Category: Confessions

. . . are good for the soul.

Impatience Is Making Me Wait

I am impatient.  You’d think I would be patient given my long history of infertility, dizzying stint wandering through the maze of adoption resulting in twins . . . and then the unexpected appearance of a baby boy, followed by an even more unexpected girl.  (My youngest son not only arrived nine days late, but then he dilly-dallied through a forty-three hour labor before finally putting in an appearance.)  Have I learned nothing from all these waiting days?

Well, I’m still impatient.  I realized that (again) today while huffing a long-suffering exaggerated sigh at church.  My daughter–she’s three and a half–is driving me nuts with her demands and her pace (s-l-o-w) and her new trick of having to be in front of me wherever we go.  (I’ll be heading down the stairs and she’ll exclaim, “Wait!  I want to be in front!” and I’ll have to stop and wait while she positions herself the perfect distance in front of me so that I am poised to trip and land on my head.)  I’m impatient for her to get through this phase.

I’m impatient for the school year to end. 

I’m impatient for the day when I will no longer be responsible for wiping other people’s noses and bottoms.

I’m impatient for free time, long, luxurious stretches of thought-time, during which no one interrupts me for a drink of water or a snack of “peeling cheese” (aka string cheese) or Coco-Puffs cereal.

I’m antsy these days, unable to focus.  In addition to getting the boys through the final four weeks of school (or die trying!), I am coordinating our church’s Vacation Bible School (VBS) again this year and I haven’t yet ordered the materials.  It begins in less than two months.  I need to recruit, to plan, to order, to organize, to decorate–did I mention recruiting?  

I thought this weekend I’d get my school-at-home records up to date and my order ready for VBS, but the distractions of dirty dishes and sandy floors and six extra boys in the back yard have blocked my accomplishments.

I’m so unfocused that I can’t even seem to get through a book.  I started To Kill a Mockingbird weeks ago.  My daughter absconded with it and I couldn’t find it for several days, but even when it reappeared, I didn’t resume reading.  In the meantime, I started three or four other books and can’t keep reading them.  It’s as if my brain can’t get any traction on all those words organized on all those pages.  I can’t concentrate.

Tomorrow, I say to myself.  Tomorrow.  I’ll get the stuff done that must be done.  The boys will be at P.E. at the YMCA and I’ll sit right down and not read blogs.  No.  Instead, I’ll get my VBS order ready and update my school records.  (Name it and claim it! she says in faith.) 

Time speeds by and yet, I’m still impatient.  I think it’s a character trait I have, the flaw of hurrying time along, of wishing this moment was over so I can unwrap what comes next. 

Slow down, brain.  (I will.  As soon as I hurry and finish the tasks I am avoiding.  Really.) 

The Myth of Sleeping In

At heart, I’m a pessimist . . . except on Saturday mornings.  On Saturday mornings, I somehow trick myself into believing that I will get extra sleep, even on days when my husband leaves the house early, as he did this morning.  My daughter wakes up at 6:55 a.m. and I barely open my eyes as I pluck her from her crib and run bath water.

As the water runs, I return to bed and precisely four minutes later, return to the bathroom to turn off the water.  I am still mostly asleep, convinced I will be sleeping in this bright Saturday morning.  I am a Saturday morning optimist.  I crawl back under the covers.  

Six minutes later, she beckons me and I stumble back to the bathroom to answer her nonsensical question (ie. “can I have a cloth-cloth?”).  She has very few made-up words in her vocabulary, but she calls a “washcloth” a “cloth-cloth,” which I find very charming.  But I still would rather sleep.  So back to bed I go.

Ten minutes later, she’s finished with the bath.  I wrap her in a towel, turn on her television, bring her a bowl of dry Cheerios and a drink and stubbornly return to bed.  I am sleeping in!  It’s Saturday! 

Soon, she appears at my bedside.  “Can I sleep with you?” she asks.  So, I scoot over and she climbs in.  Moments later:  “Will you turn on a show, please?”  I turn on Nickelodeon and plump up my pillow.  I am sleeping in!

She’s eating saltine crackers in bed.  She turns on the light.  She’s in.  She’s out.  She’s up.  She’s down.  She’s talking to me, even though I AM SLEEPING IN!  It’s Saturday!

At 9:15 a.m., I’m still in bed.  “Sleeping.”  Lights are all on, so I’m suffocating under the covers.  The television is loud.  How did it get so loud?  And then the alarm begins to ring in the bathroom.  This alarm clock almost outsmarted me, but one day I read the instruction booklet three times in a row and figured out how to turn it off.  Only, somehow, now it’s beeping.  I say to my daughter, “Hey, can you go push the buttons on that clock and turn it off?” 

She goes, but can’t get on the counter because she’s wearing her 8-year old brother’s pajamas and her feet swim in grievously long pajama legs.  She keeps slipping.  I say, “Can’t you push the buttons?”  She says, “I can’t!  I’m slipping!”  Finally, I throw off the covers with a mad flourish and stomp to the bathroom.  I say crazy things like, “FINE!  WHY WON’T YOU LET ME SLEEP IN?!  IT’S SATURDAY!”

And so the day begins.

Hats!

I have a big head. No, really. I mean the circumference of my head is unusually large, twenty-five inches–I just measured twice–which by anyone’s standards indicates that my noggin is gigantic.

I also have all this Cocker-Spaniel hair (“yes, the curl is natural, do you think I’d pay money to DO THIS TO MY HEAD?”), so all things considered, if I were a snowman, I’d fall over, head first, into a snowbank.

The huge-headedness of mine has only bothered me on the rare occasion, like when I was visiting Tahiti as a sixteen-year old and our new found Tahitian friends gifted me with a lovely straw hat to commemorate my visit. It perched awkwardly on my head until we boarded the plane and it’s never touched my hair again. I hang it in my closet, a reminder of balmy breezes and Tahitian brown eyes, but I can’t wear it. That hat is made for a girl with a normal head size.

Sure, perhaps I need an extra-large head to encase my super-sized brain, but that didn’t offer any comfort the time I went snowmobiling in northern Michigan and the helmet crushed my eyeballs into the front of the helmet and smashed my nostrils into my upper lip, causing my breath to steam up the helmet windshield (what is that thing called?).  Who needs to see anyways?  Inside that helmet I felt like one of my kids as a toddler who snuggled his head into a flowerpot. Nice and cozy. Also, I had to undo my French-braid to lessen the bulk and when we arrived at a restaurant for a little break (thank God, my head could expand to its normal shape again), my hair looked like the “before” picture in a shampoo commercial. Oh, so pretty! 

Even if I could shove my head into a hat, I wouldn’t because I have eight tons of the aforementioned Cocker Spaniel hair firmly affixed to my skull. (I would look like Bozo the clown.)

My hair makes me hot, causes me to swoon on a slightly warm day and is the reason that I bought a hundred hair bands last time which came on a handy key-chain-like ring. My supply on the ring has dwindled down to three, so now I dig my hands deep into whatever pockets I might be wearing in hopes that I’ll fish out a hair band. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am about to push aside the 307 broken pencils in my drawer to see if a hair band is handy. (It was. Oh, sweet relief!)

One time, I remember Oprah mentioning that she has a big head, though do you think I can find any proof right now through the magic of Google? (No.) And Rosie says her head is big, too, though she is fuzzy on the details. Perhaps I’m destined for television talk-show fame, if my head is any indication. Then again, well, maybe not. I suspect there are additional qualifications, like the ability to make small talk with random strangers and the willingness to wear super-high pointy high-heels and smile at a camera.

If I ever lose my hair, I’m doomed to a life of shiny baldness because even Bartholomew Cubbins‘s five hundred hats doesn’t include one in size Too-Too-Too-How-Can-She-Even-Balance-Herself-With-That-Bowling-Ball-Head-Large.

I Am No Mother Duck

A few days ago, while driving down the road with my youngest two in the back of the 1987 Chevy Astro, I noticed a car slowing in front of me. Two women standing at a bus stop were pointing and laughing and so, I slowed, too. The car in front of me sped up and so I could clearly see the spectacle slowing traffic. A mother duck and her four ducklings waddled from the middle of the busy residential street to the edge, as I waited with my foot pressed to the brake while frantically digging in my purse for my camera.

I pulled out the camera just as the little procession reached safety.

The image of that mama duck and her babies has remained in my mind, though. Her ducklings followed, hovered close to her feathered sides, didn’t run off, didn’t fight with their brothers, didn’t refuse to do grammar because it is so boring.

I’m nothing like that duck mom. Today, as a matter of fact, I would have thrown my letter of resignation at my boss, only, uh, I don’t have a boss and I can’t resign. Instead, I slammed the door and strode outside, first to the driveway where I stood by the lilacs, and then up the street a few houses where I noticed a gentle spring breeze and wondered if the neighbors were looking at the wild-haired lady in her moccasin slippers wandering the neighborhood. All the windows really did seem like eyeballs behind sunglasses, staring at me.

I didn’t go far, of course, because I was keenly aware of the littler ones in my house and also cognizant of the fact that my teenagers would keep an eye on the little kids even though those very same teenagers, well, one of those teenagers, had caused me to flee into the street, question my very status of a competent mother and resolve to turn in my Homeschooling Mother Card once and for all.

I CAN’T DO THIS! I shrieked to myself, as loudly as one can shriek inside one’s head on the street in the middle of the morning while worrying about neighbors calling the police to report a raving lunatic strolling the streets.

My son, The Reluctant Student, has some issues, some undiagnosed issues having to do with paying attention and retaining information and organization. I don’t need a label to know that he struggles with what comes naturally and easily to me and his twin brother. He sometimes stays focused and tries, but this week he’s been derailed. The picture of him as a railroad car literally off the rails, unable to move forward or backward, blocking the rest of the train from moving fills me with pity and understanding, but also frustration because we need to keep moving. Moving forward, heading toward the finish line, hurry, hurry, hurry!

When I hurry him, he resists.

I used to think that raising children was all about nurturing them properly and creating the right environment. I see now how much genetic predisposition influences and even controls behavior. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, like a salmon swimming upstream who finally encounters an impassable dam.

So, between a difficult morning of grammar (adverbial phrases, anyone?) and my daughter who spends every waking moment either changing her clothes or interrupting me or demanding Cheetos, I really did decide I am not cut out for this mothering gig. Really. I quit. DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M NOT COMING IN TOMORROW! I QUIT!

Blink. Blink-blink. Okay, fine. In two weeks, I’m outta here, for sure. I’m going to get a job cleaning chimneys or muck-raking cow stalls or deep-sea fishing on an Alaskan fishing boat . . . something easy like that.

If I were a mother duck and my kids were those ducklings, today they totally would have been squished by a car. Tomorrow, maybe they will be all fluffy and yellow and quiet and cute. One can hope.

(My son just sent me this instant-message: “GOING TO TRUN OFF NOW MOM GOOD NIGHT I HEART U =) AND ALSO SORRY FOR TODAY.” Okay. Fine. Whatever. I’m in for one more day.)

Unveiling

Yes, as it turns out, I do have a face. And when I wear lipstick you can even see my lips. When I was twenty-eight, I remember a forty-something mom telling me how her lip-color had faded with the years. I thought that odd, but what do you know? It happened to me, too. Without lipstick, no lips.

So, you’re saying to yourself, how did Mel come up with that photograph so quickly? You see, I am never ever in the family photographs for two reasons. One, I am always the photographer. Two, I am fat.

But you see, being fat has opened doors, which is ironic in so many ways. For instance, I have thought to myself, Self, you need to get yourself in shape so you can go to that writer’s conference next year and kick-start your writing career! And I’ve thought, If only I weren’t so fat, so many more opportunities would fall into my (no-longer ample) lap. And I’ve looked at Heather B. Armstrong’s blog, “Dooce,” and thought, Well, of course she’s making money blogging. She’s skinny.

See how irrational we chubby fluffy pudgy chunky fat girls can be? The internet is a wonderful thing, too, because no one has to see our outside and we can bypass those feelings of embarrassment and self-disgust and just put forward our best selves, the inner parts of us. I have been dismissed sometimes because being fat is like wearing a force field which makes you invisible to the human eye. Sometimes, this is good. Who wants to be hounded by the paparazzi, after all?

So, I’m fat. And my being fat has indirectly led me to this particular blogging job which has requested a photo.

And I have no photographs of myself. So, knowing that I’d need a photograph for my new blogging job, I decided I would spruce myself up and get myself to a photography studio as soon as possible so they could work their magic and hopefully, employ some airbrushing techniques to remove my double-chin and possibly fifty pounds. Which wouldn’t be possible for days, weeks, months . . . who knows? Because, as the detail-retaining among you will remember, my husband is out of town, hanging out with his college buddies in Las Vegas. Yes, the pastor is on the loose in Vegas!

The email that came yesterday, though, asked for a picture now. Right now. As in hurry-up-send-a-picture-before-we-change-our-minds-right-now.

And there I am, wearing a shirt with gummy remains of a Triscuit smeared on my shoulder and not a drop of makeup on my pale face and no chance of leaving my house. I made a half-hearted attempt to locate an existing picture of myself, but knew deep in my heart that I don’t have one I can tolerate. And using my old college picture or the one of me was a three year old simply would not do.

At lunch-time, I have a forty-five minute baby-free window because one baby leaves for a lunch break with his mom and the other hasn’t yet arrived. I sprang into action. I smeared on carefully applied make-up, fluffed up my hair and put on a clean shirt. Baby number two arrived just as I finished glossing up my lips. I’m sure the baby’s dad was shocked to see me in that condition, but what can you do? You can’t always be a frumpy housewife, I guess.

I had one 13-year old keep an eye on the baby and my daughter, while I went outside with my other 13-year old. I dragged over a ladder, stood my son in front of the laurel hedge, and positioned the camera just so. Then I changed places with my son. I had him step up the ladder a few rungs so he’d be looking down on me, so I could tilt my face slightly up and thus, through the magic of posing, eliminate a chin. Hey, when you don’t have special lighting and your own personal airbrusher, you get creative. (From now on, whenever I know there will be cameras, like at family reunions or holiday events, I am taking my 6-foot aluminum ladder with me, because, as it turns out, I don’t look too bad if you are three feet above me and I’m looking up.)

He took about ten shots and I chose the one you see to the right as the best one.

And now you know the truth. I’m a fat blogger. I hope we can still be friends.

I’m kidding! Of course, you’ll still be my friend. Because here’s the best part about having a fat friend: you look thinner standing next to her.

Now, ten points to the person who comes up with an utterly delightful title for a blog chronicling the diet of a fat housewife. Okay, a hundred points.

Go!

Cryptic and True, All at the Same Time

When my husband is driving and I am the passenger, he is forever reminding me that men have superior depth perception. Especially compared to me. He heard that fact one time and our experiences in motor vehicles seem to back up this idea. I’ll be stomping the imaginary brakes and clutching the arm rests while he’s still accelerating, even though a parade of brake lights shine in front of us. He’ll say, “Relax!” which has never made me relax, not one time, not since the first time he said it to me nineteen years ago.

The other day, I was idly chatting on the phone with my neighbor, the one whose house was hit by a falling tree a few weeks ago. She’d called to let me know her sick son wouldn’t be going to school. (We carpool.) My son wasn’t going either–he missed the whole week due to this flu bug–and then we wandered from topic to topic. I washed dishes while we talked and then stood and gazed out my back window.

Over my back fence is a new development of houses and on the other side of that little development is a sporadic row of trees, tall, spindly Douglas Firs with clumpy branches at the tops of long trunks. They look kind of like feather dusters and during windy days, I liked to watch them sway back and forth.

As you imagine, when we had the wind storm, those feather duster trees whipped back and forth and some of the tops snapped clean off. In recent days, I’ve noticed gaps in the line of trees. And then, that morning, I saw that in that particular stand of Douglas Firs, only one remained.

As I watched that morning, phone to my ear, that tree began to wiggle and then it began to fall. I hollered into my unsuspecting friend’s ear, “OH MY GOSH! THAT TREE IS FALLING! IT’S GOING TO HIT THAT HOUSE!” She has no idea what I was talking about, but having been the recent victim of a falling tree herself, was appropriately panicked.

And then the tree fell, missing the house completely.

It’s all about depth perception. And how mine is wacky. I always sense danger when danger is not within arm’s reach. As you can imagine, this makes me jumpy and suspicious.

But “jumpy” and “suspicious” are pejorative words. I prefer to think of myself as aware and discerning. For each negative, there’s a positive, right? And, if you are negative, you must admit that for every positive there’s a negative. Maybe that’s just me.

As I pick my way through the maze of life, occasionally bumping into dead ends and circling in cul-de-sacs going nowhere, I sometimes open a door and come face to face with a sneering, leering crowd who holds up a distorted mirror, reflecting back a warped image of myself.

And so I do what any jumpy and suspicious aware and discerning girl would do. I already know what I look like–I am obsessively aware of my true self and how I really am when I’m in the dark–and I refuse to play along with a fun-house mirror game in which I am psychoanalyzed by the clowns. My faults are grievous enough as it is. So, I slam the door closed, deadbolt it, build a brick wall in front it, drag a heavy chest in front of the wall and carry on.

No looping back for me. No changing my mind and turning back. No way for them to get in and no way for me to waver. And once that door is barricaded, it’s like the fate of those drug tunnels that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sometimes find burrowing under the border between Mexico or Canada and the U.S. Even though the tunnels are engineering marvels, testimony to the dedication and determination of their creators, the DEA officials unapologetically fill them with concrete.

I’ve filled in the tunnels with concrete. I go forward. I won’t look back.

The weird thing is that I thought they were closer than they really were. My depth perception fails me again.

True Confession

I have a Mean Streak. I do. I know I shouldn’t say that out loud, especially where people can (and probably will) use my own words as ammunition, but I say it anyway.

I.
Have.
A.
Mean.
Streak.

This explains why I laugh at “American’s Funniest Videos” when someone falls down. This explains why I smirk at the baby’s screams when I am a little slow getting the bottle to her imploring hands. This explains why I like to watch the first shows of “American Idol” more than the last shows. My Mean Streak.

I suppose a more theologically astute (and pretentious) person might point out that a Mean Streak is kind of like a Sin Nature. I have one. You have one, too, but you probably don’t want to admit it. I don’t like to admit it, either. It’s best to just keep the Mean Streak hidden, to pretend it’s not there.

My Mean Streak thinks terrible thoughts sometimes. My Mean Streak shines the spotlight of judgment on stupid people and judges them for their stupidity. My Mean Streak shrugs off the gentle hand of Benefit of the Doubt and would prefer to tell it like it is, according to me, of course.

I carry a mental gag in my pocket at all times, so I can shut up the Mean Streak’s mouth before I do any damage. My Mean Streak is muffled. Mostly. I don’t say out loud the worst of what I think.

But, oh! Some times I can hardly contain myself! I cannot understand non-thinkers. I don’t get why people are not interested in reading. Why doesn’t everyone want to figure out their own personality, their angst, their development? How is it that some people are not interested in understanding people?

Why are people so stupid? And why does it bother me so much? Why do people make such devastatingly stupid choices? And why should I care?

Some days, my Mean Streak won’t stop squawking and on those days, it’s best to just shut up. If only I had an Isolation Chamber where I could hide before my Main Streak lands a punch squarely on the face of the nearest knucklehead.

Ten Ways I Annoy My Husband (Without Really Trying)

1) I have purchased exactly one plunger, which may or may not be located near the toilet currently overflowing. (We have three toilets, one plunger, a 3:1 ratio, obviously not efficient.)

2) I leave wads of crumpled used tissues on my bedside table. What can I say? I have allergies.

3) At least once a month, eager for an evening snack, he pours cereal in a bowl, opens the fridge and finds . . . no milk. This is highly disappointing to him.

4) I leave shoes out, under the dresser, near the bed, wherever. I can’t be bothered.

5) I insist on doing things My Way (aka The Right Way), things like loading the dishwasher and packing correctly for trips.

6) I turn down corners of the magazines he leaves in the bathroom so I can pick up where I left off.

7) Clutter.

8) I mock his heritage by using an improbably bad Southern accent.

9) I talk to him during “important” portions of shows he’s trying to watch.

10) I don’t get out of bed when the alarm rings. I’m a three-hits-to-the-snooze-button kind of girl.

The Valentine’s Day Grinch

I have to confess. Valentine’s Day means nothing to me. I used to love it . . . in elementary school when the holiday promised heart-shaped cookies and lacy hearts and an afternoon party during school. My mom would make sure I wore red or pink to school. What’s not to love?

But for the last thirty years? Valentine’s Day has been a non-event. Oh, wait. I remember my first married Valentine’s Day. In 1988, it must have been on a Sunday, because I remember after church spending the day with my husband . . . and a bunch of young people from the church we were attending. I wanted to confide in the mom of the house–she was probably forty-five, maybe fifty–and I wanted to ask her about marriage and did she worry that her husband didn’t think she was pretty anymore and would she please be my mentor and my friend and help, help, help, I’m lonely, even though I’m married. You’re okay. Am I okay?

I can’t remember other specific Valentine’s Days, though my husband always brings me chocolate and a card and sometimes a teddy bear or something. But a gradual realization has dawned over recent years. I’m not very romantic. I have a very low need for romance. Perhaps I can blame this on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs . . . I’m always stuck in the “need sleep” stage of life, it seems. I’m just pragmatic, sensible, apt to choose comfort over fashion. I have no poetry in my soul, other than the tried and true: “I had a little tea party, this afternoon at three; t’was very small, three guests in all, just I, Myself and Me; Myself ate up the sandwiches, while I drank up the tea; T’was also I who ate the pie and passed the cake to Me.” (Thank you, Miss Brittingham, third-grade teacher.)

My husband, though, appears to be moving closer to the romance spectrum of life while I inch away, bit by bit. And so, with some alarm, I opened my eyes wider in dismay when he announced, “I thought of the perfect Valentine’s Day gift! And it’s not too expensive, either.” (He already brought me two dozen red roses with the reassuring thought that they are less expensive now, only $19.99 at Costco and they are really quite lovely.)

Oh no! We’re doing Valentine’s Day? I mean, beyond a card and chocolate? Does this require creative thinking on my part? My creative powers are exhausted by the challenge of examining the American Revolution, battle-by-battle, while comforting the baby who bit his lip and negotiating with my little terrorist daughter who wants to cut with scissors right now and wondering, all the while, what we’ll have for dinner that will take ten minutes to prepare because I forgot to get something in the crockpot again.

I’m a married woman. Nineteen years in July, as a matter of fact. As I see it, that’s my own personal Valentine’s Day. Is this not enough? Can we not leave Valentine’s Day to elementary schools?

Bah-humbug.

A Calm View From the Leaky Boat

The burden of inadequacy is a heavy one, an awkward load to carry, especially when you are trying to hurry along at a normal pace, keeping up with the flow of traffic. I feel like I might have an invisible seventy pound backpack of ineptness perched on top of my head and my neck just isn’t that strong, but I don’t want anyone to notice that I’m struggling along.

I was a fervent believer in myself in the early days. I knew I’d be one of those mothers you read about in parenting magazines who is creative and playful and has friends over for coffee while the kids politely play in the other room. I knew it! All I had to do was follow the “Ten Easy Steps . . .” or the “Three Simple Strategies . . . ” and I would get the results I wanted. Perhaps it was my ease with mathematics that made me believe logic would apply to parenting, too.

But the variables foiled me. I didn’t count on my own personal slothfulness. I didn’t know my children would be anchors rather than sails. I thought they would bob along merrily, agreeably, grateful to be along on my own personal journey to perfection. I didn’t count on runny noses and scant cupboard space and the overwhelming mountain of laundry and kids who get their hair wet but don’t use shampoo because it’s just too much trouble.

I miscalculated badly. I’m just not good at being a mom, logistically or emotionally. If I were a photograph, I’d be out of focus. If I were a car, I’d have flat tires. If I were a house, I’d be drafty.

I’m a leaky boat, but for now, I can bail faster than we’re taking on water, so I’m sure we’ll get where we’re going.

But it won’t be pretty. Which is truly disappointing to me. Don’t even try to cheer me up because tomorrow, I’ll be fine when the fog of denial and false cheer rolls back in.

And we’re on Day 22 of the rain.