Category: Fretfulness

. . . most things I worry about never come to pass.

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.) 

Why Boring Is Good

This afternoon, I thought, if only something would happen.  And then I wondered if I’d lost my mind.  After all, something could be something bad, and one should not resent the doldrums when they settle like stale air. 

Boring is good!  Boring means we don’t need to call an ambulance to rush a bleeding body to the emergency room.  Boring means we don’t have to telephone a lawyer to find out exactly what to do with the jackpot. 

Boring means I don’t need a new outfit and I won’t have to wear pantyhose and shoes that make the balls of my feet throb.  Boring means the kids are all in their rooms, safe and sound, busily digesting and growing another inch before morning.

But when things are so boring, I have to dredge up material from the deep recesses of my mind and boy, things are kind of dusty in there.  I find an old picture of my dad, the one I took the day he left on a sailboat to sail down the coast to California.  Steroids prescribed to shrink his brain tumor had bloated his face, but he smiled with pure joy that day.  Cancer had been his ticket out of a job he despised and he ate hot fudge sundaes and grabbed as much life as he could.  Then he died four months after the diagnosis.

That photograph hangs in my hallway and tonight, while I held my crabby nap-free daughter, I saw my dad’s face looking in at me.  He’s been gone since 1989 and I still can’t figure out what to do about that gaping vacancy he left.  It’s unfillable.

After my dad died, I was absolutely convinced that I would be next.  Nothing like stark terror to bring excitement to your twenties!  I even found a breast lump, had a mammogram, followed by an ultrasound, resulting in a surgical biopsy. 

That morning, the surgeon drew purple arrows on my skin, pointing to the spot.  Next thing I knew, I was stretched onto the operating table, arms straight out, finger-clip catching the rhythm of my beating heart. 

The sun shone into the room and upbeat music played while I laid exposed.  The needle numbed me.  I felt the tug of the knife, heard the sizzle as the wound was cauterized, smelled the burning, saw smoke.  The doctor said, “Looks like a lipoma.  Good.” 

And so I didn’t die from cancer.  It was nothing. 

A few years later, when our twins were two, my husband’s voice started to sound scratchy.  We had no health insurance, so he put off seeing a doctor, but finally, some church members insisted that he go.  So, he did. 

The first specialist assured him everything was fine.  Rest the voice, he said.  And so my husband was mute for a week.  When he didn’t improve, he saw a second specialist.  This doctor told him the growth on his larynx needed to be removed, but that it was probably nothing.

We drove to Midland, Michigan, for the surgery.  A friend cared for our boys while I sat in the waiting room.  Afterward, the doctor met with me and assured me, “You have a greater chance of being hit by lightening on the way home than of that being cancer.  But we’ll send it to the lab for a biopsy anyway.  One chance in a ten thousand,” he said.

And so, a few weeks later, we were shocked when it turned out to be cancer.  Cancer?  Laryngeal cancer threatened to steal his voice.  He went back into surgery so the doctor could make sure he got it all. 

And weirdly enough, that was that.  All of his follow-up visits showed no sign of cancer.  We hardly even remember that terrible chapter in our lives.

The thing is, boring can turn into catastrophe in twenty minutes or less.  And when things are dull, life is good.

You heard it here first.  

Waving Tentacles

I joined Netflix and received one movie which sat in the ever-present paper pile on the kitchen counter for six weeks. Then I cancelled my account and sent it back.

I love to watch movies, but at home I am constantly distracted. For instance, just now, at 10:33 p.m., I had to step into my boys’ room and scold them for horsing around and admonish them to GO TO SLEEP! If I were emotionally involved in an intricate movie plot right now and pesky kids interrupted me, the continuity of the movie would be lost and I would be annoyed.

So, I admit it to myself. I just don’t like to watch movies at home. Netflix, for all its convenience, doesn’t work for me. It cost me a $9.99 membership to know that for sure.

* * *

I know this post is a little sketchy, a tad bit boring, but I had a nervous break-down today contemplating my impending status as a paid Mom Blogger. My mind keeps wandering off in eight directions like an octopus out of water and consequently, all my snippets of ideas have scattered. Some things are going to change around here, which freaks me out. Any rational person is resistant to change on some level, right? Even good change?

It’s kind of like I’ve been singing in the chorus all this time, happy to be somewhat anonymous, blending in with the other voices and now, I’m going to step forward, grab a microphone and sing a solo. And everyone will be looking at me and I’ll just have to dredge up a grim smile and look over their heads at the back wall while I sing so I don’t die of embarrassment and make a fool of myself.

So, the freak-out subsided and I focused my worry instead on getting a decent photograph of myself, which would be easier if I were still twenty and didn’t have these circles under my eyes.

Thinking Interrupted Thoughts

I used all my fingers and one toe (the pinky toe which turns sideways, much to my chagrin) to count the number of children in my house today. And yet, I managed a creative dinner (breakfast burritos) and kept everyone alive all day long. I had some thoughts in my head at some point today–I believe I was going to complain about my utter fatigue and about the depression that sometimes lurks in the shadows until I poke it with a stick–but that all seems a foggy dream now.

Sometimes, I’m here all day, routinely switching laundry from basket to washer to dryer to basket to folded on the back of the chair back to basket, changing diapers, fetching snacks, dragging the boys through their lessons (lately, the War of 1812 and the Monroe Doctrine), answering the phone (I need to get a cordless phone–what is this, 1974? I have to run into the kitchen to catch the phone before the fourth ring, which is clearly archaic) . . . and I feel so disconnected with what is happening in my household because my brain is churning and then–STOP–interrupted. Over and over and over again until I am positively strung out from the effort of thinking a coherent thought from beginning to end.

That has to be the worst part of motherhood–the elimination of meaningful thought. I used to have thoughts, ideas, actual beginnings, middles and ends to my daydreams. Or maybe it only seems that way. The constant interruptions drive me berserk. I did not know that becoming a mother would mean I would never have an uninterrupted thought again.

Except for short thoughts, thoughts like, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” and “HEY, WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE COOKIES?” and “LET’S HAVE PIZZA FOR DINNER.”

* * *
Blogger will not let me comment on any of my favorite reads . . . which I assume (giving you the benefit of the doubt!) is what is also happening on my blog. If you have a comment, please feel free to email me at Melodeee (at) gmail (dot) com.

Wherein I Pout and Rant and Rave and Leave Home

Yesterday, my husband had to work. The funeral started at 2 p.m., so by noon, he was gone and I was still here. I admit that I was the tiniest bit pouty about the fact that I faced another Saturday at home with the children and the laundry and the dirty kitchen floor. He said, “You could at least have a good attitude,” and you know, that’s true. I could, but I didn’t. I don’t know . . . maybe six weeks of illness and too many weekends in a row at home have taken a toll. You think?

Anyway, then, of course, I felt remorse and shame at my petty pouty attitude. And so I gathered the children together (“Where are we going?” “I’m not telling.” “Why not?” “Because you’ll complain.” “Oh, Mom! That means it’s somewhere we’ll hate!”) and off we went in our 1987 Chevy Astro van.

First stop? Gas station.
Second stop? Bank.
Third stop? Wendy’s drive-through.
Fourth stop? Zoo.
Fifth stop? Dairy Queen.
Sixth stop? Side of the road so I could stop screaming and start wiping up the ice cream plastered all over my daughter’s fingers, dripping on the floor.
Seventh stop? Video game store.
Eighth stop? Parking lot of video game store where I completely blew a gasket and considered simply walking about from my family. Why? An entire spilled Cookie Dough Blizzard in the third row. Children clamped their mouths shut, quite wisely, so while I ranted and raved, it could have been worse. For instance, the Blizzard might have spilled on carpet rather than the plastic floor mat thingy.
Ninth stop? Back home.

My husband called a bit later to let me know the funeral had ended and that he’d be home and then I could leave if I wanted. I had been under the impression that I wouldn’t get a chance to get out of the house alone, so this was a delightful surprise. I practically sprinted out the front door when he arrived home.

I poked around in my favorite local discount stores and ended my evening using my lone remaining movie gift card. I saw “Failure to Launch,” the Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker movie. The reviews have been dismal, but I went anyway, figuring at the very least I’d just gaze at Matthew McConaughey, who is one fine looking man.

The question is . . . would he be as fine without that accent?

And about Sarah Jessica Parker . . . she is two months younger than me. She has a son the age of my daughter. Her hair, in its natural state, is the color my hair in its natural state. But that is all we have in common. She’s somehow managing to remain young and nubile, while I have two age spots on my hands. I hate her.

The Plague has passed and all that remains are random coughs and an occasional sneeze. I am thankful to be alive.

The Virus Speaks (Incoherently)

I suppose the people in my church would describe me as being standoffish, aloof. The more uncharitable would say I’m stuck-up. Or maybe this is only my own projection upon the unsuspecting and dear parishioners to whom my husband devotes his days and often nights and inevitably, his weekends. No one is ever unkind to my face and only the occasional anonymous soul offers up “constructive” criticism.

Most of it is imagined on my part, if truth be told. I hear their silent words when I dress on Sunday mornings: “Why does she wear the same three outfits over and over?” and “Does she look a little bloated to you?” and “What is with that curly permed look?” [Note: The curl is real.] The real conversations I have following the services are so shallow as to be puddles as opposed to ponds: “Oh, fine. Staying busy!” (said brightly with fake smile.)

I haven’t always been this guarded. Not until I learned by trial and error. As we’d arrive at a new church, one or two women would appear on my doorstep or telephone me frequently, extending a hand of friendship or the use of their washing machine before mine was functional. I’d share bits of myself, innocuous secrets about my life, candid moments freely offered. And I learned to regret it. I learned that those who approach the new pastor’s wife first are those who will end up being trouble.

Given the logistics of my life at the moment–the isolation that comes with schooling at home while tending to younger children–my connections with the outside world are limited. I am unable to leave my house between 7:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., so there are no gym workouts, no lunches with friends, no errands run during daylight hours, no playgroups, no park outings, no manicures, nothing. I depend on a local friend (or two) who calls periodically, the dearer friends who email regularly, my husband’s intermittent phone calls throughout the day and the connections I’ve made through the internet. As you can imagine, each of these arteries bring a bit of life to me, a necessary adult connection and reminder that I am a person, not just a maid who insists children do math problems and keeps the laundry to a manageable mound.

You know how a person can live with a blocked artery? Or two? I guess that’s kind of how I live now, during this season of life. I used to think that if I were simply more outgoing, I would draw more people to myself, but this is less about personality and more about necessary circumstances. But that doesn’t really make it easier. I simply have to endure and find a way to thrive during this demanding time of life.

When I think about how women lived in prior generations, I feel like a whiny baby. Think of how easy it is, how machines and technology and electricity have made life so much easier. Only, I wonder if life isn’t any easier. Chores, perhaps. Life? Not so much. The more connected I am to modern conveniences, the less connected I feel on a human level.

Or maybe that’s just the mucus crazy-talking.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow I will feel better. I hope. Because a virus must end sometime, right?

p.s. I’m not aloof. I’m just shy. Just so you know.

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.

Public Service Announcement and More!

You should be thankful that I just deleted my original paragraph. I’ll just leave you with this link which details everything you might want to know about noroviruses. Did you know you are considered contagious from the moment you show signs of illness to at least three days later? And some people are still contagious two weeks later. (But my twins show no signs of illness. Yet.)

How did I get to be forty-one without knowing all that? Study carefully, Young Grasshopper. You may need this information sooner than you think.

So, my deadline still looms. I have three great ideas, but no actual words strung together like pearls or even like popcorn strands, the kind you hang on your tree at Christmas. I did send back a cheery email: “I’ll have everything to you by midnight!”

I’ve just made my daughter cry because she won’t stop asking me to blow up spit-slimed balloons. Pardon me while I go tend to the angst of a 3-year old.

Okay. I’m back. I am never going to earn my Mother of the Year tiara at this rate.

See you when I finish my assignment. Or when I get back from Tahiti, whichever comes first.

Photo courtesy webcam.

Get Out the Disinfectant!

Warning: Don’t read this if you have a queasy stomach or a big bowl of split-pea soup by your keyboard.

I cancelled school today. I met baby boy’s mom at the door at lunch and asked her to please not bring him back after lunch. I did two emergency loads of laundry. I lolled around in my pajamas, startling my daughter by jumping up and darting to the bathroom every ten minutes for, oh, about six hours.

And that’s really all you need to know about that. Except that, just as I was putting dishes in the dishwasher, thinking I felt a bit better (at 4:30 p.m.), my poor curly-headed daughter did three things:

1) Whined that her stomach hurt;
2) Coughed;
3) Vomited all over the couch cushion, leaving herself in a puddle of puke.

Tomorrow morning is my son’s 8th birthday party at an arcade/laser tag place. He’s having a 2-in-1 party with his best friend who has the exact same birthday. My husband will have to go while I stay home with the ill child. I figure soon my husband will be clutching his stomach, felled by the same virus.

You might want to disinfect your keyboard now, lest you get what I had.

What Was I Going To Say Again?

I sit, pondering, longer than usual. My brain turns over and over, like those chickens you see at Costco grilling behind the meat counter. And yet, nothing.

Earlier tonight, while steering my old car down dark streets, I happened upon two topics to discuss. I can’t remember the first one and I don’t want to describe the second one tonight. Which leaves me only with a recitation of the day’s events.

Have I mentioned recently how much I loathe dark mornings? I hate taking a shower. I hate brushing my teeth. I hate drying my hair. And I especially hate talking to anyone. And so, as a joke, God gave me a very talkative daughter who wakes up suddenly and with great cheer. She sits on the toilet while I shower and asks me to get her a cookie. She opens the shower door to let in a cold gust before I’m dry. She climbs on the counter to brush her teeth while I blink at my reflection.

I do not enjoy this start to my day. This morning, however, I readied myself alone because I had to be presentable by 7:15 a.m. Which I understand is not that early in the scheme of things, but still.

We’re concentrating on history lessons this week, so the boys and I sat at the kitchen table while I read the history textbook out loud. Intermittent whines, screeches, hollers and plaintive cries for help upstairs interrupted our study. Have I complained lately how stressful it is to coordinate schooling-at-home with the ravings of a three-year old and the needs of a baby or two? At one point, I rendered a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence, which was nothing more than a veiled attempt to outshout “Blue’s Clues.”

I learned something, too. And not just about the Battles of Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. No. I learned something far more important.

Laundry does not wash itself, even if you are preoccupied with the laundry generators. That hardly seems right to me.

So. We finished history. Fed the little kids. Rocked the baby to sleep. Put the little kids down for naps. Read the newspaper. Welcomed home the second-grader. Agreed to let his friend come over for the afternoon. Created a last minute dinner (frozen ravioli, frozen homemade spaghetti sauce and frozen corn . . . see? I have a frozen theme). My husband, God bless him, called to inquire about my day and I said, “I am so tired of this. And the rain.”

And he said, “At least you have tomorrow off.” And I said, “Oh, yes, at home with my four kids, that is a Day Off!” with perhaps less enthusiasm than is right. And so, a few minutes later, he called again and asked if I’d like to run his errands in exchange for leaving the house for the evening.

Of course I would! And that’s how I ended up browsing for cards at Barnes & Noble, viewing “Capote,” in the movie theater, shopping at Target, and buying three dozen Krispie Kreme donuts. (Two dozen for his workshop tomorrow. One dozen to appease the children in the morning. Okay. Who am I kidding? Half a dozen for the children, half a dozen for me because I need those calories to get through the day, tight jeans notwithstanding!)

“Capote” was a remarkably well-done film. I immediately purchased In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s last book. Now I have two thousand and ONE books to read before I die.

Here I am now, home again, home again, jiggety-jog. Tomorrow, a wind storm is predicted to bring us gusts of 60 miles per hour. I am looking forward to that, oddly enough. The wind is already flinging raindrops at the window with an admirable show of force.

The end.