Barnmaven

They don't slow down

Today was a very important day.

Today, I registered my son for kindergarten.  My baby.  The last baby I'll ever have.

I remember when he was born and one of my sorority sisters from college, who had also had a baby that year, sent me a card that said "Welcome to the Kindergarten Class of 2010!" and I thought how far away that seemed.  And here we are, almost six years later, almost there.  It has flown by.

He was born two days before his due date.  In stark contrast to the herculean labor I'd had with his sister (29 hours of it, including three hours of pushing plus a cartload of meds/interventions), the Racecar Man was born in just over three hours, about 10 minutes of pushing, and no meds.

He was an easy, sleeping, smiling baby.  I had been so worried about having a boy.  What if I didn't know how to parent boys?  Worry melted into the sweetest, soft love the moment they placed him on my chest.  What I felt was akin to the worst crush I'd ever had, multiplied by a thousand. 

As he has grown, he has changed.  Plump baby to sturdy toddler to skinny preschooler.  He was climbing stairs at nine months, walking at ten.  He talked early, his fine motor skills were better than mine when he was two.  He takes apart everything he can find and his favorite toys have wheels on them.  He knows how to operate the DVR and the Wii and how to put his own toast in the toaster.  But he still crawls up on my lap to cuddle, he still hold my hand when we walk through the parking lot or on a busy street.  He's scared of bees and positively heroic in the face of spiders.  He is so very sensitive, incredibly naughty, and totally enchanting.  I reach for his warm, heavy baby self and find myself grasping instead a tall, bony lad, all elbows and knees and ribs.

My baby.  Who is not my baby anymore.

 

 

No more babies in my house.

Where my insides are coming out, or so it seems

Note:  This post is not for the faint of heart.  If you are put off by discussions about ones' lady bits or if you pass out at the mention of blood, childbirth or anything related to women's reproduction, move along.  Shoo.  The rest of you, come along with me.  We have to talk.

I posted last week that I got my Mirena out.  Now let's preface this by coming to an understanding:  I LOVEDmy Mirena.  That little plastic critter was a godsend to someone like me.

 

I used to have horrible, nightmarish periods.   When I was really young, first starting my cycle, I had massively heavy bleeding.  I remember a family trip to Banff, we had a Volkswagen Rabbit then.  I started what was probably my third menstrual period ever, and I honestly thought I was going to bleed to death.  Or die of embarrassment.  I was soaking through Maxi pads like they were kleenex.  I feel sorry for whoever bought that car.  (Dude, those brown stains in the back seat?  NOT JUICE.)  In my late teens and early twenties I started getting cramps that seemed to have originated in the third level of hell.  I was later diagnosed with endometriosis, and had laser surgery to clear it up. It helped for a while, but eventually the stuff came back, and while not every cycle would be bad, about every third cycle I would have a day where I could not get off the floor without the aid of heavy-duty opiates.  Percocet was my BFF. 

Pregnancy and breastfeeding, for me, were better than birthdays, Christmases, getting my driver's license and turning twenty one.  I bid farewell to my periods with nary a regret.  I got pregnant with my daughter on Valentine's Day 2001, and other than a few cycles after she was born, have been mostly blood-free ever since.  Breastfeeding kept my periods light, at least once the Lochia got done frightening the living snot out of me (if anyone had told me that, postpartum, I would pass a blood clot the size of an orange I might have passed on the whole thing.  No fanks!).  In 2005, after my son was born, as soon as my first cycle showed up I went and got the IUD inserted.

I wasn't in love with it at first.  I am one of those people who react to it by bleeding.  A lot.  For a very long time.  I bled for six weeks straight with that muthafucka, and during that time period I hated the thing with unrivaled passion.  Finally, one glorious, blessed day, the bleeding stopped.  And it pretty much stayed stopped until...last Thursday.

While my little progesterone-emitting friend was having a long staycation in my uterus, my monthly cycle was an infrequent and timid little visitor.  Aunt Flo went out of the country for an extended period and her wallflower of a cousin Trickle came to call instead.  Trickle was so uncertain about overstaying her welcome that she could be counted on to depart quickly, usually after a day or so.  She was sometimes so quiet I couldn't even tell she was there. 

Five years.  Every single month a non-event.  Oh yes, I was spoiled.  Rotten.  Paybacks are such a bitch. 

I got my Mirena out on Wednesday.  I have been bleeding like a stuck pig ever since. Now, I expected I would get my cycle back, but my GYN said that it would probably be quite light for a while.  LIAR. I have been bleeding like a stuck pig for the fifth day in a row now, with no sign of letting up. 

Now, before you yell at me to call my doctor, I already talked to Dr. Google, and Dr. Google introduced me to a significant number of women who had their Mirena taken out and bled for as long as several weeks.  So I'm going to give this a little time before I get concerned.  If this is normal, great. 

My dilemma at this point is whether I want to either get another IUD or go back on the pill in order to regulate my cycle, or do I just stick it out and let Mother Nature handle things in Her own way?  I'm more of the mind to let my body sort itself out for a bit, but honestly, I don't know how much more of this shit I can take.  Aunt Flo's on vacation again, but this time she sent Sister River in her place and frankly, she's not such a great conversationalist.

Baby Pictures

Our little colt is doing well.  He's so cute I can't resist sharing a couple of little videos and pictures of him.

 

 

After all that playing, who wouldn't be tuckered out?

 I think I have a little bit of a crush. 

Unraveling

We sat in the kitchen, miserable. We sorted through the detritus of more than a decade, argued over what was important and what was cared about and who would get custody of which things. We talked for the millionth time about why we ended up where we are and acknowledged one more time that we both would have done things differently Some people say that regret is a wasted emotion, and of course the past being a fixed path is unchangeable and inflexible. No, regret cannot change the course of water that has already flowed downstream. So often, because we are told that it is useless to regret, we shelve what we regret and move on.  I believe that regret is worth at least a periodic sifting-through, if you will, because how else will we make better choices in the future if we learned nothing from our mistakes of the past?

We do not own the time that we are given, not the length and breadth of it, but the choices we make are ours and we must own them.  I know that parts of this unraveling I own.  I am trying to instill in myself, on a cellular level, that which I already intellectually know:  I am responsible for my own emotions. 

When I am hurt, when I am angry, it is not up to someone else to make those feelings go away.  That is my job, mine alone.  The actions of others might soothe me, momentarily, ultimately I am the person who must decide to move on from my anger and hurt.  Forgive, never forget, but let it go.  Dwelling on past hurts is one of the most certain ways that I know of to be miserable, unhappy and bitter.  Someone hurt you?  I'm sorry.  Now LET IT GO.  If I had understood this, in theory and in practice, life right now would look very different. 

 In the same vein, I am not responsible to someone just because they think I should be.  When I buy into the philosophy that I owe another person something or that I must not do what I believe is right because it might make them feel bad, I am failing myself. This is a lesson for me, not for the other person.  How many times do I have to let myself be swayed by imposed guilt into doing something that I don't want to do before I realize that I shouldn't be letting other people dictate my boundaries?  How many times should I apologize to someone for how I feel before I realize that they don't have the right to tell me what my feelings on any certain subject should be?  When I failed to honor my own feelings and boundaries, I created a landscape in which I continually felt used, misunderstood and ignored.  *I* created it.  I can't blame another person for doing what I allowed them to do.

So I learn and I move on.  I watch the once churning riptide of a marriage subside and flow back into the deeps, examine the whorls and striations it has left behind in the sand of my soul.  I study them well, seeking greater wisdom in the learning of how I hurt myself and others.  I make promises to myself that I'm not sure I know how to keep, to not do this again.  That Next Time I will be stronger.  Next Time I will honor my boundaries.  Next Time I will remember that in relationships one does well to wade in from the shallow end, not to dive into the deepest part too soon.  Next Time I will limit my expectations of others, and increase my expectations of my self.  Next Time, I will not let fear and insecurity erode my foundations. 

And if there is no Next Time, I will still practice good relationship skills with my children, with my family, with my friends. 

I am sad that we lost our way.  I know that things could have been different, but we let ourself be drawn in ways that divided us.   I hope that someday we can forgive each other for our hurts, that we can treat each other always in a way that honors the relationship we once had and that honors the children that we created together. 

We grasp the opposite ends of the thread that held us together and together we tug.  Bit by bit, the unraveling takes place.   No stopping it now, no going back.  The only thing to do is, the right thing to do, is to step over the pile of thread, look to the future and hold on to just enough of the past to help keep me on my path.

Its Thursday

and I'm topic-less.  The problem isn't that I can't think of something to write about, its more that I can't pick ONE thing to write about.  My frontal lobe is mashed full of thoughts and feelings and ideas.  Expressing them coherently and in an ordered fashion is the challenge of the day.  I don't do Friday Fragments, and its too late for Random Crap Tuesday, so let's just muddle along here and see what we get.

Tuesday morning when I woke up with no kids in the house I believed for a few moments that it was Saturday and I had forgotten to turn my alarm off.  As I was reaching over to shut it off and go back to sleep I remembered that J and I had switched Mondays and Tuesdays due to a scheduling issue for him.  It was such a disappointment to realize that not only did I have to get up and go to work, but that I still had three more days of the grind to get through. 

Springtime here is in full swing, we've been getting lots of rain so everything is green and lush, so rare for us living in the desert.  Babies are popping up everywhere, the cows are popping out little calves like there's no tomorrow, you should *see* the little goats two blocks away, and O.M.G. baby chicks at the neighbors!  The mares are starting to foal, too.  I pass by one small breeder operation on my way to my carpool, and every year have nearly gotten myself in a serious car accident when I see the first foal of the season has arrived.  I love the babies, always have.  We had one on my street this year, but it has been a bit of a sad occasion.   The mother was an older mare, and this was scheduled to be her last foal.  I'd been looking every time I went by to see if the baby had arrived, and finally on Sunday night she gave birth to a beautiful long-legged, knock-kneed colt.   Tuesday, though, when I was coming home I saw her down flat.  I pulled in and right away could tell there was something seriously wrong.  She could not get up.  The neighbor came out, having just called the vet, and we sat with her a while.  Sadly the mare did not make it.  She'd apparently been bleeding internally since the birth and wasn't able to be saved.  I spent Tuesday night trying to help my neighbor and the horse's owner locate goat's milk and feeding apparati to get the colt some nourishment.  My other neighbor, who has cattle, supplied a calf feeding bottle, but horses and cows have big difference in the size and shape of their milk bags, so the little guy could not get anything out of the calf bottle.  None of the supply stores were open yet, so we had to find something to at least get him through the night.  Eventually, after trying several different things including a latex glove with a hole poked in it, putting the milk in a small bucket to see if he would drink it that way, someone had the bright idea of trying a kid's sippy cup.  You know what?  It worked.  I can see the headline now:  Orphaned foal saved by Sippy Cup! 

Yesterday, between bouts of work and a doctor's appointment, I stopped by a couple of times to check on him.  To be honest, I think I'm developing a little bit of a crush on the wee fellow.  He's awfully cute, with his long eyelashes, big brown eyes, soft nose whiskers and long, knobby legs.  The owner has another mare foaling soon, so we are hopeful that she will be willing to take on a second foal to nurse. 

In other news, my daughter has also fallen head over heels in love - with reading.  After a rough start this year in school, she has finally been bitten by the reading bug and last weekend we went to the bookstore and for the first time I bought her a book she wantedrather than one that I hoped she'd like.  She has been reading constantly ever since.  She reminds me of myself as a young girl, nose always buried in the pages of a book, oblivious to the world around me.   She fell asleep in my bed last night, book clutched tightly in her hands.  My heart went a little kerwonky in my chest just looking at her.  So precious.

My mirena comes up on its five year mark in the next few weeks, so yesterday I sadly bid it farewell.  Getting it removed hurt much less than it did being installed, which was a relief.  I was anticipating the worst.  I think a big part of the difference was that the insertion was done by a male doctor.  I strictly prefer women when it comes to doctoring my lady bits.  Men might know what they're doing down there, but they don't know how certain things feel, and by god if you've ever had a cold speculum shoved up THERE and cranked open with no more thought for your comfort than if the guy was changing your air filter, you know what I mean.  Hel-LO, dude, there are nerve endings there!  Yes!  THERE!  And hi, when you're shoving the IUD up my cervix, remember that its usually only meant to have things come OUT and you know what?  That bloody well HURTS! 

Well, the removal was easy and painless, and now I have no birth control.  Not that I plan on needing it anytime soon.  I'm sworn off men and dating for the long term.  Life is a lot too complicated these days to even consider it.  Hell, I barely have time to breathe, much less date.  So unless its possible to be impregnated by my, er, B.O.B.*, I should be safe.

On an entirely different note, did anyone manage to catch a glimpse of Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul on the Rachel Maddow show on Tuesday?  My jaw hit the ground when the man discussed intellectual opposition to the Civil Rights Act.  He wondered if it was right for the Federal Government to force a private restaurant or lunch counter owner to permit something on their premises they were personally opposed to.  He actually used guns as an analogy.  He said that if a bar owner was personally opposed to guns, they were free to implement a policy prohibiting guns in their establishment.  OMIGOD.  DID THAT MAN ACTUALLY DRAW AN ANALOGY BETWEEN BLACK PEOPLE AND FIREARMS??? In defense of racism?  Yes.  Yes, he DID. Unbelievably, this moron won his primary race and will face Democratic challenger Jack Conway in November.  I do believe its time for Kentucky to change its habit of electing Republican senators and send Rand Paul packing in November.  I do not believe that any individual who harbors such blatantly racist beliefs should ever be elected into a position of representative power.  EVER.  And now I'm mad because I just wrote about it. 

Off to stew.

Have a nice day, y'all.

*Battery Operated Boyfriend

Is there such a thing as an honest relationship?

So Mark Souder is the latest politician to fall by the wayside after a sex scandal.  There’s no end to the long, long list of fellas on either side of the aisle who haven’t seemed to have good control over the Little Politician residing in their pants.  I have to say, at least when the Dems get caught in a cheating scandal, they typically haven’t been out there on a public soapbox defending “traditional family values” and screaming about how gays are ruining America.   The sheer hypocrisy of the guys who are working so hard to pass legislation to make sure only heterosexuals can get married and ranting and raving about the “sexual depravity” of our GLBT citizens only to then be photographed heading off to Europe with their rented houseboy makes me want to vomit.  Personally, I think what happens between consenting adults is private, and I'm not less likely to vote for someone because of they got cheating.  Now, if there was taxpayer fraud or other illegal activity involved, that's a different story.  But I don't think cheating in and of itself makes a person unfit for public office.  The government would be positively decimated if that were the case.

It’s an interesting question to me, as we watch marriage after marriage fail.  Even those who seemed from the outside to have “perfect” relationships (John and Liz Edwards come to mind) aren’t immune to cheating.  I often wonder if the Clintons have always just had an understanding and that’s why their marriage has survived Bill’s wandering ways.   

When Brad left Jen for Angelina, a lot of women I know (me included) looked at their less-than perfect bodies and faces and thought to themselves “Good God, if a man can cheat on her then what chance do I have??” 

I sometimes wonder whether human beings are actually capable of being truly monogamous.   Even people of faith don’t seem to have cheating-proof relationships. And it's not just celebrities and famous folks who do it.  I know personally a couple of married men who are frankly impressive in their apparent ability to separate their devition to their spouse from the need of their penis to explore every available vagina.  They *seem* to be happily married.  But hell, what do I know?  I don’t live in their houses.  We’re all different people behind our closed front door than we are at work or out with our friends.  Maybe they have understandings too.  Some of the cheating I’ve seen has been so blatant that one would think there’s no way in hell that the spouse can’t see it.  They HAVE to know. 

And what if they do know?  Do they have agreements between them that it’s OK to be with other people?  Do they mind?  Do they worry about STDs?  Do they have rules? 

What’s even worse to me is wondering what if they DON’T know?  Should somebody tell them?  It’s such a dilemma. 

I’ve been through it personally on both sides of the fence.   I don’t want to be with someone who needs to sleep with other people and lie to me about it.  I want to be in the kind of relationship where when the other person decides they need to move on, they tell me, we end things, and go our separate ways.   I've been the person who cheated on my significant other, many years ago when I was young.   I knew it was wrong, and when I finally told the guy I was involved with what had happened, it was horrible to see how much it hurt him, how angry he was.  I deserved his anger.  He deserved my honesty.  Disregarding issues of religion and conventional morality, what I did was wrong.  Wrong in the sense that if you have a truly honest relationship with someone you love, I think you owe it to the both of you to be up front.  If the relationship is over for you, it’s over.  Unless you have agreed with your partner that its ok to bring other people into your bed, the right thing to do is to end your current relationship before you move on.  I think I've learned from my experience and I never want to put myself or anyone else in that position again.

When I was the person who was cheated on I was so hurt and angry that I never really got over it. Maybe I deserved it after having done it to someone else, I don't know.  But it was awful.  I felt like I could not move or breathe, like my skin was on fire and like everything that I believed was true about my life and my relationship was a lie.  I'm as angry about it today as I was the day I found out about it.   I think I was angrier at being lied to than anything else.    That’s what really gets me about cheating.  The fundamental dishonesty that is at the root of it.   I was miserable when I was being dishonest, and I was enraged when someone was being dishonest with me.

Is it really possible to have an honest relationship?  To have monogamy, to be able to tell your partner if you’re unhappy, to be able to hear your partner tell you they want to move on, and be healthy enough to say “You know, I really care about you and it makes me really sad that you want to move on, but it would be wrong for me to try and make you stay if this isn’t where you want to be.”  Can people really DO that?  Can people own up to wanting to move on from a relationship and make a clean break before they start sleeping with somebody else?  Or do the people that cheat really still want to be with their partner, but feel the only way they can stay is to find another way to get something they are missing in the relationship?

Do you think human beings are truly capable of monogamy?  Why do you think people cheat?  Is it because we are with the wrong people to begin with?  Or are we wired that way?    What do you think?  I really want to know.

Listless Monday: Things I've Lost/Things I've Gained

I take a great deal of satisfaction in having come to motherhood at what the doctors like to refer to as "advanced maternal age".  (And the doctors can just smooch my butt, by the by.  Ageist douchebags)  I know plenty of women who procreated young, married young.  Women I went to high school with are grandparents already, while my youngest isn't in kindergarten yet.  I know that parenting can be harder when you don't have the energy you had, but in many ways it can also be extremely satisfying.  Unlike my friends who by necessity became mature adults when they were in their late teens/early twenties, I enjoyed more than a decade of doing whatever the hell I wanted whenever I felt like it.  I wished I'd traveled more.  Wished I'd written that novel.  But still and all, those were very good years.  I don't have the lingering feeling that I missed my youth.  Now that I'm approaching middle age, I don't have any desire to get a fancy car or a younger boyfriend, or even to go out and hit the party scene as I see too many women my age doing.  I know many of them are trying to make up for a youth they never got to fully enjoy thanks to the responsibilities and fiscal burden of being young parents.   I got to sow my wild oats - and then some, thank you very much. 

No, the things I miss now, as a mom, are not the things that one might expect.  But there are things that are gone from my life, things I really wish I still had:

1.  Language.  I have a B.A. in English.  I have been reading since the age of 3.  I LOVE words.  I like nothing more than reading a deft turn of phrase or a scene described so vividly that I can smell and feel it.  Words used to roll off of my tongue and pen with the ease of a well-oiled hinge.  No longer.  With the onset of my first pregnancy, I fell victim to the dreaded cerebrus maternus-- MOMMY BRAIN.  This insidious disease has taken root deep in my system, and the most prevalent symptom is complete dyspraxia.  I KNOW there is a word that I want to use.  I just can't REMEMBER IT.    And so I have gone from being what I used to gloatingly consider an eloquent person to one who stammers and says "SHIT!  What was that word?  SHIT!"  constantly.

2.  Abs.  I am pretty sure there are still muscles inside my abdomen.  But I can' find them.  Endless crunches, yoga dvds, leg raises and shredding a la Jillian Michaels have failed to cause them to reappear, so I must finally accept the fact that they are gone forever. Along with whatever used to resemble skin tone being my navel and pubic bone.  Seriously, is the skin there always going to wrinkle and sag? 

3.  Money.  Sometimes I have this great dream, wherein I go get a pedicure and have my legs waxed, hit the salon for a good haircut.  Then I go to Barnes & Noble and drop $150 on books, and stop and have a grande nonfat vanilla latte at Starbucks.  On the way home I fill up my tank with premium gasoline, and when I go to the grocery store I buy WHATEVER.  I.  WANT.  Then I wake up.  I cry.  The end.

4.  Coherency.  I believe that the loss of logic and deductive reasoning is a secondary symptom of cerebrus maternus.  Along with the inability to speak, I have lost the ability to remember things like math and people's names, follow simple directions or respond appropriately in social situations.   I try to yell at my dogs and I call them by my children's names - I try to yell at my children and I call them by the dog's names.  I have solved this problem by simply yelling "HerculesRoscoeFosterDogChildAChildB - STOP THAT!!!!"   I put milk away in the cupboards, I pour coffee on my cereal, and on more than one occasion have arrived at work to find that I have two different shoes on my feet. 

5. Me Time.  Its not that I was ever the kind of girl who was into meditation and quiet moments.  But I have always enjoyed having time to bury my nose in a book or sit and watch a movie without interruption.  In the past 8 years, the only time that I have been able to read more than one paragraph of a novel without hearing "Mommy!  I have to go potty!"  "Mommy, I'm hungry"  "Mommy, the dog ate my Barbie and then pooped out her shoe!"  have been when I was traveling for business and staying in a hotel room by myself.  J used to think that my work trips were my chance to go live it up in strange towns with strange men.  In truth, the strangest thing happening was that I would run myself a nice quiet bath, get a glass of wine from room service and fall asleep in a warm tub while reading a book.  I know, you're thinking "Good God, that woman's a HELLION!" 

6.  Music.  They may finally be getting over it, but I have not been allowed to play the piano or sing since my daughter could speak.  Music has always been a part of my life - fourteen years of piano lessons, singing at weddings or whenever I could, teaching myself to play the guitar.  There was a time in my life when I sat at the keys nearly every day.  When the Amazon Girl was a baby, there didn't seem to be time, and the last thing I wanted to do if she was giving me a few minutes of free time by napping was wake her up with my piano playing.  When she was a toddler and could entertain herself, I thought to myself "Finally!  NOW I can play!"  I sat on the piano bench, selected a nice old jazz standard and started to play.  No more had the first notes of "It Had to Be You" left my mouth, when suddenly a curly-haired virago appeared next to my chair.  "NO MOMMY!!  NO SINGING!"  I patiently invited her to sit on my lap.  She refused.  "NO!  Mommy NO SING!"  And so it went.  Every time I sat at the piano for more than a few minutes, a tantrum ensued.  After the second child arrived, any attempt to enjoy a few minutes at the keys resulted in a fight erupting, something being broken, or an emergency which required my immediate attention.  I have been forced to acknowledge that my children were born with an internal radar which informs them the moment I have decided to play the piano.  I can prove this, because last weekend they were playing at the neighbors and after I finished my housework I sat down at the piano.  No sooner had I started to play than daughter fell over and skinned both her knees.  I could hear her screaming from half a block away.   I'm going to try it next when they're at their dad's.   What are the odds they can hear me then?

The price tag for parenting is high, in many respects.  And when I take the time to think about the things that I miss most about being a child-free adult, what strikes me more than those things I no longer have is the presence of new things in my life that I cannot imagine living without.

1.  Purpose.  Before I became a mother, I wandered aimlessly through life.  I did whatever I felt like doing at the moment, I took the opportunities that came along, but I had no direction.  The arrival of my children changed that, not just by necessity, but by the awakening of the realization that I had found my place in the world.  I have identified myself with many titles in my lifetime, all of them meaningful and profound.  Daughter, Cowgirl, Athlete, Adoptee, Friend.  Of all of the titles I hold dear, I cherish "Mother" the most.  And because it is so important to me to live up to all that being a Mom means, I have no choice but to have a direction.  To know where I'm going and what I stand for. 

2.  Flexibility.  Nothing used to annoy me more than when my Grand Plans for things got screwed up.  I always know how I want things to go, and rigidly following plan was also a way of coping with my ADHD.  Any mother knows that while children want and need structure in their lives, that in the grander scheme of everyday, Plans, while noble in concept, are only meant to be adapted to Circumstance.  A Plan is a good thing.  Start with one and do your best to follow it.  If you have children, be prepared for your Plans to be disrupted.  Constantly.  The bigger challenge to me was to learn to be OK with that.  On the large and small scale, I have learned that one of the kindest things I can do for myself as a parent is to learn to be flexible.  To learn that MY plans aren't always going to happen, and to be OK anyway.  My children have given me a great gift by teaching me flexibility. 

3.  Relaxation.  And I don't mean the "spa weekend" kind of relaxation.  Technically falling under the category of Flexibility, relaxation is what happens when you stop trying to be on time for everything, when you stop watching the clock and panicking because you're going to be late for work/church/dinner/appointments.  Relaxation is when you take a deep breath and decide to live in the moment and not care that you didn't make it to the movies because your kids decided to dismantle your washing machine and throw your car keys in the garbage.  Its a survival skill - Relax or lose your mind.  You pick.

4.  Love.  I know, its such a cliche.  It can't be helped.  I thought I knew what love was before.  I thought the love I felt in my relationships was the ultimate kind of love, that needing-wanting to be with someone all the time, that desire for closeness and rapport.  The kind of love I felt for my parents, needing, wanting to please.  The kind of love I felt for my dog or my horse, having someone I could be around who loved me without an agenda, who liked me for me and made me feel good about myself.  Certainly special, but nothing compared to the depth of love you feel when you hold your child for the first time.  When some mechanism deep in your soul that you never realized existed awakens and you realize that THIS is the person you would die for.  This is the person you would sacrifice everything for.  This is the person that no matter what, you will do whatever you can to ensure they are protected, happy.  There is no moment in the world that is so perfect as that moment when both of my children are near me.  None.

5.  Faith.  It was easy to walk away from faith before I was a parent.  When that changed, my perception of the entire universe shifted.  How could I not look at the perfection of my baby, feel that upwelling of joy and fierce love, and not understand that there indeed WAS a greater purpose in life?  Not feel intimately linked to Creation?  My faith has been shaped by my experience as a parent, my understanding of Who I believe God to be honed by my own relationship with my children. 

6.  Family and Friends.  My boundaries and definitions of family were refined once I became a parent.  I began to appreciate and enjoy my own parents even more, because I was finally able to understand what the challenges of raising children can be like, I was able to see how a parent might be doing just the best they can in a difficult circumstance.  I stopped having resentments about the things they did that I didn't agree with, because I got to experience how it felt to have other people question your choices or your parenting style.  My relationships with other certain members of my family deepened, because we finally had some common ground.  Children are life's great equalizers. You might meet someone with whom you think you have nothing in common, but if you are both parents, suddenly you have everything in common.  Interestingly, the people in my life with toxic qualities suddenly became easier to say "no" to.  I no longer have the luxury of tolerating bad behavior, I have children who are learning from me about what friendship means.  I want to model healthy relationships, which means I have to HAVE healthy relationships.

7.  Self Esteem.    Physical perfection no longer matters.  I have to learn to accept myself so that my daughter will not be twisted by my own body dysmorphia.  But even deeper than learning to accept my imperfections has been learning to recognize my strengths.  My children (at least for now) think that there is nothing I can't do.  I can bandage every cut, soothe every hurt, I know how to operate the lawnmower and how to drive a car.  In my children's eyes, I am Superwoman!  Its hard to buy into negative perceptions from others when the people who matter most in the world to me think that I am beautiful, smart, powerful, amazing.  The opinions of the outside world fade into just so much noise, and I can hold my head high, because I have the antidote to the poison of their negativity.

And there you go.  Two lists for . Have yourself a nice day, now.

A fine day to be outside

And nothing finer to be doing than hitting Big Flat for another gorgeous ride:

Time to clean house and do yardwork.  Sadly, trail riding does not magically make the mundane chores disappear.  Where's the Easy button?
 

Naked

When people make fun of disabilities or kids who look different, I turn into two people.  On the surface, my superpowers flare and I become Barnmaven, Defender of the Innocent, Crusader Against Injustice and Ignorant asshattery.   I swoop through the air in my bright pink cape, using my Acid Tongue to serve a Verbal Lashing on the evil perpetrator.  Justice served, I fly back to my telephone booth, magically transform back into Barnmaven the Mom and regular old human being, and then I crawl into my closet and I shed a tear or two.

The tears are from the other person I become when I witness cruelty.  I become the Girl With the Braces.

Thanks to congenital deformities to my lower spine and right hip in conjunction with a C-curve scoliosis, I move a little funny.  Not so much now, but when I was little it was really bad.  After I started walking, my toes pointed straight in toward one another. Straight in.  Not pigeontoed.

Throughout my childhood years, I suffered a combination of leg braces and physical therapy to help my bones move the right way and to strengthen the right muscles so that I could walk more like a normal person.  The braces and the funny red shoes they came with I have almost no memory of, but I remember the physical therapy, using sandbag weights to build muscles and crying because it was so hard.  My right foot, the one with the malformed hip socket, still turns in when I'm not trying to make it go straight, and because of the scoliosis, I give new meaning to the phrase "Baby's Got Back."   

I suspect this has a good deal to do with both my desperate need to be liked (I wanted to feel normal) and my deep-seated distrust of people (they made fun of me - a lot).   Questions I heard in grade school and beyond:  "Why does your butt stick out like that?"  "How come you walk so funny?"   One particular incident in sixth grade, a group of older, junior high aged girls approached me, ready to make fun.  They were laughing.  "You know your butt sticks out?" one girl asked, challenging me.  I turned bright red and looked at the ground.  "I have scoliosis," I mumbled in embarrassment.  "What's that?"  "Its something that makes my back curve the wrong way.  Its better now, I used to wear braces for it."  "Oh.  Wow.  Hey, you guys, leave her alone.  She has a DISEASE." 

In my twenties I remember a guy at a bar that I knew only superficially walking up to me and saying "You know, you'd be a really pretty girl if your butt wasn't so big."  "You'd be a halfway attractive guy if your IQ wasn't so small."

I was lucky.  I outgrew my braces, my differences are mostly under the surface now, unless you're looking for them.  The emotional scars are deeper and longer lasting.  And it is time for me to start letting go of them.

Putting pictures of myself on my blog is excruciating.  Its not only that I know you're looking at the bags under my eyes, the deep lines next to my mouth and the fact that my mouth is crooked and my right eyebrow higher than my left.  And yes, I have  hammer chin.  And I would like you all to not notice those things and think instead that I am pretty.  But what is deeper and worse is that I am sure you can look at my pictures and see my funny leg and my butt sticking out and also the remaining weight from my babies that I keep losing and gaining and losing and gaining.   

But today is Bloggers Without Makeup day.  And so.  Without further adieu, here I am.  Late to the party, as usual. 

Part of me knows that there is a way to overcome my fears of being exposed, and that way is not to continue to think that I am successfully hiding my flaws.  That way is to bring them out into the sunlight.  The people that see them and run away, good riddance.  The people that make mean comments about them, so sad that they remain hopelessly shuttered behind their lack of intelligence and class.  The people that I want to know, the people that I think I can let in a little, they are the people who see me and don't care about those superficial things. 

Which kind are you? 

Resistance is futile

I've never been a girly-girl.  From the time I was small, I preferred pants to dresses.  My mother would often torture me by dressing me in them anyway, of course.  Sometimes she would buy patterns and make us matching mother/daughter clothes.  Ugh.  Torture.  I didn't like Barbies either; I liked Breyer horses, and Barbie was useless because her legs would break off at the hip when you tried to force her to sit on the horse.  The few Barbies that I did have ended up being one-legged and inevitably discarded on the floor of my closet.

And shoes?  Hated them. When I was in first grade my mom bought me two pairs of shoes - a pair of saddle shoes for school and a pair of Keds to play in.  I LOATHED those saddle shoes.  I begged and pleaded to wear my tennis shoes, my pretty blue Keds with the white laces and the blue tab behind the heel.  Lovely, comfortable tennis shoes.   But my mother, being unreasonable and perhaps overly parental, insisted that I wear the saddle shoes to school.  I was so indignant about being forced to dress like a girl that I ran away from home.  For real.  All the way to my friend Kirsten's house, a twenty block ride on my bicycle across a very busy four-lane main road.  Over shoes!

As I grew up and got real live horses and played sports in high school, my distaste for "girly" stuff only deepened.  Of course I put on a dress for Prom and all that stuff.  But most of my life was lived either in shorts and high-tops or in jeans and cowboy boots.  And that's always been my style.  Once I grew up, I realized the value of looking like a girl (boys seem to appreciate it) and so some skirts and dresses inevitably found their way into my closet.  The problem is that I always seem to gravitate toward the somber.  People would ask me what my favorite color is.  "Black."  "Really?  Just black?"  "Yes.  Black."  All my early business suits were either black or navy blue, with a white blouse.  Even now, I tend to buy clothes in solid colors.  I've extended the palette to brown and sometimes even a fairly pale pink, but still.  Mostly black.  Mostly solid. 

Then I had a daughter.   A daughter who loves pink best in the whole world.  Who has a room painted pink, because she wants one.  And whose favorite pair of shoes is a hot pink pair of converse with clear sequins sewn on.  Without fail, every choice of clothing she is offered, she gravitates toward the pink like a moth to the patio bulb.  And she LOVES Barbies. For years I have watched her, head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised, wondering how this pink-shrouded pink-loving pinkity pink PINK girl came sliding out of MY womb.  What I didn't notice was the effect all of this pink frilly stuff was having on me.

It started with great subtlety.  One day I was getting a (rare) pedicure.  I always get either "french" style toe painting or occasionally, if I'm feeling brazen, fire engine red.  But one day, for no reason whatsoever (or so I thought), I walked in for my appointment and when my eyes landed on hot pink, I grabbed it.  And later on I looked at my hot pink toes and I thought to myself how really pretty they looked.  A year or so later, after a lavender pedicure and a mauve toe job, I picked pink again.  And I realized once again how very much I liked it.  I might have even loved it, a teeny little bit.  And then I was shopping for clothes and I saw this bright pink tank top, and I bought it.  And when I put it on?  I LIKED it.  Somewhere along the line, my daughter waved her magic pink fairy wand and invisible tendrils of Pink Lovewound their way into the fibers of my brain, where they seeded themselves, grew roots, and started to branch out and leaf.

On the day before Mother's Day, I was out shopping for clothes with my mom when I realized it.  I looked up, looked around, and laughed.  "Hey Mom.  You know what?  You know what my favorite color is?" 

She looked at me the way you look at your dog when it suddenly starts walking into the wall over and over again for no apparent reason.

"Pink, Mom.  My favorite color is PINK.  Can you believe it?  Me?  Pink!"  And then I let her buy me a new dress.

Don't laugh.  It happened to me.  It can happen to you.

You will be assimilated.