Barnmaven

Admission of guilt and a Pledge

I do it every day.  Sometimes several times in a day.  Sometimes its not just my fingers, its my mouth too. I'm such a bad girl.

But today?  Today it ends. 

Today is the day I take the pledge. 

Today my car becomes a NO PHONE ZONE.

 

The bluetooth headset is charged.  Harder than that will be not checking twitter or texts on my 90-mile round trip to work.  I know I can do this!  Too much is at stake, too many lives have already been lost or changed forever because someone like me just couldn't wait another few minutes to read or send a tweet or make a call. 

Won't you join me today and make your own car a NO PHONE ZONE?

Almost Time

I struggle with posting this.  It is a controversial topic for some people.  It is a sad topic. 

I bought Missy as a 'pity purchase' when I bought her daughter Miss B. Her former owners were selling all of their horses, and because I like her so much they asked if I would take her too.  She got ridden a little at first, but due to her age and increasing joint stiffness, she's been pretty much a pasture ornament at our place.  She's a lovely horse, been everywhere, done everything.  Been showed, trail ridden, gamed, taught little children to ride, helped scared adults find their confidence.  She's given far more than she ever received in return.  Even after I stopped riding her, I'd still spend time with her.  We'd have "beauty spa" days, I'd give her a bath and trim her fetlocks and her whiskers and brush her til she was shiny.  I'd give her carrots and rub her between the ears.

She's pushing thirty now, and up until last winter she was trucking along mighty well.  The winter, though, was a different story altogether.  She struggled to keep her weight up.  She had a long bout of diarrhea that it took me a month to get sorted out.  She's lost her energy, she's listless.  Her thyroid is swollen to the size of a large orange.  Her flanks are sunken where they used to be rounded.  I fed her beet pulp all winter to help her with her weight, gave her supplements and probiotics and carrots and apples and love.  I give her butte when her arthritis is acting up so that she can walk.  But its time.

The other day when I went to feed the horses she was laying down, which she is doing a lot more of.  She struggled to get up, and once she did, she could barely walk.  She was staggering, unable to lift her feet more than a little bit off the ground.  Walking around usually loosens up her joints, but increasingly it takes longer and longer for her to have any comfort.  When I watch her I can see that she is in pain.  Today, thanks to a dose of Butte, she's moving better, but the look in her eyes tells me that it is her time. 

Saturday she will get an extra big breakfast of grain and treats.  She will have some Butte to help her be comfortable.  I will love on her, give her a good brushing and comb out her mane and tail.  She will then take a trailer trip to a farm not far from here where she will be lovingly euthanized and buried.  We will never forget her.

This is a tough year at my house for losing animal companions.

I will second guess this as long as I live.  I can't say any more.  There is more to be said, I just can't say it.  Its too hard.  I'm sorry.

Flashback: The first one

When I think back to the ideas I had about parenting in the years before I had kids, I laugh hysterically.  Then I smack myself in the head a couple of times and boot myself in the rear for good measure.  What arrogance!

Before I had children, I just knew that my babies would be sweet smelling, laughing little angels with cherubic little faces and innocent smiles.  I knew that they would always listen, would love nothing better to sit on my lap and read books with me.  I would be the perfect mother.  I would provide structure, loving discipline, fresh-baked cookies, an endless supply of crafts and my children, my husband  and I would sit down for our yearly family portrait smiling serenely in matching shirts.  My children would not have tantrums in the middle of the grocery store or on airplanes.  They would amaze their kindergarten teachers by already being able to do advanced algebraic calculations and read Tolstoy.  They would graduate college at the age of 13 and be supporting me with their salaries from their jobs as doctors and astronauts.  OK, maybe I'm getting a little far-flung.  Maybe.  But up to a certain point, that's what a lot of parents fantasize about before having children.

The reality of my children is that while they most certainly have angelic smiles, while some of our best times are playing and laughing and cuddling together, that they are CHALLENGING and HARD and sometimes they make me realize things about myself that I don't want to.  Sometimes they frighten me because of the intensity with which I love them and because of the occasional piercing recognition that they are the most important thing I will ever do and I DARE NOT SCREW THIS UP.  Sometimes they have tantrums.  Lots of them.  Sometimes in public places.   Nowhere in my Mommy Ideology was there a whisper or iota of consideration given to the difficulties of raising children with bipolar, ADHD or anxiety disorder.  Not a single moment was spent considering what it might be like parenting special needs kids, or being a single mom, or being  so flat broke that sometimes I'd have to decide between buying groceries and paying the electric bill.  Nowhere did my fantasies touch on the very real possibility of postpartum depression and the horror of carrying my newborn around wondering how on earth she could be so unlucky as to be born to a horrible mother like me.  While almost every wonderful fantasy I had has come true (we're working on the whole "budding genius" track, it may be that we need to tweak some DNA sequencing), so much  has been unexpected.  And I would still do it all again.  But I would change my expectations dramatically.  

The same can be said for pregnancy.  I even knew exactly how my pregnancy would go.  I would be healthy.  I would glow.  I would exercise every day and limit my weight gain.  I would do yoga.  I would be a beautiful, magazine-model mommy in white maternity capris, a crisp red cotton top with white polka dots and white sandals on my freshly pedicured feet.  I would be amazing.  I would look lovely, I would smell lovely, I would be the GenX version of the Madonna, holding her rounded Jesus-full tummy with a little halo and a beatific smile.

I got pregnant with my daughter at the age of 36.  I was healthy.  I ate right.  I exercised. I even GLOWED, dammit  For about the first two weeks.

The first awful surprise about pregnancy was how many things I used to love that now made me retch.  Even the SMELL of coffee made the bile rise in my throat.  Poor J had to wait until he got to work to have his cup of morning joe.  Commuting to work together became a Nightmare on Elm Steet version of a Keystone Kops episode.  J, falling asleep behind the wheel, then yelling at any driver who got within a thousand feet of HIS PREGNANT WIFE.  Me, sitting in the passenger seat, trying not to hurl, screaming at him to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, can't you see you're upsetting the pregnant woman, dammit?

Girl Scout cookies, always a favorite of mine, sat uneaten in the cupboard for months.  I couldn't stand them.   Dont' worry, there were plenty of other sweets clamoring to take their place in line.  Ice cream was my lifeline.  And there's nothing as great as a big old third-trimester belly to set your bowl on.  Or your hot cocoa.  Or your plate.    And salty foods - I couldn't get enough.   Bacon.  Chips.  Pork Rinds.  Mmmmmm.  I gained 60 to 70 pounds during my pregnancy.  I was so damned pregnant I was actually pregnant in my ass.  Who gets pregnant in their ASS, I ask you?  Apparently, moi. Me.  The three masted schooner look was really working for me as I waddled into the third trimester.  Fred Flinstone had NOTHING on my feet.  I had two pairs of shoes I could wear, a pair of slip on canvas fake-Keds two sizes too big, and my birkenstocks. 

My hip and shoulder joints relaxed and separated to the point that I couldn't sleep on either side for more than a half hour or so without being in excruciating pain.  Edema and joint pain notwithstanding, I was fairly healthy while pregnant.  My blood pressure from the very first was always perfect.  My daughter measured ahead size-wise the entire pregnancy, which had me a little frightened for her actual birth. 

Birth.  Oy.  Who could have prepared me for that?  I'd even been present at a birth - years prior, a very good friend gave birth to and relinquished a baby boy.  I was present for her birth, and it was the most amazing, impactful experience I'd ever gone through.  And still -- nothing about being present for the birth of someone else's baby prepares you for what it feels like when you go through it yourself.

My birth plan involved a CD player with relaxing, meditative music.  My focal point would be a picture of the sunrise taken at the beach on my birthday one Florida winter, the day J proposed to me.  I would use the birthing ball.  I would use the tub.  I would have massage, I would have no drugs.  My birth coach would arrive three days before due date and everything would GO AS PLANNED.  Yes, you may feel free to laugh hysterically at me now. 

Three weeks prior to my due date, I awoke in the middle of the night, feeling as if I'd wet the bed.  I wouldn't have been surprised at that point, since my daughter seemed to have a compulsion for tap dancing on my bladder.  If she wasnt thumping on it with her elbow, she was planting her skull on it and pushing against my rigbs with her toes, STREEEETTTCCCHING as tall as she could go.   This, of course, typically resulted in uncontrollable, involuntary urination on my part.    So waking to wet maternity underwear wasn't really a shock, it was just surprising that I didn't feel like I had to pee.  Usually when my bladder is full I'll dream about how full it is while I lay in bed and try to avoid having to get up in the middle of the night and traverse the spiders under the bed to go to the bathroom. 

When I went to the bathroom, though, it was clearly not pee.  Being a compliant patient (and also gleefully hopeful about the possibility of not having to be hugely pregnant ONE MORE DAY), I immediately called my OB's office and was told to head to the hospital to be checked out.

Long story short, we came home three or four days later with a baby.  Short story long, the following two days were among the longest and MOST painful of my entire life.  The hospital visit began with a nurse examining me and saying she could find no evidence of amniotic fluid.  We argued for a couple of hourse, eventually she sent me down for an ultrasound.  Apparenlty the hole in the amniotic sac was being blocked by my daughter's head, because the moment I sat down in the wheelchair to go downstairs, GUSH. "What does THAT look like to you?" I asked the nurse in my snarkiest Preggo Lady voice.  Lesson number one:  Be nice to your nurses.  You will need them later when you're sucking on ice chips and trying to see what's happening through your sweat-soaked bangs and you need someoneto rub your back while your husband is sleeping in the chair.

Ultrasound showed that our daughter was doing fine and that amniotic fluid was lower than desired, but still in tolerable levels.  It was decided that we would not leave the hospital at that point until she was born.  I was started on an IV and given some stuff to start my labor.

The next 29 hours were hazy.  We'd called my sister Vicki, and at some point that afternoon she arrived having broken all existing speed limits between Virginia and New Jersey.  My chosen birth coach was in Seattle and could not make it on short notice.  Once labor did begin, it was indescribable.  My daughter had decided to go posterior, and the resulting back labor was a nightmare of pain beyond my wildest dreams.  I have always prided myself on having a high pain threshold.  Ask anyone who knows me -- I've walked on torn ligaments to make sure my horses got fed before calling for someone to take me to the ER.  I've driven myself to emergency care with  acute appendicitis.  But this pain was something I'd never experienced before, and hope to never experience again.  I tried sitting on the ball.  No good. The bathtub was not an option since it posed a risk of infection with a ruptured amniotic sac.  Backrubs didn't help.  A shot of stadol didnt' touch it. Kneeling, standing, stretching, bending - nothing.   Finally, disgusted with myself for feeling like I needed help, I begged for an epidural. 

As much as I had planned a drug-free birth, in retrospect I'm glad I made the choice I did.  I couldn't have known that I would be laboring until nearly 9 am the following morning.  I would not have had the strength to push my daughter out without having gotten some sleep that night, although I am sure the three hours of pushing was partially a result of the block. 

The only parts I remember after the epidural and the flashes of sleep I got overnight are the transition from labor to active pushing, bits and pieces of the OB yelling at me that I needed to get things going or I was going to end up with a section (lovely to be threatened with surgery when you're trying to push a watermelon out of your crotch) and the scray looking vacuum apparatus they used to deliver my daughter.  After that, I clearly remember the unbelievable sense of physical relief when her shoulders slipped free and everything just LET GO.  SWEET GOD IN HEAVEN, it was over.  And there she was.  MY BABY.  Red, screaming her lungs out.  J cut the cord, and they put her on my bare chest immediately.  While she latched on for the first time, the doctor berated me for my lateral tear and how could I have needed 8 stitches for a 7.7 pound baby?  None of it mattered, beyond my baby nursing at my breast, and the endless counting of fingers and toes and staring in amazement at the sheer perfection of her.

Someday I'll tell you about the aftermath of the stitches and the whole labioplasty drama.  Suffice it to say that when your partner jokes to the doctor about taking an extra stitch to make you "good as new?"  Hit him in the head with a sledgehammer because I GUARANFUCKINGTEE YOU it is the stupidest thing that has ever come out of his mouth.  And later when you run into the OB who surgically fixed what the OTHER OB did to you in the local Hallmark store, you will be mortified when he doesn't recognize you by sight.  Because he never really looked at your FACE. Um.  Yeah.

So that's the story of the first arrival.  The thing that changed everything that came after.

This Sunday night it was just her and I.  We grilled chicken and made salad for dinner.  We sat at the table and used our good placemats.  We toasted each other, her with her apple juice and I with my Cabernet, and I looked at her amazing, beautiful face, and I knew then, as I know this moment, that I would go through that whole experience a thousand times over so long as it meant I could have her in my life.  My daughter.

Dear God

There's been a status update floating around Facebook lately.  I would post it here, but I really, really don't want words like that associated with my blog.  I just don't.  Here's a link to Suebob's post on the same subject, if you truly want to read it (and a damn fine response, if you ask me).  If you don't care to follow the link, in essence, the post I'm talking about, its a prayer to God about some of the famous folks who've died this year, followed by what is essentially a request for God to kill our president. 

I've been stewing on it since the first time I saw it about a month ago on the status update of someone I have since unfriended.  I saw it again a couple of days ago on the status update of a high school classmate.  I set my Facebook to ignore that individual's feeds and have been struggling ever since with what I wanted to do.  Unfriend?  Continue to ignore?  Un-ignore and try to understand why someone would think this is funny?

I'm not going to entertain the possibility that I might be too sensitive.  I recall too well during the Bush years whn anyone, myself included, were called "traitors" and "Un-American" for voicing disagreement with our then-president and his policies.  We were derided.  We were told to leave America.  We were called "disgraceful."  And yet during all of those eight long years, as much as I detested what I saw happening in our government, as much as I disliked what was happening in the country that I love, like Suebob mentions in her most excellent post, did I ever consider praying to God for George W. Bush to die?  I really don't think I did.  In retrospect, I hope the hell NOT.   Not even as a joke.  I  am reminded that on several occasions I may have asked God  to please let us have someone else (so long as it wasn't Dick Cheney) be president instead.  I think that there is sufficient evidence, however, that God isn't particularly interested in politics, because you know, not once did he answer those requests.  Except for the big resounding "NO."

It is painful to me to see the violence and hatred being spewed out of people on the far ends of the political spectrum.  Painful, sad, disheartening.  Frightening.  To some of those folks over there on the Red side of the divide, I'm not even a real person.  I'm not a mother, I'm not an employee, I'm not a citizen or a cowgirl or a dog lover or a Christian.  I'm just a LIBERAL.  I am reduced to nothing more than a single word, a word that is often spat through clenched teeth, pursed lips, accompanied by involuntary spittle.  And yet, it is not me personally who has that power, who carries that much weight.  It is the picture created in the sayer's mind of what it is I am.  I'm a liberal, therefore by definition I must:

• Hate America
• Hate God
• Love communism
• Hate babies and puppies
• Routinely sacrifice said babies and puppies on the altar of socialism
• Burn the flag
• Drive a Volvo

And yet none of those things are true.  Though I wouldn't mind being able to AFFORD a Volvo. 

I have a prayer of my own. 

Dear God:  I love my country.  I love humanity.  I love my children and I love my life.  I am so grateful for every good thing, every opportunity, every blessing that You have given me.  I am grateful for the technology that allows so many people's voices to be heard. 

God, I pray for my friends and my neighbors and even my enemies, that You would remind them all that the words that they use can hurt.  I ask that You help them to see me, to see people of other political persuasions, to see President Obama - to see us as PEOPLE and not as THINGS. 

I ask that you would have them remember that the president they so cavalierly ask you to kill is a husband, a father, a person who loves this country too.  I ask that you have them look at their spouses and children and imagine how they would feel if You took them away from their families, and ask them to consider how Michelle Obama and HER children might feel if their husband, their father were taken from them and to allow that feeling to engender within them compassion for others.

God, I wonder if you could tell me how You want me to respond when people tie Your name to messages of hate.  I know that Jesus said to "turn the other cheek."  I know that He commanded us to love You first, others second.  I know that He preached a gospel of love and redemption and healing.  God, can you help me to turn aside the bitterness and spite that I feel when I read things like this and help me to respond in a loving way, a way that does not denigrate or defend, but that lets only LOVE shine through?

God, I confess to you that I have been as guilty as anyone of judging people by their affiliations.  Help me, God, to remove the plank from my own eye and to check my words and actions.  Lead me away from the enormous temptations of hypocrisy and judgmentalism.  Help me to desire to be right in my relationship with you instead of "right" in my opinions as expressed to others.  Help me, and all of us, to create a change in our words and our actions, to step back from that precipice of hatred and anger and back to an attitude of love and humility.

And if you could also see your way clear to removing the calorie and fat load from chocolate, that would be great too. 

 

****

Dirty Pictures

No, NOT THAT KIND!

Just a bunch of dirty, dusty people and horses on a sunny weekend in Prosser, WA, learning from the master.

Bill starts us off.  That's my mare, Miss B in the foreground.  Bill's gelding Grits is in the background.  (Grits is for sale, y'all.  Check it out, you know you want to buy him.) 

After some work on moving our horses feet, Bill decides to start us on an exercise to move them from the top of the fence, getting them to approach us as if we were asking them to let us mount from their right side.  This is unnatural for a horse, both because they are stronger from the left and also because most horses are afraid of anything that is higher than they are.  They are a prey animal, and instinct tells them that a creature *above* them wants to eat them.  This was a great exercise and we worked on it both days.

Miss B. from above and on her right side.  Eventually, on day two, I got her withers below me.  From the fence, with just my halter and lead rope and no other tools.  It was WICKED AWESOME.

Kim, pictured below with one of Michelle's horses.  She had spent the last week out at Full Circle Ranch, interning with Bill and Angie.  She is a trainer and eventually wants to be a clinician.

Valerie moving Phil's feet.  Note the slack in her lead rope.  By day two, "Phil the Pill" was visibly softer on the rein.   Note also Phil is looking directly at the camera.  What a ham.

Very calmly, but with energy, Valerie asking Phil to change directions.  She has control of his fore and his hind, and he is moving off of her without crowding.

 

Bill, framed by my pretty little girl. 

Miss B. shows off how well she flexes to the right when asked nicely: 

 Bill leaves us with a few words of wisdom

 
Were those dirty enough for you?

Saddle Sore

When I blow my nose it comes out black – still full of arena dust.  My shoulders are sunburnt, my seat bones are tender and the muscles in my thighs burn when I sit.

 

I could not be happier.

 

I have spent the weekend on my horse, a rare and precious occasion.  My friend Michelle invited a limited group to attend a two-day clinic with Bill Basham of Full Circle Ranch this weekend.  Thanks to a lot of kid help from J (and a bit from my parents too) I was able to go for both days, and dude, I am about as contented as it is possible for me to be.

 

This is where you non-horsey readers might want to wander off for a while.  I'm going to get boring.  I promise.

 

I've written a little before about Bill and Angie from Full Circle Ranch and what its like for me as someone who showed a long time ago in the WayBackWhen days to learn what the "new" horsemanship is about.  I sent a six year old green-broke, crazy-eyed mare to Bill and Angie for sixty days and what I got back was a completely different girl.  She was the same color, had the same markings, from all outward appearances save one, was the same animal.  But she was not and is not the same as she was.  And the difference in her is in my mind the same difference between the old style of "breaking "horses and teaching riding and the Natural Horsemanship and Balanced Riding of today.    This horse is SOFT.  You pick up a rein and she follows.  You give her a little pressure somewhere and she moves off of it.  And somewhere in her brain, the concept of trusting and trying when asked clicked on.   She wants to please you.  When I ask her to do something new, she gives me a good, honest try at understanding it. 

 

What Bill teaches ME is to respond to her questions with the right answer.

 

If I don't know how to tell her "yes, that's right" or "no, that's not quite it" in ways that she can interpret, I can ruin that mare.  So knowing how to talk to her and recognize when she understands is the key to having a beautiful relationship with my horse.

 

As a clinician, Bill is far different from any other trainer I've known.  He has an approach that's hard to describe.  If you forced me to put a name on it, I'd say it was a lot like Master Po.  Or Yoda.  Much of what he knows can't just be taught by talking, or even by showing you.  You have to feel it.  To understand how energy moves out of the body, you have to do exercises that illustrate what your energy does when you arrange yourself in different ways.  To understand how it feels to be balanced, you need to recognize what it feels like to be unbalanced.  And so the exercises take you on very small steps at first through these basic concepts.  He gets you there by asking you questions about what you're doing that make you want to smack yourself.  Or him.  Or both.  Sometimes I just pretend I didn't hear him and have a very lively conversation in my head which involves a lot of four-letter words.

 

We spent more time on the ground with and without our horses than we did in the saddle, which to the outsider might seem odd, when you consider that for most people the ultimate goal is to ride your horse.  Bill, like the really GOOD trainers out there, understands and wants his classes to understand that riding your horse is like trying to live on the second floor of a building.   You cannot safely live on the second floor if the first floor isn't built up to code.  When it comes to horsemanship, your ground work is not just your first floor, it is your basement and your foundation.  You simply cannot do ENOUGH of it.  Groundwork establishes everything you need with your horse relationally to be able to safely ride.  You teach your horse to respond to pressure and energy from a safer place (the ground) so that you have control of your horse when you are in a less safe place - his back. 

 

Bill has seven principles of training.  They might seem simple at first glance, but they are not.

 

A lot of people who don't ride, when they get on a horse for the frist time, are taught that the horse's mouth is the horse's "brakes."  If you want the horse to stop, pull back on the reins.  NOT TRUE.  Your horse's "go" and your horse's "brakes" are really in the same place, for the beginning rider -- his hindquarters.  If you can move your horse's feet from the ground or from his back, you can make him go, stop, turn.  If you don't have control of your horse's feet, you've got nothing. NOTHING.   

 

There's so much more to it than I can exposite here with my tired, simple Monday-night mind. 

 

I liken what Bill and Angie can do with a horse to what a highly skilled surgeon can do with a heart.  Put a beating heart in front of me and ask me if it's healthy or sick, if I can fix it or not, and likely?  Dude who owns that heart's gonna die very soon.  Ask a heart surgeon to take a look and he'll know what goes where and be able to tell by the visual cues and some other testing exactly what the status of that heart is and if it needs repair.

 

That's what Bill and Angie do with horses and people.  They are highly trained, highly experienced "heart surgeons."  They can spend some time with a horse and ask it some basic questions, and from that get an understand of who that horse is, what he needs and how to communicate with him so he will understand and listen.  They can spend some time watching a person handle his horse and gain a very clear picture of how that person is hurting or helping his horse.  Then they can work with that person and that horse in a very individualized way to help them both.  That's what they are doing for me, on an ongoing basis.  My relationship with my mare has changed completely with their help and guidance.  I've gone from having a problem horse I thought I needed to sell, to having a really awesome horse that I can't wait to ride.  And if you have "the sickness" like I do, that's a damn miracle.

 

For many women a "perfect" weekend might involve some shopping, a day at the spa, a romantic dinner, a weekend getaway with that special someone.  I suppose my perfect weekend does involve getting away with someone special -- but that someone has four legs, a mane and a tail. 

 

Pictures to follow...promise.  And I apologize if I sound completely inane...I'm still pretty wiped out, not to mention I've got to fit all the stuff I DIDN'T do this weekend into my evenings for the next few days.   Even so, a weekend on my horse is worth every second of extra effort this week's going to bring.  There just isn't anything in this world happier than a dirty, tired, saddle-sore cowgirl. Word.

A sandwich I really didn't want to eat. Either day.

This morning I hit "off" instead of "snooze" on my alarm, my boxer gifted me with multiple piles of liquid stool that required cleaning, and to top it all off I spilled coffee down the front of my white t-shirt as I was pulling out of the daycare parking lot after dropping off my son.  I was an hour and a half late for work.  Yup, the morning was a capital P Poop Sandwich complete with cheese fries on the side.  Me?  Fine!  Yes, I'm terrific!  Absolutely awesome, thanks for asking!  Just please remove all sharp objects from the room for your safety and mine.  And don't slam the door when you leave.  Maybe lock it behind you.

I'm unreasonably emotional this week.  I could have blamed it on Aunt Flo from Red Bank paying me a visit, but that euphemism actually packed her bags and left a day or two ago.  And the emotional nuclear warhead of my monthly cycle typically detonates somewhere between 3-5 days prior to her visit.  So I guess estrogen can't be blamed.  Could be I'm hitting the low swing of the pendulum on my bipolar cycle, but even that doesn't quite seem to "fit." 

As a preface to today's stellar beginning, yesterday's emotional fun can best be described as a whole fecking bunch of "meh."  And maybe a heaping, stinky ol' poop sandwich.  Two in a row.  Yum. 

Its hard to know just how much stuff it is OK to write about the separation.  Some people who read these pages know us both.   I don't want to say anything disrespectful of my children's father.  I want J and I to be not just people who paste a smile on our faces for the benefit of our children, not just people who coexist without fighting, but parents who raise our children together respectfully as friends on the same team, even if we no longer live together. 

Letting go is a much more gradual process when you have children together.  I think at this point in time I can't envision what that will look like when it is fully done.  Putting aside feelings of resentment and anger, jealousy and disappointment, there are still going to be times when our lives are unavoidably entwined.  In some ways we are still entwined in ways financial that I think contribute toward an unhealthy continuation of codependency.    But as time goes on and we both go about the process of living separate lives, there are inevitable places along the way where things are really fucking hard.

As things that were once held jointly get separated out, not only do the minor earthquakes and tremors surrounding those dissections cause emotional distress, but I also find the the finality of each thread's unraveling is profoundly sad.  Every step that we take toward living completely separate lives, not just physically but on paper as well, is another step toward something I realize is inevitable, but also another step away from the dream that we held on to for such a long time.  It is heartbreaking.  

I feel so disconnected from the rest of my friends, nearly all of whom are married or in relationships.  I have become a cliche, a middle-aged single woman.  Single in a double world.  Even the bloggers I follow are, for the most part, happily married or happily partnered.  This venture into the foreign landscape of a solo person is at the same time peaceful and fraught with angst.  I can't relate to people who are in love, who are happily married, who have someone they spend time with other than their children or friends.  I find myself drawing inward, feeling awkward and out of place in social situations.  Everyone else is a "we."  I'm just an "I."  And even though that's truly how I felt more and more over the last few years, I still had the social trappings of being a "we" and so belonged in the club of the twos. 

Its not that this is all bad.  Its certainly better than the alternative.   I don't' have to be answerable to anyone for my time.  How it's spent.  Who its spend with.  What the price tag is.  But the reality of freedom is that it's often not as "free" as it sounds when you're looking at it from over the fence.  I never wanted to be out of my marriage so that I could go DO WHAT I WANTED.  I wanted out of it because I couldn't live in it the way it was.  I can't speak for J, but I'm pretty sure that's where he was at too.  We devolved to the point to the point of being so miserable and angry with each other that we couldn't even hold a simple conversation.  It was no way to live. 

But even as miserable as we were, this is still so fucking hard to do.  I never expected to be feeling this sad about it.  I thought I would be OK with letting go of the little pieces as they slipped away.  And of course, I'm not really "ok" with it at all.  OK in concept.  And very sad as the process becomes real.  It would be so disrespectful to the relationship we tried incredibly hard at to be glad to see it go.  We don't deserve it, the two beautiful children we made don't deserve it. 

I guess at the root of it, the separation is no different than any other thing in life.  There are good days and bad days, days that are incredible and those that are unbearable.   A recent conversation with a friend who is having her own very transformative life changes going on reminded me that the grief process is not limited to matters of death and dying.  No wonder I feel like someone punched me in the lower cortex.  So tonight, as a panacea to the poop sandwich I feel I've been gnawing on lately and as a balm to soothe my grieving spirit, I think I"m gonna just have chocolate and vodka for dinner.  With a side of a box of kleenex and a DVD of Girls Don't Cry. And let my stinky dogs lay on my bed with me.  And cry.  That chocolate's going to taste a lot better than what I've been chewing on the last few days.

Where would we go and who will watch the kids?

Mr. Lady's post  last Friday got me meandering down the nostalgic pathways of road trips past.  Most of the ones we took in college were short, and usually undertaken for the purposes of aiding and abetting our desire to engage in underage drinking without the possibility of arrest.  Vancouver, BC was close enough to leave after class and be there in the early evening to drink hard cider and Canadian beers (generally superior to commercial American beers, this in the days before microbrews really hit my radar).  I remember driving back to Seattle with the sun coming up right about Bellingham and wishing I didn't feel so hungover so I could enjoy the spectacular sky.  Moscow Idaho was the choice of our cross-state rivals at WSU and too long a drive to be considered for a casual weekend trip.   If we were going to the Apple Cup and it was the Coug's turn to host it, Moscow was SO ON.  But otherwise, no, fank you.

When I pledged a sorority, we did the traditional Pledge Sneak.  Marjorie borrowed her parents' Suburban and I volunteered to drive us all to Ocean Shores, where it predictably rained all weekend.  Since we were only there for the drinking and making up of skits and songs for our return, weather was a non-issue. I'm not sure I'd have offered to the be driver that weekend had I known that the old Suburban's accelerator pedal was incredibly heavy and hard to press down.  By the time we returned to the sorority house on Sunday, my right calf had a Charley Horse that took a week to go away.  Fun weekend, that.  We were creative, or we were at least we were convinced that we were.  If you're ever in town and shove enough wine in my face I'll even sing you the song we made up.  I haven't forgotten it.

I haven't had a road trip since 1998 when J and I drove from Seattle, WA to Toms River, NJ.  That was an incredible adventure, one neither of us will ever forget.  We were in LOVE and nothing could suppress our conviction that youth, love and a sense of adventure would conquer every obstacle in our path.  And then somehow we morphed into parents (I say "somehow" rhetorically.  I know how babies are made).  Everything since then was a family vacation, complete with screaming children, and therefore is classified under "voluntary mashochism" and not "road trip."  As I read Shannon's post, I thought of all the road trips I've taken mentally in my head in the last few years, and I immediately commented, "Let's rent a Winnebago and GOOOOOOOOO!"  I wasn't expecting her to actually respond, but next thing you know there's an email in my inbox to the effect of "You're so f'ing on!  BRING IT!"

Know what?  I am a lame old lady.  Because right after I laughed uproariously (thereby startling the cat in my lap into sinking her claws into my thighs) the very first thought that went through my head was "I only wish I could.  Because the kids and who would watch them, and the animals and who would feed them?   And work, and blah blah blah blah blah."

When did I lose my sense of adventure?  When did I in fact become a boring old woman with absolutely NO redeeming qualities other than great hair and halfway decent boobs? 

If this is what being a grownup is all about, I'm ready to hand in my resignation and rejoin the ranks of the young and reckless. 

I miss the days when I did what I wanted to without thinking of the consequences.  Yes, of COURSE I was irresponsible.  That was a big part of my charm.  I wasn't the ringleader, but whenever one of my partners in crime made a crazy-assed suggestion, I was the first person to jump up on top of the table, rip off my shirt and say "Hell YES! Let's do that!" 

I miss that hippie chick.  I'm not so crazy about the cautious old granny who moved into take her place.  Something must be done.  Something.  MUST. 

I need a partner in crime.  Any volunteers?

Outrageous or just sad?

Lots of uproar today over the news of Artyem Saviliev's return to Russia by his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen.  If you haven't heard about it, read the news story here, here or just about on any available news outlet.  According to the Bedford County, Tennessee sheriff's department, an investigation is underway to see if a crime has even been committed. 

Since I'm not a legal expert in real life or even in the completely imaginary television series that I star in when fantasizing about quitting my day job, I'll leave the legal commentary to the authorities and the folks who are paid to opine about those issues.  The only "professional" expertise I have in this area is that of an adoptee and as a parent of a child whose behavior has been at many times in the last few years outside of the normal boundaries of behavior.  And when it comes to those two areas, this case is pressing on my emotional hotbuttons with the PSI of a mastadon on meth.

Its not like I've ever had any reason to feel that my adoption was a bad or a shameful thing.  My parents were, for the most part, good parents.  Yes, we have our family drama and the occasional elephant on the floor.  There were spankings and there were days when like most children I resented my mom and dad, but unlike a lot of kids, including my birth sibilings, I was safe.  I was at all times loved and wanted.  I was given affection and attention and support and more material things than I likely deserved.  My folks were open and up front about the fact of our adoption from the time my brother and I were very young.  It was not a secret, and it just seemed very normal.

At the same time, there are things about being an adoptee that perhaps only another one of us can understand.  I remember worrying that if I was too bad that maybe my mom and dad *wouldn't* want me anymore and maybe they would take me back to the adoption agency.  You may not believe this, but I know an adoptee this actually happened to.  Not her, but her brother.  Her parents divorced after they had adopted two kids, and her mom, unable to cope with single-parenting two children, sent the boy back.  What the fuck she was thinking I have no idea, perhaps that it would be easier to parent a girl than a boy?  And if she thought that, had she seriously not consulted anyone who has been around teenage girls?  There might be worse things than being sent back, though.  I know adoptees who were abused by their adopters.  One really good friend recalled being beaten by her adoptive father with a length of garden hose. 

It doesn't seem fair, perhaps, that those who must or choose to follow the adoption pathway to parenthood have to undergo rigorous scrutiny.  After all, nobody made my birthmother take a fitness test before she birthed her litter of six.  Ha.  Maybe they should have. 

 But in my eyes, any person who says to another "I am willing to take on the responsibility of raising your child" has, if anything, a greater responsibility.  So many people see adoptees as having been "saved" from whatever horrors there are to be imagined.  Perhaps we are like Orphan Annie, stuck in an orphanage with an abusive matron.  Maybe if we'd been kept we would have been beaten or drugged or sold as sexual trinkets.  And maybe our adopters *did* save us, in some way. Unless our adopters were Joan Crawford, that is.   But here's the rub:  we didn't ask to be saved.  The adoptee is the one member in the triad that has no say in what happens to them.  We didn't ask to be born, we didn't ask to be relinquished, and we didn't get to choose the family we ended up with.  We were at the mercy of the adults and the system, and so if we really were saved, than it is the responsibility of our "saviors" to live up to very VERY high standards.

So many parents who adopt are truly wonderful, amazing parents, and this is not directed at them.  Those parents have my utmost regard.  Those who provide their children with love and security and structure, they are the reason that for the most part I see adoption as an incredibly positive institution.  I love it when people who know I am adopted and who are thinking of adopting come to me and ask me about my experience.  It shows me that they truly care, want to be enlightened parents.  I tell all of them to be truthful with their children and to love them not "as if" they were their own, but just to love them as any parent would their own child. 

Artyem Savelyev has been failed so many ways. 

Did Torry Hansen know of Artyem's issues when she signed adoption papers?  Maybe, maybe not.  If not, the agency requires scrutiny and perhaps censure.  But regardless, when Ms. Hansen made a decision to adopt a child, she accepted a great responsibility, one that it appears she very quickly abdicated.  I'm not speaking of legalities, I've already stated that I have no proper understanding of whether any local, state, national or international law has been broken.  What I'm talking about is a moral code, the one that in my book makes my friend's garden-hose-bearing dad a criminal of epic proportions. 

When you give birth to a child there are countless factors you will have no prior knowledge of.  Your child might be born with an physical disability that doesn't show up on normal neonatal testing.  Your child might have an unseen heart defect or neurological issue.  You might end up with a child who has a learning disability or a personality disorder.  Whatever the case, once you commit to bringing that child into the world, what you get is what you get.   Your choice has been made and you are responsible to be the best parent you can possibly be.  If you are not prepared for the worst possibilities, DON'T HAVE BABIES.  I believe in my heart that the moment you choose to have a child - the moment you decide that a pregnancy will continue to term, that you will accept a child from another mother as your very own, that you are making a contract with God.  Parenthood is often selfish in its origins.  We carry within us - most of us, anyway - the need to nurture, to create, to care for.  We want a baby because we feel our lives are better with children than without.  But becoming a parent means being willing to be selfLESS at times.  Yes, moms and dads must care for their own needs.  But there are going to be times when your child needs you and it will require you to put your own comfort aside for a time.  Sometimes, with some children, a LOT of time. 

For J and I, becoming parents meant learning to deal with incredible rage and at times almost uncontrollable physical violence.  There have been days when both he and I have been bruised and broken mentally AND physically.   Our marriage didn't fail because of anything that our kids did or said, but our own inability as adults to properly care for our stress levels around their issues was a contributing factor to the disintegration of our marriage.  (Please note that I am drawing a very careful distinction here.  Our children did not cause our marriage to fail.  WE caused our marriage to fail.)  There have been days when I have been exhausted and frustrated and hopeless, and even moments when I have wondered how in the world I was going to survive ONE MORE SECOND.  But never did it cross my mind that NOT parenting my child was an option.  Of course it isn't. They are.  My. Children.

Now.  It is entirely possible that Ms. Hansen was not the appropriate choice of a parent for Artyem.  I'm not going to disagree with that, or with the fact that she was apparently in it far over her head.  But I truly  don't believe she put as much time and effort into helping him get well as any person who was making a commitment to parent him should have.  She brought this boy home in September.  Its only 7 months later and she sticks him on a plane back to Russia.  

Look, I've been there with a kid who has serious issues and I know the amount of time and doctors and medications and therapy that it takes to start making progress.  I've lived it, and frankly September to April is not nearly enough of a time investment to throw up your hands and abandon your kid.   I KNOW how long it takes for you to evaluate how well a particular course of treatment, medication or therapy is working.  And I know for a fact there is no way that 7 months would have been an adequate amount of time for her to locate appropriate medical and psychological care for that boy and to evaluate treatment efficacy.  No way.  Our quest for diagnosis and treatment took years to make progress.  And it evolves constantly.  Is this working?  How about that?  Medication dosage appropriate?  How long are her cycles?  How consistent is our structure? 

There is nothing acceptable in my eyes about how Ms. Hansen handled this situation.  At the very least, if he was being violent and she could not control him, she should have gotten an emergency hospitalization, which would have led to serious evaluation and possible long term residential treatment.  No emergency room would have refused care to her, even if she couldn't pay.  She could have notified the agency of the issues they were having.   Even if it was the right decision to make that she wasn't equipped to parent him, she should have worked with them to reach a solution. 

Putting a seven year old boy on a plane by himself to a foreign country with the equivalent of a note pinned to his shirt is NOT an appropriate solution. 

Ultimately, whether karmic justice is served, the story is more sad than outrageous.  Artyem is still a little boy who needs a family.  I'm sure that with the amount of attention his story has received that he now has a better than ever chance of getting one, but who can say how much hurt his young heart can overcome?  How much worse will his chances of overcoming his issues be because of what Torry Hansen did? 

There are lessons to be learned here, I hope the world is paying attention.

Does my child belong in public?

I know, two posts in a day.  Maybe I'll take a week off to make up for it.

Her Bad Mother posted today about whether it is discriminatory for store owners to not want babies in their stores.  This just after I had posted about ADHD and my frustration sometimes with people's reaction to my daughter's behavior.  ADHD, bipolar, autism, aspergers, PDD-NOS, all have the commonality of being mostly "invisible" disabilities.  It is not immediately clear that the child you see as "misbehaving" in public is actually having a meltdown due to sensory overload or the inability to appropriately process something they are experiencing.   And no, I'm not saying that it's easier for parents of children with visible disabilities.  Its just different experiences that we have. ( I have my own pet peeves about the people who stare at the boy with leg braces or the girl in the wheelchair.  Go up and smile and say "hello" to them for fuck's sake.  They're people, not zoo exhibits.)

There was recently another online shakeup over a mother's complaint on her blog regarding the behavior of another child in the library.  Mothers of autistic children recognized some hallmark signs of autism (hand flapping, low frustration tolerance) and went apeshit in their defense of the child, prompting Smockity to remove the post and apologize.

One of the commenter's on HerBadMother's post wrote this:

"I am a mom and have 3 kids- 2 younger ones (9 & 10) that I take with me everywhere I go. They are well-behaved and don’t go into stores acting stupid, being loud, and manhandling the items and breaking things. But there are ppl out there, and you have all seen them, I know I have, who come in with WILD, unruly, loud, destructive children and the parents don’t even TRY to control them. I have seen it NUMEROUS times in almost every store I have been to. It is THOSE parents with THOSE kids that make ppl leary of having young kids around & I don’t blame them. It is a parent’s responsibility to make sure your children act civilized and behaved when in a public place, especially a store that sells breakable items."

OK, for one?  HOW NICE FOR YOU that your children are well-behaved.  Lovely, really.  You must, by your own definition, be a REALLY GOOD PARENT.  That of course leaves me contemplating the fact that in comparison with YOU, I must not be a Very Good Parent at all.  Because MY KIDS?  They are sometimes the "THOSE KIDS" you speak of with such contempt. 

Honestly, when I hear someone tell me how their children are always perfectly behaved in public and that parents of poorly behaved children have no right to take their children into the public eye, I want to SMACK SOMEONE.  I want to have a big fat tantrum of my own, right in the middle of the fucking room.  How dare you tell me that my daughter has less of a right than your child, who blessedly for you, lacks neurological issues?  How.  Dare. You.  I'd love to be one of those parents with perfectly behaved children.  Truly, I would.  Its the fantasy I always had of motherhood.  I pictured myself looking exactly like June Cleaver, feeding my perfectly groomed tots perfectly cooked food, placing my perfectly cool hand on their feverish foreheads when they were sick, reading them stories in a perfectly expressive voice while they lay tucked in their perfect beds in their perfect pj's, playing perfectly nice games like Monopoly and Scrabble with them.  OK, I do some of those things anyway (well, not Monopoly and Scrabble, more like Whack-A-Mole, but you know what I mean).  Never in my life did I imagine that the biggest challenge I would face as a mother had everything to do with something I could not control. 

I'd love it if the people who complain about my children being in public would offer to come babysit my children for me so that I can go shopping or run errands without them.  I'm a single mom now, don't you know, and can't really afford to hire a babysitter for the weekly grocery shop.  CPS rather frowns on me leaving them home alone or locking them in the car - or better yet, leashing them to the parking meter.  Or perhaps you feel that since my children aren't always well-behaved that we don't deserve to have groceries? 

Maybe when my kid does have a meltdown in the store and I am frantically trying to deal with it, instead of staring at us or speaking rudely about us, maybe you could help me maneuver my cart out of the way and keep an eye on my other child while I am otherwise engaged.  Maybe you could ask me "How can I help?" when you can clearly see that I am overwhelmed and trying to stay calm.  Maybe you could just give me a friendly look instead of staring at me like you wished my kid and I didn't exist.

I'm not making this shit up.  People do this to us, all the time.  When I was testing the waters in my faith journey, I tried going to a couple of churches.  One place I went to I thought would be welcoming of people with differences.  I blogged about it before, how after the service, my kids threw simultaneous tantrums.  NOT ONE PERSON OFFERED TO HELP ME.  They just stood there in horrified silence as I worked to corral my kids and get them out the door to the car.  Trying to figure out how to carry my then-60 pound daughter to the car and not leave her also-tantruming brother inside alone with strangers was a little bit more than I could handle at the moment.  I never set foot in that church again.

Maybe I can't write about this, maybe I shouldn't.  I'm angry right now.  Maybe being angry isn't the right way to change people's perceptions, but I can tell you that it is not fun being the person who gets stared at and talked about, no matter what the reason.  I don't accept that I should feel shameful or guilty because I don't have perfect children.  Except that when we get treated this way, I do.  Feel shamed.  Guilty.  Like I'm a bad person, a shitty mother.  A less-than-stellar citizen.

I hate it. 

**Check out this great post by Leah at workitmom.com on kids on airplanes.  I puffy heart her.