child’s soul is slowly sculpted by the chisel of lovelyness followed quickly by the hammer of doom. The other of us was born into the more aggressive/aggressive type of crazy, where the child’s soul is yanked out and shattered in one swift movement, leaving the child to carry around these shards of soul, trying to put them back together while simultaneously using them to stab the people they love most.
*cough*
Ok, maybe one of us was born to both kinds of crazy, but that’s not the point! The point is, you’re my best friend and I’m thrilled that you think I’m worth hanging around for. You continue to surpise me with the depth of your love for me and the girls. Thank you for always being steadfast and wise and loving in all of the ways that matter most. I am the luckiest dame I know. I love you more every day. Happy anniversary.
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