HomeSlice

Ugh, it’s midnight and I’m still up.  I’m uploading some photos from today - we took the girls to the park this morning with my parents (Lily terrorized my parents by staying at their house last nght - I’m sure my mom was in bed at 6.30 pm tonight from sheer exhaustion). 

I will get into details of the weekend later, but for now, some pictures.

First, pictures from Wishing Well park. Then, pictures from our evening with Chef Tim. Tim and Sara are good friends of ours, and Tim is a professional chef.  He used our house to “beta test” his in-home cooking class - it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot in spite of myself. Two friends of ours, the Nances, came.  I even ate foods I wouldn’t normally touch with someone else’s mouth (onion marmellata?!?!?) and found that I actually LIKED them.  He served four courses with four bottles of wine, each wine matched to the course - not only am I slightly drunk, but I am very full!!!

We had zucchini flowers, which I naively thought were going to be zucchini cut into floral shapes. No, they were actually the flowers that grow out of a zucchini.  Fried in tempura, with a tomato cream sauce - they were super-delicious.  Then we had tagliatelle with a duck ragu, which was beyond delicious.  After inhaling mine, I enjoyed watching John eat his bowl and what was left on the table.  He was really enjoying the food.  Next, we learned how to chop and clean leeks, and Tim made fried leeks for a garnish (although Karen and I put a serious dent in the garnish before it ever hit the plate - ooops!). We had the most amazing pork tenderloin I’ve ever eaten - it was wrapped in pancetta, on a leek cream sauce, with a balsamic vinegar reduction for accents, the onion marmellata and the fried leeks on top.  It was the only time we all stopped talking - our mouths were too full.  For dessert, Tim made Panna Cotta with strawberry coulis and blueberries.  I didn’t have any since I’m off my choice of cocaine (ie sugar) but everyone else loved it, as the pictures show.

I hope he keeps doing this - we learned a lot, had tons of fun, and drank our way through the four bottles of wine.  Now, I think I’m going to go nighty-nighty. 

My parents returned from Alaska with some goodies for the girls, including a pair of stuffed dragons.  My dad made up a story about how the dragons would only hang around if the girls were behaved - these dragons are sensitive to bad behavior and would fly off if the girls misbehaved. So far, so good. 

I’ve quietly removed the devil’s granules from my diet (aka refined sugar).  Well, Jennifer and Sara would disagree about the “quiet” part, but I didn’t make some gradiose announcement to my family or anyone else. I just sort of decided over the past month that it was time, and I needed to take some action against my burgeoning ass and waistband. 

It’s more than weight gain. I’ve also had a love/hate relationship with sugar.  It gives me a lift in the afternoons, it’s a pleasant way to wake up in the morning, and I love saying hello to my little friend in front of the tv when the girls are in bed.  I LOVE DESSERT.  All kinds.  I’m not a snob.

Years ago, I lived flour- and sugar-free for close to two years before I decided that, screw it, I am a normal person and I can eat whatever I want in moderation.  I knew it was a lie but I was tired of always being the one to skip the cake.  My eating-disordered-but-in-recovery friends all believed that sugar was to a food addict what booze was to an alcoholic.  I still somewhat believe them.  I just got tired of always asking for ingredient lists on everything.  What’s unfortunate is that those two years were the healthiest of my life. Yes, I lost weight, but the most important thing? I stopped thinking about my weight and obsessing about my body. It just “was”.  I was there, but instead of feeling every inch of me and being repulsed or worried about it, I don’t even remember realizing I had a body.  It was like burning in the sun for years and all of a sudden being given shade and a hand-held sun, even if just for a few minutes. 

Over the past few months I’ve gotten really cranky about my eating habits and my starve/eat/starve cycles.  It’s a slippery slope back to where I came from, and just because I have children doesn’t guarentee me 100% normal eating and body image.  I wish it did, but it doesn’t. 

I recently revisited a favorite book from the past, Marya Hornbacher’s “Wasted.  She describes dipping her toe into bulimic waters for the first time:

“I look back on my life the way one watches a badly scripted action flick, sitting at the edge of the seat, bursting out, ‘No, no, don’t open that door! The bad guy is in there and he’ll grab you and put his hand over your mouth and tie you up and then you’ll miss the train and everything will fall apart!’ Except there is no bad guy in this tale.  The peson who jumped through the door and grabbed me and tied me up was, unfortunately, me.  My double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, ‘Don’t eat.  I’m not going to let you eat.  I’ll let you go as soon as you’re thin, I swear I will.  Everything will be okay when you’re thin.’ Liar.  She never let me go.  And I’ve never quite been able to wriggle my way free.”

She nailed it for me.  No one tells young girls (sexist!  or boys!) that dipping your toe in might mean always, always, always craving the water.  That once you start, most can’t stop.  It isn’t a phase, it isn’t a blip, it isn’t something you do because it’s “cool” in college.

I began thinking about my ED a while back when a close friend of mine shared her fears about her sister.  So much of what she shared with me - how her sister acted, the anger, the drastic weight loss, the denial, the lies, the hiding - rang something that would not be done justice by calling it a warning bell. It was more like a freakin’ gong going off, over and over again in my head.  I tried to be calm and explain my thoughts.  I loaned my friend the book.  She read it and was both fascinated and sickened by it.  She knows her sister has a big problem but she is powerless to stop her or help her. 

So why, after all these years of living *with* flour and sugar do I decide to cut out one?  Eh.  I attended too many OA meetings not to know better than to say “I’ve given up sugar forever”.  Just like AA, you take it one day at a time.  You commit to skipping the sugar “just for today”.  I’m not being quite as nazi-like about it, either.  I might still put syrup on my pancakes or eat a food that has sugar as the 5 or 6th ingredient on it.  I know whatever I’m doing is working, because after the horrible cravings gave way on Wednesday, I was left with splitting headaches and exhaustion.  Yesterday I felt like I was going to fall asleep at my desk.  I needed my drug, and Hershey is my pusher. 

Mike asked why I was doing it. Part of it is - I need to lose weight.  The bigger issue is that I need to feel healthy again.  My eating is scattered at best. I’m either trying to balance out the calories I ate at dinner by not eating breakfast or restricting lunch, or I’m just saying “screw it” and eating with abandon. Somewhere in the middle is healthful eating.  Those who know me know that I’m not so great at gray areas.  Removing sugar makes it easier for me in the long run.  This, and I still believe that I am addicted to sugar.  I don’t put the word addiction in quotes because I do actually believe some people can get a charge out of eating refined sugars. I am definitely one of them. 

Day 5 has pretty much sucked.  My head is killing me, despite two Advil this morning and another round of Tylenol this afternoon.  I’m cranky and I wish I could remember how long it took for me to lose the cravings and the headaches the last time I did this.

I wonder about the flour. I wonder if I’ll find that now that sugar is out of my diet, I’ll start abusing bread.  God, I hope not.  Life was a lot of vegetarian meals, chicken and barley when I had no flour in my diet.  I can only handle one substance at a time, so for now, I’m going to keep up the illusion that I don’t have to go cold turkey on the flour.  In the meantime, I’m trying to do this instead of dipping my toe in the water. I’ve gone down that path and it’s not one I care to revisit.

Lately, every evening when I arrive at RS to pick up the girls, I end up clenching and holding my breath before entering Arden’s classroom.  Is it a horrible attack of gas?  A really bad smell?  NO!  It’s me waiting to find out if Arden has been “thumbs up” or “thumbs pointing toward hell”. 

Here’s the thing about The Ard.  You have to love her. She’s funny, she’s silly, she loves to be a goofball.  She’s got personality oozing out of her ears.  It’s a good thing, too, because she also has deviljuice oozing out of her ears right along with the personality. 

A couple of days ago, I went to pick the girls up, and headed to Arden’s room first.  Ms. Christine, Arden’s teacher, happened to be in the lobby while I was entering my super-secret security code that gives me access to the door.  I asked her how Arden did today.  Ms. Christine sighed and shook her head.  “We had a difficult time this morning,” she said.  “I’m not going to lie to you.” 

Morning snack in the dining car was cream cheese on a bagel.  Arden swears she loves bagels, but what she really loves is just the cream cheese (Lily, on the other hand, won’t get within 10 feet of cream cheese).  She spent the first 5 minutes licking the cream cheese off the bagel.  Then she asked Ms. Christine for more.  She told her no, she needed to eat her bagel (which is what I would have done).  Arden decided tha she didn’t like Ms. Christine’s lip, so she threw her bagel down on the floor in protest.  I’m surprised she didn’t stage a coup to overthrow the cream cheese dictators in the dining car, but I’m sure that will happen later - when she learns to spell “coup”. 

I lamented to Christine and Donna, another teacher familiar with Arden’s antics, that she was so incredibly headstrong and willful (no idea where she got it).  They jokingly said, “Leave her with us for two weeks and we’ll return her fixed.”  I know they were just kidding, but I still felt the need to say, “Look, we are strict parents. We don’t let her talk to us that way, or whip bagels at us, or be sassy or throw fits because she doesn’t get her way. We consistently don’t give in.  So I just want you to know that we aren’t letting her run wild at home.”  They both said they didn’t think that, but I’m not sure what someone else is going to do with Arden that we haven’t tried.

Even Donna and Christine talked about how well Arden’s personality would serve her later in life. I added, “Yes, if it’s tempered.” 

I cannot wait to put her in the shirt I got her for her birthday:

I remember thinking I was off the hook when Lily hit three, just to find out that she actually got more tempermental, moody, and sometimes, downright nasty.  Arden is also going through a particularly bad phase right now.  If we have less than 5 fits a night, I feel like I’m on vacation.  I keep reminding myself that she will get better, older, and more able to express herself with words instead of eardrum-rupturing screams.  Please, god, make it hurry. 

Lily and Arden’s cousin Matt turned 9 this past week, and Christine was nice enough to send me some pictures of the kids. There’s even, god forbid, one of me in there. 

Jennifer and I dropped the option to pay with Express American on both sites yesterday.  Why?  Because although we had been warned by merchants everywhere that AMEX is only there for their cardholders, we just couldn’t really believe it until experiencing it ourselves.

Not that they care.  We feel like we spend a lot of money with them, but they just don’t care about the amount of money we process through them.  And if we lose some business due to not accepting the card, well, that’s what we have to deal with. 

I don’t have the patience or the interest in rehashing the whole situation.  Basically someone stole an AMEX cardholder’s card number, and ordered a bunch of merchandise on two separate orders from us.  We shipped it to a different address than the billing address. This is very common - many people buy gifts on our site and have them shipped directly to the recipient.  In the 120 pages of fine print AMEX sends to merchants to read when setting up an account, they apparently told us that they only will protect us if we ship to the billing address.  We can’t do that.  Who would pay for items to be shipping to themselves, just so they could turn around and ship it back out again? 

AMEX doesn’t care about our business model or that our store sells primarily items that are gifted to someone else.  They just saw that a cardmember’s number had been stolen, it came from us, and even though we provided information and backup out the wazoo to support our case, they dinged us for the full amount.  So now we are out the merchandise and the money. 

What made me the most upset?  I know you’re dying to hear.  What made me the most upset was that when I asked what they were going to do to go after the person who stole the cardnumber, they said they can’t or won’t do anything. It’s our responsibility, in Richmond VA, to go after some freak in Allen, Texas.  When I tried to report to Yahoo that one of their email addresses was being used to buy merchandise fraudently, a robot responded to my email with something about subpeonas.  Is ANYONE listening???  Does anyone care?

People want to know why identity theft and stolen cards are so rampant. Here’s the answer:  because none of the big companies with the money and resources to do something about it care.  Who is eating the cost of fraud and con artists? The small merchants who pay hefty monthly service charges for the pleasure of accepting credit cards, and fees on every transaction.  We make them rich.  In turn, when it’s time for them to step up and fight for us - they do nothing.  And what can you do as a merchant, really?  We can afford not to accept AMEX.  But we’d be out of business if we tried to get away from Visa or Mastercard.

Jennifer and I are going to go after the person or persons who did this.  We aren’t going to spend a ton of time or money on it, since we don’t have it, and on a happy note, we’ve buffed up our site’s security measures now and we are entirely paranoid, which is a good thing.  Tracy’s going to hook us up with a friend of hers from the Richmond Police Department.  As she so eloquently put it, “We’re going to nail that bitch.”  I love you, Tracy.

I just felt compelled to say that there is some kind of racket going on here. It’s so complicated and so messed up that I don’t have the time, energy or brain power to figure out just HOW screwed up this all is. I just know it’s not right.  All these credit card companies who talk about fighting identity theft want us to fight it by paying insurance for monthly fees for protection.  No one is going after the real issue.  At the end of the day, the credit card companies end up with more money.  And I’m pissed about it. 

You know the song?  Sing it with me now. Happy Anniversary Bay-bee, Got Choo on my Miiiiii-ind. . . ”  Well, my version is the title of this blog entry.  It wouldn’t be a special occasion without someone vomiting, having infectious diarrhea or being really cranky. Today, Arden has been very cranky, and Lily, poor thing, had an upset tummy after lunch and barfed all over me, her bed, her pink blanket, and her carpeting.  Happy Anniversary!  Let’s clean up puke together while we reflect on the wonderful years we’ve had, and all the great ones to come!

I love this picture.  I don’t have a scanner at home, so it’s a picture of a picture.  What cracks me up is that people always think it was posed.  In actuality, Mike and I had just gotten into the limo and were looking out the window at his good friend and fellow law school alums Greg and Brenda.  Greg had managed to get trashed at our early afternoon wedding, and had spilled some a drink all over another friend’s pants.  We were laughing because Greg was screaming, “Jeff peed his pants!” as we rolled out of the Jefferson Hotel’s parking lot.  You can dress us up . . . but you STILL can’t take us anywhere. 

We’ve been together 9 years.  It’s been the fastest almost-decade of my life.  7 years after our wedding date, and 40 pounds heavier, Mike still apparently loves me.  I love him too.  He still remains my closest friend, my sounding board, my reality check, and the gentle hand that pulls me back when I’m about to cross a line I shouldn’t.  He isn’t perfect - but he’s a lot more perfect than I am.  We balance each other out. 

Back in my younger days I used to think that love meant being on a roller coaster. Highs, lows, highs, terror, lows, ridiculous highs.  Hanging on for dear life.  Wanting the ride to never end, and begging for it to stop.  My marriage is the antithesis of those days.  It is fairly smooth, I’m not terrorized by it, and it feels safe to me.  Often walking into our house when it’s silent feels like leaving the world or the chaos in my mind, and it’s because Mike makes it that way for me.  I still have a great need for others in my life - I couldn’t survive without my friends - but he is the one anchor point that I always come back to.

We’re hoping the babysitter shows soon so we can go to a restaurant without kids menus and crayons.  We might even cross the river, or go downtown.  Shocking, I know. 

This is all hypothetical, of course.

You’re a wealthy woman, with a couple of kids. One of them is nearing 4, and needs a nap mat.  You hop on your spiffy new iBook and browse the internet and happen upon a store selling such cute nap mats.  You decide to buy 6 of them. 

This internet store scrambles around, because your order coincides with the PEAK of nap mat season.  Internet store is happy that receive a nice big order for a woman that apparently has six children.  They send you happy notes through email and beat on their manufacturers to MAKE.NAPMATS.FASTER.  Must provide all six to you immediately.  You receive your six nap mats about one week later. 

While sipping your nonfat latte, you spread all six nap mats out in the family room, yell at the labradoodle to get the heck off them, and call your 4 year old.  She trots in.  You tell her you’ve ordered six nap mats, and she is to pick out her favorite.  She goes through all of them, and decides on her favorite.  She drags it off into her bedroom, probably complaining that it doesn’t have Princesses on it. 

You package the other 5 nap mats up, write a short and sweet note to the internet store that sold you the six nap mats, telling them that you wanted your 4 year old to be able to PICK her favorite out up close and personal. You pay another $30 to ship the 5 back, and wait for your sizeable refund. 

The owners of the internet store politely refund your money, even though they want to hunt you down and beat you.  They are so thrilled that your 4 year old was able to pick her favorite nap mat, especially after they shipped you six nap mats at their cost, badgered 3 different manufacturers to MAKE.NAPMATS.FASTER.  But you don’t care.  Hey, at least you sent them back at your expense. 

Those same owners wonder if they are just mean mothers because they don’t order hundreds of dollars of merchandise online to let their kids pick from in the safety and comfort of their home.  They decide that they aren’t mean.  Just practical. 

Again, all theoretical, of course. 

Arden’s preschool gives out daily sheets every day - hence the name, “daily sheet”.  I picked up Arden today, and glanced at her daily sheet.  On the back, under the “social” category, a small handwritten word:  “Feisty”.  (Well, actually it was written as Fiesty, but who’s grading the daily sheets? Not me.)

Feisty.  It’s a pretty good word for her. At nearly three, she was sassing her primary teacher today and yesterday, saying “I’m not gonna LOOK at you!” when told to do something (she thinks that’s a punishment, apparently, and I’m not going to educate her).  She usually combines the threat to not look at you with a goose-step, dinosaur-like stomping of feet and flapping of arms for good measure.  I got her in the car and she immediately took her shoes off and began kicking the back of the seat and the window, just to be spiteful - she wasn’t even mad at the moment.  She got mad - after I told her to stop.  She and Lily spent the rest of the time trying to shove each other’s toes in each other’s faces, all the while screaming, “SMELL MY STINKY TOES!”.  It was highly entertaining. 

I know that Arden is going to test me daily and that this is not a phase.  She is stubborn, hilarious, and incredibly independent. These are all traits that will serve her well later in life. Right now, they just give her parents an ulcer.  I think it’s interesting that I have one daughter who is paying me back ten-fold for all the times I sat at the dining room table, a child myself, and complained about the meals my mother served, refused to eat, or just slapped a sour face on and made dinner miserable for all those around me.  Lily is my mother’s payback to me in human form.  Then there’s Arden, who is so incredibly spirited and determined.  Thank god she’s fairly cute, smart, and has personality coming out of her ears - otherwise, raising her might not be so much fun. 

Lily had a doozie of a temper tantrum that lasted for about an hour last week.  It took her about 45 minutes to recover - I am STILL recovering this week from it.  Thankfully they don’t happen very often, but man - when they do, I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe where everything is said in a screaming, stereo-turned-up-to-11, nothing-will-ever-be-right-again way.  Even Arden covered her ears and begged for mercy.  I am fairly certain that Lily is going through this due to some adjustment issues with her new classroom. This week has been much better. 

I’m sort of taking the day off tomorrow.  The concert I was supposed to go to with Sara was rescheduled - for MAY.  Major, major bummer.  However, she had told clients she’d pick up some items for them at the Container Store (because Richmond still is not cool enough to have one), so I’m going to Northern Virginia just to check things out with her and keep her company.  I could use some time off, and since I haven’t booked my massage yet, this is a good second choice. 

We had a busy weekend.  Mike and I reorganized the garage, which made us both feel like we had accomplished something.  However, it was Mike’s weekend to experience male PMS so he was a little on the crabby side.  I don’t think he enjoyed it quite as much as I did.  After, I headed over to Sara and Tim’s to help them with their unexpected move.  They are moving into a beautifully renovated home on Richmond’s North Side, which is a close second to my first choice of living back in the city.  I had one of those weird moments when her new neighbor crossed the street from her gorgeous, restored Victorian mansion.  She wanted to know if Sara and Tim had kids (they do not).  She was disappointed, because she apparently has her own brood living in this exceptionally cool, different, beautiful home - with city schools and all.  I’m also fairly certain she doesn’t send her children to the aforementioned schools, which necessitates having to afford very expensive private schools.  However, just for one moment I allowed myself to daydream about living in a big old house built in the early 1900s that Mike and I would lovingly restore contractors would restore in our imaginary world where we had money to pay for that, and our kids would go to school and trick or treat in neighborhoods full of character and people from all different walks of life, instead of the sterile and oh-so-pristine-white suburbs where we currently reside.  It’s a fantasy for so many reasons, but it was fun while it lasted. 

I know most people think I’m nuts, but those few years we spent living within the city limits made me a rabid fan of historic homes, the old tree-lined neighborhoods that made up the early days of Richmond, being close to the river, and the sheer diversity of the people that made up our neighbors converted me forever.  If not for the children, I don’t think much could have gotten us out of the city.  We moved reluctantly, to newer home construction, granite countertops and perfectly manicured lawns.  There are more minivans than people out here. 

I’m only partially making fun of myself.  We had good reasons for coming here - did I mention the schools?  My neighborhood is chock full of kids for our kids to play with (and egg houses with later in life).  The houses hold their value, the neighbors are polite, and there’s a private swimming pool.  It’s a good place to grow up. 

But driving past our old home on 45th Street still fills me with longing and nostalgia.  I know it’s probably just rose-colored glasses, but that’s where our first home was, and we LOVED that house.  I have such great memories there, of the walks we would take, the crazy neighbors, living without a community association, the arts festival that took place annually a few blocks away, and all the great houses.  It was our original nest - it was tons of fun while it lasted. 

Sometimes growing up sucks!!!!

Yesterday, I picked the girls up at preschool as I normally do.  Getting them out of the building and into the car in one piece is difficult - usually one of them wants to run pell-mell into the parking lot without looking, or is having a tantrum and wants to be carried, or is literally sitting on the sidewalk sniffing the petunias because they are so “pretty”.  I usually open Lily’s door first because she can climb into her car seat and even buckle herself in.  I leave the door open because she likes to shut it herself and because it was close to 98 degrees out yesterday.  I then open Arden’s door, help her in, and buckle her up.  I am usually commanded to fetch any number of toys, most likely that have fallen way under the seat and this requires me to kneel in the parking lot and feel around for whatever the toy of the moment is.

I pride myself on my competence and efficiency in terms of getting the girls in and out of the car.  Usually I can accomplish these things in under 2 minutes.  However, yesterday as I was leaning over buckling Arden in to her seat, I hear a short car horn.  I ignored it, thinking it was someone trying to get someone’s attention. Then I hear a LONGER car horn.  I finish up what I’m doing, and stand up to close the door. I see a large minivan blocking me in, and a woman making “hurry up” hand gestures toward me. 

Folks, let me tell you - I was about as close to using the F word in front of my kids and a whole parking lot full of other people’s children as I’ve ever been. I closed Arden’s door and went over to Lily’s, quickly checked that she was buckled in properly, closed her door, then stood aside so Ms. Frantic Pants could get into the parking spot next to my car.  Did I mention that there were NUMEROUS parking spots right near her that didn’t require her to wait for me?

As she exited her car, I told myself to calm down and breath and not kill her in front of my children.  She walked by and said, “Oh, I didn’t see that you were putting your daughter in.”  Apparently my huge ass sticking out of the passenger side door wasn’t enough of a visual clue that I was actually there, buckling my children. And if this was true, who was she honking at?  My kids?  Yes, woman, I leave my kids buckled into their car seats in sweltering heat with BOTH DOORS open while I chat inside the air conditioned comfort of preschool!!!  I took another deep breath and said, “Yes, unlike you, I have TWO children to get in and I go as fast as possible. I’m sorry it inconvenienced you.”  She just kept on walking. 

I think what took me off guard is that another mother, with kids at the same school as mine, and who has obviously experienced the PITA factor that car seats today entail, chose to gesture rudely and HONK at me because I wasn’t going fast enough!  This, while I’m sweating and panting, with handfuls of school papers and artwork, and she sits in her freakin’ minivan with the a/c blasting and parking spots all around her.  I guess I thought that motherhood means you understand?  That you are supposed to get what each other are going through?  Apparently not. 

So for those of you with or without kids who get frustrated at how long it may or may not take someone to get their kids in and out of places - give us a break, please. We are going as fast as we can, and usually that’s not all that fast, considering children when rushed move slower than a glacier. 

Arden’s got this hilarious new thing she does when she’s reading stories with her dad or looking at things she deems “cute” or “small”.  Tonight I finally remembered to take some video of it.  The first video is our typical evening.  Mike reads to Arden first, and usually Lily perches on the Diaper Genie (can we throw that thing out yet?!?!?!) and they chatter through the story. 

The second video is my favorite.  Arden talks in this high-pitched, “baby talk” voice when she sees something cute.  She’s looking at a Baby Einstein flap book, and under the flaps on the last page are pictures of baby animals that were featured in the book.  It’s pretty funny. 

I can’t wait to torture her at her graduation or prom with these!!!

I’ve read some amazing blogs today focusing on 9/11.  A lot of people have said a lot of very poignant and moving things, crafted beautiful paragraphs, and woven painful stories of the when and where, and the losses we all endured in 2001.  There isn’t much I can add, but I can say that one of the major themes I noticed is a huge loss of innocence and trust.  So many people wrote about how the events of September 11 shook them to their core, sent them running to their families or friends, made them fearful, depressed, beyond sad - and changed the way they felt about their country and their world forever. 

For me, I felt true, unadulterated fear that is still with me today.  Thankfully I didn’t have children on 9/11/2001, but I did within two months.  I had a pervasive feeling that I could no longer protect myself, let alone my children.  I felt violated and afraid.  That first week after the attacks, I really didn’t want to leave my house. I remember curling up on our couch with Mike, in our first home, and just crying.  And asking him to explain this to me, as if his explanations could somehow make it all right.  Mike had always been able to calm and comfort me, and reason with me. Another first - he couldn’t really do any of those things that evening, as we watched replays on television of people throwing themselves off the World Trade Center and the buildings collapsing and what looked like the living dead lurched through the streets of Manhattan. 

Tonight I hugged my kids hard when I picked them up for school. They promptly shoved me off them, unaware of what transpired just a few years ago.  And for that, I am so glad. 

We spent most of this past weekend in the pool. Lily decided, two days before it closed, that she wanted to jump off the diving board, so she spent the last two days constantly jumping off the board and swimming to the edge. She was quite pleased with herself, to say the least. 

Some photos:

Arden, at the pool, ready to jump.

Lily, on the diving board

Arden, relaxing after a hard day’s swimming.

I also took some video of Lily’s jumps.  They aren’t the greatest, but hey - I did what I could with my crappy digital camera!

I keep asking myself, what are we going to DO until the pool opens next year?!?!?  Yikes!

It’s one of those work days where I can’t seem to focus on anything, everything is irritating me, and I’m exceptionally whiny.  I’m nearly as annoying as my 4 year old when she whines, and that’s saying a lot.  It’s almost as if 30 days of non-stop motion at work has caused me to be incapable of proactive planning and dealing with a normally-paced workday. 

Then I stopped and glanced back at what the last 45 days have been like.  And I realized, I’m fried.  Burned.  Toasted. Stick a fork in me, I’m well-done.  In my previous life, I would have put a vacation time request in, taken a week off (paid, I might add), and kicked back.  Not so much now.

Mike appears to have hit a new level of stress with my business and has a permanent look of worry on his face whenever we think, or talk, about money.  This coincides with our best month ever - which is great - and also with me being beyond tired, a little bitchy, and entirely unmotivated at this particular instant in time.  He has every right to be frustrated, and I’m not going to take that away from him. It’s got to be frustrating to be in his shoes and know that your wife, with the amount of hours she works, could be pulling in serious cake in corporate America.  Unfortunately, that same, afore-mentioned wife nearly pukes when thinking about working in the professional services industry again.  All those politics, ass-kissing, platitudes, travel, and worst of all, the pantyhose.  Ugh.  So I’ll give Mike his irritation and concern for our monetary situation.  My lack of steady paycheck for the past year has put us in debt personally, and that really bums him out.  However bummed out he feels, multiply those feelings by 10 and you’re getting close to how it makes me feel.

Are we turning the corner?  Eh.  Sort of.  Our high-powered financial analyst (aka my father) looked at the reports from this past month and told me the truth, as he always does.  We’re going to be doing a lot more consulting in the upcoming months if we want to be able to survive long enough to see the online businesses prosper. Not what I wanted to hear, but probably something I needed to hear, even though I already knew it. 

So I’m burned out, and I need a vacation.  I’m not going to get one, but I need to find a way to refocus myself so that I can be proactive again at work.  All those orders were great - god, you have to LOVE nap mat season while it lasts. I have a lot more understanding a respect for all the shop owners I knew in Traverse City who made an entire year’s worth of money during June, July and August - and how they must have felt when the leaves started to fall and all you had to look forward to was 9 months of hellish winter and lake effect snows along with no customers and no money.  I’m glad that we have 2 other businesses that aren’t seasonal, because without them, I’d be REALLY bummed out.  I also just have to say how thankful I am that I no longer live in Northern Michigan, much as I pine for it during the summer months when I am drowning in sweat and humidity and sweltering heat. 

The girls are back at school, adjusting to their new classrooms. Lily’s going through a particularly whiny and argumentative phase - it’s like she’s 1 1/2 again and her favorite word is “no”.  I thought we were done with that - apparently I was wrong.  Arden’s actually getting a little bit better and I’m learning how to avoid temper tantrums without giving in to our little Hitler’s whims - it’s an art form with her, really.  Such a delicate balance between melt-down and cheerful happy blonde girl.  Last night I had an interesting conversation with Lily, during which I was reminded of how much she picks up on what I say.  It went something like this:

“Mommy, my brain is getting me all, you know, spastic!”
“What do you mean?”  (knowing full well, since at the time she was jumping all over her bed and me, buck naked, as I tried to encourage her firmly to put on some underwear)
“My brain is making me spastic - my brain is going, ‘mmmmmm mmmmm hmmmmm la la la la la mmmmmmm’.  My brain is singing to me and making me hyper!” 

Apparently I’ve been telling her she’s spastic too frequently . . .