Crazy Is As Crazy Does

June 30, 2005

I come from a long line of crazy women. Not crazy in the eccentric way like my father in law. No, I mean crazy in the should-be-strapped-down-to-a-table-and-have-electroshock-therapy kind of way.

Today I joined the illustrious women in my family.

I was at my OBGYN appointment and the doctor asked me how I was, how the post partum depression was. I answered that I was fine. And just to illustrate how fine I was, I burst into tears. I am fine. But I’m not fine.

I’m not angry and crying anymore. I don’t walk through the house slamming things down on tables and randomly yelling at innocent people, though that is more a testament to my self control than a lack of desire to do so.

If you were to see me out grocery shopping, I would seem surprisingly normal. I wouldn’t yell or make a scene, even if you cut me off with your cart and grabbed the last package of hamburger buns. I might even smile and make a joke about it. But inside I’d want to tear your face off and then stomp on it for good measure. So this isn’t normal? People always comment to me that I am so “calm” and “peaceful” and “patient” and they want to know my secret. I never know what to say because those words do not describe how I feel.

I don’t know how to describe how I feel now, other than a resigned sadness. It’s like a aura that hovers in the air around me, almost palpable at times.

The doctor asked me if I had friends that I talked to. She seemed a bit worried when I asked, “Do you mean in real life?” and responded, “Well, I don’t mean imaginary friends.” That made me laugh because I never thought of the people I know via the internet as imaginary per se. But now I will, because it makes me seem even crazier. And hysterically laughing and crying simultaneously at the doctor’s office, will make her rip out that script pad faster than the speed of light.

Well that and when she asked me what I like to do in my free time. I didn’t want to mention my imaginary friends again or even mention the internet, because nothing screams crazy like “plays on the internet”. So I said shopping. Which would have been a fine answer, I think, except that she asked shopping for what? And I blurted out, “Groceries!” Good God almighty why would I say that.

It’s a good thing I didn’t mention the internet, because that would have seemed crazy.

Ascots, The Newest Fashion Accessory

June 29, 2005

My father in law is recovering from his open heart surgery better than anyone could have hoped. He even turned down the good drugs the day after his surgery. That generation is strange with it’s inability to accept narcotics with pleasure. Rob walked through the corridor of the intensive care unit seeing room after room of people, mostly men, mostly older, in obvious discomfort. He was afraid of the condition in which he would find his father. His worry was for nothing. Lou was sitting up straight in his bed, hands behind his head, watching tv.

I think he was probably complaining about something.

We’re a lot alike in that regard, him and I.

Neither one of us is easy to live with, and that was never more apparent than when we lived at my inlaws house for four months while we we were trying to buy our first house. I was pregnant with my second child and had terrible morning sickness (a misnomer for all day long sickness), it was a very hot summer, and the smell of food cooking would send me running to the bathroom.

My father in law wakes up very early in the morning. Very early as in 3:00 am, closer to the time I go to bed for the night than when I wake up. After he drinks his very weak coffee made from a combination of recycled coffee grounds and fresh ones, he begins to make dinner. Yes, dinner for that night. When I would wake up at a perfectly respectable hour like 8:00 am, there would be my dinner sitting on the counter already cold, wrapped in plastic wrap, staring at me while I ate my corn flakes.

It happened that this particular summer my brother in law’s garden had a rather prolific crop of zucchini. I made the error of telling my father in law how delicious the zucchini was the first time he prepared it.

From that day on,for four long months, I woke up every day to find cooked zucchini on the counter. I begged my brother in law to just go out to the garden and stomp on the plants, to stop the never ending zucchini hell in which I was trapped. It has been ten years and I have not eaten zucchini since. Just writing this makes my mouth water and causes me to dry heave.

It is entirely possible that he was trying to drive us out of his house as quickly as possibly with the never ending zucchini cooking. In the end, he gave us several thousand dollars we needed towards our down payment to hurry things along.

***************************

Recently the town in which my inlaws live, built a new huge senior center. My father in law was telling Rob about it, and how big it was, and all the activities that would be going on there. After he was done, Rob said that it sounded like fun and asked when he was going to head over there.

My father in law looked incredulously at Rob and emphatically stated, “I’m not going there. It’s full of OLD people!”

We laughed at this, because when you are 80 years old, I think you can safely call yourself old. There really aren’t too many people older than you. But he won’t go. He doesn’t want to hang out with old people who have nothing better to do than to talk about how they are falling apart bit by bit, unlike himself. Come to think of it I already do that, maybe I should go and play pinnacle with the geriatric set. It would have to be better than Candyland with the preschool set.

My father in law has recently developed a fondness for ascots, and wears them everyday. He developed this penchant for them after he had his cataract surgery and could see his reflection clearly for the first time in 25 odd years. I imagine that it would be shocking to wake up one day and suddenly see yourself 25 years older. He looked in the mirror for the first time after his surgery and screamed, “When did I get wrinkles?!? What happened to my neck?!?”

I asked my mother in law what she said and she told me she was too busy running away to hide so that he didn’t get a good look at her. So now he just wears his ascots to the grocery store and fancies himself quite the ladies man.

He is an eccentric, crazy, old kook. And yes, I say that with love. If I don’t have a mildly offensive nickname for you, it means I don’t like you, and therefore have a really offensive nickname that I dare not utter in your presence.

**************

The day after his open heart surgery, Lou was talking with Rob’s mother on the phone while one of the nurses tried in vain to take some blood. She kept poking and poking him with the needle and was having trouble getting any blood. My father in law got annoyed and said on the phone, “I have to go. This nurse thinks I need a transfusion, she can’t get any of my blood.” Then he hung up, setting into motion a series of events.

My mother in law heard transfusion and panicked.
She called her daughter, Rob’s sister, who panicked even more.
Rob’s sister called the doctor, who was completely baffled.
The doctor called the nurses, who were confused.
Except for one nurse, who vaguely remembered the conversation.
She went to his room and reprimanded him like a child, because “you don’t joke about such things when you are old, in the hospital, and have just had major surgery.”

He told her that no one has a sense of humor. Because clearly this is the perfect time to make such a joke… when else would it be funny?

Rob and I agree. We are the only people, aside from him, who found it remotely funny.

Oh and when Rob visited him in the hospital, his father had a dozen eggs for Rob to bring home. Why? Well doesn’t every occasion call for giving your youngest son some random food item that was on sale the previous week, or month, or even a year ago, in the case of the frozen hostess cupcakes or the mini snickers bars in the Halloween themed wrapper we get in August. It is a tradition that we fully intend to pass on. So Miles, be forewarned.

I am so thankful that crazy old kook is doing well. I’m thinking of buying him an ascot in one of these fabrics. Embrace the crazy, I say.

Given this man’s personality, it wouldn’t surprise me if he out lived the lot of us.

Paint, Not Just For Walls Anymore

June 28, 2005

Paint, Not Just For Walls Anymore
Originally uploaded by the big yellow house.

Guess what I did this weekend?

You can’t see the huge drip of paint that fell off the ceiling right into my eye and sent me screaming and running to the kitchen sink. I don’t think that there could be any worse paint job than painting a ceiling, and a wainscott ceiling is the worst of them all.

Click on the photo to see the before and on-the-way-to after. I need to finish painting it this week, in between being a basball shuttle service, so that we can tear up the ugly carpeting and put down the tile floor that has been sitting in boxes in our house for well over a year now.

And then I can welcome my new chair home and into the room.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame, Over and Over and Over Again

June 27, 2005

No, I’m not in prison, just living in my own personal baseball hell.

In the morning… baseball CAMP! In the late afternoon, baseball practice for two different All Star teams at two different times! I feel like I am living in the YES network… all baseball, all the time! yes, I am shouting! Look at my overuse of exclamation points!

I did take some time during the morning baseball camp to go to the Hitchcock Furniture store. There I spied a chair that I fell in love with. And it with me. I called Rob and told him that the chair is beckoning for me to come back and get it. Even though I am miles away at my own home, I hear it’s pitiful lament. The best part, I told Rob, is that it is on sale. Now it only costs a small fortune.

CONVERSATION OVERHEARD AT MY HOUSE SATURDAY NIGHT

Me: What is today’s date?
Rob: The 25th I think.
Me: Oh, our anniversary was yesterday. Happy Anniversary.
Rob: Happy Anniversary! Why do we always forget?
Me: I don’t know. Maybe because we didn’t have a wedding we don’t feel connected to that date.
Rob: We never forget the anniversary of our first date.
Me: Or the first time we had sex.
Rob: Maybe we should just celebrate that from now on, our sexaversary.
Me: I just don’t think that is as socially acceptable.
Me: It’s a good thing that we married each other, I think there are other people who would be really upset about a forgotten anniversary.
Rob: Did you really know that it was our anniversary and you were testing me to see if I remembered?
Me: No, why would I do that?
Rob: (laughing) Because there is some really big present that you want and you want to guilt me into buying it?
Me: Nah, you should know me well enough by now that if I want something I just talk about it ad nauseum. Then you finally get sick of hearing me talk and you tell me to just go and buy it.
Rob: So what is you want?
Me: I’m not sure yet, I’ll let you know.

Ummmm, honey, I know what I want now.

How To Deal With A Clogged Milk Duct

June 23, 2005

1) Discover breast is very sore, even after nursing baby. Determine that a milk duct is clogged.

2) Force infant son to nurse some more in an attempt to unclog duct

3) Massage sore breast.

4) Put hot compresses on sore breast.

5) Put hot compresses on sore breast, while massaging.

6) Use google to find out what else can be done for stubborn clogged milk duct.

7) Force infant son to nurse while standing on head in modified yoga position while doing the football hold.
Swear often.

9) Try hottest compresses that you can stand. Suffer first degree burns on nipple and surrounding breast area.

10) Massage breast some more.

11) Squeeze breast and nipple as hard as you can.

12) Give a moment of thanks that no neighbors can see into your windows due to the summer foliage and therefore are not witness to your walking through the house feeling yourself up all afternoon.

13) Greet husband at the door demanding he squeeze your nipple, hard.

14) Tell husband to stop smiling, this isn’t about sex.

15) Assure him that no, it also isn’t like the “pull my finger trick” either.

16) Find a white spot on nipple and determine this is the cause of all milk duct troubles.

17) Get a needle and repeatedly stab nipple in hopes of unclogging milk duct.

18) Engage in even more colorful swearing.

19) Marvel at the amount of things you bump sore breast into.

20) Force infant son to nurse more, this time with him in modified yoga headstand.

21) Invent new swear words.

22) Have husband tell you to stop playing with your breast, words you never thought you would hear in this life

23) Sit on couch clutching cold beer to breast.

24) Tell husband he has no idea how much it hurts.

25) Have husband respond that he is sure it hurts and how could he have any idea the magnitude of the pain since he is just an inferior male.

26) Tell husband not to forget that.

27) Have husband assure you that he knows you never will let him forget.

28) Clutch sore, burned, bruised, stabbed breast in hand.

29) Decide to just go to bed and hope poor breast is better in the morning.

30) Chug beer as sleep aid.

Happy Blogoversary* To Me

June 22, 2005

The post that started it all: June 22, 2004.

It has been a year now that I have had this blog. Incredible really.

It struck me that people who know me in real life would probably surprised at some of the things that I highlighted about my life and some of the things I have left out. Everything that I have written in true, but it could never be the whole truth.

It has been a fun year. To recap the highlights… I was pregnant, drove with all my children to Disney World, did lots of grocery shopping, did lots of laundry, survived the plague that I thought was signaling the end of the world, gave birth, had some post partum depression, bitched and moaned about all the people in the world that I came in to contact with, and painted, a lot.

I was going to write something about all the people whose blogs I regularly visit and have had the privilege of getting to know this past year, but by god that is a daunting task and I really should clean up this house because my husband is returning home from L.A. early in the morning and I don’t want him to have a coronary as soon as he walks in the door. As it is I am eating a bowl of faux ice cream** out of a Winnie the Pooh plastic bowl, because all the rest of them are in the dishwasher washing right now.

He loved California the first day he was there. He said the weather is incredible. But I guess everyone else thinks that too, because there are too many people. I’d hate it. Unless we somehow became millionaires and could buy a normal sized house with a yard. The people he met there had an almost perverse pleasure in telling him how much their tiny houses cost. Who in their right mine spends $600,000 on a two bedroom, one bathroom house with no yard? Must be something in that California air that makes people crazy too. Unlike us sane New Englanders who live in huge drafty old houses and take a perverse pleasure in telling people how much we spent to heating them last year, that would be almost $5,000.

You know that you have a good marriage when after almost 11 years of marriage you miss your spouse when they are away and can’t wait for them to return.

Hurry home, honey, the remote control is missing. And yes, I have looked for it, sort of.

Also, there is something is stuck in the disposal and I have an unnatural fear of sticking my hand down the drain, even when the disposal is turned off. I fear that it will turn itself on like a scene from a Stephen King novel.

And I have had my fill of those home improvement shows that you detest.

But back to my blogoversary.

All of you people over there on my sidebar are the ones who have made this fun. You have made me laugh, made me think, and at times made me cry. I’ll probably never meet most of you, but if you were ever in the neighborhood I’d have you over for coffee or a beer. Or both! Coffee flavored beer!

And here today at the big yellow house, proving the more that things change the more they stay the same, we are setting up the pool. And no, I don’t think it is filled yet.

* I don’t know if this is an actual word.
** IBS and lactose intolerance are the pits

Six Months, More Or Less

June 21, 2005

It is unbelievable that half of a year has already passed since you were born. I find myself watching you everyday as you learn and discover new things and I want to commit them to memory. I know that by next month I will have forgotten what you are like right now.

The way you like to inhale and sigh really loudly so that you never fail to scare me into thinking that you are choking. Or the way you jump so enthusiastically in your jolly jumper, that you end up bouncing off of the trim in the doorway and spinning around. The way you hate to fall asleep and will scream for an hour every night while I try to settle you down. Nothing works, nothing makes you happy, but yet every night I feel compelled to try the same things. You just don’t want to allow yourself to fall asleep. Yes, even the screaming I don’t want to forget.

I hope I remember the way that your eyes light up when your siblings come to play with you, and your deep belly laugh when they tickle you. I don’t want to forget the way your brothers run to you at the first sound of displeasure from your mouth, and how that always makes you smile. I can only hope they always treat you with as much love and compassion when you are two years old and destroying their things. Of course they usually will pick you up and then come and find me no matter what I am doing. And they always seem a bit surprised that I don’t want to hold you while I am using the bathroom.

You have a special place in our family as the youngest. I feel happy that I don’t have to store all the memories of your babyhood and childhood myself. Your older siblings will be able to tell you stories of what you were like when you were a baby. You will probably be thirty years old and I will still refer to you as my baby. I promise not to do it in public, or at least to try not to.

You still don’t sleep through the night, not by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s okay. I have full confidence that you will one day. Even though there are times in the middle of the night when I think, ‘For crying out loud, just go to sleep already.’ Mostly I savor the moment and rub your small head.

I never want to forget the way you you crawl around on your stomach . I love the way that you pull your legs up underneath you so that you are in a squatting position, like a frog. Then you try to hop, though you often just end up in the exact same position you were in.

I know that it won’t be much longer that I get to see that toothless grin of yours. Soon enough there will be some little white buds poking up out of your gums and it will hurt when you bite my shoulder.

I have just started giving you cereal and baby food. So far you haven’t been impressed. Though you did like the taste of birthday cake frosting Rob gave you this weekend, so perhaps you are just picky. Oh goody! I am not sure how much food is actually making it into your stomach. I put a spoonful of cereal into yourmouth, you push it back out with your tongue, and then I try to scrape it off your face with the spoon before you smear it everywhere with your hands or feet. Yes, feet. You think they taste yummy covered in cereal.

Last week you had your first experience with a baby teething biscuit. You loved it, except you would drop it and scream so hard that you wouldn’t notice us trying to hand it back to you. So we would have to stick it into your mouth like a plug.

The next day, you had a rash all over you face. I’m not positive it was from the biscuit. It could have been from you dragging your face across the carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in days since the vacuum was broken. It could have been from getting pelted in the face with sand at the windy beach while you slept.

Things you like:

eating paper that you find on the floor, this includes ripping pages out of books and magazines
jumping in the jolly jumper
crawling on the floor
your pacifier

Things I like:

that you can entertain yourself for short periods of time
the way your eyes light up when you see me

Things you dislike:

sleeping
laying down
the airplane noise when I try to “fly” the spoon of baby cereal to your mouth
being strapped in your carseat
the back of my head

Things I dislike:
that you are growing up
that I will never remember it all

Because All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

I now have a Flickr account too.
You can click over there on the sidebar to see them.

In Which I Realize Life Is Like Junior High

June 18, 2005

To my lovely next door neighbor,

Today you told my husband he was mean. You demanded that he apologize to your son, not for a particular incident, but rather overall mean behavior.

You are right, he is so very mean.

It was mean of him to volunteer to coach a team that no one else would. A team that would not even exist if he had not stepped forward.

It was mean of him to leave work early three days per week and sacrifice his Saturdays in order to coach.

It was mean of him to ask the boys to at least call and let him know if they aren’t going to come to the game, because there is quite a bit of thought and planning that goes into the batting order and field positions. Last week only seven boys showed up for the Friday evening game. That makes nine boys who didn’t come or call. We had to borrow two boys from the other team. I would have called all nine of those boys when I got home and asked for an explanation, but he didn’t do that because he is mean, unlike me.

Or, perhaps you were referring to his interactions with the boys on the team. It was mean of him to forbid the boys from leaving the dug out and going to buy food at the snackbar during a game. God knows going without junkfood for a couple of hours might kill them.

Likewise, it was mean of him not to let the boys play whatever position they want to play whenever they want to play it, including his own sons. Perhaps next time he’ll let 6 boys play first base simultaneously, really the team couldn’t do much worse.

Perhaps he was mistaken about what this coaching job would entail. Because my husband has no desire to have a 12 year old best friend. If you want someone to to baby your twelve year old, I suggest coming and doing it yourself. And frankly at 12 years old, being told to “walk it off” if you are hit in the leg with a ball is appropriate. In the words of my infamous 10 year old, “It’s a baseball, not a bullet. You’ll live.” Nothing warms my heart like my 10 year old cynic.

It was very nice of your husband to play coach for the day last week when my husband was away. I told my husband he needs to be as nice to the boys the next game. He should let our two boys play every inning and play whatever position their little hearts desire, the way your husband did with your son. Because apparently you can be unfair and still not be mean.

My husband told you that he would be happy to apologize to your son if he had truly hurt his feelings, because he would never want to hurt a twelve year old. I told my husband that he could do that over my dead body. We don’t always get everything that we want in life. That is just how life is. At twelve years old your son should be able to face that fact. And, as his mother so should you without calling to complain that my husband is mean for not granting your son’s every desire.

You might have heard me outside in my yard when I was grilling last night. My 4 year old kept stealing slices of cheese that I had laid out to go on top of the hamburgers. I finally yelled, “Stop it! I am mean. You have two mean parents. MEAN MEAN MEAN. You better get used to it!” And then I cackled.

I thought about it later and realized that was probably mean of me. So when I drove by your house and saw that you were out in the front yard working on your flower gardens, I waved, but you didn’t wave back. You were looking right at me, but perhaps you didn’t recognize me. I know that there are so very many people who drive green 15 passenger vans, and pull out of my driveway. That’s why I honked the horn, repeatedly.

I know you didn’t ignore me on purpose. That would be mean.

Your next door neighbor,
Chris

PS- My mean husband had no part in this letter and would probably be horrified to know of it’s existence.

So I Married A Lunatic

June 17, 2005

Sometimes I think the phone changes words, adding to voices inflections that don’t exist and putting meaning behind words that was never intended.

He says: The weather is great here. It’s so nice and peaceful.

I hear: I don’t have to listen to your whining and complaining, and I don’t have to listen to those loud children or crying baby either.

He says:The hotel is nice. It is right on the beach. When you are on the balcony, you can see miles and miles of beach line.

I hear: I am standing outside on the balcony, with my binoculars, oogling women jogging down the beach… topless.

He says: I went out to this fabulous restaurant with some co workers. The food was incredible.

I hear: I am so glad I don’t have to eat your cooking. No matter how many ways you prepare chicken, woman, it is still chicken. I get to eat with interesting fun people who have interesting fun things to talk about, not silly baby stories or stories about online friends I have never met. And they are not wearing what is essentially pajamas, pretending it is real clothing. Nor do they have spit up all over their shoulder.

He says: Then we are going to go out for a few drinks.

I hear: Then I am going to get drunk so I can dull the pain of my life with you and talk to attractive women who have probably brushed their hair in the past 24 hours. And these beautiful scantily clad women will think everything I say is so intensely interesting.

He says: Is something wrong? Are you having a bad day?

I hear: Good Lord, you ungrateful woman, what is your problem now?

He says: Blah blah blah

I hear: You suck. You suck. You suck.

Thank God he doesn’t travel much anymore. I hate phone conversations.