Happy Crappy Mother's Day!

My mom sucks. 

Today is Mother's Day, and I won't be seeing her or talking to her. I did print out a card and have all the kids sign it, and I did sign it as well, and I did send school pictures. 

Months ago, my mom sent me a letter detailing the ways I had hurt her feelings over the last several decades. The list was not all-inclusive, but went over some of the highlights of our awful relationship.  I responded to that letter in my head, on paper, on my computer, dozens of times, but deleted it every time. My mom and I don't have civil discussions, no one changes their mind about anything, and that's not all her fault. 

Instead, I wrote her a letter I'd never send, right here in this safe space. 

Recently I discovered my family has been getting together and not inviting me, not just once; it is a pattern, one that apparently will continue. At Christmas time, my daughter invited everyone over for Butter Beer and snacks on Christmas Eve. My brothers and mom couldn't attend because they had already made Christmas Even plans - dinner at my brother Phil's house. I don't know if I would have gone had I been invited; Christmas Eve is my favore part of the holiday with the kids' anticipation reaching a peak. But my youngest brother was in town and I may have changed our plans if they had invited me. But they didn't. 

Then a few months later, I found out my sister-in-law had thrown my younger brother a 40th birthday party, and the whole family had gotten together, again, without me. I was crushed; I spent a whole day of work crying between phone calls.  before my work day started, I burst into tears on my husband's shoulder, and my daughter interrupted me to ask me to braid her hair for an interview she had for Upward Bound that day.  I dried my tears, but when she asked me what was wrong, I told her. 

I really couldn't see why they weren't inviting me, other than my mom being annoyed with and disappointed by me, which is completely our norm. Nothing had happened to escalate our mutual disappointment and anger with each other. It was baseline. 

UK Shameless vs. US Shameless

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Image from: http://shameless.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_Gallagher

I'm an unabashed Shameless fan.  I love the US version and am up to date on that. I also love the UK version, but I have not finished all episodes available on Hulu quite yet. After a lot of episodes of both, I have come to the true conclusion that the Brit's version is better, although there are characters I like better on the US version.

I find the UK version to be more real.  Chatsworth Estate IS poverty. Cramped, dingy, neighbors right up your ass. Crime is rampant; in fact, the Maguires (Milkovich's in US version), a crime family, live right next door to the Gallagher clan. The characters are much more down to earth and believable.  Not every one is a gorgeous human being with a perfect body; they look like people you'd see walking down your street, not standing next to a Hollywood star or walking the red carpet.

The Gallaghers may be down and out in the US version, but they have a huge house I would love to have for my large family.

Frank Gallagher in the US version is pretty much just a huge piece of shit most of the time, using his children, not caring for anyone but himself.  UK's version has a lot more nuance and is more than the caricature portrayed on the US show. He has feelings, he actually does care about his children, but is still a piece of shit. He's got the red cheeks, the gin blossom, and greasy hair. William H. Macy is amazing and I adore him, but he looks too good to be an alcoholic.

So, UK Frank wins it for me. As for the other characters:

Fuck your prayers

I am having a hard time working today. I do customer support through chat, email, and phone, and I find myself crying off and on all morning.

I am so hurt and so angry at our government and many of our people. I just find it so disheartening that while our children go to school and get murdered, you are more interested in keeping your guns.

NO ONE HAS EVER COME FOR YOUR HAND GUNS OR YOUR HUNTING RIFLES. NEVER.  Obama had eight years and despite your idiotic tropes, he never took your guns.

You care more about your right to own weapons of mass destruction than you do about my kids' right to go to school without worrying where they'll hide from a shooter. My fucking family members care more about it than they do about my kids, their own kids. It's...sick.

I am so proud of the kids at the school. David Hogg had me sobbing through my stretching at the gym the other day when someone ill-advisedly turned on the news in the fitness room. They are leading the way this time, and I want to hug every one of them. I want to assure them that someone does care about their friends dying.

I saw a tweet suggesting we all keep our kids out of school until our government decides their lives are important. I would support that.  Maybe even just a day. I don't know what to do at this point, but I sure as hell won't be praying for change. Even the mythical Jesus said you have to do more than pray. Pray, then DO. THE. WORK.

Regret-free Abortion

Today is Roe V Wade's anniversary. The other day our shithole president addressed March for Life (butlolfuckyouifyouarealreadyalivingchildorwomanonthisplanetespeciallyawomanorchildofcolor) protest, claiming he gives a shit about the lives of children and women. Women called bullshit, of course.

Women aren't going to stand for his dumbass bullshit, trying to drag us into back alleys for our abortions. And in case you didn't know Dump was a flaccid flip flopper, here's proof he is lying to his redneck anti-woman base.  

So if you believe Dump is anti-choice, you're wrong. I bet there are dozens of women who have expelled Dump's nasty cell clumps from their uteri. I mean, christ on a cracker, we can't have more Don Jr and Erics and Ivankas running around. That's fucking disgusting. 

I have had two abortions and I have not had a single moment of regret. The first guy who impregnated me was abusive, and he was excited about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby, way more than he wanted me. He wanted to marry me. He also barred me from leaving a room when we got into a fight, and pinned me to the wall. He also cheated on me during our brief summer fling. I had no doubt that I would be having an abortion, and I did. I dodged a big bullet with him.

The second time was with a boyfriend that I later married. He supported the decision, and I don't know if he really wanted me to have the baby or not, but it doesn't matter, because I didn't.   No regrets, not a single moment wondering what if I hadn't. Two regret-less abortions. 

The situations were quite different but my decision was not and I am happy I made those decisions. The most harmful thing about the process for me was when I naively went to a Crisis Pregnancy Center expecting them to provide what they advertised, referrals for abortion. Instead a nasty old woman in polyester pants tried to convince me to keep the baby, even sent me a postcard at home, a clear violation of privacy, and called my house as "a friend." She gave me booties for my precious baby, which I threw in a dumpster.

The Bad Christmas

The year before we took in our nieces and nephews, they had an awful Christmas.

Their mom, though she was supposedly working full time and then some, and making tips, neglected to buy them any presents.

She should have gone to her parents. They would have made sure to buy a few things for them, if they knew my sister-in-law had nothing for her kids. But since she was leaving the house every day for 12 hours, they thought she was working (and maybe she still was at that point, I really can't say), and had no reason to believe that she couldn't provide this for her children.

My mother and father in law are raising two grandkids from another sister-in-law, so that Christmas morning the kids began opening their presents. My MIL noticed that my SIL's kids were sitting, still hopeful but sad-eyed, watching their cousins tear into gifts. When asked, my SIL teared up and said she had bought presents, but they had been stolen out of her car in the Wal Mart parking lot. All that was left was a movie for her youngest son - Toy Story 3.

The only gifts they got were what their grandparents got them; well, we had gotten them gifts but we were broke that Christmas and so only got them a few small items from the local thrift shop. The kids came over to my house that evening to play.  Some of the older kids took my daughter's brand new bean bag and tried to hang it from the rafters in the basement and swing on it.  It immediately tore and spilled out millions of staticky, white balls. I got so angry at them for that. I yelled at them. The bean bag was pink corduroy, it was really big, and my youngest daughter loved it. I made them clean up those white balls for over an hour, and I was still huffy.

Later the kids were upstairs and I asked them what they got for Christmas, and they told me they'd gotten pajama pants from Grams and Papa. They recounted the story of their presents being stolen, and I immediately got pissed because I knew it was a lie. I also immediately felt like dogshit for chastising them for breaking the bean bag.

The next Christmas came up, and we knew we had to make that up to them. We got help from the school - two different organizations got gifts for the kids. My beautiful, generous friends bought all the kids gifts. We splurged too much too, and that morning when they came up the stairs, we recorded their faces, so bright and surprised and nearly in disbelief. Three more Christmases and we spoiled them rotten. I tried not to, but I'd go overboard and it would take us several months to get caught up on the bills again.

Finally, this year we scaled it back. The kids are older now and some of them mainly wanted clothes. We decided no new electronics; they are on computers, tablets, phones, etc., enough already. So they each got about five gifts and a stocking. For seven kids, that's still 35 presents. The baby only got a couple, of course (oh, I forgot to mention, my youngest nephew is now living with his dad and doing fairly well. We also had a new baby about 18 months ago) and the kids had their stockings as well, filled with candy and small gifts. We are still behind a bit but will be caught up next paycheck. It was important to us to dim the memory of that last bad Christmas with their mom.  I doubt we succeeded, except inasmuch as kids memories do blur when they are that young.

But even if they never forget that bad day, I hope it will at least be overshadowed by the happier holidays.

Still Lucky

Wow!  It's been four years. I am a bad, bad blogger!

We did get pretty busy with having four extra kids. My last post detailed all the wonderful ways in which we were blessed after we took in my nieces and nephews. We were given a good queen size bed. People brought us groceries. We got help with Christmas presents through two different charity organizations. We'd just gotten stable enough to get off food stamps, but soon figured out we needed that back, so I reapplied and we were able to get about $500 a month in food stamps, which was amazingly helpful.

When we took the kids in, I was not working much; my medical transcription job had been cut severely as doctors began to use voice recognition technology and did not need transcribers. I was down to an hour of work a day or so on that. I got some work doing freelance writing, but it took tons of time and brought me very little money.

A few months later, I went on an interview for a company my best friend worked for.  It is based out of our teeny tiny hometown, and I get to work from home still.  I do have a set schedule, though. The job is in customer support, so I answer phones, emails, and chats, and as we are a pretty small company, I wear a lot of other hats too; proofreader, trainer, organizer, spreadsheet maker and editor, special project manager, etc. Most days I really like my job.  Most customers are fine people, and my coworkers remain cooperative, funny, and amazing in many ways.

To train for the job, which requires me to do support for seven different websites we own, I had to be out of town for weeks.  I'd train for a week with one customer support rep, go home for the weekend, and then train the next week with a different person. I'd rotate back to the start when I had been to everyone's houses. It was difficult to get through, as we only had one van, which I had to take, and my husband was left with seven kids to take care of. Luckily, it was summer by this time and he didn't have to worry about getting them to school, but he did have to get to work five days a week and get them to appointments (when we took in the kids, their teeth were terrible and each one needed at least three visits to pull teeth, fill cavities, etc). My in-laws were instrumental and we could not have done it without them. They babysat, took my husband to work, and helped deal with an outbreak of lice that lasted for months because I simply did not have time to comb through seven heads every night.

It wasn't long after the kids moved in that their mom went to Georgia. I am still not sure why she went, but she rode along with some friends and eventually they left her there, and she's been there ever since, no ID, no car, no possessions.

We organized our large basement so that the younger kids were on one side and the older on the other side.  As they got older, we divided them with boys on one side and girls on the other side.  the basement is sort of separated by the stairway, so they have their own spaces, sort of.

We made do. Eventually, with my job, we stopped getting food stamps. The kids are still all on Medicaid, thankfully. It is still difficult to feed the kids on our budget, but I menu plan and we do go to Family Services when we need to, such as now, right after the holidays. You never know what you're going to get from them; one time we got an entire cheesecake. Usually we get a lot of cube steak, but one time we got sirloin and New York steaks. One year my father in law was able to get a buffalo permit from the tribe and both he and my husband got a buffalo. That fed us for a whole winter and boy did I get spoiled on buffalo burger; it's quite a bit tastier than beef. We just had to pay for the processing of the meat.

The help we get has slowed down, but the school still asks us sometimes if we need snow boots, if we need help paying for instrument rentals, etc.We are still grateful. We are still a family. We are still very, very, lucky.

And if I had a bugle i would blow it

Many of you know that for a couple of months now my husband and I have had seven kids. Our two nieces and two nephews have been staying with us since just before St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s family business, but suffice it to say their mom, my sister-in-law, is homeless and unable to care for them at this point.  There is no one else who could care for them right now, so we took them in.  I grew up in a house where I was told repeatedly “If you get pregnant don’t expect any help from me,” so I sort of came out of that with an unwillingness to help others in these situations.  But that all changed when I had children and nieces and nephews started popping out all over the place. I fell in love with those kids, all eight of them, so when four of them needed a stable place to live, there wasn’t really a choice. Of course they were going to stay with us.

            We absolutely do not have the money to afford four more kids on top of our three, but at least we have room for them. For a whole month they were living in a seedy hotel with ten people, so just having room to play or sit quietly and do homework is pretty awesome for them. We have a full basement, and it’s partially finished. That’s where the kids stay, on a set of bunk beds and a queen-size bed. We could use a couple more dressers and some major organizational supplies (especially for their shoes! My god, the shoes!!!), but otherwise they fit here just fine.

            Where I’ve been so pleasantly surprised is by everyone in our community. When people find out we’ve taken in these kids, they have surprised us over and over with generosity. A woman from the church my kids attend gave us a queen-sized bed. My brother-in-law and his girlfriend brought us a car full of groceries. My mom made little Easter baskets for seven kids instead of three. I talked to their school counselor, and told her where we were really having trouble was feeding the kids, so she hooked us up with the “Lunch in a Backpack” thing. That helped, but we were still struggling to feed these kids, all ages 5 to 10, who seem to be hungry at every moment of their waking hours. So I applied for food stamps, and we were approved for $608 a month. That’s about $150 a week, and all of us are so grateful.

            One evening when the kids were playing outside, a woman who knows their grandpa stopped by and gave us a nearly full platter of Subway Sandwiches, which was perfect timing as they hadn’t had much for snacks all day and I didn’t have any idea what I would be able to put together for dinner.

            The school system also hooked my nieces and nephews up with clothes! They sent three bags of clothes, some old and some new, including shoes, underwear, and socks. My eldest niece got three really beautiful dresses, and they all felt so special with their new things.

            One day, a friend stopped by and gave us a couple of grocery bags of snack foods!

            We have just been amazed at how everyone we know has helped provide for these kids. It matters.  So, so much.

            I’ve taken to making a weekly menu now, and buying groceries once a week. I stock up on bananas, clementines, apples, and pears, and buy the ingredients for the dinners I’ve chosen. I keep ingredients to make our own cookies on hand. All of the kids, even mine, are starting to eat more vegetables and a wider variety of foods. We haven’t gone as healthy as I know we should, but we’re moving that way (the other day, they ALL ate salad!!  SALAD!!).  Our house is so full now! The hubby and I had just begun talking about having another baby when all this happened, but we absolutely cannot handle that now, and that’s OK. Being a presence in these kids’ lives is more important right now, for sure. 

            So even though none of the people who have helped us read this blog, we are grateful.  I will try my best to pay this forward.

 

P.S. Any study or blogger who says having three kids is as difficult as having 6, or 7, or 10, is HAHAHAHAHAHA WRONG. 

           

Working At Home

I've been working at home for about eight years now. I am a medical transcriptionist; I type up reports of your visits to the doctor. Well, probably not yours specifically unless you live in my smallish city and go to a certain hospital. I don't work for a national company; I transcribe local doctors and work as an independent subcontractor for a local businesswoman who owns a transcription business.

Working at home is amazing. One of my best friends since grade school works at home too. I can work whatever hours I need to as long as I get my work done before the 24-hour deadline, while my friend works set hours every day. We both have small children that we have to run to and/or pick up from school. Both of our jobs allow us to avoid daycare expenses.  Working at home is great.

In the real world, that cereal would spill
on the counter, the OJ would end up
all over the laptop, and mom would
find a better place to type her work.

Except when it isn't. My friend and I went to Chico Hot Springs with our other childhood bffs last weekend, and we confessed to each other that we have become no-showering, dirty-clothes-wearing, stank breath, messy haired slobs. Our other friends piped up that they'd love it if they could roll out of bed and go to work. And that IS nice. To a point. My friend said she sometimes went four days without showering. I admitted I almost always sleep in my bra and often wear the same clothes for two days in a row. I never wear makeup.  So my friend, who may have been totally sloshed, insisted we make a pact.  At least four days of our work week (I talked her down from all five days), we will get up and shower or wash our faces. We will fix our hair. We will put on makeup (she even gave me some makeup, since mine is pretty much decimated with four little girls in the house) or at least earrings. We will get dressed in real pants (difficult for me since I have exactly three pairs of jeans, but still doable).

I'd already decided I needed to start caring for myself. Hell, even just changing my underwear and washing my face makes me feel like a new woman, so I started getting dressed every day, even if it was yoga pants, and began wearing earrings again. I've amassed a few pairs as gifts over the years. I'm all about hair flowers, too, so instead of makeup I'll probably be doing hair flowers and earrings.

Another difficult thing about working at home is that there are so many DISTRACTIONS. Especially now that we have seven kids in the house, there is always someone who needs me to do something. Someone wants to read to me--how can I say no to that? Chores need to be supervised, fights need to be extinguished, dinner needs to be served, etc., etc., etc.  So at times, work that would take me four to five hours takes me ten hours. This means I'm distracted during all things.  When I'm working, I feel bad for ignoring the children. When I'm doing something for the children, I feel guilty about not working. It's something I need to work on changing, these feelings, because neither thing gets my full attention.

Even with the distractions and lack of personal care, I love working at home. It's the only way I can work realistically right now, with seven kids, one vehicle, and a partner who works outside the home. I know how lucky I am to be able to do this--but that doesn't mean it's all blissfully rolling out of bed and performing my work until finished, and then attending to the children's needs. It's a mishmashmosh of coffee breath, sock buns, and getting my ears used to sporting earrings again.

I'm trying.

Let's Be Bad, Together.

I've started subscribing to the thought that for feminism to really work and come full circle, women have to care for and support other women. This is hard because our culture has taught us to judge each other as whores, sluts, prudes, thin, fat, ugly, pretty. You know where I am coming from. Fighting the urge when we meet or see another woman and not to compare her to yourself physically and mentally (job, man, etc) is what women do a lot of the time. We have to program ourselves to fight this innate urge to judge our fellow women. This comes to the forefront of my mind tonight because I will be attended a hip hop/rap show where a female group is headlining. There will be big hair, lots of eye makeup and hella cleavage. I am sure to be one of them, as this is part of the fun. The headlining women swear like sailors and talk like men. In a word, as a woman, I jump between thinking the music is super ridiculous to a good turn in the status quo of things. Why shouldn't girls be able to rap about getting laid? About wanting to be tough? Men have been doing this in every form...forever. If the critics of feminism think feminist language is hate speech towards men, they need to think again. Women are just trying to undo the millennia of oppression placed upon them. And if we wanna do it with big hair while trying on your crude lingo? We are going to do just that.

A Virtuous Woman is Above Feelings



A couple of years ago, after a visit to their place, my stepmother sent some stuff home with me for the kids. When I got the bag home and looked through it, among the toys and clothes there was a magazine. My stepmom had written on it that it was for my mother-in-law. I looked at the cover, and something jumped out at me. See, the mag was called Above Rubies, which is a publication "to encourage women in their high calling as wives, mothers, and homemakers."  Oh, brother, I thought, no WAY am I letting my MIL see this crap.  I threw it away.

Recently, though, I came across another magazine while I was waiting for some work done on our vehicle. I skimmed it for any particularly offensive articles. Above Rubies followers believe their god should control their bodies, not their own selves here on earth. (Contraception? Goodness, no! Submission to husband in everything? Of course, silly billy!) and instead I found one that made me stop in my tracks. It wasn't offensive, exactly, but it was disturbing. The article is titled "I Almost Gave Up!" and is about a woman who read AR and threw her birth control away. Her second child was a sick baby who had jaundice and a milk allergy. The next two babies had kidney problems, and one of them needed surgery. Her husband lost his job during that time. Obviously this was all very stressful. So the wife asks her husband if he would consider having a vasectomy, which he would not. She begged him, then, "Well, how about just a temporary preventative method? I really need a break. I can't do this anymore."

Let's stop there. This woman has been through incredible stress and anxiety; probably she'd been sick with worry for YEARS. She's coming to her husband, her partner in life, for support.  She's telling him very clearly she wants a break from pregnancy, that she needs time to recover.  So how does her loving husband, her spiritual leader, comfort her?

He refuses to have sex with her until she changes her mind. Not, mind you, because he's a DICK, but because "He was not willing to compromise [their convictions]."

Then, this woman who obviously needed comfort and support, changed her mind. Her kids began asking her when she'd have another baby, and "I realized I was the only one wanting a break." 

THAT. is the part that hit me the hardest. She believes her own opinion doesn't mean shit. Her feelings are invalid. I'm all about reproductive choice for women, and not just when it comes to abortion. If a woman wants to have 19 children, who are we to tell her she can't possibly be happy having babies every year? Because we don't know what that woman is thinking. But here, we do know what she was thinking. She was thinking she needed time for emotional recovery. She was thinking her husband might support her in her crisis. She was thinking of her own personal emotional and physical health! She's the one carrying the children in her body, but her emotional torture means nothing even to her.  Gawd, that's just so fucking disheartening.

Celebrating International Women's Day Informally

I began a post for today, International Women’s Day, and I was going to list all the crappy bills being introduced in Montana that will hurt Montana women. That’s sorta my schtick, being pissed off, and I definitely am.  But I have already had bad news today and I didn’t want to bring myself down any further.  So instead, a happy list! I did some good things for women and girls over the past year, even if I couldn’t be involved in a formal IWD event (there are none here in Billings as far as I know).

 

1.       Being real. My daughter, 8, asked me how babies are created, and I told her! I had been planning a speech and I was going to get library books and it was going to be a whole thing.  Instead, one evening we were lying together in my bed talking, and she asked me. No one else was around, I had the time, so I explained how babies are made and born.  I believe her words were “Huh!”, and since then she has told me several times that she wants to have kids, but she wants to adopt, since she doesn’t want to go through “all that stuff.” I’m not sure if she means the sex or the pain of childbirth!  This led to a funny exchange a few weeks ago:

DD:                  Mom, do you have to do, you know, to have a baby?

Me:                Do you mean sex? 

DD:                 Yeah, that.

Me:                Oh.  Well, no.  there are other ways (I go on to explain about sperm  banks and surrogacy and etc.)

DD:                 Can you do that?  I want a sister.

Me:                …well, I could.  But Daddy and I could also make a baby by having sex, like we talked about, right?

DD:                   I guess…but do in PRIVATE and shut your door!

Me:                 …we usually do. 

DD:             Well, this one time in Spokane, I saw you and Daddy and you were naked and kissing.  I was supposed to be taking a nap.

Me:          Are you ever going to let me forget that?!?!  Also, next time maybe you should just take a nap.

2.       Girl Scouts.  The same DD mentioned above came home from school one day last fall with a Girl Scout flyer.  Could she join?  Sure, I said, and signed the slip saying I’d be willing to volunteer. That quickly turned into me being a troop leader, and I’ve been loving it!  We’re currently doing a project involving gathering healthy and diet-specific foods for our local food bank. 

3.       Volunteering.  My Brownies and I have volunteered at the Billings Food Bank twice as part of our project, and I have to say I love it, and am looking for more opportunities for us to volunteer around the community.  I never really learned as a kid how important it is to just help people—even if it’s doing a favor like babysitting for a friend or giving someone a ride to work, so now I’m doubling down, trying to make sure my Girl Scouts know it is important that we get involved, that it’s not only fun for us, but it helps someone, maybe a little girl just like them.

 So yeah, it’s been a depressing year with the War on Women still going strong even though voters told the GOP in no uncertain terms last fall to back the fuck off women’s rights.  But there’s still work to be done, and I think one of the most important things we can ever, EVER teach our children is compassion.  Empathy.  Teaching them to give a shit about people, not things or gadgets or money, but people. If the human race is going to be as amazing as The Doctor gives us credit for, we better get on that compassion thing.

My agnostic nativity

I’ve always adored Christmas.  When I was young, I would go crazy with anticipation.  We were fairly poor growing up, but my parents refused (I know now) to get public assistance.  My dad worked in backhoeing, and when the ground was frozen there wasn’t much for him to do.  Some weeks the only income we had was the $20 my mom got from helping an elderly man in his home, Mr. Parsons.  I was so thankful for Mr. Parsons.  Still, there were days when all I had to take for lunch was a couple slices of bread.  My mom doesn’t recall that and doesn’t necessarily think it’s true, but I recall it clearly.

            Still, at Christmas, we were spoiled rotten.  Through the year we didn’t get sugared cereal or pop or candy or toys.  Somehow, my parents were able to give us four kids fabulous Christmases.  We’d come down to a living room practically bursting with gifts.  And we got up so early that by the time it was light, we were done opening and ready to start playing.  I’ve had difficulties with my parents over the years, but I will always be grateful to them for making that time of year so magical for me.  They must have saved all year, bought presents throughout the year, and/or gone into credit card debt to do it.

            I was the kind of kid who believed in Santa Claus, hard, and could not be convinced otherwise.  It was the magic I loved.  Santa could be at my cousin’s house early so she could open her presents on Christmas Eve, and later come to my house so we could open ours Christmas morning.  The writing on the tags was different because Santa was in a hurry, for Pete’s sake; this was not proof enough to disbelieve.  I used to wish that I was one of our fish so that I could see Santa Claus just once.  But I NEVER EVER wanted to peek and find my Christmas presents.  I am all about surprises remaining surprises, the buildup and anticipation, all that.

Boobs and betrayal

I follow a lot of parenting pages and blogs.  Most of them are natural parenting type pages, and nearly all of them espouse breastfeeding, which I am all for.  I breastfed my first child for a few months, but I didn’t have any support, i.e. someone to show me what to do, how to do it, the pitfalls and how to avoid them, etc., so we only made it for two months, and then I pumped for another month.  Some of the bloggers I follow get a little bitchy about BFing, though.  It’s clear to me that breast is best—it provides the best of the best nutritionally and bumps up immunity.  It has lasting benefits.  But I also think if a woman can’t or even just doesn’t want to breastfeed, we should all shut the eff up.  As long as the baby is being fed, we should back off.  Still, if I have another baby I’ll (probably) definitely give it another whirl.

                I added the qualifier after reading Florence Williams’ book Breasts:  A Natural and Unnatural History.  Williams, who received her MFA through the illustrious MFA program at the University of Montana, breastfed her children.  “I was happily nursing my second child, blithely backstroking through that magic bubble known as the mother-infant pair-bond, when I stumbled upon a news report…I read that scientists were finding industrial chemicals in the tissues of land and marine mammals as well as in human breast milk.”  Being a journalist mama, she wrote about it, sending off her breast milk to Germany to be tested for flame-retardants, which hang out and build up in our fat, and have been shown to cause all kinds of problems in lab animals.  Her breast milk tested positive, higher than she expected, and 10 to 100 times higher than women in Europe.  Williams’ milk also tested positive for a jet fuel ingredient, among other chemicals and exposures that come from electronics, furniture, and food.  And that got her wondering about the ecosystem that is the human breast.  “What toxic load had I already bequeathed my children by nursing them?  What did it mean to their health, and to mine? Was it still okay to breast feed?  How did these chemicals interfere with our bodies?  Could we ever make our milk pure again?”  Breasts store fat, so they also store fat-loving chemicals.  They’re permeable, reflective of everything we eat, drink, touch.

                The book made me a little uncomfortable, which I take as a good sign.  Williams is a chatty writer, so she makes the scientific stuff understandable.   In parts it was a bit much for me, but not so much that I didn’t want to keep reading every second.  I particularly love the way she started the book off.  She took care to mention a theory of breast evolution—basically, it goes like this:  Men like big breasts, and find them useful.  Big-chested women were chosen for mating, the big boob gene got passed down, and well, there you have it, that’s why most men prefer a large dairy section.  Large breasts are a better indicator of age, the theory goes, so our ancestor males knew that once the boobs started sagging, either with age or after pregnancies, the males would look elsewhere for a mate.

                And then, to my delight, she pretty much pshaws that whole theory, pointing to glaring holes:  Frances Mascia-Lees, an anthropologist Williams spoke with, thinks the last fifty years of study about breasts and attraction has been a bunch of bull.  If men had so much to do with breast evolution, if they prefer women with large and firm breasts, why would our boobs be at their largest and firmest while pregnant and breast feeding?  Why is there so much breast size variation, and why are smaller-boobed women just as good at nursing and parenting in general?  “Just suppose for a moment, gentlemen of the academy, that breasts evolved because she needed them, not because her club-wielding cave man did.”  Ha!  I love it. 

                But that was all in the first few pages.  Now.  Basically, we know nothing about breasts.  What causes breast cancer, what REALLY causes it?  Young breast feeding mothers get less of it, older breast-feeders like me, a little higher.  The only thing that has been actually, without a doubt proven to cause breast cancer is radiation.  And the most commonly recommended screening tool?  Radiation, in the form of mammography.  Williams goes into a lot of things that I’m not going to do justice to, but I found this review that touches beautifully on some of the science.  What this book did for me, though, was make me more aware that I need to be more aware.  It’s exhausting, all the steps we have to take to get away from plastic, for example.  Carcinogens are found on the back of shiny receipt paper, for crap’s sake.  It’s incredibly depressing, but we’re on a need-to-know basis.  And it turns out we really do need to know. 

 

Cross-posted at Bark.

Lice suck. Blood.

It was a full year ago that I first dealt with the dreaded head lice.  I wrote about it, foolishly thinking after that one day, that initial shampoo and brush out, and follow up, that the problem was gone.  Oh, me.  The lice were not in fact gone, and everyone in our family got it.  I got used to the bugs, and they didn’t scare or creep me out as much as I had thought they would, but they lingered. Oh, lord, did they linger.  I used RID on two of my kids and myself to get rid of them.  I scraped my scalp daily for weeks after Jo found a shitload of bugs on my head.  With the long hours I was working then, and my partner working evenings, nearly all of the nit combing went to me.  The lice stuck around for a long time, though I washed their sheets, wrapped up their stuffed animals in bags and put them in the basement for weeks, and tried to keep up on the relentless combing. 

                We didn’t truly get rid of the lice until we moved from Spokane to Billings, MT.  My mother-in-law has a bad-ass nit comb like I’ve never seen.  My partner told me stories of how hard his mom used to comb their heads with it when they had lice.  She never used any RID or anything on their heads, just combed religiously.  After Mom-in-law got ahold of my kids, the lice were gone. 

Sorry, I know it's gross, but you need to know what they look like. 
My daughter's hair is not that thick, so they're easy to spot when
they're adults.  SICK.

                Until a couple of months ago, that is.  My sister-in-law and her 4 kids moved in with my in-laws, who live only a few blocks from us. My in-laws are raising an additional 2 kids, so my nieces and nephews are here often.  They spend the night, they hang out at the Y together, they nap together, they play together, they use each other’s brushes and wear each other’s clothes.  One morning my 4 year-old nephew came upstairs, groggily scratching his head.  Oh, no, I thought.  I checked his head, and sure enough, nits (eggs).  Since then the kids have been passing the damn lice around.  Since the first episode in Spokane, I knew I wouldn’t use pesticides on my kids’ heads again (ugh, how could I do that in the first place?!  Know better, do better).  Well, my son had a few nits and I had my partner buzz his head.  Gone.  But then, my littlest girl with her fine, curly hair got them.  I began looking into natural remedies.  My cousin had told me to wash their hair with vinegar.  Apparently it loosens the grip of the lice and the nits to the hair.  The louse will lay an egg on the individual hair, near the scalp, and sometimes the nit comb won't even get it off.  I ended up going through their hair meticulously, grabbing each nit with my thumb and index finger and sliding it all the way down off the hair.  Then I’d crush it.

                So if you are dealing with lice, here’s my advice:  DON’T use Rid, the shampoo OR the spray.  I tried this method, but it was implausible.  It sounded great, but in practice it sucked ass.  I put that much soap on my little girl’s head, and I couldn’t brush through it, let alone blow dry it.  Fuck that method.  Mayonnaise in the hair, followed by a shower cap and left on overnight, is supposed to be a good method. But I also read that lice can hold their breath for over 8 hours!  Gross.

                What you need to do is get your infested person in the tub.  Wash the hair however you want, then put in some conditioner.  I read that coconut smell is yucky to lice, but who knows.  I went and picked up some Suave, that cheap shit.  Slather the hair.  Comb it first with a brush or comb to get the tangles out, and have the kid lean up against the side of the tub.  Lay a white towel on your lap (so you can see the buggers), and get your comb out.  I also use a paper towel on top of the towel, to wipe the comb off.  You’ll want to crush the little fuckers when you find them, even the nits.  And that’s hard to do on the towel, so when I find one I grab the paper towel and put it on the hard edge of the tub and crush the louse with the handle end of the comb.  I divide my girl’s hair and put half up in a little clip while I work on the other half.  Comb through the hair, making sure you get the comb right down on the scalp, because that’s where they like to hang out.  The big egg-layers can be as long as your pinky nail.  When you’re done combing, rinse the hair and then blow dry it.  The lice apparently do not like the heat.  Also, don’t bother washing the crap out of all the bedding or freezing the stuffed animals.  Just toss them allin the dryer for 20 minutes on the highest heat.  The heat will help—lice can’t survive super hotness.    

                Just being vigilant is the best advice I can give you.  Learn about the lice life cycle.  If you get all of the big egg-layers out, the ones that hatch won’t lay eggs for 10 days.  And don’t worry—lice can’t jump from kid to kid.  They can’t even live very long if they are not on skin.  Don’t be a-scared, just be aware. 

"A Million Hours Left to Think of You, and Think of That"

*I am not an expert. I am just a person sharing a piece of my story*

I have only told three people outside of counselors that I self-injure. The counselors, surprisingly, or perhaps not, both had the same nonchalant attitude about it, like if they showed it was a large concern, it would become a bigger problem. Maybe this is how they are taught to treat it? And they always ask: “Why do you think you do it?” and I give the real and honest answer, “To make a physical manifestation (yes, I say that. I’m a poet) of the pain I feel on the inside on the outside.” Seeing blood or feeling a burning pain from the emotional or mental distress, in whatever way, makes it seem less serious BECAUSE it can be SEEN. The pain can be visualized. I’ve placed it outside of myself. 

When pain isn’t tangible, it seems less real. And when what you are feeling doesn’t seem real, you feel insane. So, there came a point for me when I needed the injury, the wound, the blood to feel a bit more ok.

It started small. I’d bite a nail to a jagged edge and run it on my skin until it burned. Then, until it bled. I have a scar from the time an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t let up on a lecture that before I knew it, I was flying to Washington D.C. with a significant cut from digging and digging the night before.

I found myself finding relief in restaurant bathrooms during stressful situations, or what I now know to be panic attacks.

I changed my method over time to get faster blood results and, honestly, the Washington D.C. dig had caused a seeable scar. I had to draw blood, feel pain, and not scar and the new method allowed me to accomplish this goal.

Self-Injury is not about a cry for help. It’s self-therapy. If it was a cry for help, self-injurers wouldn’t work so hard to hide it. This is my own opinion. It is unhealthy self-therapy, but it is what it is: an extensive symptom of my diagnosed depression and anxiety.

According to the Self-Injury Foundation, “research shows that the main reason people self-injure is to regulate intense emotional states; that is, to feel better” and that scratching, cutting, burning, biting, facial picking and other self-harm behaviors are exhibited by those who self-injure.

I haven’t self-injured in a few weeks, but I am glad I found the Self-Injury Foundation website. The information there has given me perspective about why I self-injure. Reading that my self-injury isn’t because I’m “crazy” and am, in fact, self-medicating in an unhealthy way has helped me understand my motives more.

If you, or someone you know, self-injures, please visit www.selfInjuryfoundation.com or contact your doctor.

Drinking is dumb

I don’t drink alcohol very often.  I used to, though.  I started drinking in high school when I began dating an older dude who introduced me to the wonders of Black Velvet.  He also introduced me to heartache when he dumped me and began dating another girl, a girl I considered a friend.  I then took up drinking to dull the pain of a broken heart, as well as to escape being pulled in all directions by my parents and their terrible, ugly divorce proceedings.  I drank pretty heavily for the next seven or eight years, but I never liked the taste of it—any of it.  Beer I hated the least, so that was my beverage of choice. 

                While I was drunk, I slept with at least fifteen dudes.  Some I still don’t know if I slept with,  but the clues pointed me in that direction.  I stopped drinking when I met my first husband.  Most of my life had been spent trying to win the love of a boy, and that’s a different story, but once I had one, I didn’t drink much.  The older I got, the worse my hangovers got.  A few years later, though, my husband and I split, and even though I was happy about that, I was nervous.  I was back in the dating game, and I pretty quickly got burned.  And then I started dating a great guy who drank, so I went through another phase of drinking.  Eventually, though, I slowed down and stopped, because I still never liked drinking.  I liked being drunk, but I hated it going down and I hated the next day.  Even if I drink a little bit, I feel like crap for a whole day.  So I pretty much stopped.  I drank a little in graduate school, mostly because EVERY.  SINGLE.  FUNCTION. outside of school involved everyone getting sloppy drunk, and I suppose I wanted to fit in, and to fit in I needed to be chatty, and I’m not a Chatty Cathy by nature.  So even though I only got tipsy three or four times during my two years of grad school, I still drank way more than my usual. 

                And today, I don’t drink for all of those reasons mentioned, plus one more:  Someone I love very much is an alcoholic.  And I am so pissed at ALL THE ALCOHOL IN THE WORLD, by which I suppose I mean the culture we live in.  For fuck’s sake, I can’t read a Facebook status, tweet, blog post, whatever, without the casual mention of alcohol.  It’s fucking ridiculous.  “Had a rough day, lol, going to get my drink on.  Watch out, yo!”  “Mommy needs her bottle.” 

We couldn't help but wonder when we'd get
our own gin blossoms to giggle about.

                I really do not understand the alcohol culture.  Go out for dinner—drink!  Stay at home with your partner—drink!  Take out the garbage—that deserves a martini!  It pervades EVERYTHING.   And here’s a thing I don’t get:  Mention how your kids make you want to drink, and you’re a normal mom.  Mention how your kids make you want to take a toke, and by god, you’re going to get blasted and possibly reported to the authorities. 

                FUCK THAT.  Our society tells us to go out and drink, drink, drink your life away.  You’ll look cool, you’ll have that extra burst of confidence, you’ll be able to dance, you’ll get up the nerve to call that girl or boy, you’ll be friends with the cool people, the next day you’ll be able to tweet about how totally wasted, sauced, sloshed, tanked, pickled, and fucked up you were.  At the same time, we’re pissed beyond all belief about the person who gets five DUIs.  We’re outraged when a drunk fight breaks out and someone is hurt or killed.  With good reason, these anger feelings.  But it’s a very mixed message we’re getting.  Drink responsibly.  Talk about an oxymoron.