Mandajuice

Do you do the euphemism while having your euphemism?

Yesterday I wasted a few brain cells trying to figure out where I stand on the issue of having "grown-up time" while "Aunt Flo is visiting."

Or, you know, playing hide the salami, churning the butter, crashing the custard truck, drilling the ditch, sweeping my chimney, makin' bacon, parallel parking WHILE driving in a red car, surfing the crimson tide, fighting the crimson crusade, hitting the 57, not praying, seducing the vampires, falling to the communists, etc.

What I'm saying is that I'm 35-years old and I really have no clue whether I love or loathe doing the naughty while I have my period. I have no frame of reference for it at all. Baldman just woke up happy and let me know it was Business Time and I lay there frozen to my pillow. I literally couldn't remember if I've ever done that before, which quickly devolved into me freaking out about not being able to remember, until it finally occurred to me:

I've had MAYBE ten periods during the last dozen years. At the most.

At first it was because I was too obese to ovulate. Then once I lost weight and started cycling again, I got pregnant with Alex right away. Then I was pregnant and/or nursing for more than five years and I've had my magic IUD ever since.

I spotted a little bit last month, but this is literally the first real period I've had in nearly six years. No wonder I have no idea what to do! I asked Joel where he stood on the issue and all he said was, "You need to get a new IUD."

Even weirder was walking into the bathroom to find my kids playing with my tampons and then having to explain to them what they were for.

"Uh..." Part of me wanted to tell them "THOSE ARE MINE. PUT THEM AWAY!" and be done with it, but I'm just not that kind of parent. I want them to know they'll always get answers from me when they have important questions, so I just went with it.

"Every month my body makes an egg and when I don't use it to make a baby, it has to come out."

I was trying to simplify it as much as I could.

"And there's some, uh, padding that also needs to come out. Of my uterus. Where my body grows babies." I pointed to my lower abdomen.

Alex's eyes got big and Genoa's got even bigger.

"It's kinda gross, though, and I don't want it to ruin my underpants so I have to use, like, a sponge to catch it."

I took one of the tampons they'd opened and ran it under the bathroom faucet so they could see it expand. They were enthralled.

"They go in your crotch?" Genoa scrunched up her nose with disgust.

"Yes, Genoa. They go in my crotch."

"I want to see one of the gross ones!" Alex begged.

I can think of a lot of ways I might potentially scar the child for life, but that will never be one of them. Genoa just wanted to know if it hurts. I'm not sure she believed me when I told her it doesn't hurt any more than peeing. But SERIOUSLY. I feel like I'm 11 years old again! It's all new to me again.

How did you tell your kids about this stuff? And more importantly, do you close for business when you're checking in to the Red Roof Inn?

"Your mother's hands"

Joel had a speaking gig on Saturday night where he delivered a twenty-minute "pop talk" as a pre-show warm-up for Hand2Mouth Theatre's production of Uncanny Valley at the Artist's Rep Theater. Joel's talk was perfectly Joel: a discussion of Hitchcock's use of the uncanny in Vertigo, among other films. His talk was well-delivered and well-received and I got to experience my usual pleasure at knowing my date was the smartest guy in the room, only it was doubly good because everyone else in the room got to know it too.

We stuck around for the performance, which H2M describes as follows:

"You are defined by a handful of memories that make you who you are, that haunt and overtake you. You recreate them in your mind but you know they're gone. You can never go back.

But what if you could?

Only by journeying into the Uncanny Valley can you come face to face with your essential memories, made palpable and alive. For ten years Hand2Mouth has rigorously trained to make this journey into the unconscious mind, and now we present a performance about the mechanism of memory, played out live in front of you by our team of seasoned performer-explorers"

I loved it. I love the idea of retrieving lost memories, mostly because I have so few organic memories myself. I think it's because my childhood was mostly good. There wasn't enough trauma to scratch many grooves into my hard drive.

One-by-one, the actors would take the stage and retrieve these memories - a housefire, a treehouse, being chased, falling down and having your older brother snap off a piece of aloe and use it as a salve on your knee.

They often employed prompts to get the memories going and that's where they got me...

"A time when you felt free.

A time when you felt loved.

When someone made you feel worthless.

Feeling stupid.

When you were kind to a stranger.

Your first kiss.

Your first hickey.

Your mother's hands."

My.

Mother's.

Hands.

None of the other prompts sparked much in me, but my mother's hands? I could see them instantly. The freckles. Every ridge in every fingernail. The way her skin crinkles when you pinch it. How the dirt fills the estuaries in her palms when she's been digging in the garden.

My mind's eye could see every detail as if they were my own hands.

I started crying like a baby. Big sloppy tears streamed down my face and since I was wearing a cheap polyester dress, I didn't even have anything to wipe them on.

The strange thing was that I didn't feel SAD. Only nostalgic. I couldn't explain the tears at all. They were just... there. Like a faucet. Exactly like when I think about the fact that Genoa turned five today. Unexplained weepiness ensues just because.

So today I talked it through with my therapist.

Have I mentioned that I'm in therapy? Apparently not, since so many commenters seem to keep recommending it to me. Since I know I'm about to get accused of using my WELFARE DOLLARS to get expensive medical treatments, let me be the first to disabuse you of that notion: I get my counseling through Portland State University's counselor education program. It's only $15 per session, which makes it a crime NOT to get therapy. On Mondays I go alone and on Tuesdays, Joel and I see a post-grad together. My individual counselor is all of 24-years-old and I love her if for no other reason than that one session I spent 45 minutes talking about my vagina and she didn't flinch AT ALL. 

Anyway, this afternoon I explained my reaction to the play and, bawling like a baby, wondered at why the thought of my mother's hands was so upsetting to me.

"Well, what did your mother DO with her hands?"

The strange thing was that up until she asked that question, the memory of my mother's hands had been like a photograph: static, stationary, motionless. But then my brain (not to mention my HEART and that queasy spot just south of my asophagus), went right to the image of her holding Alex as a baby. Feeding him warm bottles of my breastmilk. Changing his diaper. Wiping his butt. Bathing him in her stainless steel kitchen sink. Tickling him until he giggled.

The first time I saw my mother use her hands to care for my child.

Becoming a mother myself and finally GETTING IT.

Forgiveness.

But not just for my own mother. For ME.

I'm never going to be able to give my children some of the things I wanted for them - perfection, stability, belief in happily ever after, that white picket fence, both parents at their birthday parties. But when I remember my mother's hands, I'm filled with nothing but gratitude. Love. Appreciation.

Strength.

My mother did the best she could with the hands she was dealt.

If I can forgive my mother for being human, I can damn well forgive myself.

Good Things

After losing my job last week, I switched up my schedule so I could see the kids more. It used to be that even on the days I didn't have to work, I'd still drop Alex off at his dad's every morning so he could ride his bike to school. But that often left me feeling disconnected from him. He'd get home from school and do cookies and milk and the daily rundown with his dad, which is fine, I'm glad they do that, but I want to be involved like that myself. So Alex and I talked about it and instead of riding his bike Wednesday through Friday, we agreed I'd take him to school and pick him up myself.

I LOVED it.

Especially because Wednesdays are short days, so I get the morning alone with Genoa and the afternoon alone with Alex. I had no idea that the simple act of swinging my SUV through the pickup line at an Elementary School would make me feel like a mother again, but there you have it. We had one of our best weeks together in months.

Thursday, I had to get my hair did so Genoa joined me at the beauty school all morning. (The only way I can afford to stay blond is to have my roots attended to by Paul Mitchell students. It's half the cost and I always have a half-dozen people consulting me on how to manage my fro.) We stuffed her backpack with toys and snacks and while my hair was processing, she sat on my lap so I could read her Alice in Wonderland. Then she put on my glasses and pretended to be Mommy.

Before heading back to pick up her brother, we hit the foodcarts for a Cheeseasaurus Rex and a burger at Brunchbox. It was a perfect Mommy/Daughter day.

The next morning we dropped Alex off at school and drove into Portland to "work" at Joel's office in Chinatown. Genoa kept asking about him and when she'd get to see him again, which... yeah. It's one thing to check in with your kids, like I often do, and say, "Hey, how d'you like Joel?" and get a positive response. But it's an entirely different thing when your almost five-year-old professes a desire to go visit your boyfriend because she hasn't seen him a few days and she misses him.  So off we went.

Of course, "work" turned out to be more like "entertain Genoa while occasionally updating your Facebook status," but I was perfectly happy with that. We borrowed Liza's watercolors and spread out on the floor to paint butterflies.

Which quickly devolved into vampires. Bloody ones.

We're gonna mail them to my Grandfather to cheer him up.

That night we got a babysitter so I could stand up in front of 100 strangers (plus my sister, her girlfriend and Joel) and deliver a 1500 word poem I'd written about my divorce. It wasn't the kind of thing I'd ever publish here (0r anywhere else) and I went out of my way to share it anonymously, but HOT DAMN, it felt good to get those words off my chest. I'm not sure it went over all that well with everyone at Dirty Queer, but the laughs and applause I got were exactly what I needed. I'm proud of myself for doing it.

Saturday we had a lovely brunch/play date with friends Sara and Jules and then headed into town to roam around before attending a BBQ with some of Joel's ex-Jehovah's Witness friends (always a fun crowd!). On Sunday morning, we woke up to a flat tire. Since the tires are still brand-new, I put a call in to Les Schwab because they do free repairs and offer roadside assistance, but they were closed on Sunday. Joel had left his car in Portland and we couldn't be stranded since we had to get to church.

So Joel changed my tire for me.

In the rain.

Without swearing or getting angry or starting a fight about how I really should be more careful or how dumb I'd been to let my AAA membership expire. He just DID. IT. because it had to be done. I stood there handing him tools, trying to help and basically waiting with my stomach clenched for him to freak out and become a jerk about it and he just... didn't.

Is this how couples are supposed to work? Because seriously: I HAD NO IDEA.

That night we went to Theophilus for dinner and a sermon and you really should go read about it because it was the first church I loved as much as The Bridge.

The week was perfectly bittersweet. Apparently my heart can ache for my grandfather and break at the sound of my mother weeping with grief and still make room for hope.

And gratitude. I've got that in spades.

Grandpa

I've hesitated to bring it up, but my grandfather is not doing very well. He had a massive coronary last week and we've all been waiting on pins and needles to see how he pulls through. I haven't wanted to talk about it because talking about it means acknowledging the fact that he might be dying. Which would somehow imply that I accept the fact that he is dying. That we're all dying. Which I don't wanna do.

Have I mentioned that I'm not good with death?

My mother isn't doing very well with it, either, especially since she's also his round-the-clock care giver and this is her Daddy we're talking about. I can't even think about my father's eventual someday-way-in-the-future-after-we-have-flying-cars-and-telepathy-and-condos-on-the-moon death without bursting into tears. Daddies are supposed to live forever.

I'm not sure if it's because he shares a birthay with Jesus, or if he's just stubborn, but my grandpa has always been a fighter. His asthma was so bad as a child that they didn't think he'd live to see double-digits and here he is 89 years old and still fighting. I'd very much like the opportunity to hug him this July when we drive down to California to visit, so if you're the praying type, add that to your list, please. Pray for his heart, my family's and mine.

 

Things I did today

1. I woke up in the arms of my favorite baldperson. He's the first man with whom I've ever been able to make proper spoons. We somehow fit together exactly right and that means we're actually able to sleep snuggled up against eachother. Which is a little weird. And lovely.

2. I washed my hair. I'm down to three times a week, which is my personal best. Hairwashing is for losers. And brunettes.

3. I paid my bills. This was the most depressing part of my day.

4. I went to therapy. Can all you well-meaning commenters kindly stop suggesting I get some help? I have some. Maybe you should get some too? Just saying.

5. I ate a Quarter Pounder With Cheese. It was delicious. I order one every week after my counseling appointment and every week, I savor each magnificent, grease-laden bite. This is the one and only way I ever cheat on Joel.

6. I lost my job.

7. Which is probably a good thing. I have enough money saved to make it at least two months. Which means I have two months to prove I'm a writer. Wish me luck!

8. I immediately went to Joel's office, where I was first comforted (see #1 above re: fitting together, which we do just as well horizontally as we do vertically while standing on Flanders Street), then encouraged.

"This means I have to be a writer and that means I have to write," I whined.

"Then come upstairs and write."

"I didn't bring my laptop." More whining.

"Do it by hand."

"Fine!" (I hand-wrote the opening three pages of my next novel in under an hour. It, and by "it," I mean he, was magnificent. As usual.)

9. I bought the invitations for Genoa's upcoming 5th birthday party. But I'm not ready to talk about that yet. Because she is still My Baby.

10. I picked up my kids early.

11.  I fed them a healthy, organic dinner.

12. During our meal, we each shared two bad things that had happened today and two good things. Alex got asked to quiet down not once, but TWICE during carpet time today. But he found "the pebble of infinite power" (or something equally awesome to a seven-year-old) (he talks FAST) while playing make-believe werewolf games with his friends at recess. Genoa pushed one of her friends at school, but then the principal waved at her and her friend Ashley came with Dave to pick her up after school, so she was set. I lost my job, but got a really good hug from Joel. I officially plan to lather, rinse, repeat this dinnertime delicacy until they go to college. (Thanks, Crystal!)

13. I took the kids to Kindergarten Open House at their school. Genoa started off shy, but warmed up immediately when she recognized some other kids, including the Jehovah's Witnesses who live across the street from her grandma's house. There was a time when I fantasized about taking the kids out of that school so I could move to Portland and not have to commute to work two hours a day, but those times are behind me. (Obviously!) I still fully intend to move to Oregon someday, but I'll happily drive them back to their neighborhood school every morning. It's worth it.

14. I showed Alex how to surf the web using the Wii. This is what I like to call a BFD.

15. I put my children to bed and calmly and succintly asked them to GO. TO. SLEEP.

16. I tried again.

17. And again.

18. It's 11:30 and even though I put them to bed THREE HOURS ago, my children are STILL not asleep. I have no choice but to blame this on David. I spent over NINE HUNDRED NIGHTS teaching Genoa to sleep by herself and he singlehandedly undid all that work in a matter of weeks after the divorce. The children don't have to stay in their beds at grandma's house. In fact, he ENCOURAGES them to get up at any time and join either him or his mother for the rest of the night. They literally NEVER sleep in their own beds over there, so it's no wonder I can't get them to sleep independently at mine. It's funny how when it was ME he wanted to sleep with, we were 100% on the same page about getting the kids to stay in their own beds. But now that I share my bed with someone else, he's happy to sabotage my parenting efforts.

EDITED TO ADD: I have never and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES would ever let Genoa share my bed with Joel. That's... INSANE. I brought it up during an argument with David solely to illustrate the point that what HE'S doing is pretty unhealthy for his children's independence.

19. I wrote a blog post and went to bed.

Medusa Hair and Mommy Guilt: two things men don't have to worry about.

Have you ever done that thing where you're making out in the hot tub with your man at midnight and you get so overheated that you uncurl your legs from around his waist, high-tail it out of the steaming water and dive into the pool? The pool that hasn't been heated since last September?

Yeah, me neither. I also didn't go to bed with my hair wet and wake up this morning ready to turn people to stone with a single gaze.

I'm starting to think we need to do a bedhead competition or something. Hair this batshit crazy shouldn't go to waste.

I hestitate to mention it, but yesterday was a pretty rough day for me. There was a reason Joel and I were in the spa until midnight - it was the only way I could decompress enough to fall asleep. The fact that I don't feel like talking about it is also the reason I'm going to. (THRIVE ON DISCOMFORT, BIATCH!) I woke up reeling with anxiety. At first it seemed unplaced, just a general sense that an anvil was about to get shoved out of a window into my path at any moment.

Just like my daily battle with hives, I kept trying to figure out the trigger - was it the big party I'd planned for my boss that night? Was I worried that my rad Mexican caterer wouldn't come through for me on time? (He was late, but worth the wait.) Or that we'd run out of booze? (We totally did.) Or that I'd put my foot in my mouth? (Likely.)

My hives turned out to be the simplest, stupidest thing ever - I'm allergic to being cold. And yesterday's anxiety turned out to be Mommy guilt, equally simple and just as stupid. I only wish I could take a daily Zyrtec and get rid of that too.

It was all because of the Mother's Tea at Genoa's Preschool yesterday afternoon.

I felt guilty because I've only been to her school a handful of times this year and I don't feel like I belong there. The only person I knew at the tea was her teacher and that was only because Alex had the same teacher two years ago. I haven't befriended any of the other moms and there haven't been on any play dates.

As a working mom - even a PART-TIME working mom - it's nearly impossible to come up with a schedule where I can drop her off at 1:00, WORK, and still pick her up at 4:00, particulary since my commute each way is close to an hour. It's just NOT do-able, except for one day per week I've arranged as a day off. Even then, it's only one day, every other week, and I've only been able to do that for a couple of months.

It didn't help that I arrived to find this waiting for me on the table. Apparently they were expecting David's mother? Or something?

The fact that Genoa started off by being shy (because of all the other moms there) didn't help, but she got over it soon enough. (And frankly, her shyness and my ignorance about what to do about it deserve a post of their own.)

The cookies helped. 
But I couldn't help but feel bad as I looked around the room at all the stay-at-home moms. I don't think I really understood the work vs. stay-home debate until yesterday. I had no idea how left out you can feel as a working mom. Whether you work by choice or not, you simply aren't there with your children as much as the other moms are, and that makes you feel like you're not as close to your children as you should be. Like not enough of your universe is revolving around THEM.

Well I call bullshit.

Do DADS feel guilty when they show up for the father's day brunch and they've literally only been to the school twice that year?

I could be wrong, but I don't think they do.

I think they just accept their given role. What's worse is SOCIETY accepts their given role. I recently heard a show on NPR about mothers who give up custody of their children - willingly - after a divorce. Men do that ALL THE TIME and no one thinks twice about it, but when women do it, they are judged harshly, in spite of the fact that giving up custody might be the very thing that makes them a better parent.

Why the double standard? This feels like something we should be talking about. Why are women and men held to different parenting standards?

After thinking about it, I got a little indignant about the fact that my vagina had been causing me so much guilt all day. And my guilt had nothing to do with the divorce or the school itself or anything the other moms did or didn't do. I just felt strangely out of place at my child's school because I'm almost never there. 

Which isn't really even my own fault. I didn't go back to work out of boredom or choice. If I had stayed married, I'd feel the same way because I'd still be the only working parent. Their father is the one who drops the kids off at school and picks them up. That's the way it is because he's the stay-at-home PARENT. His penis has nothing to do with it and my vagina shouldn't either.

I would love to hear from working dads on this. Am I off base? When I asked Joel if he ever felt guilt about not being at Liza's school more often, he shook his head. Like anyone, he has plenty of parenting guilt, but his kids are older than mine and he sees his parenting role as more of an advocate than a caregiver. Is this a gender thing? Why do the roles of mother and father require separate definitions? Can't it just be parent and co-parent?

Time flies

One of the few tasks left at my day job is scheduling client appointments. Apparently I am a relatively effective nag, which I attribute solely to my ability to do my job without taking it too seriously. Like, "You haven't called back to schedule an appointment. Should my feelings be hurt?" or "If your expedience with returning my e-mail had a Facebook page? I would like it AND become a fan!" Anyway, today I tried to schedule an appointment with a client and she e-mailed back to say she was in the middle of a divorce, going to school full-time and also a full-time mom, so, you know, I can pretty much take my appointment and suck on it.

I e-mailed her back just to let her know we'd be here when she needs us and that I could totally empathize because I was there a year ago myself.

WAIT.

I was there a year ago myself?

It's been a year since the day I decided to end my marriage.

A whole year.

Really? Because it seems more like ten.

Sometimes it feels like my life is taking place on a different PLANET, it's so different from how it was all those years I was married. Even the years I considered good years were no where near the kind of good I'm experiencing now.

I mean, I'm writing this post from my boyfriend's office. He's sitting opposite me because we get our best writing done at separate desks with a good dozen feet of floorspace separating our reproductive organs. Any closer and I can smell him and then the writing suffers. My dog is asleep on a blanket next to my desk, from which I can see the trains at Union Station, at least three bridges and the food line at the Blanchet house soup kitchen. I had to bring Harry with us to work today because there's no way we'll get home before midnight. We'll both be too busy writing. Doing what we love.

But it's not only the love in my life that's making it so good. It's that I'm unraveling over a decade of conformity and realizing I didn't lose as much of myself as I thought I had. This was the year I learned to give up the when. As in, I'll be happy when I get/do/become XYZ. Screw that. I'm happy now. Right this minute.

My children are a constant source of joy and angst and for the first time ever, I'm really trying to step back and break my bad parenting patterns. Patterns I had no idea were even there. I want to be an intentional parent, not just a reactionary one, which is a lot easier said than done. A year ago I couldn't have taken myself on like this. Just getting out of bed was work enough.

I didn't see my life like this a year ago. That wasn't why I left. I honestly didn't know it would be this much better. I just knew I couldn't fake it anymore.

In hindsight, I wish I'd said congratulations to the client who's going through a divorce. It doesn't feel like it when you're in the middle of it, but divorce is usually a GOOD thing. Divorce isn't random. You can't blame it on a poisoned arrow from some angry cherub in a diaper. People who are genuinely happy together and in love don't get divorced. It's usually the last resort after years of struggle and discontentment. The day you wake up and realize your marriage is over is like the day an alcoholic wakes up in the gutter. Rock bottom. From there it can only get better.

Here's to better.