Birthday-Party Performance Anxiety

My latest post is up at DotMoms:

Ben's fifth birthday is next month, and it's making me anxious ...

Snippets

We got John’s new twin mattress last Thursday and set it up in Ben’s room, which is now Ben and John’s room. The first three nights, John crawled into it no problem. Then Saturday night he fell out. I found him whimpering on the floor about 3:30 a.m., eyes wide, bottom lip sticking out. He clutched my neck so hard I thought he’d never let go. The next morning he claimed not to remember the incident, but that night he cried to sleep in his crib, and then for the next three nights.

Our goal is to get John out of the crib and into his bed and new room long before the baby’s born. That way, maybe he won’t associate the baby with being kicked out of his room and his bed. So Tuesday afternoon, I said, “John, are you going to sleep in your bed tonight?”

“No.”

“Why not, you said it was so cozy. You should try to go to sleep in it tonight!”

He thought for a second. “Why, is the baby coming now?”

Heh. I guess he’s on to us.

Last night he did admit to remembering falling out and being upset about it. We convinced him to sleep in his sleeping bag beside his bed. Hey, it’s a start.

******

I walked into the grocery store yesterday afternoon with Ben and John in tow. Ben, who will be 5 next month, wanted to sit in the little seat at the front of the grocery cart.

“OK,” I told him. “You can sit there, but if I lift you in you have to stay there. It’s too hard for me to lift you in and out.”

“But can I come home with you?”

I Have Seen My Future, and It Is Bloated and Lumbering

I know I'm a total wimp, but today, the temperature reached 85 degrees. It wasn't humid or anything, and a cool wind took the edge off.

But? My legs felt like two lead anchors. Every time I stood up to do anything, I broke out in a sweat and my entire body screamed, "Sit down!" By the time I got in the shower tonight, my ankles had swelled to the size of grapefruits. My back thinks its carrying a full-term baby, yet I'm not due until July 8. I survey the crap around the house, the crap I want to deal with before the baby comes, and I feel like crying.

Thank God it will drop to the upper 50s/lower 60s for the next week. Thank God! It could be worse, I'm psyched to have this baby, I'm being a total wimp, the stupid projects can wait. But tonight all I can think is, "Waah!"

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

I have to break up with my therapist. When our relationship started, I never thought it would end this way. Not that it’s one little bit dramatic. I’m sure it happens this way most times.

When I started therapy, I had a specific reason. There was something in my past that I couldn’t talk to anyone about, so I figured I’d use the therapist to say it out loud.

Also, despite my successive obsessions with cigarettes, then working out, then eating well, then The Artist’s Way, despite progressing to a stable place in my career of choice (editing and writing), despite years focusing on self-help in general, I still felt like a drowning person. Drowning people don’t like the here and now, not one bit. And that’s where everything I read said I should want to be. Maybe the therapist could help me.

Anyway, I told her my big secret on the second visit. Forced intimacy, that’s all I could think. This woman’s a stranger, and I must bare myself.

But after that, Carol kept things pretty day-to-day, preferring to master my contentment through the behavioral side. We didn't do any analyzing of my psyche, as I'd thought we would. To her, that's a waste of time, and I guess in a way it is.

We get along. Despite being a therapist from NYC, she’s fairly conservative in her political leanings. Despite never having kids and never having mentioned a boyfriend (or girlfriend), we still have a lot in common. So much that “forced intimacy” soon evolved into unrequited friendship. Yep, at one point, I wished carol and I could catch a movie or visit the shops along the coast, talk to each other on the phone just to catch up. Exchange Christmas cards. But we will never, for obvious reasons, be friends.

Last week I told her I planned to stop coming. I believe I even said I wanted to “fly free,” or something stupid like that. She immediately said, “Do you want some feedback?”

“Sure.”

“I do think you’re doing great, but I just think now may not be a great time to stop. Can I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“Having the baby will be a big transition, I think you should wait until after that before you stop.”

“O.K.” Just like that, my big decision to end therapy now got reversed. Through the rest of the appointment, I felt alternatively like a sucker and like a sociopath. Either she didn’t want to lose the income she got from our visits or she thought I was too unstable to not be in therapy and survive the birth of my newborn. Or thrive though it.

Then we discussed money. “My copay’s $15 now, once a month would be better than twice.”

So she offered to waive the copay, which I refused. She went on about how it’s not charity, she’d rather see someone still come rather than miss out because they can’t afford it.

I stopped feeling like a sucker and started feeling trapped. “No,” I said. “I can pay you.” Then we chatted about prices going up and incomes staying the same, and how can this go on? The price of cable. Her unprofessional accountant and how he messed up her taxes.

That’s the thing, we chat a lot. Like friends, but I don’t feel like I’m doing any significant work on myself. We don’t have goals and action plans. We discuss my day-to-day irritations as they arise or occur to me, and she gives me concrete things I can do to rectify these problems. She keeps firing off one idea after another until I accept one or come up with one of my own and declare that I'll do it.

Which all sounds more productive, somehow, than it feels.

The fact is, I know much of what I need to do, I just can’t bring myself to do it. Keeping myself on an even keel still feels as hard as three years ago. When I say even keel, I mean, staying active, working out, writing, eating well, keeping up with chores and house stuff, socializing. Going to church. You know, keeping all the plates spinning. Three years of therapy hasn't changed my overall sense of well-being, or that I'm living the life I want to.

My brother, a therapist, has a very successful industrial CEO for a father-in-law. He calls my brother a “paid friend.” Not something that makes my brother feel good. Makes him seethe and want to stab the guy in the eyeball with a fork, in fact. But I can see that angle. I enjoy knowing, chatting and consulting with Carol. In some ways she is my paid friend.

Maybe I’ve stopped being honest with her. Perhaps I just feel sick of her pat answers. “Just do this! OK? All better?”

She gives good guidance, usually, often coming up with simple things that I didn’t think of myself. Except the time when she suggested that I let the kids watch videos during the day only when I want to do housework. Hello? When do I get a moment to rest? She said I could rest while hanging out with the kids. Those are the moments I realize, she doesn’t have kids, and she’ll never totally get it.

Somehow I don’t feel I need her anymore. I can’t explain it I guess. Once a month for a few months, then I break off. For real this time.

Crap

You’d think after subscribing to Flylady for 4 years, I wouldn’t have any crap around my house. But I look around and all I see is crap. And I just can’t keep up with it now that I’ve entered third trimester territory. Because with two little kids in the house, absolutely all of the crap is on the floor. And I’m six months pregnant, so bending over, well, there’s only so much of it I can take.

Yes, I’m just over six months pregnant, which means I punctuate everything I say to people with “and I’m six months pregnant.”

“I just cleaned the whole house, and I’m six months pregnant!”

“My throat is killing me, I’m coughing all night, and I’m six months pregnant!”

“I’m six months pregnant, and you’re in my way.”

“I really need a chocolate chocolate-dipped cone from Dairy Queen, and I’m six months pregnant!”

"Look at all the crap all over the place! Damnit, I'm six months pregnant!"

Despite the title of this post, I don't feel like crap. After two weeks with a nasty head cold, I feel pretty good. So good that, yesterday, I spent all day on my feet. Got Ben to preschool, went grocery shopping, got Ben from preschool, served lunch, babysat my 2-year-old nephew for two hours, then our 5-year-old neighbor came to play for another few hours. All while picking up crap in between. Then, big exciting trucks delivered two rugs and John’s new twin mattress. Served dinner, cleaned up dinner, put laundry away, helped get two very excited new roommates settled down.

Sat down, finally, at 9 p.m. Felt crampy. Likely just braxton-hicks contractions, but reminded myself to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. And to stop picking up crap. Which means, all the purveyors of crap must pick up their own crap. Or I'm renting a dumpster.

Regression Lessons

My latest post is up at DotMoms:

In the last six weeks, my son Ben has regressed to about age 3 ...

Beware the Cornered Cat

When I attended UMass at Amherst, I lived in a politically charged dorm. Located across the street from the engineering buildings, my floor housed a cluster of the more conservative students on campus. To add to the fun, we had the usual radical lefties as well.

I loved the debate, and I loved that my dorm had representation from both sides of the political spectrum, unlike the rest of the largely liberal campus. Still, I tried to stay out of the fray, venting my political ideas in my journalism and political science classes rather than in my living quarters. But during my junior year, I became ensnarled in the contention, and wound up committing one of my cruelest acts.

Four men on my floor belonged to a conservative group called Young Americans for Freedom (YAFF). One day they slipped an anti-gay flier under my door. It incensed me, so I showed it to a few friends in the dorm. Then two of the YAFF guys had the nerve to yell at me for showing it around. I guess their flagrant intolerance was for members only.

Lisa, who held far-left political views, lived in a corner room between the four YAFF guys and my boyfriend, Brian. She stalked my politically naive roommate, Angelique, trying to brainwash her with liberal ideas at every opportunity.

One evening, Angie came home sobbing. After calming down for a few minutes, she told me that Lisa pounced on her at the dining commons when she mentioned her new American Express card. “I can’t believe you’d do business with a company involved in apartheid,” she hissed. When Angie said she planned to keep the card, Lisa became enraged and yelled at her across the dinner table. “I am so mad!” she seethed, eyes glazed, veins popping. “I’m disgusted with you!”

Like a lioness protecting her cub, I wanted to go claw Lisa’s eyes out. She didn’t care about Angie’s financial future or delicate credit rating, the way I did. She just wanted to force her political agenda down Angie’s throat, and was willing to humiliate and belittle her to do it.

We already had a catty relationship, Lisa and I. She knew I hung out with the conservatives, that I smoked cigarettes and other things, all of which she disapproved. More than once, she had screeched in my face during buzzed Friday night political debates. She refused to make eye contact or say a simple, “Hello,” as we passed each other in the stairwell.

So one day, I came across another political flyer. The cartoon featured a young woman with straight hair and round glasses who quite resembled Lisa, in retrospect. Frame by frame, she recalled choosing to go to a party, to drink a little too much, to go to some guy’s room, to have sex with him, not to use birth control. Then, in the last frame, she said something like, “Now I’m pregnant. I want choices!”

I knew the abortion issue wasn't so black and white. I had even been known to acknowledge the need, from a public-health standpoint, for legal first-trimester abortion. But in a flash of spite that quiet weekday morning, I prowled across the hall to Lisa’s room and slipped the flier under her door. I may not remember the exact wording of the cartoon, but I remember my exact intention: to piss Lisa off.

Curled up on Brian’s futon that night, I saw Lisa and her boyfriend pass on their way to her room. A minute later, I heard a growling sound, then a loud howl. I sat up and stared as she stomped over to her YAFF neighbors and banged on their door. “Open up!” she demanded. When they didn’t, she kicked their door. As hard as she could. With her bare foot.

Meee-ooow!

Her fury surprised me a bit, but even more shocking? Seeing her in the hallway the next day, on crutches. She had broken her toe.

From Brian’s room, I could hear the YAFF guys professing their innocence. Lisa said, "Yeah, right," and hobbled off to her room.

I never entertained admitting my role as the cartoon culprit. After a fleeting sense of guilt, I chuckled to myself, enjoying her suffering and my secret role in it.

Looking back, I can see how living among vocal conservatives on an otherwise liberal-friendly campus could have made Lisa behave like a cornered cat. I can see that she had passionate beliefs. And I can imagine how many flyers the YAFF members might have slid under her door before I decided to do it.

But mostly I see the risk I took in provoking someone to anger. Thank God she just broke her toe. What if she had sprinted in a rage down the stairs, fallen and broken her neck? What if she had confronted a YAFF member rather than a closed door? What if she had killed someone? Like, me for instance.

When I decided to indulge my cruel side, I never dreamed someone would get hurt. But from that day on, I did become more tolerant of Lisa. Maybe the incident tamed her a bit. Maybe I just figured I’d gotten my revenge. It wasn’t quite sweet, but somehow, it left me declawed.