Bettie Bookish

Who do I have to feng shui?

I've decided to practice a version of the art of intentional placement in our home after seeing the amazing results it brought for others.

This isn't the first time I've thought about it or studied the basics. Somehow, it has always seemed like a lot more fun to clear clutter as part of a spiritual practice than to clear clutter just because I'm a grown-up and shouldn't act like such a flippin' slob all the time.

The problem - aside from the fact that I am a huge flippn' slob - has always been that once I get past the basics of keeping your house clean, repairing or discarding anything broken and mapping your house on a bagua, it just becomes too complicated for my feeble little chemobrain to integrate. Honestly, if I can't manage to pull it together enough to put all my trash into the garbage can every single time, how am I supposed to remember everyone's 5 ghost direction or figure out which family member's numbers should determine the placement of our front door?

And holy crap, I think I have a bathroom right in the center of my prosperity bagua. Help.

I get overwhelmed. Is there a cure for overwhelmed? What if I put a bag of marbles in my Helpful People bagua? What if I take the bag of marbles and hit myself over the head so I can get a good night's sleep?

Seriously, anyone out there with advice? Advice other than, "Clean your house, woman."

SNOW DAY

It's beautiful.

And here, Internet Strangers, is an example of very very bad feng shui.

I'm going to go clean my house now.

Good, good, good, good, good

I hate bedtime.

Mornings are tough, but they're manageable, thanks to my patented trick of training my children to stay in bed later than they might ordinarily enjoy.

Me: Oooo - it's snuggle time. Let's get under the covers and talk about what we want for breakfast.

Bee: Yay! Snuggle time. I want oatmeal and pancakes and sausage, no, bacon and marshmallows shaped like Christmas trees and pretzels and....

Me: Zzzzzzzzzz.

I've never said I was a good parent.

So that's how I deal with mornings. That and copious, stomach-eroding amounts of coffee and other caffeinated beverages. And just the teensiest bit of crank with my marmalade toast. Mmmm.

The rest of the day usually goes pretty smoothly. And even if I can't exactly get anything accomplished, at least we all have a decent time of things.

MM has taught me that I too easily confuse her near-constant happiness with ease of care. The truth is that she is almost as demanding as Bee was at the same age, she just smiles and coos a lot more. Bee was much quicker to express frustration, leaving us feeling like parental Carrottops, furiously running through our big box of props in a fevered attempt to quell her displeasure.

Instead of a crying baby who won't allow me to set her feet on the floor, I have a grinning baby who won't let me set her feet on the floor.

The net result is largely the same: The kids' daily functional hours exceed mine. By 7 p.m., I am so thoroughly done, I would hire Tara Reid to come be our evening nanny if it would mean I could go take a bath. Alone. Without anyone throwing toys into the tub.

But no. At 7 p.m., we still have at least one hour to go, and possibly more.

Provided that we can get Bee in and out of the bath and into her pajamas without a critical 3y/o meltdown over something life-altering like turning the water off too soon (or not soon enough) or discovering that the preferred PJs are still in the dirty clothes hamper, her bedtime ritual is pretty simple. Brush teeth. Three stories. Smooth blankets.

"Goodnight, Mama."
"Goodnight, Bee. See you in the morning for snuggling."

MM is proving to be the bedtime wildcard.

Some nights, she drifts softly and immediately into a sweet, smiling sleep. Other nights, she fights it - twisting and turning and sitting up to giggle and scrunch her nose and make other hilarious faces so her parents will totally forget why they brought her in the bedroom.

Tonight's slumber was 1.5 hours in the making. And by the time she fell asleep and I made my way downstairs to get cracking on all those little projects that are completely impossible when small children are awake, I used my last sliver of energy to make myself a bowl of ice cream.

See you in the morning for snuggling.

You call THAT a tantrum?

You know how it sounds when a toddler gets a shot? It's a cry like a really complex wine or artisanal chocolate.

There's the deep despair bottom note. Guuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. You can hear a combination of frustration and anger, but in all it is a fairly palatable cry. The middle note is all about catching your breath and demonstrating, in case anyone has missed it that, "hup,hup,hup, I'm crying over here. Really sad."

And then there's that top note - that shrill crisis screech. It's full of rage and horror and immediacy.

My daughter actually does fine at the doctor's office, and her vaccination cries are usually short lived.

On the other hand, if you are at the ballet on a long-planned girls' day with aunts and grandmas and good friends from NYC, and you have to make the long trek to the ladies' room in the rain, and it's already almost 3 p.m., and your Little Bee has not had anything that looks remotely like a nap, and you demand that she hold your hand because there's a crowd, and you have to wait in a long line in (did I mention) the rain, and the pretty dresses you both wore are getting soggy and cold, and when a stall finally opens up you lead Bee in there and close the door behind both of you so you are in there together when she had thought she would be in there alone (hup,hup,hup) apparently that is enough to set off the most blood curdling, terrifying, "Holy fuck, is someone torturing or kidnapping a child in the next stall?" wail you have ever heard.

No, I mean it. I will put this cry against any tantrum, whining, meltdown or wail your child has laid out there, because I am so confident that I can beat all your tantrums. Bring it. Because if you were to hear this, your ears would bleed and you would want to put me in jail because there is NO WAY a child should make that kind of sound unprovoked.

The secret is that, as far as my daughter is concerned, she had been provoked, and my suggesting that she use the bathroom was the last straw.

As she stood stiff, red-faced and SCREECHING in the bathroom stall, I went ahead and used the bathroom as quickly as I could, then got the HELL out of there. But the screeching didn't stop when we got outside. I knelt down next to her and informed her that, if she didn't calm down, we were going to have to leave the ballet, which she adored, by the way. A.D.O.R.E.D.

But she was not abut to calm down. The more she cried, the more she was going to cry.

She wouldn't allow me to carry her, and if I tried to hold my umbrella over her head or guide her to walk underneath it, the screams intensified as though I were zapping her with a taser. The result was that we both got soaked walking back to our seats to get car keys, raising concern every step of the way.

Left and right I got the "some people shouldn't have children" looks. People tried to intervene.

"Is she OK?"
"What happened?"
And one woman scowled deeply at me and, seeing my daughter walking in the rain, asked if I would LET HER give Buttercup her shirt to keep warm.

By the time we finally got to the parking lot, we were both crying.

I was so angry at my daughter. Furious that she wouldn't listen, that she wanted her way so badly down to every detail and when she didn't it, she howled in the middle of a large crowd like her name was Luka.

I was angry that we had planned this entire outing around getting Lila, her mother, the pregnant Sunshine, her sister, and Lila's college roommate/former bridesmaid to gather from distant corners so we could take Buttercup to the ballet, and the day was ruined.

We sat in the car for an hour. An hour of inconsolable screaming. I held out a little glimmer of hope that she might cry so hard that she would hyperventilate and pass out take a nice soothing nap.

She didn't, but she did calm down enough to accept some consolation, and within another 10 minutes or so, she climbed into my lap and rested her head on my shoulder.

Lessons:

- Shorter ballets or performances at a different time of day.
- Bring my own car so that we're not waiting in someone else's car for the show to end and making everyone feel awkward because, they love her and everything, but the last thing they want to do is get into a car with her.
- If it's raining, stay home.
- Ballet diapers!
- Ballet Kleenex!
- Ballet Xanax!
- Bring her Dad so that, when she begins wailing repetitively "I WANT my daddy I WANT my daddy I WANT my daddy" I can say, "Okey, dokey - there he is."

Things did get better, especially thanks to Lila, her mom and her college friend, who all
sort of took turns engaging Buttercup through supper and, since things were going so well, a little shopping.

But I have still been at the edge of tears all night.

My daughter takes on life as a full-contact sport. She is not laid back about anything. Ever.

And, good God, it's a lovely thing to see a child - or any person, for that matter - so engaged in her own happiness or excitement or affection. She blooms, then blooms again, and again and again and again.

And that is just pouring a glass of chocolate milk.

But when this thing happens - this particular type of tantrum - I am helpless. I am cursing myself for thinking we could make a short daytrip to the ballet. I am whispering out of her earshot that I hope she liked what she saw because we are never going to the ballet again. I am putting her in her carseat in the car and standing outside of the car in the rain because I fear my brain will leak out of my ears if I sit inside next to her.

But then she is calm, and I am calm. We've had a good day, and I am hoping she will bring home good memories. It's dark, and we are making the long drive home. Sunshine, in her tie-dyed maternity dress, is falling asleep with her fingers laced over the little bit of skin and muscle that separates her from her own daughter, due in just two months.

I wonder whether Buttercup would have fewer of these banshee tantrums if her first year had been an easier one. Sunshine's baby has been listening to her mother for months now. She feels those fingers laced over her knees or back. Buttercup did not hear my voice or feel my hands until she was a year old.

Buttercup, sitting between Sunshine and me, tries to find a comfortable position so she can fall asleep, too. It takes a while. A long while. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls my face close to hers for nose kisses.

"I love you, Bee." I tell her.
"I love you, too," she says.

I'm sorry, I think to myself. I'm sorry I couldn't help you out better today. I'm sorry I couldn't ensure that our first trip to the ballet was unsullied by tears. I'm sorry I couldn't calm you down when you really needed me to.

I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to you and rub your back before you were born. And I'm sorry you lost the person who did.

I'm so sorry, Bee, that I can't be her.

Outside the Tastee Freeze

I'm sitting up at 2:30 a.m. in Thor and Lila's guest room in Boston. Buttercup is asleep next to me, although it is a rather precarious sleep.

Always prone to waking up crying, she had an especially long jag tonight about an hour after falling asleep. And then, just as her spine-wrenching, inconsolable night terror screams (Why, Hello upstairs neighbors. No, we're not killing a child down here. Why do you ask?) softened and eased into a low hum of droning cries, I decided it was a fine time to begin my own crying jag.

The best part of this story? It was my second crying jag of the day.

I picked the wrong week to quit huffing craft paint.

The details of the day are more likely to bore you to tears than to move you to them. But it all boils down to my not being particularly good at being either a grown up or a mother today.

"Kwitcher cryin', baby, Mama's gotta get her cell phone service turnt back on!"

I'll cut myself a modicum of slack because once again we have managed to heap upon ourselves as many life-changing stressors as we can things are pretty hectic right now.

But that just doesn't excuse that fact that I have melted down twice in one day just because I was faced with a few little (see how I'm not saying "endless stream of") frustrations. And in the very middle of both of my meltdowns, I closed my eyes and could see clearly this awful Mommy all crying and frustrated, and it made me cry all the harder to have been so far from the mark of the person I want to be.

Toss on top of that sundae the fact that I have switched from one antidepressant* to another this week, and maybe I should be glad I only gave in to self-pitying/loathing tears twice today.

But hey, there's always tomorrow.

*I read me a few online journals, and I can't count the number of times I've read people describing their experience with antidepressants. That shit should come with a warning label: Side effects may include blogging.

And instead of continuing to wallow in my own Kleenexes, I'm going to wallow in my incredible success.

Amalah of Mom's Daily Dose over at ClubMom awarded me this week the John Cougar Mellencamp Hurts So Good Blog Award of Excellence. Moreover, she and others said some incredibly nice things about me and my under-appreciated efforts here on the Innernets.

(That work stands in stark contrast, of course, to all other facets my decidedly over-appreciated contributions to the world at large.)

Thank you Amy for being so kind. Thank you Moreena for saying nice things, including that I am (oh, how I am laughing) inspirational. And thank you to everyone who has visited here as a result. It's lovely to hear from all of you, and even more lovely to find your sites.

And in the true spirit of the Hurts So Good award, I promise to post more frequently, change my name a lot and do something to help the farmers.

Or maybe I'll just put on some chaps and dance on the tables at the local diner.

Over-extensionated

When my son was little, I worked at least one job all the time and went to school.

He attended a chi-chi day school, where he was always the poorest kid in class with the youngest mother and the crappiest car in the afternoon car line. I would show up for school parties, rushing and breathless from literally running from the car to get there on time, and I would step into the classroom and then remember that I was supposed to have brought napkins or something. Something I hadn't brought, anyway.

And there would always be these other mothers who had personalized old cigar boxes for each child or baked minimuffins with each kid's initials on them or brought a pony for every kid in the class.

It wasn't just that they were rich. Although they were. They just seemed to manage better all the way around. Their houses and cars were clean all the time. They didn't forget to bring napkins.

I thought that, being older and generally more together as a human being this time around, I would be more like those mothers I so envied back then. I'm not.

Although I had intended to keep regular letters to my daughter, I haven't.

I haven't even compiled her lifebook yet, and now we're on our way to another daughter whose photos and mementoes likely will be stored in a box instead of an album where they could do her some good.

I haven't published a book, or even worked on that goal seriously.

And my house is never clean, EVER. I mean, it's not health-department dirty or anything. It's not like my mom's house. But everyone in our family seems completely incapable of regular daily maintenance.

Am I just missing some DNA fragment that other people take for granted?

I know I've had a lot on my plate these last 18 months or so, what with the cancer and the mom dying and the chemotherapy and the traveling to China to adopt my daughter and the hurricane and the home destruction and the other hurricanes and...

It's easy to tell myself that falling short of my own expectations (or, more accurately at this point, fantasies) is just a byproduct of some seriously bad and demanding circumstances. But that's just not true. The bad circumstances have just highlighted what a really tentative clutch I had on everything to begin with.

Now, I'm going to go wash my hair for the first time in four days.

Where are my car keys, a poem

This morning, I:
got up
wrote my column with Buttercup in my lap
emailed it to its editor
told my mother-in-law I would bring Buttercup to her while I worked at the church
got dressed
dressed Buttercup
brushed my teeth
decided that my hair looks like this guy's
got frustrated while looking for a checkbook with blank checks
cursed under my breath at JC, who dumped our checkbook drawer into a Target bag for the move over here
found a good checkbook in a place where I immediately remembered putting it
gathered my notebooks and folders that I needed for work
looked for my keys
realized that Buttercup was wearing only one shoe
asked her where the other shoe was
told her to go put on the other shoe
called the dogs in from the backyard
told Buttercup to come in from the back porch
with her shoe
and put.it.on!
looked for my damn keys
discovered my coffee had gotten cold since I poured it
put coffee in microwave
found Buttercup typing on the computer, helpfully resetting my Internet preferences
looked under sofa cushions for my got damn keys
raised my voice at Buttercup and took her out of the computer chair
told her to stop crying
looked in the bathroom for my keys
looked in my husband's jeans pockets for my keys
found 1/2 brown banana peel under side table
looked in garbage can for my keys
asked Buttercup if she had seen Mama's keys
told her again that she didn't need to cry
told her that the computer was not a toy
covered my ears because, wow, she was really howling
looked in the bedroom for my keys
looked again in all the previous places I had looked
looked through the window of my car
looked again through my purse
looked in the most unlikely places, such as Xerxes' room, the freezer and the bathtub
picked up Buttercup and placed her into her crib in her room and walked out because if I hadn't gotten away from that sound I would have had a stroke and, yes, that probably makes me a terrible mother, and I promise I will punish myself appropriately for it as soon as I FIND MY FUCKING KEYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
did not find keys
gave up
called mother-in-law to tell her we would not be coming over
hoped secretly that husband accidentally took both sets of keys because it is infinitely better to have a spouse who takes your keys than it is to lose your keys
called my oncologist about whether there is any approved treatment for chemotherapy-related stupidity
got Buttercup out of bed
hugged and kissed her like crazy
heated two slices of pizza for our lunch
ate lunch with Buttercup, just us girls - Buttercup and her awful mommy
sang Buttercup to sleep at naptime
learned that husband did not have keys
gave up
hoped tomorrow would be much better