Tattoos and Drool

It could be worse

In other Expenses We Totally Can’t Afford or Control news, one of our cats is sick. I don’t know WHY he’s sick or what to do to make him better, because although I thought that by throwing away over two hundred bucks at the vet for antibiotics and bloodwork and an x-ray and whatever else, we might get an answer – apparently that isn’t the case. Nope. Looks like you can do that and still be at square one, which involves the cat hiding out under the couch and leaving regurgitated stomach bile in random spots around the house.

It’s been fun, can’t you tell?

And of course, leave it to my kids to put things into perspective. I asked each boy what he was thankful for, expecting the typical Mommy Daddy Grandma House answer.

Wrong.

Sawyer is thankful for “quesadillas, balloons and dandelions that float in the air.” While Beckett’s list wasn’t quite as whimsical or profound (eating food, crackers, burgers and dinner), it too left me refreshed and a little less gloom and doom.

Like, really, how can you be depressed when there is a plant right outside in your front yard that, with a simple breath, sends dozens of tiny magical puffs of awesomeness floating into the sky? You can’t, mom. Now make yourself a dang caysa-dilla and get happy.

So. My thankful list this week? Cheap mailboxes at Menards. Cool neighbors. No cavities. An extra third bathroom to contain a pukey cat. Burger King’s cupcake shake (you sweet, sinful thing, you).

And also, indoor cats that don’t eat a mouse and then hurl it back up, whole, on my basement floor. (Sorry about that, Mom.)

Yeah, it could be worse.

On trust and the internet

I’ve been on the internet a long time. I remember being 11 years old, before we were able to get online on my home computer, and using the Gateway at my mom’s office to go into chat rooms with a screen name like hotnsexy69 where I would lie about my age (and so would everyone else). Why? Because we could. It was easy. You could be whoever you wanted and no one on the other side of the computer screen was the wiser.

Even at that young age, I knew that things were rarely as they seemed online. Over the years as I’ve gone through different stages in my life and online, that fact has always remained. Rarely are you getting the full story, and if it seems like you are, it’s probably embellished, if even in the smallest of ways. I think it’s pretty common for a blogger to sometimes over-dramatize an event – simply because it makes for a better story. And in the end, that’s all blogs really are is a collection of stories, and no one wants to read a boring story.

Being a mom, or even just a woman on the internet seems to place you directly amidst the most volatile crossfire the web has to offer. I remember back to my Diaryland days, when wars were waged over stolen layouts and the occasional 13-year-old claiming to be pregnant with quintuplets. That was just the tip of the iceberg, as I later discovered once I got pregnant with my first child.

I’ve seen countless false claims of pregnancy, stolen photos, completely fabricated lives that everyone believes until the main character slips up and the truth comes tumbling out, whether it be by way of holes in their story that are gradually linked together or something simple like stupidly hot-linking a picture of their supposed pregnant stomach. I’ve been front and center on a popular fertility website and watched as a woman faked the death of not one, but two fictitious babies.

Other websites offer a whole different brand of crazy, where I’ve seen things like a girl posing her baby-sitting charge as her own child, going so far as to dress the child as the opposite sex and take pictures of herself “breastfeeding” said child. Or the mother who was seen by her peers as an expert on premature babies and attachment parenting until it was revealed that she had been arrested for smearing her sick daughter’s central line with feces.

Message boards are their own world of backstabbing and lies, where I’ve seen people fake their entire online existence, gang up on former friends, be vindictive to the point of cruelty, and seemingly have no grasp on who or what they are hurting.

And of course, the most recent media explosion that appears to have been all for attention, the infamous Balloon Boy debacle.

So when I got caught up this morning on the whole ordeal involving Nic at My Bottle’s Up and her account of an incident involving the TSA allegedly taking her son from her (which was later seemingly debunked by the TSA), I was, in a word, unsurprised.

I don’t know Nic any better than I know any other blogger I may happen to stumble upon on a daily basis. I’ve had her on my blogroll for a couple weeks, and still have yet to ever comment on a post of hers. So while I don’t have an emotional connection to this whole incident like many in the blogosphere, I view her blog the same way as I view those of the people I do “know” – as one big story. I don’t know who is telling the truth in her situation. I just know that lies happen on the internet, and they happen a lot.

I realize it may seem insensitive of me and maybe even unappreciative or hurtful to some for me to admit that I don’t have full trust in anything I read on any blog, even those whose authors I may have a close connection with. I don’t want to project the impression that I think everyone is lying, because I don’t. I cherish the friends I have made as a result of my blog. There’s something to be said for meeting people this way and it provides me an outlet to the outside world, and oftentimes, is the one thing that saves me from a deep pit of depression as I parent my three kids in isolation most days.

But I am cautious. I am skeptical. I share my real name and my real location because it doesn’t scare me for that information to be public. But that doesn’t mean I am blindly trusting. If someone I felt was a close friend turned out to be a complete fake, I honestly don’t know exactly how I would feel. But sadly, I don’t think it would surprise me near as much as it might have even just a year ago.

My heart goes out to those who have felt betrayed or misguided as a result of this most recent course of events. I’ve been there, way too many times. I do hope that a solid explanation comes out, if only for the sake of the closure I’m sure some need. If there’s one thing to be learned from any of the things I’ve seen in my years online, it’s that your words span miles on the internet, and the internet never forgets. Ever.

Type wisely.

Last November

Last November feels like a lifetime ago.

Last November, when there weren’t enough bottles of liquor on top of my cabinets or enough Ambien on my nightstand to dull the raging pain going on in this house and in my soul. When I was engulfed in the darkest days my life had ever seen.

Last November, when I came home from a drunken escapade in Louisville, Kentucky and realized that my period was late. When I made a trip to the grocery store that Sunday afternoon, and hid a pack of First Response underneath a bag of cat food and a box of waffles. Because even when you’re married, it still feels like the eyes of every customer in the store will fall on the contents of your shopping cart, and they’ll know your deepest secrets.

Last November, the month that saw me take that box into a grocery store bathroom, choose the handicapped stall and attempt to tear open the package as quietly as my shaking hands could muster. Where I then attempted to aim a stream onto the end of the test and watched without taking a breath as it seeped across the result window.

Last November there were two pink lines. The first word out of my mouth when I learned of my unborn daughter was “Fuck.” November 9, 2008.

Last November is when my world fell apart. It’s when our closet door became full of holes and when I googled things like “abortion pill.” It’s when I couldn’t go more than 15 minutes without crying, for days and weeks on end. It’s also when I learned the sheer, raw strength of my marriage. I also learned patience. And unconditional love.

Last November, my husband and I didn’t want a baby. The decision to have her was monumental. I know without a doubt that it was the right decision. But the road to get there was.. treacherous, to say the least.

Last November, I could never have foreseen what my life would look like this November, on the other side of that pregnancy test on that fateful day. A dimpled blonde baby girl. A rock-solid relationship. A happy family. That pain I had before is gone. The tops of our cabinets collect only dust and the occasional spider, and the only bottles on my nightstand contain prenatal vitamins.

Last November, this little baby was the last thing I wanted but the one thing I needed, and she changed everything.

Life is good.

And this is why you wait til marriage

Ball State University. Sophomore year. I took a chance in the roommate lottery and found a girl who, like me, was in the art program and thus would understand why I might have a bowl of random plastic doll limbs in a bowl on top of the TV. (My freshman year roommate thought that was a riot back then, and still does, because she has a picture of it on her Facebook, with me tagged. Yep.)

So we met a couple times, to make sure there were no crazy obvious reasons we shouldn’t live together for the next several months, and then signed on the dotted line that deemed us roommates. We moved into a dorm room on the fourth floor of Baker Hall, and got lucky in that we got a wheelchair-equipped room with its own bathroom. We had designated “sides” of the room and for awhile we got along swimmingly.

And then I got pregnant.

Which means my brain switched from sane and rational to HOLY NUCKING FUTS BATMAN.

This is the part of the story where the tables turn. Because my roommate? She wasn’t the crazy one. I was. Yeah, I suppose I had a right to get ticked when her boyfriend started sleeping over every night, hogging the bathroom each morning and taking up all the mini fridge space with HIS food. She was also messy. I even took a picture of one of her random crap piles, which I posted on my LiveJournal. And it even had a nifty 2004-esque pixel font caption. See?

I, being the crazy that I am, sent her an email ticking off everything she was doing to piss me off. I’m sure it contained several instances of all caps and a few frowny faces. That seemed to fix things for awhile. Until one day, she brought over a friend who had a cold.

And then. I really must have taken a large dose of the crazay pills because suddenly it was crazy-o-clock and I was slamming vigorously away at the keyboard to construct an email about how she could NOT bring sick people around me in my pregnant state, because what if I got sick, and got a fever, and had to be hospitalized, and missed class, and your friend’s sniffles KILLED MY BABY? Then how would you feel?

(And no, I don’t think we ever actually talked about any of this face to face. Which just adds to the hilarity.)

And the next thing I knew, our poor male RA (hi Dennis!) was in our room, wide-eyed and probably clueless as to how to handle two women engulfed in crazy, listening to me bitch and cry about how inconsiderate my roommate was and that this was just not acceptable. Pregnant and hormonal and CRAZAY.

The next week, I came back from class to find my roommate’s things gone. I laid on the floor and rejoiced, and my psycho ass got a handicapped room to myself for the rest of the year.

Now that I think about it, her evil roommate story would probably be lots better than mine. And sadly, if you ask my husband, my pregnancy-induced insanity never got better with subsequent pregnancies. Yes, he’s glad we’re done. And so is the rest of the world I’m sure.

Leave the light on

I hate the darkness.

Both physical and mental.

The physical darkness at 1am, when I’m lying in bed in complete silence and my mind starts to race through the mental darkness. I can’t sleep without the TV on any more, because the darkness and the quiet are just too much for me now. It gives me something mindless to concentrate on until I’m so bored that sleep just happens. Back before I got pregnant with Avonlea, I suffered from insomnia as a result of my anxiety meds. I would lay awake in complete misery because I was so exhausted but my body just wouldn’t shut off. But this is different. I can be zonked but as soon as I lay down, I’m wide awake and being pelted with horrible thoughts, fears and realizations. I’ll fight it for awhile but eventually I give in and turn on the TV.

One night a couple weeks ago, we had just begun to doze off when we heard the most sickening, horrifying sound I’ve ever heard in my life as a mom. A sudden clamor on the staircase below our room. A mixture of thuds and slams and then silence. I think my heart skipped about 12 beats as it lodged itself in my throat, my mind first racing to the thought that OH MY GOD SOMEONE BROKE IN. Then, I don’t know why, but I switched gears and went OH MY GOD MY CHILD JUST FELL DOWN THE STAIRS.

The husband and I both flew out of bed so fast that I don’t think our legs even knew what was happening. We tore out of the room to find our 4-year-old crying at the bottom of the stairs. Seriously, this was the most terrified I have ever been. Ever. Ranks right up there with the time I was 40 weeks pregnant with Beckett and I hadn’t felt him move in hours, and was sure something horrible had happened. Just sheer terror.

Sawyer was alert and crying and I knew that was a good thing but of course, all I could think of were broken bones and head injuries and how that Natasha Richardson girl thought she was fine but then she DIED.

After it was confirmed that he was uninjured and back safely in his bed, I laid awake for what seemed like hours, rehashing the sound in my mind and trying to push all the ugly thoughts of what could have been out of my head. I looked at the empty bassinet next to me and considered going to get the baby from her room and putting her right next to me, because too much could go wrong with her down the hall without me. And then of course it was too quiet and too dark, and what was that sound, and honey did you lock the front door? Are you sure? Go check anyway. And damnit, why didn’t I buy the security system from that door to door salesman last year, or find a better stair gate.

And on came the TV. And I finally slept.

Sometimes, even in sleep I can’t escape it. My dreams are either horribly, terrifyingly realistic, or so random and off-the-wall that they haunt me for days. A few nights ago, I twisted through a few different and increasingly weird scenarios. My dreams are always like that – connected but totally unrelated. First I was hosting the oddest of Tupperware parties, in my old childhood house in Texas of all places. During the party, I glanced out the front window to see my husband laying on the driveway, apparently dead.

Then I was zapped into outer space, where I floated aimlessly and witnessed a crazy half spaceship, half helicopter dissolving in flames and being cut by a chainsaw, the sparks of hot metal popping toward me as if I could almost touch them. Then suddenly I was at a mental health clinic, waiting to be called back to see the doctor. I kept getting lost in the many halls of the building, and then I couldn’t find my car, and then I suddenly had miles and miles to walk to find my way back home.

And then, I woke up. To my husband crawling over me in bed to take a drink from the glass on my night stand, and then kissing me with a crazy glint in his eyes, while holding me down by the wrists. I could feel his breath. My heart raced faster and faster until I finally shot up in bed, awake for real this time. I had to pinch myself to make sure.

That was not a good night.

And so, I sleep with the TV on. Roseanne is painful, but still a better alternative than actually having to think.