Ah, The Joys of Womanhood

WARNING:  This post is basically all about periods and the things that can go wrong with girl parts and the things you have to do to fix them, so if you are a guy, you probably won't want to read it.  Also, I may talk about shitting myself.  I don't know if that's a deterrent or a draw, I don't know what you're in to.  Not here to judge.

Anyway.  I am a lucky lady with a condition called endometriosis, which is fairly common and occurs when the cells from the lining of your uterus grow other places and cause all kinds of problems.  I'd go into details but I don't want to and besides, I've come to the conclusion that the medical profession doesn't know how to deal with it anyway.  I've had years of treatments, two surgeries, hormone replacement therapy that turned me into a meaner, weepier version of Satan, and periods that leave me exhausted, puking, and in horrible pain for weeks.

I suppose I'm lucky-a lot of women who have it have a difficult time conceiving, if they can at all.  When I told my gynecologist Ben and I were going to start trying, she referred me to a fertility specialist right away, and started throwing around words like Clomid, IVF, etc.  I asked her what our chances were if we just gave it the ol' college try, and she said, I quote, "I guess I've seen stranger things happen."

Exactly a week later I was holding a positive pregnancy test.  I don't think she understood the kind of fertile Irish stock I come from.

In reality it wasn't that easy-Ben and I hadn't been trying for six years, but we hadn't been "not" trying either, so Henry was just a stroke of luck.  Pregnancy sometimes cures endometriosis, but not for me.  If anything, it's gotten worse.  So we were at the point where we were looking at another kid (if I could even have one) or a hysterectomy, when I started reading about a new surgery, one that didn't just burn off scar tissue that could be seen, but cut down to healthy tissue so new scarring doesn't grow back.  Turns out a specialist in Richmond actually does the surgery, and I was able to get in with her.

So I'm scheduled for a surgery Friday, and I'm a little freaked out.  I'm really hoping it helps but part of me is scared that it won't, and I'll be out of options.  Part of me is scared that I'll wake up and they'll tell me that while they were in there they found something horrible, like cancer, or my twin that I partially digested in the womb.  And part of me is scared that I'll die, even though the chances of that are very slim.  As a mom, my worst fear is something happening to my kid, but second is something happening to ME, and not being able to be there for him when he needs me to be.  I think about how much time I've put into raising him already, but if something happened to me now, he wouldn't even remember me.  That freaks me out.  I also think about Ben, and what he'd do without me, and how quickly he'd be scoring sympathy strange.

On to lighter topics.  I know I'll be ok, and hopefully this will end the sixteen years of steadily worsening pain I've had, and I can get my life back on track.  I'm tired of being tired and hurting.  Tomorrow I'm going to get up and go for a run, then go to yoga, and then start my surgery prep.  Since there's a good chance the endo has grown through my intestines or bowels, I get to do a bowel prep, which is a really nice way of saying "you get to drink salt water and shit so much you'll be passing food you haven't eaten yet."  So if you're looking for me tomorrow, I'll be holed up in the bathroom, catching up on my 30 Rock episodes, and being really glad I don't have to go through this at work.

Seriously, I can barely pee in my work bathroom.  I can't imagine having to deal with the constant explosion my pharmacist pretty much confirmed would happen.  When she was recommending one of the solutions, she said "Don't get anything that's a flavor you like, because after this, you won't ever want it again."

Hey, at least this might put me ahead in my weight loss challenges.....

Fuck yeah, Porno PTA Mom!

I'm up too late on a Friday night, fighting a week-long stretch of insomnia.  I thought I'd use this time to catch up on my 30 Rocks, because we no longer have cable and I'd like to be smug and hipster about that, but it's just because we're cheap.

So I'm up at one in the morning watching the new season on Hulu, and the following advertisement happens.  Try to picture it, I just may not be able to put it into words.

White background. Model, in all white clothes, ridiculously high heels, struts down a hallway, holding a whisk.  She walks past podiums holding Betty Crocker cake mix boxes.  These boxes explode in vibrant red and blue.  The model crushes two eggs in her bare hands, with no regard to where the shells land.  All throughout the ad, sultry music plays and she clearly is in control of this domestic situation.  The last line of the ad:  "DOMINATE THAT PTA BAKE SALE".   And then in whispered tones "theeverydaycollectionbytarget".

It's not good enough that you're in shape.

It's not good enough that you're stylish.

It's not good enough that you're dressed and made up like someone who goes out to clubs at 11pm and IS EXCITED ABOUT IT.

Now you have to be the best mom at the PTA by using a Betty Crocker cake mix.

As if that would even compete in this age of organic, hand milled everything where no matter what you do, some mom has done it better, has milled her own wheat, or some sort of freak non-wheat because gluten is evil, and has used the self-generated energy from her house to concoct level 5 vegan cupcakes (the kind that doesn't cast a shadow, if you're not a Simpsons fan this may not make sense, but trust me, it's a hilarious pop culture reference).

My distress about this ad, which repeated every time there was a break in my show, is not about my inability to cook, or my lack of time to mill my own non-gluten grain, or whatever.  The root of my distress is that I have extensive education in marketing and business.  And that lets me know that if this ad exists, it's because market research was done and an opportunity was identified and seized.

That opportunity was based on the inadequacy that all moms feel.  We're not good enough because we haven't lost the weight, because we aren't made up and dressed up every day, because we don't have baked goods every day, because, as usual, women compete against each other for no good reason at all.  When we really should be leaning on one another, even if we don't agree on everything.  I don't care if you breastfeed til your kid is five and try to feed them organic everything and use cloth diapers and I happened to just catch my kid eating a goldfish cracker he found in my own bedsheets from a snack he had at least two days ago (hint-he still ate it).

I'm done trying to top other moms and I'm done supporting organizations that capitalize on my own feelings of inadequacy as a parent and as a mom.  So as hard as it is to say, fuck you, Target.  We're all doing our best, even if we do it in yoga pants, old sneakers, no makeup, and the reassurance that our kids really don't give a shit what baked goods we bring to the bake sale as long as we love them.  I'm better than you and I'm better than fitting into a cookie-cutter image of a parent that was identified by....who again?

Oh yeah, and I can make cupcakes from scratch, when I feel like it.  Which is mostly never.  

Megan, you're such an asshole.

Time to start with some lighter topics.  I can't fix the world myself and I desperately need to laugh or make fun of myself rather than cry over the news today.  So here I go, in an attempt to do both.

Yesterday the kid and I headed to Amherst to see my parents.  It's their 35th anniversary this weekend, and I wanted to spend some time with them.  I also needed a day where I spent some of it doing something relaxing, and I find driving relaxing.  I'm generally happy to get where I'm going, I can't do anything else (clean, work, read news) so I get my playlist going, let Henry watch some How to Train Your Dragon (I don't know who invented car DVD players but if they need a kidney both of mine are theirs for the taking) and hit the road.

I decided to take my parents out to dinner in the town where I went to high school.  I never really go there except to visit my parents-I'm not the best about staying in touch with people, and I didn't really have a great time growing up there.  My parents also moved from the house I grew up in to a new house when I left for college.  Yes, my parents moved when I went to college, and didn't tell me.  Seriously, I got a call near Thanksgiving to let me know to not go to the old house because they didn't live there anymore.  I guess I should be glad they told me.

It's not like I had a terrible childhood, I was just very shy and awkward and attempted to make up for it by trying too hard.  I didn't hit my stride until my twenties.  People who knew me in my twenties are probably scoffing and saying "You call that hitting your stride?  You were still at the level of an unsocialized, talking rhinoceros who someone let drink Jack Daniels" but trust me it was an improvement.

Anyway, on to me being an asshole.  When we walked into the restaurant, the guy at the stand looked really familiar, but I was trying to corral Henry and I just didn't put it together.  If you have a small child, you know eating dinner in public is not a relaxing event.  If that child has not had a nap, it is the equivalent of eating a meal next to a ticking time bomb that is certainly going to explode and act like a total asshole and embarrass you in public.  It's not their fault, but there it is.  So the guy comes to say hi, and it's someone I actually knew pretty well-I was also good friends with his sister, but I just didn't put it together.  That plus having one eye on a small child who was slowly transforming into a crabby stomping dinosaur made our conversation too brief, and I felt really bad about it.  I'm pretty sure this guy lost no sleep over it but it's probably going to be one of those embarrassing things that decides to replay in my head at night when I can't get to sleep, and my subconscious feels the need to scream "YOU ARE SUCH A DORK" and chortle at me while I cringe and accept that as correct.

Here is the thing about me.  My vision sucks.  I have a problem with my optic nerve, so it's not really my vision, it's the way my brain and eyes communicate.  I can look like I'm looking at one thing, and really be seeing something else-something above or beyond it.  Face recognition is really hard for me, and if you're moving, there's no way I can pick you out.  I've walked past my husband and my mother, among others, without seeing them, making them both chase me down like we're on a blind date instead of people who have known each other for years.

This leads to lots of misunderstandings.  People have told Ben, "I saw your wife and she looked right at me and didn't say hi, is she mad?"  Which is a nice way of saying "Your wife is a total cunt but I'm going to see if you have a good excuse for her."

Please know that there is literally NO ONE I know who I dislike to the extent that I wouldn't at least say hi to them if I saw them.  If you see me, and I don't say hi, it's because I didn't see you, or I can't figure out who you are.  I would never be that rude and chances are I'd really like to talk to you.  My eye problem led to a lot of my social awkwardness and a lot of people thinking I was cold or stuck up when I wasn't-I wish I had figured out a good way to address it when I was younger, I could have saved myself a lot of time and a semi-alarming drinking problem I developed in a sad attempt to relax myself enough to fit in at parties.

So to everyone out there that I may see this holiday season-Hello!  I've missed you.

What can you say?

I've spent this week in a constant state of distress.  I'm not even sure how to put any of this into words.  It's not like I didn't know what type of violence we're capable of.  I read the news.  I see what goes on in the world. I try to step out of our America-centric media sphere and get an inkling of what goes on outside of our hemisphere.

I think it all started with the Israeli/Palestine conflict, or, I guess I should say, increase in conflict.  Days of bombings on both sides, children dead, communities torn apart.  I'm always amazed by how much death is justified by faith.  If there is a God, I imagine He's just rocking in a corner, mystified and horrified by what He created.

The violence that happened in the US recently is an eye opener to us, but in too many countries it's the status quo.  In too many places mothers can never be sure if their children are going to come home.  We send our own kids and brothers, sisters, wives and husbands, moms and dads, to fight wars that we never agreed to, or don't understand the real causes for.  I feel for every parent in Afghanistan who's just trying to have a life and raise a family, and never agreed to be the centerpiece for a bloody battle over....do we even remember any more?

I read posts from people about how the Bill of Rights guarantees their right to bear arms, to let anyone who wants to buy an automatic weapon have one, that they need these weapons to "protect their families". Where the fuck do you live, Somalia?  Where in America do you need to fire 30 rounds to keep your family safe?  Either fucking move or improve your marksmanship.

And here's the fun thing about the Bill of Rights and Constitution.  They don't give you the right to do whatever you want.  And if you think you'll ever have to rise up against a "tyrannical government", I advise you to look into the US defense budget and ask yourself if your guns are even going to help you if that happened.

WHICH IT WON'T BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE A TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT.

So that's a lot of bitching from me, maybe I should try to offer some answers.  I don't know though.  I know more guns aren't it.  I know armored backpacks aren't it.  If I have to send my kid off to school packing a side arm and a bulletproof vest, then we've already lost any freedom I could have hoped to give him.

I have had some rays of hope this past week.  Ben told me about a teacher in Rockingham, a football coach, who requires his players to spend time in the class the coach teaches.  This class is for profoundly disabled students.  This coach has brought kids into that life, and shared his classroom with them, and has created a new norm.  I read about a quarterback who looked out for a disabled student who was getting bullied.  I read about teachers who gave their lives to protect their kids.  I saw kids in Islamic countries holding signs that their God doesn't condone violence.  Because it's our God too.

We have so much potential.  I want to have faith that we'll realize it, and not spiral into oblivion.

This might have not been the best post for the theoretical end of the Mayan calendar, but perhaps it really is the end of a cycle, and the start of a new life where we value our children-not just the ones we bring into the world, but the ones who will run our world.

End late night rant.

Today was a really bad day.

Like so many people out there right now, the world isn't making much sense to me right now.  I opened my news page at work to read about a shooter, three people injured.  Over the day I watched that story grow and morph into a nightmare-a gunman at an elementary school, twenty innocent children and six adults dead.   Children, gunned down in their school.  We still don't know why, although I'm sure the media will hammer us with the gory details in days to come.

My heart is broken for every person in that town.  Not just for those who have lost loved ones, but for the surviving children who are forever marked by this.  I resisted the urge to run out of work and go pick up my kid, and never let him go again.  I probably should have stopped reading or listening to the news, but that just seemed like a betrayal, sticking my head in the sand would be an insult to the families who can't hide from this.  So I listened to NPR on the drive home and cried the whole way.  Looking in the cars around me I knew I wasn't the only one.

This day reminded me of another awful day, the day of the Virginia Tech shootings.  That too started out with reports of a couple of injuries, then quickly spiraled out of control as a nation watched in disbelief.  Just like then, I can't get my head around how a person could walk into a school and open fire on people who had never done them any harm-to people they had never even met.

I think the root of all of my distress is the reminder that no matter how hard we try to cushion our children, we fail.  I can spend thousands of dollars on safety gear, strap my kid into the car, cushion the hard corners of life, but I couldn't have stopped this.  We can't protect our children from life, and as a parent, that knowledge leaves me vulnerable and devastated.  I can't imagine getting that call.  Or the desperation a parent must feel knowing their kid was in harm's way and they couldn't protect them.  I'm watching my son play and know that I would not want to live in a world without him.  He probably is wondering what the deal is with the excessive hugs he's getting today.

There will be a lot of conversations in the next few months.  Maybe it was a gun problem.  Maybe it was the pervasiveness of violence in every aspect of our lives.  Maybe it was mental illness on the part of the shooter.  Maybe it was all of these things, and more.  I hope that as a country we can pull together and start having real conversations-not blame throwing, not partisanship, not knee-jerk reactions-about how we allowed our society to break down so much that this sort of thing could happen.  I hope we can band together and realize that nothing, no ideal, no political belief, is worth the safety of our kids.  They depend on us.  We have to do a better job, be better people, for them.

Grandpa Wayne

I've been thinking about my father-in-law a lot today, as have many people who loved him.  Today would have been his 63rd birthday, but he died in 2009 after a pretty terrible illness.  In the fall of that year I got pregnant with Henry, his first grandson.  It bothered both me and my husband Ben that Wayne would never meet his grandson-he would have been crazy about both of his grandchildren.

And they would have been crazy about him.  He was a kind, funny, approachable, caring guy.  He had his flaws and his demons, as we all do, but he was a loving father, a caring husband for over thirty years, and a highly amusing father-in-law.  The first time I met him, he told an incredibly inappropriate dick joke, and I knew I was going to fit in just fine.

Some strange things have happened since his death, and I'm going to write about them now.  I carry a healthy skepticism about this sort of thing, but neither I nor Ben can deny that they happened.  In the end they give me peace.  You may read this and decide I'm insane, delusional, or both, and should not be trusted.  All I can say to that is join the motherfucking club, line forms to the left.  I know this all sounds farfetched, but until you experience something like this personally, you can't really understand the impact.

Right after our son was born and we brought him home from the hospital, strange little things started happening.   We'd put him to bed with no blanket over him (he was born in June) and when we went back to check on him, he'd be completely tucked in.  Like, from shoulders to feet, looking like a little burrito.   As he grew, we started noticing more strange things.  He had a habit of throwing his pacifier out of his crib, or his stuffed animals, because he knew we'd come in and get them.  One day I just decided, "Screw it.  If he's going to throw stuff out of his crib, it's just going to be gone."   He threw his pacifier out of his crib, cried for a bit, and then was quiet.  I went in, and the pacifier was in his mouth and he was asleep.  I heard it hit the floor.  Ben was in the basement and heard it hit the floor above him.  But there it was.

One night when he was maybe 6 months old he figured out how to flip himself over the railing of the crib.  Our bed was still in that room at the time, and there was just a narrow walkway between his crib and the bed.  I know before I went to sleep I cleared it, because I was always worried about tripping while carrying him in the dark.  Somehow, when he fell, he landed on a pillow that took up that entire walkway, and he was perfectly fine.  We dropped the crib down that day to prevent any more jailbreaks.  But I have no idea how that pillow got there.

One day I went in to check on him after I'd gotten home late from class.  He was really cute, all cuddled up with his blanket and his stuffed sheep, Stanley.  I took a quick picture, went to the living room and showed it to Ben.  He said "Hey, where did you find his sheep?  I was looking everywhere for that!"  I said "It was in there when I went in there."  Ben gave me a strange look and said "Are you fucking with me?  I turned that bedroom upside down looking for that damn thing.  You had to have put it in there."  I responded that I really hadn't.  Hmmmmm.

The best story occurred when I was home on maternity leave, and Henry was maybe 4 weeks old.  Ben had been working all day, and when he came home, I asked him to take the baby for a while so I could have a break.  He said sure, if I could just let him grab something to eat first.  I went into our office to sit on the chair in here because it rocks.  I was facing away from the door, and I closed my eyes as Henry snuggled against my chest and fell asleep.

I felt what I assumed to be Ben walking towards the chair.  He stopped, put his hand on the back of the chair, and stood there, looking down on us.  I was thinking "He's going to think we're asleep and sneak out of here without taking his turn with the baby."  I played asleep for a minute, until I heard him walking back out of the room.  I turned around quickly to bust him, but no one was there.  I got up and walked to the living room, and Ben was eating on the couch.  I asked him if he'd just been in the office, and he gave me a look and said no.  I am positive there was someone standing there, with their hand on the back of that chair.  I went back in and sat down again, and realized I smelled cigarette smoke.  Neither of us smoke-but Wayne did.

Little things kept occurring for the next month or two-finding toys in the crib we hadn't put in there, Henry being tucked in several more times, footsteps.  One day I was home alone with Henry and I heard footsteps.  Henry was in his exersaucer, and he looked up and started waving and laughing.  It really looked like he was looking at and interacting with an adult.  I heard an adult laugh, and I smelled cigarette smoke.

I said "Wayne, we miss you, you can come visit Henry any time, just please don't scare him."  Then I heard a man's cough, seemingly right next to me.

These might seem silly to nonbelievers but they gave me a great deal of comfort.  I know Wayne is gone, but I like to think he swings back by to check on his grandson, and now his beautiful granddaughter, and to let us know we'll see him again.  Don't know where, don't know when.  But we'll meet again.  Some sunny day.

Debating

So it's been a while since I posted, and yeah, that seems to be a habit with me.  I've been doing some serious thinking, and am leaning toward discontinuing this blog.

Like many, many people, I struggle with what I want to do each day.  And by that I mean professionally.  My personal life may not be perfect, but honestly, when I get to day care to pick up my son, and he sees me, and drops all toys and runs to me yelling "MOMMY!", I really feel that I have no other purpose in life than that.  It's that great.  That moment can blot out any bad day, and this is coming from someone who wasn't raised in that tradition.  My mother never really brought up the "wife and mother" stuff with my sister and I-she wanted us to be intelligent, successful, and resilient.  I like to think we're both those three things, but I wasn't prepared for how a child might impact the life I'd set out for myself.  i didn't understand the kind of love I'd have for him, and the kind of sacrifices I'd make for him.

Writing for a living has always been a dream of mine.  I'm still working out the when and how, and reading as much as I can between a full-time job, two classes, a toddler, and trying to retain some semblance of a marriage and a social life.  The more I start researching humor writing and that sort of thing, I realize this sort of writing is done to death.  And by that I mean the mom blog.

If you want a book or a blog about parenting, no matter your style or your interest, it's out there.  Some moms present themselves as terrifying (looking at YOU, Tiger Mom, and maybe at my own mom) and some portray motherhood as the pinnacle of existence as a woman.  You'll also find every single level in between.  I've noticed three trends in the books I've read (they may vary slightly but really, it's in three categories)-the stay at home mom who is really happy about it, the stay at home/working mom who seems equally happy and pissed about it, and the working mom who seems to be trying to justify it.  "I make my hockey kid peanut butter sandwiches and have a glass of wine and it's ok!"  Maybe also the tattooed, punk-rock mom, but these days, honey, who are you kidding?  There's more tattooed moms than non-tattooed moms in my city.  You're not even edgy anymore.  In 15 years our kids are going to think tattoos are the lamest thing ever because everyone's parents have one.

Which is not to say I dislike them.  Tattoos, I mean, not parents.  I want one.  And I'm encouraging Ben to get MEG LIFE on his abdomen, Tupac style.  So far no dice.  But back on track.

So you read a lot about parenthood-the serious advice, the humor, the "how to raise an A student/Christian/Jewish/Muslim/valedictorian/well-rounded Princeton applicant who never shows up two hours past curfew at 16 years old and proceeds to barf on your car".

And fuck if it doesn't get boring.  So I'm pretty done with this blog.  There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said, and the thing is, we all (hopefully) do the best that we can, and that means different things to different people.   I don't want to gush about my kid off of facebook, and I really only do it there to keep my relatives and friends who I don't see up on things.   I've been intimidated to take a leap into writing about things that I care about, who I'm not related to, and to stretching into fields I'm unfamiliar with, but it's time to get over that.  I'm nothing unusual as a mom, but I'm also completely unusual as a mom.

So maybe some day I'll write a book, and I'll spare you the expense of my advice:  get the epidural.  Totally just saved you fifteen bucks, or whatever it's going to cost to get books implanted in your brain after Kindle technology improves to the point where the new Twilight book literally haunts your dreams.

Until then, keep your eye out for the new blog,  Go To Sleep, Crazy Lady, and hopefully a few more projects I'll get to work on once classes are over this winter.  Branching into some grant writing and some marketing, so we'll see how it all turns out.

Til Then-  Smell ya later.