Mandajuice

On love, Take Two...

Let me take a quick break from the peanut gallery to answer a question - and a good one - from my mom. She recently pointed out that I seem to be exhibiting a dangerous pattern. That pattern being that my writing is pretty much her only source of information about me because I'm crazy busy and terrible at returning phone calls, but even more concerning, that I appear to be writing about Joel in a way that strikes a similar chord to the way I wrote about Dave during my marriage and how can she possibly tell the difference? How can she know I'm okay?

Way to cut to the chase, Mom!

But she's right - I hid so much about my relationship with Dave that how COULD anyone tell the difference? My mom lives two states away, so it's not like I can SHOW her the difference, even though that difference is obvious to anyone who's ever seen Joel Gunz and I in the same room together.

But how can I do him justice on my blog?

The truth is - I can't. But what follows here is my best try...

[Waterfront Blue's Festival. 4th of July. Radness.]

I was on the way home from Joel's gig a few weeks ago when I found myself obsessing over him like a teenage girl (you would, too, if you heard his epic drum solos). He threw his arms around me after that two-hour set and his drummer-boy sweat soaked through the silk blouse I was wearing over my capri pants. When I tried to lift my shirt up on the freeway, so I could smell his sweat on me with one hand, while I held the steering wheel with the other, I realized that I had never loved him more than I did in that moment. Shit, I've never loved him more than I do right now as I'm writing this post.

[If the fact that she so often climbs into his lap without warning or pretense is any indication, Genoa's pretty smitten herself.]

I almost hesitate to write about it because our therapist once called our love "sacred" and I think she might be on to something.  (She also looked me in the eyes during a recent session and said, "Amanda, I've been thinking about your vagina ALL WEEK.") (She's a keeper.) But I think she's right - there's something almost holy about our unholiest of communions.

Joel and I have never made any promises to eachother, except for that pinky promise we made to never get married. Ever. For any reason. We both simply prefer the idea of waking up every day with a choice. I'm not with Joel because I have an obligation to him; I'm with him because I want to be with him. Today. Which, as our recent trip to the ER reminded me, really is all we get.

[GORGEous snooglefication. Taken by Liza...]

It's funny because even though I'd written it in fiction, I'd never actually experienced that phenomenon where touching someone else gives me more physical pleasure than being touched myself. I love Joel's bald head, for example (HUGE SHOCK THERE, I know), and even though he gets zero thrill from my persistent fondling of it (in fact, sometimes it even annoys him), I don't care because I'm copping that feel for ME, not for him. I simply need to touch him.

[In line waiting to board the Looping Thunder at Oaks Park on Tuesday. Joel was a wee-bit nervous. I was a wee-bit busty, which is precisely how I calmed him down.]

But it's not just the physical that makes our love so sacred. It's that Joel is one of the only people I've known who has ever really SEEN me. I've been thinking a lot about why I've felt the need to defend myself against the accusations certain people make (sometimes HORRIFICALLY publicly) against me. It all comes down to being SEEN. Not everyone is going to see the me I really am. And no amount of discourse - ugly, pleasant or otherwise - is ever going to change that. I need to let it go and accept the fact that it doesn't matter who sees me as an evil, smelly whore, or a terrible mother who doesn't change her daughter's underpants often enough, because that's not me. That's someone else's reality.

[In my reality, this is what Joel looks like after a cup of Snoop Dogg's Colt 45!] [Which he will never, EVER be caught dead drinking again.]

But frankly, all the ugliness in my life, past and present, only serves as a magnificent contrast to my relationship with Joel, because he sees the same Amanda that I see. I never need to defend myself because he's already on my side. He's more on my side than I am even. He sees a better me than I do and he makes me want to live up to the person he sees.  [My favorite photograph ever taken of the two of us. Because I can still taste that kiss.]

I know a lot of you are probably still skeptical about the similar things I said about Dave and I'll be honest, I THOUGHT I was in love with him for a good chunk of our marriage. But THINKING you're in love with someone is a lot like THINKING you've had an orgasm. When you finally FEEL one, you know better and you have a good laugh at the expense of your formerly ignorant self.

This is me laughing. Because honestly: I had NO IDEA.

[This photo was taken last night at Willamette Week's Best of Portland party, during which we celebrated being named one of Portland's Best Reads for our Year of Sundays blog.]

[See also: He makes me smile WITH TEETH, people. If that's not a contrast, I don't know what the hell is.]

"Congratulations, You're Getting Sued!" (A prologue to my Q&A, by Brandy...)

[On May 19th, Brandy accused me of misusing my welfare money, even though I wasn't on welfare at the time. We had an exchange in my comments section, which you can read here, and you can read her response to me HERE...]

"Atheists in yer homepages, messin' with yer theism!"*

Joel and I had our first co-written article published today, which you can read on the homepage of Beliefnet.com.

 *I stole this quote from our boss/editor, EvanDerrick, (@BNetEntertain) because it was the first thing that made me laugh after the alarm went off this morning and I was still checking my e-mail in bed.

Keeping my marbles

Sunday was my last day with the kids for the week and that meant it was time to count our marbles.

Based on the recommendation of good friend and frequent commenter, Jules, I've been using a new system to help keep the kids in line. They start out on Mondays with 30 marbles each, then have them added or taken away for behaviors, either good and bad.

We started it all off with a big brainstorming session about what constituted good behavior vs. bad and what kind of rewards the kids wanted to purchase with their extra marbles.

It's seriously working! Alex has gotten really into it and asks to walk the dog (2 marbles), clears his plate without being asked (1 marble), and goes out of his way to be polite (1 marble). So far his rewards have included a train trip on the Max with Joel and a Sunday afternoon picnic with me. Next week I get to take him to OMSI for the day because he earned an extra 30 marbles this week. (Fortunately, my parents bought me a membership, so I can actually afford to take him.)

Genoa, as per her usual MO, was a late adopter and ran down almost all of her 30 marbles during both of her first two weeks on the system.

However! She ended THIS week with 26 extra marbles, which means she earned a manicure/pedicure from mom (and she gets to give me one in return, which is the real reward in her eyes) and a special bike riding trip on one of the trails near our apartment.

Here's the system we came up with if you want to give it a try: [If you want it in a Word doc so you can modify it yourself, just Download Keeping my marbles.]

See also: this was first week EVER that Genoa slept in her own bed every night and didn't get up even once. I call that progress. Of course that had less to do with the marbles and more to do with the several hours a day she spent in the swimming pool working herself into exhaustion. But still! Progress!

Like any behavior system, it's really more for ME than for them. It helps me be more consistent in a measurable way. It's all part of something I've slowly, steadily been working on - being an intentional parent - rather than a reactionary one. This has been a rough few years for my kids. They've been passengers on a bumpy ride and for most of that time I was so stressed out and/or depressed I could barely take care of myself, much less give them the kind of structure they've always needed and too often lacked. I'm doing my damnest to make up for that lost time now. I want them to feel heard and understood and one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to simply INVOLVE them more. This system, along with just TONS of talking and listening, seems to helping move us all along in a positive direction.

And then there were... FIVE?!

Mostly because it's not entirely my story to tell, I don't think I've mentioned that a lot of the stress in our lives lately has come from Joel being involved in a somewhat cumbersome personal project. Liza has lived with her mother full-time (with the exception of the usual single-dad weekends and Wednesdays) for several years, but that time has never been enough for Joel.

Over the nine months we've been together, it's become clear to both of us that we not only want her, but that it's in Liza's best interest to be with us. Full time. All the time. Even if it means going to court to make that happen. We're trying to avoid an ugly, expensive court battle, so Joel's been working through mediation and the first step was getting Liza for the summer, which we hope to make permanent once the school year starts. (CROSS YOUR FINGERS!)

I could talk for YEARS about Liza. How I not only adore her and wish she was my daughter, but how I'm pretty sure Liza is the reason I met Joel and fell in love with him. How Liza's presence in my life is somehow fundamental to my progress as a human being. In the less-than-year I've known her, she's forced me (through ZERO fault of her own) to work through my teenage sexual abuse, my weight, my mother, how I feel about dieting, my weight, how I feel about her father, how I feel about being called "Mommy" and a million other things.  All of them necessary. To both of us.

We're kind of a perfect match, Liza and me. I can't tell you how happy I am that she came with the Joel package.

That, and the child makes one hell of an omelette.

The funny thing, and I should probably be embarrassed about it, but I'll say it anyway, is that I've spent SO MUCH TIME fretting over Liza and her reaction to moving in with us full-time, that I didn't think twice about how my own kids would feel about it. Not that I haven't been thinking about my kids, but, seriously, my kids are RESILIANT. They are amazing. And they ADORE Liza. The first question out of Genoa's mouth every week when I pick her up is, "IS LIZA THERE?! WHEN DO I GET TO SEE LIZA?!"

So it never even occurred to me that we'd have any problems combining our families.

STOP LAUGHING.

No, Seriously. STOP.

I had no idea! I've never done this before!

So on the first Friday of the summer, I told my kids about all of it. How Liza was going to be here all the time. How we're #1 on the waiting list for a three-bedroom apartment at our complex. They seemed stoked! No problems, right?

But that night at bedtime, Genoa pitched the biggest fit she's ever pitched in the history of Genoa pitching fits. (Which, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, should make you run and hide under your bed.)

She didn't want to get into her pajamas in the same room as Liza. Which I found pretty odd considering that Genoa and Liza share an amazingly hip taste in clothes and love picking out outfits and getting dressed together. I told Genoa that if she didn't want to change in her room, she was perfectly welcome to find some privacy in the bathroom and she completely flipped her lid. She didn't want Liza there. At all.

I dragged her into the bathroom and she did this dance where I put her pajamas on her, then she tore them off, then I put her pajamas on her again, then she tore them off again. Wash, rinse, repeat. All the while she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Until it finally dawned on me (because I'm a lot slower than you'd think, apparently) that this battle had nothing to do with her Sponge Bob pajamas and everything to do with me being her mother and her not wanting to share me with anyone, not even her beloved Liza.

So I crawled into Genoa's bed, snuggled her so hard she almost couldn't breathe and reassured her that she was the only daughter I was going to have - EVER - and that no matter what, she would always be my first love.

"Yes, Genoa, I love you the most. Even more than Joel or Liza or any other girl, ever." I gave Alex a similar reassurance.

It took her a while to calm down, but by then we'd both gotten the message loud and clear.

Genoa and Alex will be the only two children ever allowed to call me Mommy. No matter how comfortable I am in the role or how much I love hearing Liza tell me she wishes she could call me Mom, I'll stick to the truth, thankyouverymuch, and the truth is that only two children ever came out of this vagina.

And hell! Liza's lucky that I'm NOT her mother! I just get to be Amanda, the woman who adores her father, fawns all over her and doesn't have to be the full-time Head Bitch On Duty because that's not her job. I get to be her FRIEND, which is something my own kids will never get.

Win-win, right?

Of course last night it was an entirely different story. I took the kids, all three of them, into my room before bed and we spent half an hour giggling over Joel's kidney stone ("He still has to pee it out his wang?!"), how best to rid oneself of loose teeth and who - no seriously - WHO had just farted. It was better than ideal. Liza took the kids to bed and read to them and we finally had to interrupt all their laughter, because seriously, it was 11:00 already. Go the fuck to sleep.

No matter how hard (or easy) it gets, I just keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. Which is that no matter how difficult it is for my kids to share their space with a new semi-sibling, or get used to a new man telling them to take out the trash, it's all for the best.

How will my children learn what love looks like if I don't SHOW them?

I know there are plenty of you (still!) (lamely!) thinking I should sacrifice everything and live alone until my children graduate from college, but what exactly would THAT do for them? What example would that set? What would that teach my son about how to treat a woman? What would it teach my daughter about how she deserves to be treated by a man?

How would they learn about compromise? How would they learn about love?

I'd rather teach them about it first hand in all its terrifying, brutal glory. I'd rather they get to live it every day until it seeps into their bones.

I fully realize and accept the fact that I'm being selfish here. I want to share my life with Joel. But I'm equally convicted that what's good for this goose is good for her gander.

Either way, I'd love to hear your family-merging stories. Pretty or not, I'm sure they'll help.

Non-Fiction

She awoke that morning not to the familiar feel of his hand sliding toward her breast nor the noise of their children arguing over the Nintendo, but to the sound of him groaning beside her in pain.

"My stomach." He stopped to hold his breath while he gripped the sheets in his fists. "It hurts."  

When the pain got so bad that he bolted out of bed to throw up in the toilet, she did some fretting, then she did some Googling, then she drove him to the hospital. It was almost as terrifying as the time she'd driven her son there. With her knuckles white on the steering wheel, she wracked her brain for words that might comfort him - or any words at all - but it turned out she was too paralyzed to speak.

They were greeted at the doors of the Emergency Room by a wheelchair and a perfectly-timed cardboard barf carton. Then she was greeted with the irony that after months of living together unofficially, he gave her address to the nurse at the registration desk. Their address.

He was vomiting again when the intake nurse took his blood pressure, so the numbers were dangerously high. And that scared her too. In fact, everything scared her - the size of the nurse's double-wide metal clipboard, the way the hospital bed squeaked when he writhed in pain, the cold, clammy feel of his skin under her hand, even the unfamiliar metallic smell of his sweat on the hospital gown. She couldn't decide which intimidated her more - touching him or NOT touching him.

Because of his extreme pain, they were pinballed into the diamond lane, where there was virtually no waiting. Three minutes to get a bed. Five until the nurse started an IV. Less than ten before the drugs arrived. The nurse moved as if turbo charged, first pushing motrin into the IV to keep any swelling down, then flushing it with saline, then pushing in the Dilaudid, then flushing it again to make sure he'd gotten every last drop.

When the nurse left and they were alone again, she watched as his body miraculously began to uncurl from the pain. "Thank God for drugs," she said, even though neither of them even remotely believed in God.

When the doctor came in, he first referred to her as the patient's daughter, then asked how long the two of them had been married.

"We're not married," they insisted in unison and she supressed an urge to cross herself.

"It's definitely a kidney stone," the bearded, bestpectacled doctor informed them with relief, "A big one."

-------

Hours later, when the medication had kicked in and they were home from the hospital, he pulled her into bed and wrapped his arms around her.

"Thank you," he said, squeezing her so tight it took her breath away.

"I'm just glad you're alive." She reached up and rubbed his bald head, pulling him even closer.

Then, because it hurt to lay on his right side, they rolled over and she spooned him instead.

"I just keep falling for you, harder and harder," he admitted.

"That pain medication must be better than booze." He had always been a romantic drunk.

"But the thing is," he went on, "I can't believe how EASY it is. It's never been this easy."

"Maybe we were just doing it wrong or with the wrong people before."

"God, I love you."

"I love you, too," she said.

And she'd never meant it more.