Uncharted

I'm still in a holding pattern with the current job opportunity. D, the recruiter who set up the interview, called on Thursday. The news was not great. Initial reports are that the salary the CEO is willing to authorize is 2K less than my bottom line.

I can not pretend that I did not feel a little bit of relief at the news. My first impulse was to take his offer to tell the company to sock it.

Instead I asked for some time to think about it and told D I would call him back on Friday morning.

J and I sat down and talked Thursday night. It was an uncomfortable, productive conversation. J admitted that my return to work would take some pressure off us financially and felt that I should give the opportunity a shot. He also felt that some of my response was out of ego.

Which upset me, as I did not feel that he was giving enough weight to my feelings about it. To be fair to J, it is a integral part of our relationship that we give each other occasionally harsh reality checks when issues such as job offers come up, in order to ensure that we are responding to negative feedback intellectually instead of emotionally. J was only doing for me what I have done for him many times in the past – making sure his ego was not the only thinker in the room.

I can't disagree with his argument about the money. While we are doing OK on just his salary, there is very little room for mistakes. Me returning to work would mean that I could pay for daycare, bank the rest and give J enough room to increase our retirement investments.

The problem, from my point of view, is that one of us needs to work at a company that allows the flexibility necessary to raise a small child. And J's company is not that place. If this initial feeler is any indication, then this place is not appropriate either. Right now, they have not made an official offer, which means I can walk away without affecting my unemployment compensation. The initial amount does not include enough PTO for me to securely take care of Toddler Alien when he is ill or enough money for me to hire an interim nanny when he can not go to daycare.

I called D back on Friday and told him that it would not be enough money, for all the reasons I expressed to J. We discussed what I would consider reasonable (flexible time off that could be made up, additional PTO, other factors) and he put in a counter offer.

Now I wait. D feels optimistic that he will be able to work something out. I'm skeptical. My gut instinct (and downright cynicism) tells me that they would not have attempted such a lowball offer if the name on the resume had been male and they will not be all that interested in discussing my need for an appropriate work-life balance. Considering the fact that several of the people I interviewed with admitted that they had difficultly filling the position, you have to wonder.

But, at the very least, I have stood up for myself.

Decision

I'm a huge fan of XKCD. Randall Munroe has created some pointed (and poignant) comics over the years.

Today's comic like a slap-upside-the-head. Zombie Marie Curie says to aspiring girl scientist: “But you don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and doing that it so hard that you become great in the process”.

When was the last time I wanted to do something so hard that I became great?

I can't remember. Literally. Maybe going to graduate school in North Carolina.

My entire life, I have fallen into things. Fallen into English because I thought I was good at it and comfortable. Fallen into QA because I followed an impulse to answer an add asking for liberal arts majors to apply.

I can recall many times when teachers and friends spoke out and said “You would be great at this”. Such as my high school math teacher, who nagged me to go to an engineering camp for girls because “you have a creative brain. You would be good at this”. J's most recent pep talk, when he talked about a children's book I wrote many years ago, but never illustrated.

But I can't remember the last time I made a conscious decision to want to do something, then followed through the tough parts to become great at it.

I have a decision to make. On the surface, the choice is simple and should be automatic. But the more time I give over to thinking about it, the harder it becomes to determine which is the correct path. The decision is this:

I am in the process of negotiating my salary for an interesting and challenging QA position. It would be a great opportunity.

Except that I don't think I want to do it.

Aimless

Last week, I sat for too many minutes staring at a Craigslist ad for a Personal Assistant for an unspecified company. I knew I could do the work with my eyes closed, yet the desire to apply for the job was not there.

I'm spending a lot of time in the past couple of weeks trying to get back to OK. OK with the increasing knowledge that my career as a quality assurance professional is essentially over. I can't compete with out of work developers with scripting skills. The jobs I am being offered are well above my abilities.

OK with the fact that my employment at major-chain-bookstore has come to an end as the location will be permanently closed at the end of the day Friday. I've been scraping pennies together to buy a bottle of something bubbly and take to the store Friday morning, so the staff for the final shift has something to share at the end. Working at the bookstore was my Plan B and it was ideal. More time to spend with Toddler Alien. More time to write. Some pocket money, so I do not feel like I am mooching off of J whenever I want to buy something for myself.

OK with asking J for money, whether it go towards buying milk for Toddler Alien or a pair of jeans for myself. This is a difficult one, as J vacillates between being easygoing and freaking out whenever we have a big expense.

Case in point: my last trip to the doctors, to get a prescription written to end a multi week sinus infection, ended up costing roughly $250.00. Ninety dollars went towards the office visit and the remaining $160.00 for the antibiotics and two inhalers the nurse practitioner prescribed to control the coughing from the infection. The reason it was so expensive can be found in J's plan – a high deductible H.S.A plan that does not cover prescriptions or anything other than a well visit to the doctor until the the deductible is reached.

Even though I attempted to explain to J that it would be expensive, he freaked out when I came home and showed him the bill, leaving me feeling useless and ashamed that I could not cover it. I need to take this medication from April to October in order to control my symptoms. I should also being taking an antihistamine with the inhaler, but I have cut that from the regime because of the expense.

So here I sit, knowing that I need to find a job, any job, that will give me halfway decent medical benefits so I can control the asthma and see a doctor to deal with ongoing, lingering aftereffects of the pregnancy. And I have zero motivation to do so.

A Quick Entry Before an Orgy of Cooking

As it is jambalaya day, in celebration of Fat Tuesday.

I went to a baby shower yesterday. The shower was held in honor of a former coworker. Unlike the last shower I attended, this one was a much less stressful affair. I still got dressed up, but instead of the pretty purple Ann Taylor number, I opted for nice jeans and a killer jacket.

I sat with two other former coworkers and four members of the guest of honor's bowling group. It was a comfortable arrangement. The food was fair, the gifts were nice and there were no games, which made the majority of guests very happy.

As I had additional baby stuff to give the GOO and her husband, I hung back at the end of the shower, waiting for the party to break up. GOO approached our table and I showed her some recent photographs of Toddler Alien, then passed the iPod to one of the other guests.

"Your first?" she asked.
"And only" I replied, laughing. "One and done!
"You don't want to give him a little brother or sister?"
"No. I hated pregnancy and I hated childbirth" I explained.
"Well some women have a hard time" she said. Her tone and body language implied that I had experienced complications.
"Oh no, the pregnancy was completely normal. I just really hated being pregnant and have no desire to do it again".

The look on her face was priceless.

The Liquidator

Note: This is a continuation of my last post. I spent the weekend trying to get a handle on what upset me so much after completing my shift on Friday. Now that I have pinpointed the source of my emotional disturbance, I wanted to distill it for posterity. Because I like to read myself talking or some such rot.

Friday morning, we had our morning staff meeting. The café shut down when the doors closed on Wednesday night, the employees charged with packing and transferring as much as possible to the two stores remaining open.

K, a service manager who has worked at the store for 20+ years, since before the build of the location was complete, struggled to remain composed as she announced the corporate office put up the store for bids by liquidators. By the end of the day all the stock and fixtures would be sold to the highest bidder, who would sell it off for whatever profit could be made.

After shelving new magazines, I offered to answer the phones, in order to give the long-term staffers a break from answering the same painful questions over and over again.

The end of day occurred at noon, when a crew of men carrying briefcases and floor plans entered the building. They stalked the floors, studying the shelves and layout, taking notes and making a concerted effort to avoid eye contact and stay out of the way of the staff.

A second man followed closely behind, in search of the store manager, D. He had heard the store was closing and upon locating D began asking information about the general layout and square footage of the space, as he was interested in renting the location.

Finding myself with a few free moments, I headed to the staff room to grab my iPod, so I could show a new coworker some photographs of Toddler Alien. D called to me in the staff room, asking if I was available for a quick task.

The liquidator was in the stockroom, surrounded by several FedEx boxes, addressed to the store, that needed opened. D introduced me, and I put my hand out in a genuine attempt to be professional.

It is now, two days later, that I realize why this man's handshake was so indistinct. He had not wanted to shake my hand.

The boxes contained the “going out of business” signage, which needed to be sorted for use in the next few weeks. Included were a set of walker boards. “These will be used outside” said the liquidator. When D asked if he would need store staff, the liquidator replied “No. Usually we go to the homeless shelter and offer some guys $20.00 to stand outside during the day”.

D continued going through the boxes while I silently stacked placards on a cart. The liquidator held up a set of stickers and said “These are seals for the service door. Every time you open the door, you need to place a new seal and log who opened the door and when, such as when you take out the trash”. When D explained that the service door could only be opened by a service manager and offered to have the staff remove trash from the front, the liquidator replied “No, because then the employees will just hid the books in the trash bags and take them out the front”.

At this point, I was finished stacking placards, all of the boxes were open and I was beginning to actively dislike the man. He had not wanted to shake my hand, he showed not an ounce of empathy for the homeless and assumed that the staff would be out to steal his stock by hiding it in the trash.

Shortly before the end of my shift, K gathered us all together again to update us on the current news. She instructed us to remove anything considered a personal item before the end of the day. When I asked about the collection of ARCs, she said to take them today, as tomorrow they would be sold.

Another service manager, G, checked me out at the end of my shift. I offered to push someone out a window for him. He said “Can you push the liquidator out the window. That man does not have an ounce of empathy in him”. I replied “I suspect there will be a line”.

Back to the Land of the Unemployed

Which is where I will be returning sometime in the next weeks. After trudging through the holiday season, selling calendars like it was something I was born to do, I was delighted to accept an offer for one of the two open part time spots at the major-chain-bookstore, thus delaying any decision about returning to full time work for several more months.

Only to discover when I came in for my second shift this past Wednesday that the major chain was filing for bankruptcy and the store that had so recently hired me was on the list of closures.

I have an emotional advantage over the rest of the staff, most who have spent years working together at this location. One manager was hired the store opened twenty years ago and remembers when the company was building it out. So today I volunteered to spend my shift manning the phones, answering the same set of questions over and over again and listening to the same set of comments.

• When are you closing? I don't know, a time line has not been set yet.
• Are all the stores in Pittsburgh closing? No, stores X and Y will remain open.
• When are you going to start discounting the inventory? No time line has been set.
• Are you still taking gift cards? Yes, online and at the stores which are remaining open will honor gift cards.
• This really sucks. Yes. Thanks.
• I'm so sorry to hear that you are closing. You are my favorite store. Thanks.
• Channel 4 said you were going out of business this weekend. To quote a coworker after I got off the phone "Channel 4 lies".
  
• This is bullshit. I understand.
• And my personal favorite "I live in Dormont. I don't want to drive across Pittsburgh and the country to use my gift cards". When I suggested he used the online store, he digressed into a rant about Amazon.com and how he still had not received an order he placed for a Christmas gift, leaving me so aggravated that I removed one of my shoes and mimed banging it against a counter while fantasizing that I was aiming it at the caller's head.

The speaker of the last quote also threatened to "call investor relations" and complain because I could not tell him when the liquidation sale would start.

The liquidator came today. He is an older man, blandly dressed in a grey suit, black shoes, white hair. His may be the most indistinct hand I have ever shaken. I relished the snarky thought of him coming down with whatever crappy illness that has been lingering in my immune system for the past two months.

In the very brief period of time I spent in his presence he struck me as a most unsympathetic of men.

To be continued... 

Back From Hiatus

I've started looking for full-time work. I'm only a couple weeks into my search and I'm already seriously considering a change in profession. Remain a part-time bookseller for the large chain with severe financial problems? Get a paralegal certificate? Go back to my self of 16 years ago and be an administrative assistant?(1) Wait tables?

There is nothing quite like a bad interview. I'm still fuming from the last interview, 50 minutes over the phone(2) with a bad connection, speaking with an individual who asked vague, broad questions and had the nerve to complain to the recruiter who set it up that my seven years of QA experience did not make me "qualified enough" as she would have to invest too much time to "train" me to use the bug tracking system and other (very expensive) testing tools. The fact that it has been a function of my profession to learn how to use such tools on my own completely escaped her. And it was not from the lack of trying on my part either.

I know what the problem is. I am totally unwilling to put up with any bullshit from any interviewer or organization at this point in my life. I would much rather be upfront about what I want and what I think I can provide then go through the rigmarole involved to land a job these days. I know that odds are stacked against me - I'm competing with laid off developers with MIS degrees and tons of experience working on $100,000 defect management systems while I have been trained/self-taught and work almost exclusively with open source tools.

Ugh.

(1) Interesting detail - the wage I am paid now, as a part-time bookseller is the same amount as the wage I was paid in 1996 as a full-time receptionist at a collection agency.
(2) Really, if you are going to waste my time with a phone interview that long and I'm in the area, just bring me into the office.

Cognitive Dissonance:

Is watching a woman in a full-length fur coat, waiting for a $5.00 latte, scream about how oppressed she is. So loudly that all conversation in the tiny mall coffee shop comes to the screeching halt, as none of the other customers are able to hear each other.

Scenes from a Mall

I'm still regrouping.

As part of the regrouping process, I have taken part-time seasonal(1) work staffing a calendar kiosk run out of a large national bookstore chain. This affords me plenty of time to watch mall life unfold and write tiny notes about what I see and think on pieces of register tape, tiny sheets of notepaper and on the back of half-sheets of invitations to a store's open house. (2)

The kiosk which I am staffing is in a small mall located in suburban Pittsburgh. The stores a mix of independent and upscale chains such as Restoration Hardware, Williams Sonoma and Anthropologie.

Most weekdays, my pacing around the kiosk is punctuated by the click-swish sound of hands washing mahjong tiles at the nearby tables. Almost daily, groups of four women take over the tables, set out the racks and shuffle tiles. Some bring a thick, felt cloth to muffle the sound of tiles on formica. They bring over trays of lunch from the nearby Panera and spend the afternoon playing. On breaks they wander over to the kiosk to look at the calendars and offer up bits of information about their lives. One woman, a thin, wiry individual with orange-red hair confesses that she comes every week, she is widowed and playing gives her something to do.

The customers offer up all kinds of information to me. They talk about their children, grandchildren and favorite pets. Some stop on the way into the movie theatre and return after the show to give me a short review and pick up a calendar as a Christmas gift.

There are crazies as well. One man asked me why anyone would purchase a calendar of Michelle Obama, as she is a “jerk” and went on a rant about how “we” paid for her Harvard education. I politely demurred that we stocked calendars for all tastes. Dissatisfied with my answer, he sat down at a table, turned the chair so it would be directly in line of sight of the cash wrap and proceeded to glower at me for the 20 minutes it took the upstairs Chinese restaurant upstairs to bring his take-out order to him. Another co-worker warned me that there she has been sexually harassed by a man, who followed her around the kiosk while telling here what he would like to “do” to her. When I asked her why she did not call mall security, she confessed that she did not know if that was okay.

(1)I worked for the same organization for 1.5 years in the early 2000's while J was under and unemployed. I was hired as a seasonal employee and the manager was happy with my work and asked me if I would continue part-time. I worked there until J and I moved to Pittsburgh.

(2)The invitations are placed on open tables by the owner of the florist/tchotchke shop located directly in front of the kiosk. She is a cranky, cranky woman who spends a lot of time complaining about the state of her business and the fact that her customers are “crowded” by the portable display pods in front of the kiosk. Many of the tchotchkes she sells are of a genre hereby dubbed “christian, inspirational”, which would not be a problem except for the fact that a significant demographic of mall customers are older Jewish women who have (I suspect) little use for tin figures of santa claus and gold-glittery tin signs that proclaim “Jesus is King!” She bought several scripture-a-day calendars, stating that she gives them as Christmas gifts to her girlfriends every year.

Law of Unemployment Number One

Unemployed + uninsured + visit to the dentist = 1 cavity and a $400.00 bill.

The upside? The bill was the most painful part of the experience.

Marshall's Greentree Road, 3:00 PM

Wednesday afternoon is the time to wander the Marshall's on Greentree Road if you are interested in observing the cross section of humanity that is the wealthy housewives of Mt. Lebanon. It is also the place to be if you want to come within inches of colliding with a former Penguin turned color announcer known in the Pittsburgh area as the “Ol' Two-Niner”.

The housewives are a scary lot. Unfriendly, dressed to the nines, they stalk the store and stake a claim at the racks of designer clothes at cut-rate prices, hovering over the large, button down w/collar white shirts with scary intensity, sending out a “I'll cut you” vibe to any individual tactless enough to attempt to reach for that size 12 Calvin Klein suit jacket and matching size 14 skirt and ramming into me with their miniature sized shopping carts, pausing to say “excuse me” after bruising my poor hip. The “excuse me” is delivered unrepentantly, a two-word verbal dressing down meant to convey how nervy I am, to be standing in the aisle, blocking her way to the size 6's.

I feel very large next to these women as I rummage through the size 12 and 14 pants, wondering when I will have enough energy to push myself back into shape and reminding myself that even if I am able to achieve some sort of “shape” my hips may be unwilling to allow me into anything smaller than a twelve.

I watch a 14 year old girl try on a short, red strapless dress for an upcoming homecoming dance. Her father comments that she looks sexy. As I enter the dressing rooms to try on a stack of pants and a couple of suits, I tell her to lean over and shake, to make sure the strapless top stays put.

He talks about how he is raising her on his own. It is an excellent ploy, as he and his daughter receive more female attention then either know what to do with. One woman suggests Spanx to wear underneath the dress, to give it a cleaner line. Another gives him options and advice about shoes. As he talks on about her, how conscious she is of her body, her voice floats out from the dressing room where she is changing back into street clothes

“Dad, you know I can hear every word you are saying, don't you?”

The suits don't fit without major alterations to both pants and jacket. No money for alterations now, no suit. The pants look terrible, cheap and ill fitting. I sigh and return everything to the attendant.

I wander a little longer, seeking pajamas for Baby Alien. At 9.5 months old, he measures 34 inches long and towers over most of his mates in the baby room at daycare. I've already looked in several thrift shops, but have not yet gathered the patience necessary to dig through the poorly organized sections of baby wear, a puzzlement as the adult clothes are neatly organized by color and size.

I've been tired a great deal this week. I sleep a lot during the day, my body's way of recovering from the months of stress it has been carrying. Next week Baby Alien drops to part time daycare and I am making plans for the days he is home.

Pushed Out

On the 22 of this month I became officially unemployed. For the first time in my life, since I started working at the age of twelve, I deliberately walked off a job.

It is cold comfort that I choose this status voluntarily.

It is cold comfort that Pennsylvania is an “at-will” state and my contract allowed me to exercise an option to leave their employ without notice.

It is cold comfort that the majority of my coworkers were upset and threw a cocktail hour in my honor on Friday evening.

It is cold comfort that my former employer framed my resignation in such a way as to imply that I was fired and made a major error in the subject line of the email he sent out (1) to the rest of the company announcing my departure. I swiftly dispatched the notion that I was fired as untrue and requested that they tell anyone who believed that I was fired the truth.

It is cold comfort that one of the most libertarian, pro-business of my friends was the first to suggest, without having listened to any analysis of the situation from myself or J, that I was pushed out deliberately because I had a baby. He also, in all seriousness, suggested that I sue them into non-existence, pointing out that “they don't make enough money to settle and you'll bankrupt them if you sue”.

J and I don't have the money to sue, but it was interesting how to witness how quickly an individual's professed values change when it concerns people he or she knows in real life.

I can't prove that my former employer pushed me out. Instructions were always given verbally, never in writing. Negative feedback, on the other hand, was given in writing and usually involved some element of, for lack of better phrasing, “making shit up.”

It has been five days and I'm still emotionally and physically exhausted. The teeth grinding has stopped and the migraines are gone, but I feel achy and sore and bruised all over.

And I have no idea what I'm going to do next.

(1) He referenced an employee fired in January instead of myself.

F(***) You, Go to (****)

Note: In case the title isn't enough of a warning, this post will be a rant. Possibly a profanity-laced rant. I would like to think that the profanity used in this post will be judiciously chosen, well placed and not suffer from overuse, but I make no promises.

I've reached the saturation point of bullshit that I can handle. So much so that the driver who honked at me this morning under the misperception I was taking up too much of his lane (never mind the parked cars that kept me from pulling over or the fact he was going approximately 15 miles over the speed limit) reduced me to tears. Because of the stress of the last several weeks, I’m tearing through my extremely limited supply of migraine medication at an unprecedented rate. As my last checkup included a demoralizing lecture from the nurse practitioner on my BMI being too high and a grilling on why I needed to take sumatriptan instead of Excedrin Migraine (1), I was not eager to call and ask for more medication. Fortunately, I received the answering service and left my request in the form of a message.

In addition to being placed on indefinite probation, my supervisor oh-so-casually mentioned to me on Thursday that they were relieving me of my responsibility to facilitate an annual client meeting as they had decided to “go in a different direction with the group”. This was followed up with an email from the unofficial leader of the group (2), who thanked me for my service.

And promptly assigned responsibility for the meeting to an individual who, slated to present at the last client gathering, bailed two hours before it was scheduled to take place without submitting any of his materials and without telling me (the person who was supposed to get the materials for incorporation into the meeting) directly.

An individual who has created for himself quite a reputation for pawning his work off on his all female team who he endearingly refers to as “my girls”. If I'm still employed when the next meeting comes around, I am going to get a great deal of pleasure out of saying “NO” to organizing slides and taking notes.

I was bluntly honest with my supervisor. I admitted that I was not terribly upset that I was being relieved of this particular duty, as the leader of the group is especially difficult to work with (2) and preparations for the meeting take an inordinate amount of time. But the timing of this decision goes a long way to confirm my suspicions that they are building a case for my dismissal. Removal from the group also disqualifies me from any year-end bonuses that may be distributed.

As an example of my mindset, this exchange between J and myself from a few days ago:

but does it really matter? They are just saying the same shit your family says. I'm just tired of being the bigger person. Really tired of it. Where has it gotten me, really? I'm being pushed out of my job, my mom wavers between passive aggressive and abusive, your family acts like I'M the crazy one when I do defend myself and the people that I count amongst my closest friends feel free to demonize my values and totally disregard my feelings.

The furor over Park51 (formerly known and Cordoba House) has made a specific subset (aka libertarian/conservative) of my friends go insane. I violated my steadfast rule of not engaging with friends or family members over controversial targets and put myself squarely in the line for a series of ad hominem attacks that summed me up to be a lazy hypocritical communist liar only interested in taking away other people's property from two of my friends. This should, on the surface be laughable.

I'm not laughing in the least. I've spent the last several days crying and trying to pinpoint when it was that I learned that it was not OK to defend myself and I should not bother trying. I think sometime during my adolescence, between teachers who told me I should just suck it up, stop being childish and that I deserved the bullying and my mother, who proclaimed that my expectations of behavior from other people were “too high” (3).

I'm “hypocritical”. The agency for this accusation is based on the claim that (as a liberal) I do not criticize the way they treat Muslim women. When I pointed out that conservative Christians are more than happy to give just about every other religious creed (including Christianity) a pass on their treatment of women and that it was inconsistent to demonize an entire faith while simultaneously claiming that they were the only parties who cared enough to speak out against the terrible treatment of Muslim women, I was told that listing the negative practices of other religious faiths was “excusing” the mistreatment. What?

Here is a short list of known liberals who actively campaign against the mistreatment of women (including Muslims) : Nicolas Kristof, William Jefferson Clinton, Hilary Clinton, Greg Mortenson, Oprah Winfrey, William Gates, Jimmy Carter. Granted some on this list are not directly speaking out against the mistreatment of Muslim women. Instead they are building schools, funding vaccinations, supporting micropayment programs and training programs, all work that gets on with the job of helping women help themselves. The argument that liberals don’t care about the rights of Muslim women is disingenuous, as it assumes that liberals deliberately exclude Muslim women whenever they discuss the practice of FGM, forced marriage, stonings, rapes and other atrocities committed upon women everywhere.

I'm a “Communist liar.” I don't even know what to say this one, except to check the calendar and make sure it is 2010, not 1955. Ditto for “taking away people's property”. I don't have any idea what to do with that statement, it doesn't make sense.

And the worse accusation, that I'm “lazy”. I’m “lazy” because I support welfare, social security and programs such as WIC, even though I’ve only asked for a handout once in my life and paid the money back as soon as I had it available. Aside from that one example, I have never asked any individual, organization or governmental entity for money. The time that my parents covered the gas bill and paid my federal taxes while I was in graduate school? They offered when they saw how little I made on my previous year's tax return.(4) When I wanted to move back to PA after my stint in South Carolina went awry? They offered to me a room in their home until I got married, so I could save money towards a place to live. When J was underemployed and making only enough money to pay the mortgage and nothing else, I got a second job. When we got behind on the gas bill because I was not making enough money from two jobs I arranged a payment plan.

I put 10% of my paycheck towards retirement savings every month because I don't have any expectation of relying on social security. Until Baby Alien arrived I was saving an additional 1K a month as rainy day money. I used that money to fund my maternity leave and did not ask for a cent from my employer. I don’t carry a balance on my credit card for longer than two months and I pay all my bills on time.

I’m “lazy”, even though the original statement, “Would you support the building of a shrine at Pearl Harbor” is a bad analogy that could have been confirmed as such with a 10 second web search using the terms “shrine” and “Pearl Harbor”. I’m “lazy”,  even though I’m not the one that proceeded to argue that there shouldn’t be a Shinto shrine there either, because the Japanese attacked the United States. What the fuck does the practice of Shinto have to do with one sovereign nation attacking another? Japan doesn’t have a national religion.

Want lazy, you who could not bother to spend five minutes to determine the source of "the shrine at Pearl Harbor = cultural center at Ground Zero" analogy or the groups currently using it. One of those groups? The same subset of people who attempted to argue that even “if” Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, he wasn’t a US citizen because Hawaii was not a state when he was born. Granted that group backpedaled (eventually) from that assertion, but using an intellectually lazy group of crazies as source material for your arguments is being intellectually lazy squared.(5)

Want lazy? You did not bother to pull up a map and actually look at the location of Ground Zero or the proposed location of the cultural center. You argued that because the wheel of a plane went through the roof of the building at the site of the cultural center, it is part of Ground Zero. When it was pointed out to you that using where parts of a plane fell is poor criteria, as it includes an enormous chunk of Manhattan, you declared all of Manhattan to be sacred and went off on a rant about how the area should be zoned Mosque free. When it was pointed out to you that zoning the area to not allow the building of a Mosque or Muslim community center violates the first amendment, you conveniently ignored that oh-so-inconvenient establishment clause by arguing that if an HOA can dictate what color a property own can paint his or her home, then the city of New York can zone Manhattan as Mosque/Muslim community center free.

In arguing as such, you conflated “freedom of expression” and “freedom from religion”. Freedom of expression means that the government can not prevent you from saying what you want. It does not protect an individual from the private consequences of public speech. Home Owner Associations are not public government entities, they are private organizations.

Freedom from religion means that a public government entity can not permit a city to zone an area as free from one specific religious faith. It is either all or nothing. You want a Islam free zone in all of Manhattan? Fine. Kiss goodbye to every single church, synagogue and religiously affiliated community center in Manhattan as well. You are aware that under that criteria, that list would possibly include the YMCA?

So for calling me a lazy hypocritical communist liar, fuck you. Go to hell.

(1) Excedrin Migraine gives me the shakes, a side effect so bad that I would prefer the pain and nausea instead.
(2) See posts from April 2009.
(3) Blaming my mother is so passe, yet here I am.
(4) I would have done my own taxes, but my father enjoys that sort of thing and it became a ritual for him to do it every year, just as I would wrap my mother's Christmas presents from him every year.
(5) Try to follow the logic of the organization who is offering such sparkling arguments, gentlemen. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, located on Hawaiian island of Oahu (a U.S. Territory since 1898) in 1941, they were attacking the United States  so Shinto shrine near Pearl Harbor = BAD. But when Barack Obama was born in 1961 on the Hawaiian island of Oahu (the same exact island attacked by the Japanese 20 years earlier), he was not born in the United States, thus can’t be a citizen. Which one is it?

Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1893 and became a U.S. Territory in 1898. In 1900, citizens born on the Hawaiian islands were granted United States citizenship. So even if Hawaii had not been an actual state in 1961, Obama would still be considered a U.S. citizen because he was born on a U.S. Territory to a U.S. citizen. Which I learned in 20 minutes of research.

Evaluation

I don't like changing jobs. I am proud that my employment history indicates a personality that is happy to stay around long term. I try very hard to work out differences. When I changed jobs two years ago, I agonized for several months over leaving, even though I knew intellectually that I was not challenged enough and could earn a considerable amount more somewhere else. But it was not until six months into my new position, when I learned that my former employer had fired everyone and closed the office that I breathed a sigh of relief over moving on to something new.

I've been trying for the past two weeks to wrap my brain around the fact that I will need to start looking again. It is becoming painfully apparent that I am not a good fit at this job and that I must find a new position before I find myself unemployed.

An implementation with a new client went terribly wrong and I am on probation, indefinitely. All the work I do must be reviewed by my supervisor on a weekly basis and by the VP on a monthly basis. If I fail to complete any task by the end of the week, I must give my supervisor a detailed explanation as to why it was not completed.

There is a long story behind this, but any explanation I have tried to come up with ends with me sounding as if I am incapable of taking responsibility for my failures. The VP is not interested in my perspective on what went wrong – if he was, he would have asked me about my perspective before announcing that I as going to have the hell micromanaged out of me. There is also a strong element of scapegoating behind the VP's decision. Conversations with the other actors in this project have revealed that I was the only individual disciplined.

So I'm looking. And considering my options.

Heartache

Last Saturday was the Fourth of July. As is our custom, we drove out to Washington County to celebrate with close friends, a married couple (C & D) with a large home and lots of property. Plenty of grilled food, cold salads, chips, desserts and beers of both the home brewed (by J and C) and mass produced variety. J and the party's host set off fireworks after dark.

It was especially joyful this year. Baby Alien, at seven months, is a stubborn bundle of laughter so interested in the world around him that bedtime is considered a personal affront. He might miss something. The house was overrun with children, including a little girl several months older than Baby Alien. D, eighteen weeks pregnant with twins, was passing around the latest set of ultrasound images. A boy and a girl.

Monday afternoon, D miscarried. Both babies lost. There were no warning signs. D was in perfect health, the pregnancy was progressing well, all her tests were normal.

Just one of those things that happens sometimes.

When words fail, make food. Express love and concern via a dish that takes some time and a bit of effort. Effort to hunt down the correct chili varietals to season the dish. Spend some more time carefully removing seeds and veins from the dried peppers, washing hands thoroughly to avoid getting oil in the eyes. Hack apart 4.5 pounds of pork shoulder while the chilies reconstitute, simmering in a mixture of water, tomatoes, cumin, onion and garlic. Throw together, cook overnight. Skim the fat, add grits.

 Try not to think about how colossally unfair are the machinations of the universe. Try not to think about the last fifteen months, how miserable you were to be pregnant, while your friend would give anything to still be in that state. Hope that she doesn't hate you now. Think of clichés instead, because the words are easy.

Today J and I drove out to their home, Baby Alien in the backseat, a container of pozole on ice in the trunk. J stayed in the car with Baby Alien while I headed towards the front door. I handed them the food, gave them hugs. Told them how sorry I was. D cried. I cried. C asked us to wait a moment, he had something for J.

A case of the latest home brew. An apology for being so sad, but “we picked up the ashes today”.

Drive away. Hope that they know the food was a gesture from the heart and that exhortations that they call us if they need anything are more then just empty words.

Baby Alien sleeps now. He has a lingering cough that he can not shake, a remnant of his first illness (the croup). Intellectually I know that is nothing, as I caught the virus from Baby Alien and have not been able to shake the cough either. Still, tomorrow we will call his doctor.

The Unbearable Frustration and Anxiety of Being

I am not OK, some days. Some days the normal vagaries of life wear me down to pointlessness. Some days this is more than just the normal weariness that accompanies caring for an infant.

It is the little things. The attempts to reach out that seem to backfire. The moments that I step out of my comfort zone that go awry. Some days I feel that no matter how much I try, I will always remained isolated. That Baby Alien will grow up to deal with a weird, sad, socially maladjusted mama whom he is embarrassed to call his mother.

My interpretive skills have gone to total shit. I seem to have lost any ability to navigate social settings with anything resembling grace, and I was never all that good at reading people to begin with.

I went to a bridal shower a few weeks ago. Part of stepping out (I hate showers) of my comfort zone. I bought a dress from Ann Taylor. I dug out the pretty silver shoes I wore to my brother's wedding. I put on the pretty Baccarat crystal necklace J purchased for me as a gift on our trip to Paris. I ruined two pairs of pantyhose before leaving the house. I tucked a bottle of wine into the gift bag, to go along with the corkscrew set off the bride and groom's registry. How bad could it be? I knew the groom - he was the brother of a close childhood friend. I knew the groom's mother (like a second mother to me), his sister, his two sisters-in-law, his aunts, his cousins. I knew some of his friends and the bride - J and I had socialized with him, her and their friends enough to be excited over their upcoming wedding.

It was awful. Not the kind of awful that you walk into right away, but the type of clusterfuck that starts out innocuously and slowly builds momentum until you hit a point where you wonder why you bothered to buy the pretty Ann Taylor dress and dig out the silver sandals that really don't fit your feet properly. The wild desire that you entertained days earlier to get out of the house and do anything gives way to frantic plots to escape.

The groom's mother greeted me warmly and made another place at the already crowded table for me to sit, with the rest of her family. Demanded to see baby pictures of Baby Alien. Passed around the iPod containing cute photos of baby. With the exception of one aunt (1), all cooed over photos and caught me up to speed on small town gossip while the aunt changed the subject to her children whenever anyone at the table asked me a question about Baby Alien.

The three, KN, KB and H, sat in a fog of tension so thick it was visible. Cut out of the shower planning by the bride's sister and multitude of friends while still expected to front the money to pay for the party, they plotted ways to avenge themselves on the other bridesmaids and spent the bulk of the shower tracking gifts and cleaning up wrapping paper with politely bitter smiles. In a classic demonstration of social ineptness, I missed the cues that the wanted my assistance in exacting said revenge by declining to put the tickets in the baskets. (2)

And so the shower progressed, with angry bridesmaids on one side, a politely hostile aunt on another and a disinterested waitstaff on the third, as I was unable to get a drink or refill of water. The guests grew restless and hungry (but not thirsty, as I appeared to be the only person in the room forced to ration her beverage), with nary a roll or leaf of lettuce to nibble on an hour into the party. Many guests, desperately downed the elaborate wedding cake cookie placed at each table as a party favor. One table managed to score several six packs of Miller Lite and were merrily drinking their way through bottle after bottle.

Desperate for some distraction from the lack of food, the angry sisters took it upon themselves to begin drawing tickets for the baskets. Service of the meal was rushed as the bride needed to begin opening gifts in short order if the party was going to end at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, as originally planned.

The gifts included the traditional mix of tacky lingerie and other "martial aids" that are so de rigor at bridal showers in these parts. It ended with the groom appearing with a large bouquet of flowers and the groom's mother asking me if I had eaten the fish, as one of the guests had become ill shortly after finishing her meal.

While on my way out, I stopped in the restroom to change my clothes and heard the aforementioned sick guest in the next stall. It was not the fish that had bought her low. It was the several bottles of Miller Lite.

Weeks later, this should just be a funny story. But it is not. Instead all the subtext from that day has been tinged ugly. This past weekend my brother told us that S and H are hosting a bonfire, to which J and I were not invited. He did not invite us because his wife, H, did not want me there.

Rationally, I understand that the bridal shower had nothing to do with the bonfire. H has never warmed to me and this is not the first time we have been excluded from plans that include my brother and his wife.

But it stung. It stung me, who has tried so hard over the years to get along with H, a person who I genuinely like. It hurts to see J, who counts S as one of his closest friends and chose S to be the best man at our wedding, who socialized with S and my brother before he met me, excluded and to know that I am the reason.

Now the comment that one of the sisters made before I left the shower, about how dressed up I was, seems catty rather than a humorous observation. And my efforts to get out in the world seem foolish, useless and pointless.

And worse of all, I am afraid I am turning into someone J is ashamed of.

(1) I was unsurprised. Several years ago I took a beautiful candid photograph (really, it was a great photo) of her youngest daughter playing during a family party and offered up a copy for her album. She complained that I made her daughter look too old and has apparently entertained an active dislike of me from that day forward.

(2) I am routinely astounded by how quickly moments like the above can propel me back to high school, when I was painted as scolding, moralistic tattle-telling goody-two-shoes merely because I was disinterested in participating in any of the dumb juvenile delinquency of my classmates. And I never told on anyone, ever. I got that, much undeserved reputation when I inadvertently revealed to a male upperclassman that the girl he was dating had lied about her age. I shall never forget the upbraiding I received from one of the cheerleaders, nor the threat that she would "make my life hell" if he broke up with the girl. As my high school life was sheer misery, I'm not sure what she could have done to it any worse because it was that bad. As for the sisters - if they had spelled out for me what they wanted I would have happily volunteered.

Things I Don't Like

I don't like being held up as an example of how pregnant women are supposed to act.

However one of my (male) coworkers has deemed it fit to use me as an example whenever his pregnant wife complains that she is tired or feels limited in what she can do on a day-to-day basis.

As his wife is not working, my coworker feels that it is necessary to remind her that I got up and went to work every day until the end of my pregnancy. Literally. When I pointed to out to coworker that I did very, very little but go to work, forcing J into multiple roles of cook, dishwasher, cleaner-of-kitty-litter boxes and scrubber of toilets, he shrugged off my gentle objections with a "but, still..."

I am not amused. I am offended. And I would not be at all surprised if this poor woman, who is now late in her third trimester, hates me.

If Not for You Meddling Kids...

Or, in this case, replace “meddling kids” with “meddling in-law”.

I'm glad for a little bit of minor personal family drama. It is something useful to escape from the non-stop attention Pittsburgh media has been paying to the quarterback formerly known as “Mr. Play for Jesus”, now better known as “showing up in the lyrics of Eminem's most recent song”.

Escape has not been as easy as turning off the television/radio and eschewing print and online Pittsburgh media because said quarterback's most recent travails have confirmed the bias I always held against him from the moment he was drafted – that this was a guy I would not want to spend five seconds alone with in a room.

End of digression Number 1. For further digressions, please see the footnotes, they are especially voluminous and verbose today.

J's mother, especially, can be a force to be reckoned with. During one of my less than finer moments in the past ten years I suggested that J's family has some Jewish members in the woodpile(1), such is the amount of passive-aggressive guilt that J's mother can pile on victims unsuspecting and otherwise.(2)

I have a thing about celebrating my birthday which can be traced back to the fact that I share a birthday with my brother, M. My twin brother. For roughly twenty years M and I had to negotiate our birthday celebrations. Some years he won and choose the dinner. Some years I did and got to eat chocolate cake. Some years (all occurring after I reached the age of 30) I've had to pretend that it was not my birthday at all and been yelled at by my mother for telling people that it was. I've had many a horrible birthday in my half-lifetime and have become stupidly neurotic about striving to have a good day.(3)

The thing that has developed with celebrating my birthday is that I want to be the one to plan it. Planning usually involves spending the day with J in some sort of fun activity, such as a visit to the National Aviary or Warhol Museum or making an elaborate and expensive meal for some of our friends. Some years I take the day off from work. Some years I plan for the closest Saturday. We get up, we go to breakfast, we go do something. This year I was looking forward to figuring out something that would involve Baby Alien(4) and toying with the idea of the Children's Museum, as there would be lots to look at and I could indulge in one of the fun things about being a parent – playing with children's “stuff” without fear of censure from other adults. And because doing something fun would remove the taint from the past two years.(5)

All my ruminations have come to a bad end, as my mom tipped me off during a recent phone conversation that my mother-in-law, gods bless her meddling little heart, was planning celebratory-type activities for my birthday and Mother's Day.(6)

My mother knew this because my mother-in-law called to ask her to come for Mother's Day, then attempted to pull a guilt trip on my mother because my parents will be on vacation in a location eight hours away and are rightfully reluctant to drive back in the middle of their vacation for one day.

The conversation moved from Mother's Day to my birthday and my MIL desire to plan my birthday celebration and her desire to gain my parents participation in the plans.

My mother reminded her that it was also my brother's birthday. I'm not sure if she did this because

1. she still remains under the impression that my twin and I somehow coordinate birthday celebrations,
2. my twin would be offended by my parents only celebrating with me,
3. she could not conceive of celebrating our birthday without my twin or
4. it was the easiest way to bring the conversation to a conclusion.

The more I think about the conversation, the more hilarious it becomes. My mother-in-law was bewildered that my mother would find driving back for one day unreasonable. My mother was bewildered that my mother-in-law was attempting to make her feel guilty and sat in awe of her powers of passive aggressive persuasion. Thinking about it now makes me laugh out loud.

She ranted, a little bit, about how unfair it was that I would not get to decide what I wanted to do on Mother's Day. In a spectacular display of tone deafness she also complained about my twin being excluded from any birthday plans she might want to make.

I, for what is worth, have resigned myself to rolling my eyes and allowing her to plan out both days, as they are taking Baby Alien for a night so J and I can attend a wedding - which is occurring the same day as the graduation party of J's oldest nephew. Payback.

(1) I admit that I put a toe across the border into heavy stereotyping with this comment. However, J's great grandmother was from Poland, came from a part of the country with a large Jewish population and immigrated to the United States in the 40's. It is not outside the bounds of possibility that family members converted to Catholicism to avoid rising anti-semitism, then immigrated. However, I have also been told (guilty of stereotyping again) that the only thing worse than a Jewish mother to pile on the guilt is a mother who happens to be Polish-Catholic. Additionally, the joke seems to be on me as J passed the Jewish suggestion on to his mother, who laughed then quietly admitted that there was a possibility that some of her fore-relatives may have converted.

(2) While I still can't completely suss out when she will strike, my reactions have gone from righteous annoyance to eye rolling, whining, mental shrugging and the occasional conciliation to her desires.

(3) As J expressed to me last night, one would think after almost 40 years I would give up trying.

(4) Going back to original nickname.

(5)The great [non] birthday fiasco of 2008 was followed by 2009, in which J was sick and spent most of what was possibly the only day in the first 20 something weeks of pregnancy that I was not unbearably nauseated, asleep. All I wanted was a card and a cupcake. I got neither. I did, however get a phone call from A in Switzerland (the same friend who sent me photographs of pregnant and newly postpartum supermodels to make me feel better about my increasing girth in late pregnancy. From anyone else this would have been considered highly misguided, as I'm certainly not the kind of pretty or thin that could be classified as “supermodel”. From A, who could never resist looking a beautiful woman, it was kind of sweet and did make me feel better in a weird sort of way) which rescued the day from becoming a tear-filled disaster. 

(As a further digression, A revealed to me several weeks ago that he and his wife (who is supermodel- territory beautiful, brilliant and fabulous) are expecting their first child, thus providing a theory to explain his offbeat obsession with pregnant supermodels – his wife was in early pregnancy when he sent me all the photos and links.) 

(6)I'm offering odds to those in the know on whether these plans include some way of getting me to go to mass.

Hurts Men Too

Saturday night BooBoo decided he was not going to sleep in his crib. Every time J put him down he woke up and began to yell. By attempt number three J was exhausted and frustrated and warned me that he was going to let BooBoo yell it out for a while, to see if he would put himself to sleep. I agreed to let him do it.

It did not work. I did not expect it would work. I've noticed over the past week that BooBoo is starting to understand that he is a separate little person, with a separate little will that does not have to mesh with his parents. I'm proud to see this. Seeing him turn his head and watch me walk away when I drop him off at daycare instead of gazing at the ceiling made me feel pretty good.

So what I see as a normal (albeit annoying) developmental milestone has left J reeling. And anxious.

“What is wrong with him” he asked, exasperated after wrapping the child up in a blanket and handing him to me to hold. While BooBoo stared at me, with eyes wide and full of immense concentration, I threw out a few suggestions – headache, ear infection, tummy trouble, just-plain-lonely.

“Should we take him to a doctor?”

Seventeen weeks into this journey and already I hate, hate, hate when J asks any variation of this question, beginning with the trigger phrase “should we”. What appears to be a perfectly innocuous inquiry from his point of view makes me want to beat down every single male and female who taught J, through words or stupid example, that he is incapable of trusting his instincts and intuition as a father. Not a parent. A father.

“I don't have an instinct for this” J says whenever BooBoo has cried a little too long because he is hungry, or needs a diaper changed or just-needs-to-cry-over-his-incompentent-staff-damnit.

My response – “Yes, you do. Spend more time with him.”

J dislikes that I do not step in or otherwise interfere when he cares for BooBoo. As long as he does not appear to be in danger or downright hysterical, I usually leave J to figure out what BooBoo needs with minimal interference from me. I suspect that he thinks, although he is smart enough to never admit it, that I'm abdicating responsibility.

Which I am. I'm abdicating sole responsibility of BooBoo to his biological father in order to avoid a dynamic in which I become the single decider and doer in all issues connected with the care and feeding of baby. I don't want that level of responsibility.

Still, there remains this idea that men like J are not competent enough to care for their own children. Members of J's own family are still express surprise at how comfortable I about J taking BooBoo to visit his grandparents, hang with the guys at Quaker Steak and Lube and watch J and his friends brew beer – without me along to supervise.

The Dairy (1) is Now Closed

I've been writing this entry in my head all week. But every time I try to sit down and put the words on screen I hesitate for a myriad of reasons sensible and senseless all at once.

BooBoo is now 100% on formula. And I could not be happier.

I read a lot of stuff. (Stay with me. There is a point to this). Some at the library, more online. One of the biggest complaints my family had throughout BooBoo's (2) gestation was that I read too much and knew too much about what was going on with my body. I shouldn't have been reading so much, it would make me worry too much.

Victorian/Edwardian much? Ignorance is bliss? Reading was one of the few things I could do to maintain some semblance of control during a process that was very much out of my control.

• I was not surprised when I had to put away my lovely bras in favor of quasi-sport style bras and tanks with snaps and cutouts.
• I was not surprised to have to buy shoes that would expand enough to fit my feet during the last months of pregnancy.
• I was not surprised to find, three days after delivering BooBoo, that the shoes I had purchased in point 2 didn't fit. I left the hospital in a wheelchair, sporting socks. If it had not been December, I would have forgone the socks altogether and left barefooted.

The weeks wore on and the two of us settled into some kind of rhythm. Even though it was still taking almost an hour to nurse him. Even though I had to give him both breasts every time. Even though it continued to hurt like hell every time he nursed off my right breast (which was every time he nursed). Even though the only time he seemed to not be hungry ½ an hour after finishing was when J gave him a bottle with formula. Even though he was barely above his birth weight and J was giving a bottle every night to help him gain.

Week eight came and went. I was still getting only an hour of sleep at a time. I was becoming increasingly depressed, to the point where I was contemplating hurting myself. I was not eating. I had no time and was not hungry anyway. I resented BooBoo. I resented J.

On the Monday morning of the ninth week I spent an hour nursing BooBoo. I put him down on his play mat for a few minutes so I could get something to eat. From the kitchen I could hear him crying. He was hungry. Again. He had finished nursing only five minutes before and he was screaming as if he had never eaten at all.

And the thought of me putting him to my right breast, of experiencing another ½ hour of burning pain that had no cause, was too much. I reached for a bottle. 2 ounces of water, a scoop of formula, shake like crazy.

And BooBoo took the bottle. Hungrily, easily, happily. When he was finished he looked at me with a contented expression and feel into a comfortable sleep.

And I experienced a moment of mental and emotional peace that I had not felt in months. I decided that today was a good day to start weaning BooBoo for daycare. Pump and bottle feed during the day, nurse in the morning and at night.

It was a good plan that didn't work. I didn't produce enough milk to send what he needed to daycare. I altered the plan. Give him formula during the day, nurse in the mornings, breast milk from a bottle in the evenings.

Which worked for two weeks, until I got food poisoning and the milk supply quit altogether. Quit cold. The painful weaning that I read about? Didn't happen. I just stopped producing.

I read a lot. A lot of blog entries from other women who have quit breastfeeding because it just didn't work for a myriad of reasons. And a I read the comments, supportive and cruel. Comments from women who were able to successfully breastfeed their children for a year plus yet got that sometimes it just doesn't work. Cruel comments from “lactation activists” (3) about sucking it up and soldiering on, no matter the mental, physical, emotional cost.

Since I stopped, being with BooBoo has been a joy. It is a joy to get up at 5:00am, while he is still sleeping, so I can be showered and dressed when he wakes. It is a joy to listen to him cry (he is not a morning person) as I change and dress him for the day. To make funny faces and silly noises in the off chance that he will smile. To hear him learning how to laugh.

And I know, deep in that part of me that just knows, that I would not have felt this if I had continued trying to do something that was fundamentally not working.

Thank you, from every fiber of my being, to those who offered support through emails and comments in these past weeks. Your kindness amazes me.

There has been one surprise. I was surprised to discover that my very flat feet are now flatter and the first few steps I take whenever I get up from a chair hurt.

(1) Quoth Jeff to a friend “We have a dairy in the back of our fridge” when I was still pumping out a decent amount every day. A very apt description.
(2) The Alien has graduated to the nickname BooBoo.
(3) I refuse to invoke Godwin's law in an entry about breastfeeding. Not going to do it.

Work Again, Work Again, Jiggity-jig

I started back at work a day later than originally planned. Having to call off on my first day back was embarrassing, but necessary, due to the semi-massive bout of food poisoning both J and myself suffered late Sunday night into the wee hours of Monday last.

After some discussion, the culprit was determined to be the (many days expired) soy milk that J used Sunday morning to make chai tea. The tea sat on the counter for most of Sunday and I threw the caution I usually utilize(1) when sampling J's wares to the wind and had several glasses. As did J.

Late Sunday night, after simultaneously cursing and celebrating Canada's win over the United States in Olympic gold-medal round hockey(2) I expressed to J that I was not feeling very well. We compared notes on our symptoms.

And about 15 minutes after that conversation all hell broke loose for the adult members in our household. J and I spent the next several hours trading off time in the bathroom. For the first time in many a day I found myself, cheek to cool tile floor, wishing for a quick death(3).

Around 1:00am, as the two of us lay on our bed, the following dialogue took place:
Me: Would this constitute enough of an emergency to call your mom?
J: Yes.
Me: Why don't we do that then?
J: Now? (Even the question mark was in italics).
Me: Why not?
J: I'll call them in the morning.

At 6:00am I dragged myself out of bed, fed (from a bottle, I'll be damned if my kid accidentally gets food poisoning from me(4)) and dressed a perfectly healthy and happy L for his first full day of day care. I am unable, two weeks later, to explain how I managed to get him to the center and back home again. All I know is that the delusion I maintained at one o'clock in the morning that I would be able to make it into work was completely shattered. I sent an email off to my supervisor and collapsed into a stupor on our bed once again.

J's parents arrived around 3:00pm, food for their dinner in hand(5). They helped J (who was far sicker than I) pick up L and took care of him until 5:00am Tuesday morning. After they left I discovered they had done all the dishes and left food in the refrigerator.

Food poisoning aside, returning to work has been delightful.

(1) J's desire to NOT waste food means that he will drink and eat many days expired items from our fridge. I've even caught him eating moldy bread. I, on the other hand, am usually far more cautious.
(2) Cursing as the United States lost. Celebrating as the game-winning goal was scored by the Penguins' Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovech-whathisnamewho? did not get within smelling distance of a medal of any variety. This is not because I think Crosby is more talented than Ovechkin. This is because I can't stand seeing an athlete as talented as Ovechkin unnecessarily thug it up on the ice.
(3) The difference between this and the many times I wished for a quick death during my recent time gestating the alien? No tile floor and guilt-free access to tequila.
(4) I'm pretty certain that this was a contributing factor to the beginning of the end of my function as a dairy.
(5) My father-in-law has, for years, maintained that we have no food or beverages in our home. Which translates to no food or beverages J's father would be willing to eat or drink. This habit goes back almost as long as J and I have been married, when we had a spirited discussion with J's father over the fact that we never had soda/pop in our home. This is the same man who turned down homemade chicken noodle soup because he wanted chili then complained that I made the chili wrong. Yes, I am still a little bit bitter about the five hours of my life I will never get back from that incident.

Bad Mom – Entry Number 1

My in-laws are not pleased with me.

My in-laws are not pleased with me and think that I am a bad, disinterested mother.

My in-laws are not pleased with me and think that I am a bad, disinterested mother because I have zero qualms about my child's father (their son) taking L for the day without me. To his parents (my in-laws) home.

They want to know “what is wrong with [me]”. Nothing that a few hours of uninterrupted sleep would not solve in short order.

On the upside, the fact that the question irritates me means that I'm feeling more like myself.

Snzzzz

I have not had much to write about lately, as my life as a bus-riding, full-time worker bee has temporarily ceased to focus on helping L to figure out how to live in the world. I spend several moments every day struggling to fill my brain up with something other than the three god-awful songs emitting from the Fisher Price 2-in-1 Playful Puppy Gym.

But L loves this hideous piece of plastic and it has become a key part of our daily routine, as the 20-30 precious minutes L spends enthralled is more than enough time for me to get a shower and breakfast. Enthralled in this case means that he waves his skinny arms, vigorously kicks his feet and emits an occasional shout when the music ceases playing.

Such is my desperation some days to get out of the house and into the world sans infant, that a trip to Costco turns into an event. Hours I can spend, wandering the warehouse, debating the merits in the purchase of a 24 pack of San Pellegrino Limonata and Aranciata (I passed up on the opportunity) and resisting the temptation to purchase $60.00 worth of iTunes gift cards for $55.00. Only to turn around and spend an embarrassing and slightly obscene sum of money of bulk goods ranging from a 5lb bag of unshelled pistachios to 64oz of dishwashing detergent.

Today's score? Two 40lb bags of kitty litter for the low price of less than $10.00 a bag. Such a little bulk saver I am becoming.

Such was my obliviousness to the bulk buying process that I failed to observe that items are not actually bagged. Instead they are placed into boxes recycled from the item's packaging.

One of these days, something interesting may happen to me again.

Notes From the First Six Weeks

1. My younger brother shocked the daylights out of both of us when he drove 4 plus hours from his home on the day of L's birth just to see him. And drove back home the same day.
2. Nothing tasted as sweet as that first shot of tequila after bringing L home.
3. All those experts who state that newborn babies sleep 18 out of 24 hours are full of crap.
4. The sleep deprivation is as bad as I thought it would be.
5. I'm never going to enjoy breastfeeding. And I'm OK with that.
6. You know you are doing something right as a couple when you manage to successfully tick off both sets of grandparents for essentially the same reason.
7. Babies can cause insanity in previously normal and low maintenance family members.
8. A trip to Costco feels like a night on the town.
9. My tolerance for alcohol has dropped to levels not seen since I was twenty-one years old. One glass of wine and I am loopy for several hours. I am officially a “cheap date” once again.
10. We managed to get through our first post-baby date night without calling home to check on L.
11. I am not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother.
12. The perception that one's child is cute is a biological construct created to prevent a parent from killing their child.
13. It is rather sad that I had to have a child in order to earn the respect and the right to be treated like an adult from some parties. It negates everything else that I have accomplished in my life.
14. Dr. Seuss footed pajamas and magna onesis = total win. Best gift we received, hands down.
15. Every time I think I can't be more overwhelmed with graditude for the kindness and support of once internet strangers, I am overwhelmed once again.

Aftermath I

L is lovely.

I hate breastfeeding. Really, really hate it. I don't produce enough to keep L satisfied. I don't produce enough to pump. And L tends to fall asleep, so every second that he is feeding I am actively struggling to keep him awake.

His doctor says I need to start pumping now to get him used to bottles. The LC says I need to wait, since he is having issues with feeding. Last night I had a breakdown at midnight. J took L from me, told me to go to sleep, went downstairs and fixed a bottle of formula, which he fed to L. Two hours later I was up and feeding him again.

My mom says to follow my instinct (that he is not getting enough from me) and supplement.

I hate this. I'm going crazy inside my house. I can't go out, because I can't feed him him without exposing myself. I'm home alone for part of the day until next week, when J goes back to work full time.

Part of me wants to give up now. But I think about the financial waste – the pump, the breast shields, the storage bags, the cost of formula and I cringe to think about how much money we would be throwing away.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Summary: J and I are now proud (and sleep deprived) parents. Our child, L, was born on Saturday afternoon, at 3:58pm.

The Bad: Labor. The whole thing. From the membranes breaking on Friday at 11:30 in the morning while I was at work, to the drive to the birth center, to the back-and-forth from birth center, to hospital, to birth center and finally back to the hospital over the course of 28 hours.

Highlights included witnessing the driver of an 18 wheeler do a u-turn in the middle of Stanwix street,  denting the guardrail and nearly taking out a convention center support beam and several cars, vehicles driving the wrong way up Penn Avenue and two trips to the hospital, the first to assess why my blood pressure had become so unstable and to do an ultrasound, the second as a formal transfer, as my contractions never developed any rhythm due to L flipping to a posterior position (aka “back labor”) and I was dilating too slowly to remain safely at the center.

The Good: The hospital staff, from the anesthesiologist who applied the epidural and took the time to explain not only what he was doing, but how and why, the midwife and hospital nursing staff who worked together to prevent a knife-happy OB/GYN from forcing me to have a cesarean section and J, who hid his fear and anxiety until after L was born.

Surgeons were consulted on L's positioning. Nurses not assigned to the labor stopped by to offer suggestions and moral support. The neo-natal unit was called down to take L at birth to ensure that he was healthy. I can confidently say that I would not have made it without their support and care.

The Ugly: J's parents showing up while I was in labor and in no shape to see anyone, in total and complete disregard of my previously and repeatedly expressed wishes that they stay home until otherwise instructed. J's parents do not handle hospitals well. They came into the room to make themselves feel better and I found myself wasting time and energy trying to reassure his mother that I was OK. I finally quietly and politely asked them to leave the room.

My parents also showed up in defiance of my previously expressed wishes. I took their arrival slightly better, if only because both of my parents are nurses and they know how to behave in such situations. They stayed only five minutes and I did not have to ask them to leave.

That it took two people, a surgeon and the midwife over thirty minutes to stitch me back up.

That J's sister showed up with her husband and children (against the express wishes of the hospital that children under the age of 12 remain at home) in the maternity ward at 8:00pm (visiting hours end at 8:30pm), after being told by J's parents that both of us were exhausted and NOT to visit us on Saturday. Her explanation? That they were “too busy” to come visit on Sunday, Saturday was more convenient for them. J refused to allow them into the room and the family went home angry because they were not permitted to see me or hold L, and complained to J's parents about how unwelcome they felt.

For the record, this is the same sister who was offended when I stopped her from touching my stomach.

Filed Under...

...things you should not say to a woman entering week 37 of pregnancy:

“Oh, you are too high! You are not going to drop for weeks. Its gonna be a while yet before you have that baby”.

Then giggle and start talking about how you did 10 jumping jacks on a hot summer day to make your water break, which it did the next morning, and how horrified you were because 10 jumping jacks may have ruptured the placenta.

Continue in this vein for several more minutes, bragging about how early all your children were and offering unsolicited advice while ignoring the frosty silence and stiff smile of the luckless pregnant woman forced to listen to such twaddle.

Compound that with having to listen to conversation about "how wonderful" it would be to have an infant at Wigilia this year, as if my sore, sleep deprived, learning-how-to-breastfeed ass will want to do nothing more than feed the infant, pack myself into a car, drive an hour and subject myself to 30+ people in a small room.

Programming Note

To hapless spouses of first time pregnant women everywhere:

It does not behoove you to complain about giving up four Saturdays over a forty week period to attend some childbirthing and don't kill the baby classes. Especially when pregnant spouse has actively encouraged you to go out with mutual friends, continue playing the sports that you love, pushed you to get exercise and spend time with your parents and siblings and essentially done everything within her limited power to make sure that you continue to maintain some sense of normality during a highly abnormal period of time.  You sacrificed four Saturdays. Your spouse, on the other hand, has sacrified her physical being and emotional sanity. She wins. Stop being a jerk.

Too Many Days

Less than four weeks. I'm uncomfortable, cranky and offering myself up as a willing guinea pig for any person willing to cast any sort of voodoo spell that will shorten the end of the alien's gestation.

I'm not willing to put up with too anything from anyone. After almost 36 weeks of restraint, my mother decided to pull out the clichés during a post-Thanksgiving dinner conversation and was promptly smacked down. In the defensive, injured air put on by any individual who knows better, but goes ahead and does it anyway, she protested that she had exercised restraint over the past 35 plus weeks. I pointed out to her that if she had been successfully able to hold her tongue for over 35 weeks, four more should have been easy.

Last week, for the first time in my life, I yelled at a healthcare provider. Concerned that I might be leaking amniotic fluid, I called the midwives, who squeezed me in for an appointment for an internal exam and to take a specimen. The nurse who examined me neglected to mention that because of the potential risk of infection, she would be unable to use any lubrication or that I might be “extra sensitive” until after I started yelling at her while on the table.

She was apologetic about the incident. Which soothed my feelings, but not my poor parts, which ached for the rest of the week. The leakage turned out to be a false alarm,

I feel subtle changes. I'm getting sweaty. The migraines, which never went away completely, have increased to their pre-pregnancy level of intensity and duration. Tylenol is completely ineffective as is the only other cure available to me right now – a solid night of sleep. And the nausea of the first 20 weeks has returned, in a slightly more manageable form.

The first of now weekly checkups came with a list of instructions. When to call the midwives – if I have another full blown migraine(1) or my water breaks. What to do if I start early labor near bedtime – call the midwife and take a Benadryl(2) to get some sleep.

My crankiness has increased since I started this post, three days ago. I feel incredibly isolated, angry and lonely right now and acting in ways that are highly counterproductive, such as isolating myself even further so I don't act out against the undeserving, including J. Who feels the tension and anger anyway and has responded by inviting a bunch of our friends over to our home on Saturday to watch the Penguins/Blackhawks game. It is the correct thing to do – I'm too uncomfortable to go out for extended periods of time at this point and I need to socialize with other people.

Too many days left.

(1) It is interesting to observe what healthcare professionals will freak out about. I've had several migraines over the course of this pregnancy, just of a lower level of pain and shorter duration, mild enough that it never occurred to me to mention them. Especially since not every woman experiences a cessation in migraine activity during pregnancy. I mentioned the headache because I was curious if it acted as a precursor to labor, a sign that my hormone levels were returning to a non-pregnant state. From the midwife's point of view, it was an indicator of something more serious.

(2) I had no idea how many off label uses there were for Benadryl until I got sick in the past month.

Five Weeks

The older I become the more that I am convinced of the studies that suggest that some illness is an immune system stress response. Throw up on a bus, wake up two days later with a head cold and no access to any of the OTC medications I regularly use to ease the symptoms at night.

Take diphenhydramine (benadryl) instead the midwives suggest, as the primary side effect (drowsiness) should be enough to knock me out so I can sleep. And if that does not work, call the center and they will write a prescription for a sleep aid. I can't take an OTC decongestant, but I can take an Ambian?

The diphenhydramine works. I take a half dose and nearly lose the pill, so tiny and clear that it falls from the blister pack and blends in with the wood of the dresser. While I wait for it to take effect J wipes down the walls and moves the furniture around, trying to make the room more comfortable. In half an hour I am fighting to stay awake and my dreams go from color to black and white and are disappointedly mundane.

I elect to skip a second dose in favor of elevating my head with a wedge pillow and running the vaporizer from the moment I get home to when I wake up in the morning. The felines like the new arrangement, little grey Lucy is especially fond of the wedge as it leaves her enough room to sleep above my head, paws occasionally kneading at my head. The other two have started sleeping at my feet, one on each side and hanging out on the bed and chair during the day. Lucy elects to split her daytime sleeping hours between the car seat and the crib.

Between three cats, a husband and my enlarged size, there is little room to turn over at night.

The head cold lingers, all week. Lingers through the decontamination of the scarf and bag, through dragging myself up and out of bed every morning, head and belly aching. I drop things. Thermometer, keys, clothes. A mint M&M rolls underneath the bookcase. I shrug my shoulders and leave it there.

 A (male) friend tries to improve my spirits over my enlarging size by sending me stories and photographs of supermodels currently in the stages of late pregnancy and early postpartum period (1). I find Gisele Bundchen beautiful but the photographs of her irritating (2) and Heidi Klum awe-inspiring, with her 45 pound pregnancy weight gain and the fact that she looks, four weeks after birth, like a woman who recently had a baby, even after dropped 25 pounds.

It lingers through the weekend, while I try put together a white chili to freeze for later. I can not locate the can opener. I have to call J, away for the weekend helping my brother and sister-in-law move, and ask him where it is. It broke, he says. Some plastic part fell off of it. He threw it into the recycling bin. I fish it out. It works just fine.

It lingers through today, as I drag myself out of bed to face another day, quietly reminding myself that I am slowly inching towards the end of this journey. While my head is marginally clearer, I feel slightly nauseated from eating too much yesterday and realize that I will have to go back to the hobbit-esque eating habits of eight months ago.

(1)Yes, my friend has a weird sense of humor. His point is that even supermodels achieve orca-like proportions while pregnant, so fretting about my size is really stupid in light of the fact that I'm actually on target for “acceptable” gain based on my height, starting weight and BMI.

(2) Not because she is six inches taller, 30+ pounds lighter and seven years younger than myself, thus able to carry the excess weight in an attractive manner, but because she is married to Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback. I'm more of a Steelers fan than I thought. Most Steelers fans can not stand anything to do with the New England Patriots, primarily because the insistence of most national sports media on referring to them as “America's Team” when there exists an enormous, world-wide Steelers diaspora that puts the Patriots fans to shame and routinely goes unacknowledged.

Bent

Nothing speaks “humiliation” like throwing up up on one's shirt, coat, bag and pants while on a moving bus. Nothing adds insult to such injury like having to use the brand new scarf, a shower gift sent all the way from a friend in Germany, to clean oneself up.

And nothing makes a person question the general humanity of the population like listening to the witnesses of my unfortunate display of stomach histrionics make fun of me, without a single soul taking two seconds to ask if I was OK.

It is not as if I feel like I'm entitled to any sympathy. I just can't help but wonder what is wrong with the world that half a busload of grown adults (not teenagers, not college students) can watch a woman throw up all over herself, then do her damnedest to clean herself and her surroundings up while crying so hard she can not breathe and not only not feel the slightest bit of pity but find it entertaining to audibly and clearly make fun of her.

Suffice to say, I checked in with my boss and went home for the day. I'm not proud that I completely lost my composure acted the classic stereotype of a woman in late pregnancy. But I could not face dealing with the world yesterday after what happened on the bus.

People really, really suck sometimes.

Salvo II in the Parenting Wars – the Breastfeeding Edition

I was in a foul mood this morning and lying quietly in bed listening to the Lucy cat purring softly did very little to alleviate it. Cat therapy can only go so far in combating the general wankery of the population.

Yesterday was my first of two breastfeeding classes. I suspected that I was in for a long three hours when I pulled up behind the instructor's (lactation activist/consultant) caravan and saw the “Babies are Born to be Breastfed!” bumper sticker, which provoked me to say “Oh god, no!” out loud, to myself.

It got a little bit worse, as I was one of only two women out of the five who did not have her partner with her. Three of the women knew each other from previous classes, and after an initial exchange of hellos proceeded to freeze me out of their conversation while throwing pitying glances my way because J did not attend the class with me.(1) The sensation that I had regressed to high school was strong and unpleasant.

The instructor definitely tilted toward the crunchy-granola side of the breastfeeding conundrum. Her general perspective was that all difficulties with breastfeeding could be solved by a correct latch and a close observation of your child's cue, with a few potshots at medicated labor thrown in just to “encourage” the class to stay on the straight and narrow path of the unmedicated.

I prefer realism to relentless optimism. Telling me to “chill”, that I will have an awful start breastfeeding if I end up having a medicate labor, that lanolin will not be necessary because my body will produce enough natural nipple protection and if all else fails, La Leche League is an excellent source of information is NOT reassuring.

Neither is listening to the partner of one woman, when prompted to introduce himself and suggest a breastfeeding myth, launched into a several minute rant against a recent essay, discussing the ways in which certain segments of the population are using breastfeeding as a way of bludgeoning and guilting working women into conforming to a specific ideal and guilting them into leaving the public sphere. Aside from the fact that he missed the point of the essay, his partner admitted later on in the afternoon that she would not be working after their child is born.

I was happy when the class ended half an hour early.

(1)J and I split duties Saturday – I went to the class and he went to a birthday party.

Postmortem of a Baby Shower

First, a digression in the form of this recent verbal exchange:

J: Did you put the bananas in the freezer?
Me: Uh, No.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, I'm sure. I took a banana last night, that is the last time I touched them.
J: Because I don't remember putting them in the freezer.
Me: You took one this morning. It had to be you, you are the last person to touch them.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
J: I was really out of it this morning.

Saturday could have been worse. Much worse. I could have been forced to play “Guess How Fat the Pregnant Guest-of-Honor Is”. Instead I had to listen to 10,000 variations on how our life will change and 10,001 variations on how I'll change my mind about being pregnant once the first one is born.

I had to physically block J's sister from touching my stomach. She was offended, possibly because since I am family, she shouldn't have to ask permission. It is interesting that the biggest offenders in the pat-the-pregnant-belly game have been members of J's family. I have not had this problem with my family members, total strangers or even J (who checks first, because sometimes the muscles are so sore that I could cry).

As I am of the persuasion who believes that pregnant women and infant children are not public property, even to family members, I was indifferent to her outrage. And I will continue to practice that indifference after the alien comes and the full on assault of complaints about hand washing and limited traveling begin.

Other than that incident, the shower went smoothly. I managed to maintain a straight face through lunch, while listening to a friend of J's family talk about how hard she had prayed for her daughter to have a child (uh, maybe her daughter did not want to be pregnant?) and how she can't understand why anyone could be an atheist after experiencing the miracle of conception, pregnancy and childbirth. My friend B, who was able to come and sat next to me during the meal, got a great deal of enjoyment out of watching me maintain that straight face and was able to bear witness to the the craziness of J's family.

And my friend B received, as a prize for baby bingo, a “Keep the Christ in Christmas” magnet, which I found hilarious, as B is an agnostic who appreciates the irony in spreading an anti-consumerist message by selling something.

Listening to my MIL attempt to organize baby bingo into special games was also entertaining and led me to make the crack "You can't tell this is a room of Catholics" to my sister-in-law.

The gifts were lovely and not too Christmas themed. The atrocity of the day belongs to a soft pink Winnie-the-Pooh layette set, given by an individual who must really, really want an alien of the female persuasion.

Sunday was spent sorting and storing all the paraphernalia, writing 38 thank you notes and washing, folding and putting away clothes. J spend the morning hanging pictures and the afternoon with his family, who asked him when we were planning on having another child.

Oy. The first (and only) one has not even arrived and they are already salivating over the possibility of a second. I can not help but think that they intentionally waited for a time when I was not present to ask this question, as my response would have been extremely snarky.