it's not you, it's me

I haven't had much to say lately. I guess that when things start turning to shit, there isn't really much to be said at all. I just find myself moping and thinking and thinking about moping some more.

So, Daniel and I are breaking up. And that's just about all I have to say about that.

I'll write more when I feel a little less defeated. Today, however, is not that day.

halloween

And now back to your regularly scheduled inanity. Halloween. Daniel and I had a few words regarding each other's choices for Bug's halloween costume. I thought she would make an especially charming little panda bear. He was of the opinion that she would make a better zombie. This mess started about a month ago and the disagreement left us in something of a standoff. Neither was willing to compromise, so naturally no costume was actively being made nor purchased. Until, my mother just up and bought her a costume without really giving either of us a choice thus ending the quarrel altogether.

So Bug went as a witch. Was it what I would have chosen? No. But it certainly was better than dressing a one-year-old as a card-carrying member of the flesh-eating undead.

This was the first and last moment she would tolerate her witch's hat.

I swear that some days I can feel myself aging. Unfortunately, this was one of those days hence the expression.

While Bug would have nothing to do with the hat, Daniel showed no qualms about trying it on. What we have here is not nearly as witchy as it is Hasid.

The girl and her cat.

Thomas the cat with Daniel in the background.

In the spirit of the day, I dragged out the hat to an old bee costume.

healthcare

This is the line stretching around the building.

Today we lined up with hundreds of other families to get the H1N1 vaccine for Buggy. Our regular pediatrician’s office only received 50 doses, which is obviously insufficient given that there are over 10 doctors in the practice and who knows how many children are patients. They allotted all of their doses for children whose health was already comprised in one way or another – and rightfully so.

This left us at the health department, somewhere most frequented by the very poor and uninsured. More importantly, this left us somewhere I could see firsthand the absolute necessity of this country’s recent push toward nationalized healthcare.

Before I start receiving your glaring eye rolls and negative feedback – like, oh, you just now think that you understand the plight of the poor and uninsured after having to stand in line for something for once in your life … before all of that, let me say that I have supported government healthcare since before Obama and before this almost-actualization of it. (Note to self: knock on wood, keep your fingers crossed, never speak too soon. Just please let it happen.)


Thank god or whoever your deity of choice may be, thank luck if you believe in no deities at all, that this country is willing to pay for these vaccines, that they are handed out for no cost to whomever wishes to attend these clinics. But please, do not forget that every nation has a huge, vested interest in the health and wellbeing of their citizens – and that, by extension, we as citizens have an interest in the health of our fellow citizens.


We do, after all, live next door to these people, we speak to them and play with their children, some of them serve us food, and some of us take care of them in hospitals or law offices. They ride our public transportation and smile at us on the street. They handle our produce and check our baggage – they are, all of them, us. So if you are truly loath to taking a basic humanistic view of other people’s health, you can at least see the imperative that we all be healthy, disease free, interactive people.


For those of you who are detractors, I will say this: I do not hail from an immigrant family - not that this should ever come into consideration in my book, though I know of people who are afraid healthcare reform would benefit immigrants - as though clearly immigrants should simply be used for the jobs they perform and discarded. (Wake Up!) My family has been in these United States for hundreds of years. Well, except for some interloping Jews here and there. And maybe some of those pesky Native Americans who we all but obliterated – but wow! We conquered this land and they should just get the fuck out! Obviously.


I come from a family of educated, beyond-college educated people. I was raised in a very typical, post-feminism, upper middle class atmosphere. (My parents had a brief foray into the hippie kingdom and came out on the other side.) I have lived according to the accepted, natural timeline of women in this country. I went to school, went to college, traveled Europe, went back to grad school.


And then, all hell broke loose. My younger sister died at the age of 26 – we were only eighteen months apart. My father was in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s Disease. For approximately a year and a half, I could be counted on for being nothing but drunk and mourning. Which is actually what I mean by the title ReFormed by Motherhood - that I'm no longer drunk and mourning. Not that I've seen Christ's light or been saved. Only that I seem to have come out on the other side.


Buggy came just in time to save my life. I say this with no irony or nuance. I was seriously drinking myself into death. I was working at the time. I had moved back to Louisville from Chicago to be close with my family, because honestly, after she died I couldn’t be anywhere but right beside them. Still, even within the close confines of family-ville, I was seriously killing myself in mourning. (And if you ever wake up one day and feel the immediate need to check on your sister only to find her dead, unbreathing, cold and unresponsive to CPR, well, then, you tell me how to get through it.)


My point being – not my sob story – I have played by the old, white man’s rules. I have run my tour. I did my duty on the upper-middle-class scale of how-to-live-your-life. But then, I found myself here. Unin-fucking-sured.

So, I do commit insurance fraud (fraud with a capital F) every day. Why, would you do that, you ask? Lets see: Daniel works a full time job that offers no benefits. After my father finally died of Parkinson’s my family’s assets were so wasted in paying his $8-10,000 prescription bills a month that we had nothing left. (And, yes, when you have Parkinson’s or cancer and the insurance company won’t pay, guess where it comes from. And guess how much that would be if you were diagnosed at 40 and died at 60. And guess how much it takes to figure transportation to doctors and remodeling the bathrooms so that no one falls and to have an on-call nurse there at the house to help and treat and administer.)


I commit insurance fraud. Yes, I do it. But you know what, Bug and I are both covered. And you do what you have to do. Poor Daniel is not covered. And I worry about him incessantly.

My greater point is, simply: how does it ever get to the moment, this moment, where all of the people of America believe that if you don’t have health insurance, you simply deserve to die? Because that is, in fact what is happening now and what has happened for too many years. You have money, okay, you get a pass, you get a free pass to the joyous land of preventative care and a primary practitioner. You don’t have money – well, so sorry, you essentially die. Lack of healthcare is truly, at its very nature a death sentence.


The majority of my friends are uninsured or underinsured. They all hail from similar backgrounds – for the republicans out there that means white, educated, middle to upper middle class working people. One of my closest friends pays into her insurance plan, but due to money, has opted out of maternity coverage. Seriously, at our age, maternity coverage is likened to having plastic surgery. Elective. Disgusting.


I will always ask this question: how is it that we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness if we don’t first have our right to health?

(senti)mental

All this fall, the leaves and colors and chill, has made me a touch sentimental recently. Pre-baby, I went through the years so absent-minded that I barely recognized their passing. Now, I sit here recalling one year ago and all the wonder of her newness. Bug has really punctuated my life in the sense that I literally count the months since I've had her, almost 13 now. I can't remember any other period when I was so conscious of time passing and so certain of every moment's impermanence.


These baby things are hard work, especially the first four months when it seems like you’re stuck in a constant cycle of sleep, poop, nurse, bathe, sleep, nurse, poop, cry, etc. I was missing from any sort of social gathering from September to February. It’s a wonder I managed to keep even one of my friends since I never answered phone calls or texts or emails. (I am totally lucky to have kept all of my BFFs, despite my poor etiquette. Thanks bitches!) And I never noticed my own hermitage until well after that little phase was over.



I remember wrapping Bug up in the Moby and her tiny self almost getting lost in all the fabric. I looked like some sort of American Apparel reject, tying jersey all willy nilly across my chest.* I often think of one day in particular, when she was extra gassy and having all sorts of fuss. I wrapped her onto my chest and she slept all afternoon while I ate Oreos and watched the second season of Seinfeld on DVD. I think it rained all day that day. But inside, with her like that, I can remember a feeling of fullness and comfort unlike any I had ever experienced. She is cozy, that baby.


So this is parenting. This barrage of sentimentality and nostalgia. Next year I’ll undoubtedly be nostalgic for this year, and so on into the rest of our lives.

Me with Buggy on my chest at the pumpkin patch last year. She's not even 1 month here. I swear there is a baby in there somewhere.

*That willy nilly was just for Daniel. He's always accusing me of secretly being an old woman for my use of outdated colloquialisms. Willy nilly, cattywampus, etc. - I'm just bringing that shit back.

our sleepless train station

After not sleeping during Miss B’s sickness last week, I was really looking forward to a few good nights of solid snoozing. But no. We finished with the sickies and went straight smack into a huge wall known as a developmental leap. So, she's talking even more and walking all around, opening doors and climbing on things and all kinds of shit I wish she'd save for later - once she reaches an acceptable age to endure a good beating.

I generally can’t be counted on for knowing much about what’s going on my world. Give me less than 4 hours of sleep at a stretch and I am rendered utterly useless. Yesterday I actually put a dirty diaper in the refrigerator and a full carton of milk in the trash. Fucking brilliant.

Most nights, she seems to go down to bed without much more than her usual “but I’m too excited to sleep” fuss. And usually or up to this point, she had been sleeping from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. religiously. But this week we’ve been up at 1:30, 3:00, 4:30 – like I’m running a damn train station in my bedroom and those conductors will not deviate from the schedule. I’ve tried going to sleep earlier since it has become obvious what’s coming and inevitably, I lay there in bed, unsleeping, totally awake and checking dlisted on my phone or reading the latest book of New Ways to Raise Your Child So She Doesn’t Turn Out Like You.

Then at 1 or 1:30, she rolls over so quick I swear I wonder whether she’s been asleep at all and says “Mama?”* Just like that, with her wee voice trailing off at the end into a question as if to ask “are you still there? Are you awake? Let’s rage!” That voice just melts me. All the grumpy, sleepy, old shrew meanness drains right out of me and I can’t help but kiss her on the lips as I drag us both to the rocker.

So I am tired. Chronically, painfully tired. I think I’ll go as some kind of zombie for Halloween – at least I won’t need any makeup. And what about Ambien for babies? Why hasn't big Pharma figured that out yet?

*And yes, we are still co-sleeping. I am an idiot and this child will walk all over me for the rest of my life. I do realize the consequences. But I get all the sweet cuddly action I could ever want and it is worth it.

saga with pumpkins interrupting

Life has been totally void of peace, quiet or sleep for the last week. But before that, we went on a little excursion to a particular pumpkin patch North of the city and spent the most serene afternoon tromping through the vines and visiting farm life.

Then, Bug came down with a nasty virus last Wednesday. No Swine Flu, thankfully, but nasty nonetheless. Not that we didn’t properly expose ourselves to the piggy flu, because we did. 3 doctor’s visits within a 5 day period, all in a waiting room where every other person donned the trademark surgical masks and generally looked the part of Michael Jackson progeny.

I say it was a nasty virus, but perhaps that isn’t fair. It perhaps was a merciful little virus who left Bug with virtually no symptoms other than fever, sleeplessness, more fever, more sleeplessness and then … Friday her body temperature went down to a shocking 94 degrees. 94! In the house, wearing a sleeper, under a down comforter, in my bed, next to my warm body. 94 degrees.

So I woke her up and put in the sling next to my bare skin and wrapped a fuzzy bathrobe around both of us and put a hat on her and warmed 2 blankets in the dryer which I then wrapped around us both. 2 phone calls to the doctor and a very sweaty Megan later, she was back at 96 – safe enough to let her go back to sleep, but not safe enough for me to close my eyes long enough to let the thermometer out of my grasp. It was like that through Saturday and Sunday until just yesterday. She seems finally to be coming out of it.

It is heart wrenching to have a sick child. The worry and fear of only 5 days has left me in a hole. I sat up every night listening to her breathing, its rhythm and regularity registering as sensitively as earthquakes on the richter Scale. I can only remember a handful of times when I’ve been struck with such fear and dread and such demolishing lack of control.

I have idea how anyone can get though the constant trauma of having a chronically ill child. My heart and thoughts go out to them.

party

Some shots from little Bug's birthday party. She is truly going to despise me when she is old enough to know better.