sight isn’t always necessary

We have been having problems lately with Elly sleeping. She doesn’t go to sleep easily – it’s a struggle for both Craig and I – and then she wakes up 3 to 4 times a night on top of that. Most nights I end up taking her into my bed and sleeping next to her, and she’s happy to be near me. I already have one child that was terrible about sleep for a long time, and it seems to me that we have another one… and I honestly don’t have any idea what to do about it. I am not willing to let her cry it out, even though about thirty people have suggested it. It’s just not for me, and that’s that.

Ok, so I’m not writing this to get suggestions on what to do, because I’m pretty good at scouring the internet for crap information and I’ve read it all by now. Seriously – I did a buttload of research with Connor, and another buttload of research for Elly. I’m on research and information overload.

What I’m irritated about with all of this is that in the middle of the night when I’m up with Elly, tired beyond tired and rocking an 8-month old baby, I’m thinking about how other people seemingly have perfect babies and I’ve been blessed with two poopy sleepers. As if I have the space in my brain to waste thinking about how other people either do or *think* they do have it better than me.

Anyway. A good show is on TV. Gonna watch it.

I really feel emotionally drained and crazy today, so rather than calling everyone I know and giving updates over and over, I’m just going to write this here.

Connor is apparently fine.

We were worried about a multitude of things, and all of the testing didn’t help to calm those fears, but after a lengthy discussion with a pediatric gastroenterologist today, it seems like he’s maybe just…

constipated?

I don’t know. All of the symptoms were all over the map, and the strange lab values were all together not indicative of any one thing. He had strange values in his differential white blood cell counts, but the actual cell counts weren’t abnormal enough to warrant any concern. He’s anemic, but that’s normal for his age, weight, and family history. He doesn’t have any of the indicators of celiac disease, irritable bowel disorder/Crohn’s/ulcerative colitis. His x-rays on Monday didn’t indicate any problem with backed up stool, but apparently there was a bunch of stool seen in the CT scan today. His history didn’t seem like constipation was the cause, but it was the only thing that made any sense right now.

And this was a really good doctor! Or so we both felt.

So now, we’re less freaked out. But all of the freaking out all week seems to have culminated in a huge whopping flop of a diagnosis, and I’m just exhausted. Connor was prescribed Miralax, but it’s such a silly drug that it’s actually not even covered by insurance anymore.

We’ll see how this all pans out. I hope I answered whatever questions you may have about it all in this post, because at least tonight, I don’t have the energy to relive it all again.

Craig’s schedule over the past two weeks has been as follows: last Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday he had off, which he spent doing family stuff, playing, tiny mini vacation. Then he worked Tuesday and Wednesday night, which in and of itself isn’t too much for me to handle. I get overwhelmed with these two kids, but two days, even three days with the prospect of having a break afterward, that I can handle. However, Craig only has tonight off, and then he has to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. So, basically, he had a little vacation, and now he’s working nonstop for almost six days. I have ONLY tonight to breathe, and all I can think about is the fact that the next four fucking days I have to be a single mom. I have a headache, it’s raining, and I’m super crabby too.

I want a vacation. I need a vacation. I want to just cry, but I have to go to class.

I’m not sure what to do, if anything can be done, about my crazy mother-in-law.  Over the years, plenty of things have happened to label her as crazy, and we’ve had our fair share of falling outs.  The current issue started just before and during Mother’s Day.  Craig’s mom was very offended that we didn’t come to her house that Sunday, and has been holding a huge grudge ever since.  She called around that time and left Craig a message about how she doesn’t understand why he has to “ask permission” to go see his mother, and we are just using her for free babysitting, and she just wants to see her grandkids.  Craig and I were upset for a few reasons, understandably, and had a very long discussion about how to control that situation.  It was completely rude of his mother to question his authority in his own family – neither of us owns the other, and when it comes to making decisions about what to do and when, we work together.  It was not that he was asking permission to go to his mother’s house, it was that he wanted to talk it over with me because we have two children and need to plan accordingly.  Plus, it was Mother’s Day, and since I’m a mother too… it’s only logical that I’d get a chance to decide what to do on my day.  Whatever.  That is too damn logical to get through Ann’s hugely thick skull.

I was also upset because whenever Ann does this, she causes a lot of unnecessary stress in our lives.  She’s called to bitch Craig out about so many silly things, and it should be easy for Craig to brush it off and call her crazy, but she’s so overbearing that he’s usually incapable of doing so.  She called recently to cry to Craig about how it’s so unfair that Connor never has spent the night at her house, but he has spent the night at his other grandma’s house.  She called to bitch him out about having other people over to our house on the day that she came over with her old lady friends to see Elly (it was my dad’s birthday, BTW).  She bitches him out because I won’t go on little lady trips with her and her friends – they wanted me to go to the Detroit Lady’s Show on my last day of my Organic Biochemistry class.

Our lives are not so easy most of the time – raising kids is a very hard job, and losing your firm grasp of your dreams isn’t something one can let go of so quickly.  Each day we struggle to do right by our kids while also doing right by ourselves, and it’s so much easier to do that when there are supportive people around.  Craig’s mom is definitely not one of the supportive people we have backing us up.  Instead, she’s a thorn in our sides, constantly shoving her drama in our faces.  She makes Craig feel like crap, and he doesn’t want to talk about it with  me because he knows I’ll get all worked up about it.  We both end up bottling up this crappy feeling… is that fair for a mother to do that to her child, and still expect unconditional love from him?  Especially when he’s 31 years old?  No.

So, Craig called his mom and told her so.  Obviously after acting like such a bitch, she wouldn’t answer her phone, so he had to leave a voicemail telling her how he felt.  Craig really rarely tells his mom the whole truth about how he feels because she’s really good at blowing things up.  This was one time that he really laid it out for her – he didn’t appreciate the way she was treating him and his family, he didn’t want to keep his kids away from her nor did he want to stay away from her, but if she kept acting the way she is, he isn’t coming over to be treated like crap.  He said he loved her, he wants to talk to her, and could she please call him back.

She didn’t call back.  In fact, that coward instructed her husband to call, so Craig had to relay all of his feelings toward his mother through his dad, and that’s never really useful.  Craig’s dad is not a good listener, and he has a real way of twisting and tripping over words.  It was Craig’s only option though, and I think that conversation was actually beneficial in some ways because it helped Craig to see even more clearly how his mother is trying to manipulate us all.  Apparently Neil was recently diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, and because of his mother’s drama, Craig wasn’t ever even informed.  So both Craig and his dad were realizing how twisted it was all getting, and though nothing was really resolved, it was easier for Craig to feel angry toward his mother without guilt getting in the way.

We arrive now at this morning, when Craig’s mother called while he was in the bathroom.  He didn’t get to answer the phone in time, so she left a short irritating message.

Craig, I just wanted to call to set up a time for me to see the kids.  You don’t have to call me if you don’t want to, just call your dad.

Bye.

Um, what?  Now she’s making “appointments” to see her grandkids, but she doesn’t even want to talk to her son about it?  She doesn’t want to fix things with the human being that she actually grew and carried in her womb, gave birth do, raised and cared for, watched over in the hospital for countless hours, loved his entire life long?  She doesn’t care about that person anymore, it’s all about the grandkids?  That lady is fuckin’ nuts.  Craig didn’t talk about it with me for long, he just said that he wished she would call and apologize.  She could apologize for being a bitch, for treating him badly, she could even apologize for the fact that Craig hasn’t realized that she’s crazy yet.  He just wants to hear “I’m sorry” come out of her mouth.  It’s SO not going to.  As I said before, she’s fuckin’ nuts.

Any suggestions?  Anyone?

I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with everyone else for so long, and I think I finally figured it out.  It’s not them, it’s me!  I just am so intolerant, and it’s getting to me.  I’m not sure how to change it though…

So my little idea a week or so ago was to sing this song to myself every time I feel like punching someone in the face.  That hasn’t been working quite as well as I thought it might, but it does help to remind myself that I’m being a wench every time I get ticked off at someone for doing something that slightly annoys me.  For instance, just now I was on FaceBook looking at random people’s status updates, and someone said something like “Can’t wait to see you at Shar’s wedding!”  The “Shar” in that statement is really named “Sharlene”, and the fact that she’s getting married but still has a bunch of high school friends that she’s best buds with and they all have shortened her name to something so damn snobbish… these factors all came together immediately in my mind and caused a little puke to accumulate at the back of my throat.

But I’m being highly critical and bratty because I’m a loser, sitting at home on a Friday night when my husband is at work, listening to nothing but the fly stuck in the paper lamp across the room lightly fluttering against the shade.

In the mornings where Craig has worked the night before, I often have to tell Connor to go play alone in his room for a while so I can take Gus out to pee, make breakfast, and/or feed Elly. Today he went up happily, and wasn’t yelling to ask if he could come downstairs for quite some time. When Craig came home, Connor started yelling over and over that he wanted Craig to come upstairs. Then he appeared at the top of the stairs with a candy cane in hand, a big grin stretched across his face because of the treat he had found. Craig said, “Seriously?” To which Connor replied, “Mom’s making chocolate pancakes, and chocolate is candy, so this is candy and that makes it ok too!”

We couldn’t disagree. He got to eat the candy cane.

While I was paying very close attention in class one day, a burst of writing energy struck me but I couldn’t take the time out to satisfy that need. I wrote down a few notes instead, and though I should be studying for my test tomorrow, I’m going to finally get out these little thoughts so that they don’t eventually die.

First – Connor and I watch Olivia all of the time (funny little kids cartoon), and Olivia stops frequently to address the camera with her numbered “Rules of Life”. Connor is still pretty little, and some of these things are over his head. He apparently had misheard what Olivia was saying, too, because he thought she was saying “You look like” instead of “Rule of Life”. So, he comes up with his own little rules all the time – it’s really stinkin’ cute. I was changing Elly’s diaper today, and she was about to grab it and I yelped a little, and Connor said, “You look like number 42: When your mom is changing your sister’s diaper and your sister almost grabs her poop, watch out because it’s scary when your mom yelps.” First off, the little rule is silly and really funny that he’s coming up with his own rules. Second, it’s funny to hear him say “you look like” instead of what it should be, and I want to correct him on it, but at the same time I’m just proud of him for being creative like that so I try to keep my mouth shut. One day I did tell him that Olivia is saying “Rule of Life” instead of what he’s saying, and he just looked so bummed out that he got it wrong. Now I tell him to say it however he wants to, because it’s his rules. Anyway.

Ok, here’s the list of things in my notebook that I jotted down to write about. They’re dumb, but the little “writing” notes on the page I’m studying are so much more interesting than the chemistry notes I should be looking at. First, there was a girl in the class that day that was wearing a mid-length jacket with a very strange pleat thing in the back. I’ve seen a lot of coats with a pleat in the middle of the back that opens up to the bottom of the coat, presumably to allow the coat more movement around the legs since the coat is longer. I’ve seen maternity coats with pleats in the front of the coat to give the woman more belly room to grow. This coat had a pleat in the back, starting probably at the shoulder blades, that opened up and then met again right above her butt. The way she was sitting made the jacket open up quite a bit in this pleat, so it looked like she had a big vagina on her back. I don’t know anyone’s names in my class, but I now secretly refer to this woman as “vagina jacket girl”.

Sitting next to vagina jacket girl was a dude that usually is fairly well dressed. On this particular day, however, the weather apparently got the best of him. I think that when he woke up in the morning and looked out his window, the warm sunshine was so inviting that he decided to wear his summer clothes outside. He likely showered, thus feeling even warmer because of the hot water, and then donned his summer jean shorts and a white tank top. Then… he stepped outside. It was only about 50 degrees that day, which is still jacket weather. Realizing he was going to be late for class, he quickly grabbed a coat and was off to school. So, Mr. Well-Dressed was wearing leather sandals with no socks, jean shorts, a white tank top, spiky ‘do, and a long leather trenchcoat. He looked like a freaky flasher motorcycle creep. I now secretly refer to him as “The Flasher”. He sits next to a male Nurse Jabba (yes, the Hut) in class.

I went for a run today! I feel much better. Well, much worse at the current moment, for I just finished the run, but during the run I felt great. I was bopping along, thinking I was doing really well for not having run in a *long* time, and it was truly a thing I can do for myself, which is all I have going for me personally right now.

Anyway, now I have to go read Connor some stories. Maybe I’ll continue this trend, and things will start to appear better, even if nothing actually is. It all about perception, right?

The past week has been hard.  One would think that with three gorgeous days in a row, my spirits would be lifted and I’d feel good about life.  I, however, was only mildly pleased with life due to the weather; why should the weather change my attitude about everything, especially when it’s probably going to change and shit on me in a day or so anyway?  I knew it would turn on me, and it did.  It did.  Today, the weather shat directly on my head.

So I’m feeling very alone.  I don’t have anyone to talk to, and I find myself in my closet sometimes, especially when it’s late and the closed door can block out any hint of light, talking to myself.  Talking to the darkness, wishing it would take me somewhere else.  I’m crying just writing this.  And I don’t know what to do about this feeling I have, but I do know that in the past, writing about it has helped.  The problem lately has been that every single ounce of my energy has been consumed by the people in my life, and when I finally get a chance to do something for myself, I end up sitting on the couch and zoning out to television because it’s easier to do than facing my problems.  Facing myself.

I’ve worked nonstop since I was 18 years old.  Before then, I worked nonstop at getting the best grades possible in high school, all while doing a zillion extra-curricular activities in the hopes of proving something to someone.  I can’t figure out what that did for me still, but someday maybe I’ll know.  Since I was 18 though, and I joined the Air Force, I’ve been a career woman.  Work has defined me, and my success at work is what made me feel like a productive and useful person.  When Connor was born, I felt like I had participated in a miracle, but I had to go back to work immediately and again, my job defined my life, and my family was the extra padding around me to make me safe.  When someone asked me what I do, I wouldn’t say “I’m a mother” or “I’m a wife” first.  I’d say I was a computer programmer, and honestly, if I didn’t get the feeling that the person cared about kids or family, and the moment didn’t come to mention my child or husband, I probably wouldn’t.  Maybe I’m a horrible mother and wife for that, but if I were a man, nobody would expect me to talk about my family all the time.  Anyway, I’m rambling.

Now that I’m home, I feel completely useless and ugly and outside of society.  I don’t want people to know that I stay at home with my kids, because I feel less than because of it.  I’m just putting this out there, and if you’re offended by what I’m saying, stop reading my blog.  I never thought that I was above the housewives in the world; I never really compared my life to their lives any more than jealousy because they could be with their children more than I could.  Having never been in their shoes, I couldn’t understand the loneliness and despair that they could be going through while they care for their families each day.  I only knew that they were getting more baby kisses and sunshine than I was, and that had to be better than sitting in front of a computer all day.

I was wrong.  This is hard.  This is really hard.  And I feel so damn lonely.  I was on Facebook a second ago, and I noticed that Craig has something like 210 friends, and I’m still not even at 100.  The vast majority of those are just people that maybe knew my name once.  Even in the virtual world, I’m a lonely loser.

It’s not that when I was working I had more friends, but I was working and a mother, so having friends was a luxury I could live without, because I had no time for anything anyway.  Now I’m a student mother, and I have no time for anything, but I would love to spend some time with someone who had no time for anything too, so at least my 4 year old child wouldn’t have to watch his mother be sad all the time.

The definition of resent from the Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary is “to feel or express annoyance or ill-will at”.  I resent my life.  I resent my 5-month old daughter for needing me constantly for her basic sustenance, consuming all of my time so that I can’t spend even 10 quality minutes alone with my 4-year old son in these long days we are together.  I resent my son for so willingly going to his room to play sometimes, which makes me feel guilty for being a bad mother and not playing enough, and I resent him for for whining and complaining about it other times, making it hard for me to do whatever it is I needed to do with Elly at the time that I asked him to go play alone.  I resent my husband for acting so tired when he’s only had 4 hours of sleep and I desperately need someone to help me for a minute because I have to take a shit and Elly is screaming bloody murder when I put her down for a second.  I resent him for yawning when he’s playing with Connor.  I resent him for wanting to do family things on his days off, instead of taking the children away and letting me have a few moments alone.  I resent the dog for bringing his bone over to me a thousand times a day, begging and pleading with me with his sad, droopy eyes to just toss it a few times, just show him a little bit of love.

I feel so used up, and so useless at the same time.

Today we went to the grocery store to sell raffle tickets for Connor’s preschool.  Connor had a blast; there was another little boy there named Elliot who happened to be just as bright as Connor, and almost exactly the same age.  They played like crazy, giggling and yelling at customers to buy tickets, pretending that huge chickens were going to come out of the conveyor belt, and just being silly.  Elliot’s mom was pretty cool too.  In the brief conversations I had with her, I found out a few really key things about her and her life that made me instantly like her.  For one, she has kids about the same age as mine – though her youngest is about a year old.  Still, he’s babyish enough for me to consider her life is about as hectic as mine.  She’s also at home with her kids; she was a school teacher in Iowa, but due to timing and silly rules about staying accredited, she’s lost her license to teach and she’d have to go to school for another year just to get a good job in Michigan, if there were any.  She’s at home with two kids, living in a new house in a newish neighborhood like mine with very few trees.

Most importantly, she’s pretty negative.  She complained about the kids in her neighborhood being bullies and treating her cute little boy badly.  She mentioned her husband’s job in Iowa, and said something about it “sucking” and that’s why they moved back.  Her hair wasn’t really done and the humidity had made it frizzy, and she complained about how it of course would be a crappy day on the day we all had to be outside all morning.  So those may be reasons why most of you “normal” people would be like “Eeeeewww… I’m not really fond of this person.”  But I’m not like most of you, so there.

She reminded me of me.  She seemed like the kind of person that I could be around and not feel like I had to act any differently than the way I wanted to act, and that’s the most refreshing thing I’ve experienced in a while.  I feel like I have to act happy and friendly to Craig even, and I’ve been married to him for almost 10 years, so it’s really not a common thing for me to feel truly comfortable in my own thoughts or actions.  You know why I act happy all of the time?  Because I recently had a baby, so if I were to mention to someone that I was feeling shitty, they would automatically assume that it’s postpartum depression and I need to go to a doctor to be put on some shitty drug that fucks with my brain.  No one would bother asking if I were feeling shitty before the delivery when I was pregnant, or long before that.  Don’t you dare come after me with these suggestions after reading this post, because I’m really not interested in suggestions for how to fix my life with drugs.  Being numb to my life isn’t going to change what it is, is it?  No thank you.

Anyway, I asked her for her phone number and insisted a few times that we should hang out, have a play date or something, and she seemed cool with it.  Maybe it’s just my perception of things though, but she did kinda leave in a huff.  So now I’m worried, like a guy who just went out with a girl and is afraid to call her for a second date, that she really didn’t like me and she won’t pick up the phone when I call.  She didn’t ask for my phone number, after all, so she probably gave me a fake number anyway.

Now I’ve rambled for an hour, and I feel better.  I’m going to go shower.