Tissue STAT!

I hate those moments of unmitigated stupidity. Unfortunately I have these moments more regularly than I probably should. This morning, while driving, I was so thrilled at seeing the sun after weeks of rain and snow, I rolled all the windows in my car down to scrape off the snow and allow the sunshine in. Unfortunately, one of the windows was the sunroof. I never did things like that before having kids. Before I had kids, everything on my body seemed to work properly. Since I had kids, every part of my body has somehow gone awry. Anything that can leak, does, any logic or knowledge that I once possessed gone! I remember when I was a kid all the old women having tissues tucked in their sleeve, and thinking ‘who cries so often that they always need a tissue nearby?’ Looking back, I realize they were my age! I rarely cry, yet I am always leaking somewhere! My nose always runs, without any instigation, my eyes always tear up, without cause, I pee when I sneeze, laugh, or cough with any vigor. Nothing works properly anymore. Body parts that were not even involved in the making of these kids seem to be broken as a direct result of giving birth. How does this happen? Moreover, why no one feels they should tell you ahead of time? I am absolutely going to tell my kids: in fact, it will be in great detail! If I haven’t scarred them for life, I didn’t do enough… Something tells me I will always do enough to scar them for life.

The "towel discipline"

When I was a kid, parents were encouraged to hit their kids; “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as it were. Now that I’m a parent, I look back on those days as Camelot. This was a beautiful time, when a parent neither knew nor cared to know, who started what? Any noise or commotion resulting from sibling rivalry resulted in an immediate whooping with the ‘belt’. This must be where the term “fashion and function” originated. Unfortunately for my father, my brothers and sisters were the last five of his ten children, and much younger and faster than he. We would scatter and hide (faster than cockroaches in a lit room) whenever we heard a belt unbuckled. Subsequently, the “towel punishment” ensued: A new method in the 80’S of disciplining your children more effectively, without hitting. My mother read an article about this new method and decided we were in desperate need of a more effective discipline, as dad could never catch us with his belt. The basic premise of this method of discipline was as follows: each time a child misbehaved he or she would incur 15 minutes of standing on a 1’ X 2’ towel, until you reached an hour. Once you hit an hour on the towel, and you still didn’t behave, it became 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, etc. By the end of the first week of this new discipline, my brothers and sisters and I, each had in excess of 36 hours on the towel. Therefore, at any given time during the course of each day there would be anywhere from 1 to 5 kids standing on various towels scattered about the living room. Basically, we were a live version of sibling rivalry, in surround sound. When we learned that any time used for bathroom breaks was deducted from our “towel time, we rebelled by taking our bathroom breaks on the towel. Fortunately, our united urination did end our “towel punishment” in the living room… Unfortunately, we lived in Florida, and were now all standing on our respective towels, for each hour of punishment owed, plus a few more… outside, on the front lawn. Suffice it to say, we were not known as the coolest kids on our block.

The neibor thinks I'm stalking her

The lady down the street thinks I am stalking her. It was a misunderstanding that could easily have been resolved, had she just let me explain. Instead she kept staring out the bay window staring at me in horror. Really! Who wouldn’t stick their head out of the door to find out why some woman in her car was yelling, “I see you! Come here! Don’t you ignore me young ladie!!!, in front of their lawn? And why on earth would anyone put the ‘silhouette’ of a dog on their lawn as garden décor anyway? I sat in my car yelling at what I thought was my dog, for a good fifteen minutes before I realized that she hadn't moved,I thought she was ignoring me! When I finally noticed the next door neighbor watching me from her front window, not to mention, the manner in which she was looking at me, (I could almost hear her screaming “Abner, Abner”, like Mrs. Kravits on the television show Bewitched)! Honestly, she was looking at me as though she had just spotted a six foot Dodo bird on the roof across the street. I got out of my car to first, get a better look at what I thought was my dog for a quarter of an hour, and second, to explain myself to this woman. Who obviously had no taste in garden décor or a sense of humor for the lady screaming at said decor for what appeared no apparent reason. Unbelievable; really unbelievable. I would have been rolling on the floor at that! Needless to say, she has taken the long way out of our housing development ever since our misunderstanding.The dog siloette is presently missing, it's where abouts unknown at present...

Giving Birth

I’d like to say when I learned I was pregnant it was the most wonderful moment of my life. I’d hoped it to be tantamount to those Hallmark movies you see where the woman is looking at her husband in doe-eyed bliss, glistening with unshed tears of joy. She is glowing from the warmth of the fireplace that her big strong man has just finished stoking, demurely telling him the stork will be bringing them a beautiful new life to love and cherish soon.

For me, the moment I learned I was pregnant, was more of an emotionally unprepared epiphany. Unlike those afterschool television dramas; I was bent over the toilet, returning the Mexican dinner I had eaten the night before. My bare buttocks exposed indecorously in the air, not having had the time to finish one morning ritual before rushing to start the new morning ablution acquainted with early pregnancy. During my Olympic precision-projectile vomiting, I realized it had been some time since my last menstrual cycle. Due to my catholic up-bringing, I was thoroughly trained with militant due diligence in all anti impregnating tactics, and had amassed an impressive collection of both birth control products as well as pregnancy kits that boasted the earliest detection of the pregnancy hormone, in the event a ‘day after’ birth control method was necessary.

As soon as I was able to return to the original morning ritual, now armed with one of the many pregnancy tests in my arsenal, I soon learned of the unplanned, yet imminent blessed event. Again, as any good catholic girl (who missed the point of no return for the “day after” pill) I screamed NOOOOOO! Which apparently is ‘wife speak’ for no need to knock, just come rushing in to the bathroom I am occupying; This, of course, being the moment my husband learned of his impending fatherhood. Needless to say, me with my regurgitated food laced hair, and wild eyed ranting of horrified recollections of Rand McNally like scribbles all over my mother’s breasts and belly, was not the reaction my husband imagined my having to the continuance of his lineage. I sat on the toilet clutching the urine soaked pregnancy test stick that had just ended my carefree unencumbered lifestyle forcing myself to take in this untimely pregnancy.

I was told that morning sickness usually subsided after the first trimester of pregnancy; that is not true for everyone. Some women have morning sickness all day and night throughout their whole pregnancy. Guess which kind of morning sickness I had… yep, right up until the birth.

Speaking of giving birth, I have what is known as child-bearing hips, which is just a nice way of calling someone a fat-ass. If I were to wager a guess, I would think a fetus would interpret such roomy accommodations as their own little Camelot and feel no obligation to come out of the womb in the customary time frame of the nine months allotted them. I believe this, because when it was time for my bundle of joy to join the outside world, she wouldn’t budge.

At ten months and one week into my pregnancy, the doctors had to concede my aforementioned guess as a real possibility and induce labor, as there was no indication of the fetus vacating the premises any time soon.

I believe the term “miracle of birth” was originally misquoted from some ancient undocumented language that said” the miracle is that you don’t kill your spouse during birth”, alas another perfectly worded term abbreviated and mangled, as though a group of preteens playing telephone were responsible for its accurate conveyance.

You must be wondering by now how my miraculous moment had come to pass. Imagine if you will, an appendectomy. This appendectomy however, will be detached without any sedation or medical paraphernalia to aid in its removal. This particular appendage is on the precipice of rupturing poisonous toxins throughout your body. You are told by the doctor, this organ must be removed within just a few minutes or it will infect your body irreparably and perhaps kill you. Keep in mind you are with a doctor that feels there is no time for anesthesia and inexplicably has no equipment to work with other than his great big latex ensconced hands. Remember, without a scalpel, the only way to get to the infected organ is to go through an aperture in your body and yank the organ out with your doctor’s great big oversized hands.

Congratulations! You’ve just given birth to 10 pound appendix and all you had to do is have your lower body ripped apart like a bag of chips. At this point you must be grateful it’s all over and you survived, after all, nothing could be worse than what you’ve just been through.

Try urinating.

I was told that the pain of birth would be forgotten over time; as it happens, that is not accurate in my case. I remember every egregious moment, each violation of my body be it the internal violations perpetrated by the 10 pound fetus permanently wedged into my bladder for the last four months of pregnancy. Or the overzealous doctor that felt the need to reach in my lower extremities and give a tug whenever he felt the baby wasn’t moving with the appropriate alacrity.
I have never forgotten how this excruciating pain came to be. Since the ‘blessed event’ my husband will forever be, in my mind, some amalgamation of a blue collared worker and an Indian named ‘Man attached to evil stick’. I have said goodbye to the stomach of yesteryear that once lay flat. I have whimpered the iconic words of Julio Iglesias “to all the shoes I’ve loved before,” certain in my recollection, these were the words he meant to sing. I even forgave ‘Man attached to evil stick’. But nothing will ever diminish the dreadfulness of giving birth.

The indentured playdate

I hate this new age of child rearing; somewhere there is a masochistic yummy mommy that decided kids play dates and parties should now be inclusive of the parents. In my opinion the only palatable reason for buying overpriced plastic for someone else’s kid, is when I am relieved of my offspring for at least three hours. Today countless parents are having indentured play dates with other embittered parents all wishing they knew who started this nonsense, if you ask me, needlessly. It’s moments like this where I can’t help advocating the urgency of legalizing Marijuana to the other parent’s. I’ve got to be honest here, I am completely baffled why the head of the PTA did not lift me on her shoulders and throw confetti in the air in a resounding assent to my edict. Perhaps I am just unable to read the inevitable approval of my suggestion, due to her facial muscles having been botoxed to within an inch of her life. As it turns out, my suggestion of obtaining a big fatty and lighting up behind the garbage shed is not acceptable behavior. She says this to me while taking out her ‘Zanax filled’ aspirin bottle and popping a few milligrams of serenity. The other mothers nodding in agreement to the absurdity of my thoughts while mentally tallying the size, shape, and milligram of every antianxiety pill being popped, patiently waiting for PTA mom to slip into the powder room to quietly bum a couple for themselves.

Diary of an inappropriate mother

For me, motherhood is more of a selective identity. This could be why my sanity is always in question by people who are in positions of authority. I got a call from my son’s teacher last week, asking me to explain the punishment he had gotten for fighting with his sister. According to Mickey, his punishment for this offense was, ‘seeing mommy naked’.

Let me explain; I was readying my underwear for the day’s events and my stance put my son at eye level with my loins. The door flew open and in charged my 8 year old boy. He began his emotionally charged plea recalling all the newest wrongs leveled against him by his sister in an effort to hide his own transgressions. It was close to Christmas and he looked so pitiful. I decided not to punish him in the traditional sense, and said the now infamous words “let’s just say... seeing mommy naked is punishment enough..." Sadly, no matter how I explain this to most people, there’s really no perspective in which I come out looking good; Hence the perpetual questioning by people in positions of authority...and the low body image...