Flying

Do you know about this? This Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman? I just caught a minute of it on Sundance (which I will be bummed to not have once my cable deal expires- I guess that’s the point of cable companies extending temporary but fabulous deals to people who call them and ask to completely stop service). I was intrigued. A woman was cautioning another about a town she was about to enter being the type of place where honor killings were the norm, but Bean was tripping so hard over their sad faces I didn’t get to watch it. The questions being asked on the site look interesting. I wonder if this is something of substance or just one more person capitalizing on the dilemmas of being a modern woman (any show/article/website/book that uses the word “confessions” makes me wary of its true intent). Here’s the project description from the site:

“What does the modern woman want? Where does she fit in today’s world?”

Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and ‘choice’ does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere.

In this six-hour tour de force, FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, master storyteller Jennifer Fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. As her drama of work and relationships unfolds over four years, our protagonist travels to over seventeen countries to understand how diverse women define their lives when there is no map. Employing an ingenious new camera technique, called “passing the camera”, Fox creates a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. Over intimate conversations around kitchen tables from South Africa to Russia, India and Pakistan, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class and nationality. Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiments, FLYING sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure chronicled with sincerity, innovation and elegance.

—Caroline Libresco, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL catalogue

Sounds excellent. I’ll blog more when I learn more…if you know anything about the project do clue me in. Danke, darlings.

Co-parenting

I already tooted every horn in the universe with my Father’s Day post about my fella, but I do want to celebrate by writing this down. Since I have shared so many frustrations regarding this issue here, it feels right to share some happiness. We have undergone an evolution as a family over these last 21 months. I could cite a million little ways in which we’ve progressed, and another billion big and small mistakes we’ve made along the way, but dammit, we got here. We were such a cliche for a while. Totally freaked me out. Who the hell are we? I wondered. Where did we go? We are supposed to be Us, what the hell happened to Us? Over time, I learned to back off more and he learned to take over more. I won’t bother to get too specific, but I can now say that Huz and I are o-fficially co-parenting our little boy.

I feel proud and so very happy. We’re not perfect: I still take over sometimes and he still quite happily lets me, but MOST of the time our home and parenting responsibilities are now equally shared. The money thing, not right now, but I used to be the primary earner before we swapped that role. We’ll get back to that. It will be ideal if we can both work part-time, but with the way benefits operate in this country, that may have to wait until next lifetime. Still, the goal is that when Bean starts pre-school, I will start part-time work again and build up to full. When Bean is in Jr. High, Huz will work part-time, doing private parties a couple nights a week after I am home from my full-time work, wherever that work takes place. I can tell you that it won’t be in an office, not unless I own the building.

I want to say it again. I co-parent with my husband.

What a relief.

Just what the frack is it

I think I am supposed to be doing? We were all set to go to the food store this morning (when you usually get groceries delivered, food shopping is a novel outing) but were waylaid by tornado-ish windstorms. On the walk toward home, I took us through a sheltered street and ta-dah, there was a petting zoo. The winds died down enough for us to enjoy Bean’s first in-person roosters, goats, and rabbits. We ran around a park for a while, had a lovely walk home, then played inside before nap. Afterward, we walked to the bookstore, picked out a couple of supercuties I so should have written myself (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Baby Loves Jazz) and meandered our way through the neighborhood, stopping to chat with strangers, look at dogs, climb some things we shouldn’t have, and take a peek at a new art installation. We came inside, ate dinner together, read our new books, listened to CDs and danced, and Bean had his puttering around alone time before his bedtime routine.

Doesn’t this sound grand? I mean it, doesn’t this sound phenomenally grand? And it was. It IS. It’s a gorgeous privilege. So why do I feel like I am supposed to be doing more?

Am I a person with such an overactive mind and body so accustomed to the worrying and hurrying and scurrying around I did pre-bambino (as well as for the 8 months or so of insanity that followed his birth) that I cannot just be satisfied with now providing my kiddo the calm days I wish I had as a child? By the way, my time is not all about Bean, I don’t want to give that impression so don’t give me the whole pitfalls of sahmhood schpiel. I write, I move, I create, I read, I live in a kickass neighborhood, I talk with grownups…I am deeply happy. So wtf is it I am seeking, other than compulsively acting like the trained monkey that I clearly am? What more am I expecting of myself right now?

Hrrrrmmmmmmmm.

One of the Beavers would say it’s “blue-collar guilt”. She wasn’t raised with much in the way of money or stability, either, and her current contentedness and ability to be so autonomous, rather than constricted by financial and familial circumstances, freaks her right out sometimes. Maaaaybe…I dunno. Of course, it is a textbook response of an acoa to panic when things are too calm (hullo, #6). 

I wonder how I can expect others to value my contribution to society during this phase of my life when I can’t even seem to entirely do so.

Motherhood is quite an education, far beyond actually taking care of the Bean.

VBAC

dun, dun, dun, dun, duuuuuuuhhhhhn! That’s right, I’m going there. At least I think so, anyway. Huz is completely freaked out by the prospect. Then again, it seems he’s semi-convinced that if  I even try to carry another babe to term my lower stomach will split at its seam and gush innards and baby all over the place.

I never thought I’d be in this position. Firstly, I never expected to have a c-section. That was for others. I was going to be a birth warrior. I was so arrogant in this unsound belief that I used the portion of childbirth education class where they covered c-sections to take an extended pee/snack/drink/stretch break. “Why do I need to know about those?” asked I. I was ready to push my baby out into this world. I visualized it, I practiced my breathing, I chose my preferred labor positions based on what I had witnessed with friends. I wrote a hilarious-in-hindsight birth plan.

And then.

Things were going swimmingly. I had been contracting since 8.5 months along. Everyone kept telling me they were Braxton-Hicks, painless, right? That they vibrated and shuddered my belly but passed without any real action, right? Not really. I felt pain, breath-stopping pain, no interesting ooo-and-ah belly shudders; early on, I felt something deep and mighty within me trying to open up. Baby wanted out. He was cooked. He was so well-done, as a matter of fact, that at 9 months along, he was an estimated 8 lbs. I asked if that was alright and was told that women much smaller than me have successfully given birth to babies much larger than that, and that there was no way to tell who could and who couldn’t until it was showtime, which would happen on its own in some still-mysterious fashion. I trusted, I ate, I walked, I waited.

10 days overdue, with strangers wincing when they saw me (I’m 5′3 and my belly seemed to jut out for a mile), I went to a check-up with Huz and my mamala. We had just been in the Friday prior and weren’t feeling anything other than good. We had plans for breakfast right after. We didn’t make it, heh.

The check-up ultrasound showed that although my water had not broken, the fluid in the amniotic sac was dangerously low. I was having intermittent contractions but no substantial dilation. The doctor, whom I lurvelurvelurve but that is a whole ‘nother story, calmly said, “Let’s get you over to the hospital now. You need to have this baby.” Wha???? Now? But we’re going to breakfast…Yes, now. Immediately. I am calling them to let them know you’re coming. We have to try to induce. No! No no no! Don’t do this to me! Her look said: it’s not about you.

And it wasn’t.

18 hours, many alien-autopsy-like procedures, many moments of deep fear and much confusion, and many, many tears later, my hospital doctor sat on my bed. He had only gotten me up to 7.5 cm with a massive pitocin drip. The contractions were so hard I could feel them through the epidural. Things weren’t going well. We did the best we could, I told him. He sighed and looked sad. Yes, we did. We could try for another hour or two. What will be different then? Probably nothing. We did the best we could. Let’s just do this.

Surgery room. Holy shit, is this a hospital set from a Fellini movie? Are all of these people in here just for me and my baby? Is something going horribly wrong that they are not telling me?

We can give you something to calm you down. No, no thank you. The lights in here aren’t as scary as the others, they kind of look like a MOMA installation. Just get the IV in, please, man, just get it in. Dig dig dig, agony agony agony.

Okay, I’m freaking out now. You can give that stuff to me.

Then comes Huz in a blur, face upside down, he is behind me but all I can see is his sweet Muppet eyes smiling. I can’t feel my arms but I know they are tied down. I don’t care. Dr. keeps checking on me over a blue sheet that goes up and up beyond the lights, somewhere into the sky while people move all around me, could there be one hundred of them?

Here’s the baby, here’s the baby, look. I do. Upside down, my son quietly squints at me. I think I smile. Next thing I remember is being quadriplegic. I’m going to drop him! I can’t feel anything! Help, I am going to drop him! No, no honey. Here, try to nurse. You want to breast feed, right? Yes, okay, go ahead. But I can’t feel anything. He’s alright honey, oh wait, no, you are going to smother him like that. I know! He’s going to fall! Get him, get him!

Huz says to the nurse, why is he wet? From the bath. No, he’s soaked, why is he so wet? Oh, good call. She’s on the phone- can I get a blood sugar kit up here? First kit is incomplete. Precious, life-draining minutes pass, maybe twenty of them, before a proper kit is located. Blood sugar is dangerously low. We are going to have to take him to special care, honey…

I am transferred to a room away from my baby. Against my best efforts, I sleep, and sleep, and sleep. I wake to hear: we haven’t been able to stabilize his blood sugar yet…he’s run a fever so we’ve had to give him two broad spectrum antibiotics and two anti-virals via IV…you can’t just wait and see what happens with a newborn…we need your approval for a spinal tap…the course of treatment is going to run at least 10 days, he has to stay here…those burns on his bottom are due to the antibiotics…we have to start another IV on him, this one’s gone bad, jeez, I don’t even know where I can put another one at this point…you can visit him…

I recover while listening to people celebrate hourly in the rooms around me. We join the world of NICU. I feel so sick but still thank the universe for the health of my baby in comparison to his little comrades. Some of the nurses make me cry. Some are incredibly cool and kind. The day comes when we have to leave the hospital without him. It hurts beyond pain, but we visit often, we get him back soon (though it felt like forever) and he is fine, it’s almost like nothing happened, except he has little healed holes all over his body. We bring him home and I can hardly believe he is finally ours, that he is well. Bean and I cling to each other almost constantly for months. We cry often. I make myself sing even when I don’t want to. Huz looks like he’s been through a war. 

I only found out 2 months later that Huz approved a bottle of formula to be given in the delivery room, that it helped stabilize Bean just long enough. Huz thought I remembered him having the conversation with the delivery nurse. I didn’t. My panic came from remembering when I was a special educator, how I took care of a child whose blood sugar got just a bit lower and the problem wasn’t caught on time. He was disabled because of it. Ignorance of the possibilities really would have been bliss. You could say it is a miracle Bean was unscatched, if you believe in that sort of thing. I wish I could have focused on that kind of thinking. Instead, I woke up startled and sweating for months saying over and over again, ”We dodged a bullet, we dodged a bullet with this kid.” Ifs, ifs and more ifs…if Mamala hadn’t snuck me that breakfast right before the induction started, if Huz hadn’t said yes to the formula, if he hadn’t persisted with questions about the baby sweating so much, oh my God. Yeah, in retrospect, I needed counseling and maybe some medication. Hindsight and all that.

I hated the hospital doctor for a while, for not calling for a c-section hours sooner, for letting my baby’s head get smashed by induced contractions for so many hours that it looked like it would burst open, likely resulting in the blood sugar and fever problems, for using me to try to bring down the hospital’s rate of c-sections. I guess I just needed someone to hate, somewhere to place the tormented feelings I was having. My regular doctor said we could armchair quarterback it all day long, but he did the best he could with the knowledge he had at the time, there was certain protocol to follow, and that there are vaginal births that result in the same NICU stays for the same reasons. I had my doubts. I’m coming around, though. I experienced an unsuccessful induction. It was medically necessary. Should they have just done the c without trying to induce, since the baby was already in minor distress? Maybe. Did they cause the major distress and resulting health issues with the induction? Probably, but who knows. Hard to say for sure.

For the longest time, I joked that my cervix was a steel trap. I grieved the not-pushing. I’ve gotta stop putting that out there. My cervix is just fine. Strong. I also hated, then feared, the man who orchestrated my birth process. I’ve stopped. I’m going back to hospital doctor. He did his best to try to let me give birth on my own. When that didn’t happen, he succesfully brought my baby into this world. He visited me the night afterward, when Bean was in NICU, and looked so sad that I almost wanted to comfort him.

It was a failed induction. Not a failed mother, not a failed person.

I think I am finally okay. I think I may want to try again someday.

P.S. I never thought I would publicly share Bean’s birth story in its entirety.  Hearing about things like this freaked me out when I was pregnant. I don’t want the reading of this post to be one of those experiences for anybody. After all, it has a very happy ending.

There are certain small events

that feel like major milestones to me. Events that have made me go, yep, I’m a mom.

I guess the first one was slinging Bean without dropping him while I was standing up and then nursing him in public, staring down questioning gazes and smiling at understanding ones.

Wanting to have sex again was a big one, too. No, my child was not actually involved. It was just remarkable to feel calm and comfortable in my body again, to assimilate my new mothering self with my individual physical self after riding out the storm.

Painting and dancing at 6 months postpartum were huge. Wanting to do these things showed me that I was getting back to me after a while away. The mental and physical cracks were healing and Bean loved being integrated into these activities.

The next standout was flying with Bean and dealing with airplane fussiness and all that. I had to do everything but stand on my head to avoid a screamfest that first time, but we did it. Not only did we get there and back, we got through security and a maze of airport tunnels in order to find stroller-accessible elevators, and we only lost one or two items along the way.

Recently, there was this:

Huz thought it was hilarious that I took a picture. It felt momentous. Still does.

Readiness to go back to work feels like something momentous, too. I am finally able to say, oh yeah, we’ve got a good sleeping/eating/playing routine going, I’m no longer depressed and freaking out (much), I can handle the bullshit that goes along with work again and I think I finally may be able to trust someone to look after Bean here and there.

I guess I can also consider my recent dressing down as a mother to be a milestone as well. When women gang up on another woman, it’s certainly not pretty, but when the picked upon one can keep her chin up during and after the experience and maintain her own identity throughout, that is very important stuff to me.

And now, the latest mothering milestone in my mind is drumroooooooollllllll pleeeeeeeese:

choosing my child’s first pet. Behold, Fred:

(a.ka. Frederic Thelonius Amadeus E. Feesh)

He’s beautiful and strange and we talk to him alot. Fish in bowls always hold a certain sadness for me, but Fred seems to like it just fine. He’s an aggressive little bugger, a loner through and through. Bean thinks he is extraordinary. I can see his point.

I hate to be so self-referential

but Blue Milk got me gabbing about myself again because she poses such thought-provoking posts, questions and commentary. If you haven’t checked her out yet you’re missing out big time. Anywho, the self-referential part is where I am going to now repost a comment I made in response to her latest post about who we all want to be as individual parents and that is this right here:

I am pulled in two directions, depending on where I am located geographically and generationally on any given day. I’m not one for much scheduling of structured activities (he’s only a year and a half old!) and that makes me the odd woman out in my community. I am definitely the laid back one around here, but I also have a background in constructivist/social education so I tend to lay off a good bit compared to them. When I visit family, though, they act like I am an overprotective semi-psychotic who is absolutely ruining my child because I breastfed until 18 months, prefer co-sleeping, make him wash his hands before he eats mostly organic food, require a fairly regulated sleep schedule, and won’t leave him with a stranger so I can go out. I just see us all as more educated to the benefits of such things than our parents were, and my partner is often in his own little world, so yeah, that has made me hyper-vigilant. I felt pretty neglected as a kid and there was quite a lot of fallout from that, so it is hard to trust the judgment of older family members who are now telling me I am hyper-parenting.

yadda yadda yadda

Does that make me a hyper-parent, or just conscientious?

I know the answer: it makes me conscientious. I just wanted to point you over to blue’s post and also reiterate my response here at b.b. because it was all so damn timely for me. I have just come back from yet another family visit where I caused so much eye rolling and tsking due to my parenting choices that it is a wonder there weren’t eyes and tongues falling right out of people’s heads and goo-ing up my shoes. It seems that very basic baby-proofing (ex: if it is valuable or dangerous, put it up high) is an affront to certain people in my family, my own mother included, as is my preference for mostly organic food, even though I shop and pay for it myself. Encouraging co-sleeping? Worrying about my child while someone is babysitting him? Getting annoyed when I find that Huz, who was supposed to be watching Bean, “forgot” and so I came out of the bathroom to find that my baby had crawled up a very tall flight of stairs and was standing solo on the top step? How dare I? What an asshole I am. I am ridiculous about my child, whatever that means, or so I am told. Funny thing is, I am actually quite fond of the approach described here (many thanks to I forget whom for the original linkage) but to some members of my family, I am a total loon.

So how do you all who are near family members deal with this sort of thing, this lack of respect for your parenting choices? Is this common? I’ve been pining for family for a year and a half, but do I really want to move to any area where the decisions I make as a parent are so openly criticized? Maybe it was just taken so hard because we were staying at someone else’s home and could not escape the disapproval…still, am I expected to entrust Bean with certain relatives who think so differently than me and Huz, in some cases dangerously so? Or should we stay put and remain surrounded by friends who trust us to make decisions for our own kid but are more hands-off?

I know, I know. I’m once again using geography as a buffer instead of resolving things with people.

Pickle.

Update:

One major reason I love my neighborhood: we are a microcosm of world culture. It keeps me fom getting too far into my own head. I met a mom in the park today who gets a ration of shit for NOT co-sleeping, babywearing, etc from her tradition-focused Pakistani in-laws. She has to wear traditional clothes when they visit, worry about their strict expectations for her daughter once she reaches puberty, etc etc. It put the requirements and disapproval experienced during my weekend in Philly in perspective. It certainly does seem that while becoming the mothers we want to be, we’re all damned if we do, damned if we don’t :) All the more reason to do what feels right to each of us.

What was the point

in getting us all used to Bean being in a crib and doing a set routine so he would go down/stay down for the night? It has all gone to crap now that he is in a toddler bed.

I always planned to co-sleep. We didn’t buy a crib for Bean before he was born. He had other ideas, though. When he outgrew his little co-sleeper bassinett thingy, he started spending the beginning of each night in his pack and play, alone in his room. Gradually, he stayed put for the night. I didn’t really want it that way, but he slept best alone in his room starting at 10 months old. It freaked me out, to be honest; to me, it is more natural for a family to sleep together for at least part of the night. I spent many nights sleeping on a futon in there with him. When I finally felt reaaaaally certain that this was the way he preferred to sleep and that he would be just fine alone, we got him a convertible crib/toddler bed. It was kind of high up for my taste, but they all were, so we went with the lowest-to-the-floor model we could find. He seemed to love it. We enjoyed the next few months of sleeping in peace. It was a miracle considering how the first 10 months had gone. 

Recently, he started using his crib bumper as a step to try to flip over the rail. I would go in to check on him and find him standing on tiptoe with his head and arms completely hooked over the railing, as though he were just waiting to grow a leeetle bit more he he could flip himself out and wind up in the ER. I took the bumper out and hoped he’d stop. Instead, he started getting his arms and legs stuck in the slats. He would wake howling as he tried to wrench them out. Did I mention I never wanted him alone in a crib? I wanted him alone in a toddler bed even less. He’s only 19 months old. Still, I took the rail out and converted it to a daybed. I re-toddler-proofed his bedroom. We babygated the hallway at night so if he did get up, he could only go into our room and not roam the rest of the place. Fine.

The first days and nights were amazing. Same ole, same ole. Bean stayed in bed and slept and so did we. It took about 3 days for him to realize that he could get out of bed of his own volition. Then he did, lots. I am not a close-the-door and cry-it-out kind of person (other than for maybe 10 minutes, tops, to let him get the crabbies out every now and again). I am, however, a behavior modification type of person, so I strictly enforced our rule that pacis are only for sleeping times. When he popped out of bed, I took the paci. When he got back in, I gave it back. Worked like a charm for two days then stopped. And so…

what do I do now? He’s up, he’s down, he’s up he’s down, on and on and on. Last night we woke to him standing by our bed at 4AM. Even though the house is babyproofed and he is corraled in a limited part of it, it freaks me out to have a 19 month old wandering around in the near-dark.  We would be happy to have him sleep with us, we even lowered our bed for that purpose ages ago, but he doesn’t seem to be able to. Tosses and turns and fusses all night, unable to settle down (I now believe that much of our sleep issues in those first 10 months stemmed from my insistence that he be in the room with us). We pulled him in with us anyway and he rolled around for an hour or so. I finally gave up and carried him into his room, put him in his bed, and fell asleep on the futon in there, only to be woken minutes later with him crawling on me. That is how he slept for the next two hours: on me. Not next to, on. Cried every time I tried to put him back in his bed. We are somehow back to how things were at 3 months old. Damn crib. Damn toddler bed. Damn fatigue.

My independent sleeper, whom I reluctantly accepted as such, seems to be gone. In his place I now have a dependent sleeper, but one who does not want to be in bed with Huz and me, he wants only me, and only in his room. It would be flattering if it weren’t so tiring.

For nap today, he just stopped crying after what felt like forever because he was unable to sleep without me having a hand on his back. I stopped touching him after 20 minutes of a very uncomfortable position and my pins-and-needles feet drove me from the room. He woke. I left anyway to see what he would do, closing the door behind me, hoping he would just fuss a minute and crash back out. He cried, lots. Made me feel terrible. Sure, he eventually crawled back into bed and crashed out, but it made me feel like a jerk to do things this way.

Wait, he just woke up again, and is now crying because I’m not there. My poor Bean. Is this just standard separation anxiety brought on by a cognitive leap? Who knows. I’m going back in now. I’ll probably be back on the futon tonight.

Sleep, I hardly knew ye.

Update:

Huz is in with him now for bedtime. Bean just seems to want someone to sit in there until he falls asleep. Makes the nightwaking tough. He’s also asking for a ton of hugs which is not typical but very, very sweet. Maybe it’s just a combo of his bed looking a little different (which it took him days to notice, if that’s the case), separation anxiety and the neverending molar teething and this thing called sleep regression my dear Ask Moxie talks about. All of this right before our trip to Philly, yee-haw. Should make for an interesting trip :)

 

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

I know, I’ve been gone a while, and I’ve chosen a crass way to re-introduce myself but that word stated in that way sums up the frustration I am feeling.

Here’s the deal:

I need to work. For my sanity, for my soul, and most of all, for my mortgage. Actually, the latter is not entirely true. Sure, we got in under that tricky wire with 100% financing, but we could always afford this place comfortably. We had simply decided to buy on a whim and only had enough dough on hand for closing costs, so we got 100% loaned. We refinanced to a more stable loan within 2 years and were feeling good. Well, pretty good, considering the typical gang bang of shady development deals, non-stop construction snafus and exorbitant special assessments that seem to exemplify living in downtown Chicago. It’s the taxes that are about to kill us.

The gang bang stuff was surprising in the typical way that first-time buyers are often surprised by the real costs of owning a place; it was all of the things that the mortgage consultant does not figure into your total payment, even though they know full well it’s going to be there. The additional surprises, like a 28% jump in our monthly assessments because nobody’s lawyer caught some very shady wording in our building’s code, made us slightly uncomfortable. We just had to cut back on cable, sell the Jeep and join a car-sharing service, that sort of thing. Good things, really, just things we may not have done unless forced. None of it would have been uncomfortable at all if I had been teleworking part-time as planned. Now though, with Daley proposing a tax increase to shame all tax increases (mostly to fund an Olympics we will not be getting) we face being forced out. Sure, there are caps on tax increases per year, but until we pay 35% of our very sizable loan, we are required by our mortgage company to have a tax escrow account. The amount required in that escrow account is based on proposed, not actual, taxes. That means we got a letter saying that we suddenly have to come up with 13,500 extra bucks this year for the bank to hold onto just in case the inflated projections become reality. I’m not crying, I’m just stating. So now, I must find work not because we can’t afford our place, but because we won’t be able to afford the razor sharp increase in the proposed taxes on our place. Sell the condo, you say? We would love to. I should be in Philly right now. I’m not. Huz should be scaling back on his work. He’s not. I’m sure you’ve read the papers. People just aren’t buying much around here. They may want to, but they can’t get financed. Kinda hard for most to come up with a 25% downpayment on $270,000 average value places (and I’m considered to be in a cheap one).

Am I boring the crap out of you with this? I am me.

Aaaaanyway, I am taking the long way around to say that I am feeling frustrated by my current circumstances (quick recap of a forced “opt-out”: if the amazing director who had hired me hadn’t been canned for being at odds with the unbelievably horrid CEO, I would have been teleworking at my prior job with the assistance of a helper for Bean all this time).  Sure I know that when one door closes, another opens. If you are me, you either kick one down or build a new one somehow. I’ve got my big boots on and my tools in hand. I’m ready but I am still bound by Huz’s insane schedule whilst trying to find some work. I never know from week to week when he will be home to look after Bean, or when I could even hire someone to be here to look after Bean. What hired caregiver would be available at any time on short notice? Kinda dumb to pay someone to be here on certain set days when Huz could very well be home. Besides, I decided before Bean was born that I am not giving over the care of my kiddo to another person with me or Huz off-premises until he is three and presumably articulate enough to tell us if that person is mean to him. That part is my choice, I know, and my choice adds considerable complication. I am educated, I am qualified, and I am being offered work but it requires me to be on-site 2-3 days a week. I can’t get Huz to commit to be here one day a week to look after Bean, let alone 2-3, or to tell me for certain what days I should hire someone to do so. See my point? 

It is not entirely Huz’s fault. Sure, he is self-involved to a degree but every time he has tried to have a consistent day at home, he gets called in to do some super-VIP tasting or some such thing at the last minute. Nope, he cannot say no. His employer couldn’t care less that his wife is trying to maintain a career and unlike most people only needs one consistent weekday to do so.

My quandary would be helped if:

• The hourly pay being offered to me by the company across the street (it’s off premises but hardly) was good enough to cover the cost of childcare. As it stands, I would be making $8 an hour after childcare and taxes (yes, I know $8 is a lot of money to some people and I am fortunate to currently be able to turn that net pay down).
• I found a job with quality on-site childcare.
• Huz’s job responsibilities were shared so that it would not always have to be him doing the last-minute super-VIP things and I could schedule consistent on-site work with clients one freaking day a week.
• My former employer would reconsider their refusal of my teleworking arrangement (and for that matter, apologize for making me repay them for the one month of postpartum health insurance I used while we were negotiating an arrangement- I could have strung them along for my allotted FMLA time, then showed up for one day when my leave was over then quit like so many women have to do in this broken system)
• The costs and management for the care of my child while I work stopped being completely up to me (hullo, Huz? hullo employers with subsidies or onsite care? hullo, IL and U.S. Government assistance?)
• We could sell the condo and move to Philly so Huz could scale back on work, I could ramp up and we would have family help with childcare.
• My art and writing skills suddenly increase exponentially and I am payed a billion bucks for my talent. I can create with Bean happily running around my feet like the cheeky little tyrant he is.

I know, I know. So here I am, still asking: is it too much for a parent to want to be near her child while he is so very young? Must she sacrifice not only the advancement but also the basic maintenance of her career to do so for this relatively short time? Must she choose between selling her once quite affordable home at a loss and being with her kid? These are not new questions. I still have no satisfactory answers.

So yeah, back to blogging. I had a dream last night where Theresa came over for dinner and told me it would be good for me and I should get back to it. She looked so great, it must be that Alaskan air. I think dream-Theresa is right. Hi again, peeps. Thanks for being here. I’ll be seeing you again soon.

Love,

a clearly not very evolved over the last 6 months B.

Here is an almost frighteningly bare look inside my brain

and it wasn’t even posted by me. How odd to read words that I have said only to myself and maybe to Huz written here so perfectly by someone else. How very comforting, too. She has given it clarity that I have been unable to achieve. Finding the post was like a Christmas present.

Here was me last Christmas, newly postpartum:

Here was me with the Beavs this Christmas

No, it was not due to heavy pharmaceuticals, just time. I actually did spend time with the Beavers last Christmas, too, but I was in a fog. This year was exponentially better. Don’t our cook-ays rock? We also made Christmas unicorns, rhinos and our newly traditional sparkly poos (leftover gingerbread that we are too tipsy on Glogg to cut out properly).

Happy Holidays, peeps! Peace on Earth, goodwill to Women (and the fellas we love, too)!

Choices - real ones this time

Choices are good. I like them. Everyone should have them. I have written about pseudo -choices that are really a forced crossroads where one is stuck picking the thing that sucks the least. That, to me, is just a shitty situation in disguise. Okay, maybe such things do count as choices, but they still rim. Good choices require you to make decisions where clear benefits are present either way, where your options are wiiiiiide open. Sure there are cons depending on what you decide, when are there not consequences in life? The kind of decisions I am talking about are those where the good outweighs the bad, where one can be pretty damn happy either way, it’s just a matter of picking this path or that one. These are the choices that give a woman the opportunity to be true to herself.

Choices I like having even though I have no idea (yet) what to do: 

One child or more? I am likely going to be a one-baby-momma for all sorts of thorny reasons but it will take years to decide once and for all and I am pleased that it is entirely up to me.

Chicago or Philly? Though it is amazing how much of my Chicago-related boo-hooing has lifted since I’ve lately had more time to myself and the crappy real estate market is priddy much making this decision for me at this moment.

Take an enjoyable, paying job that utilizes my degrees once a week and provides much-needed continuity on my resume or use my upcoming me-Wednesdays to go wherever the hell I feel like going and dedicate at least 4 hours each week to writing for rilly rilly real instead of hopping on and off the interweb to spout off like I do in such an unorganized fashion? I’ve allowed myself to be caged by blue-collar sensibilities my entire life, where creative endeavors were an amusing luxury, hobbies to be pursued as time allowed between the scheduling of multiple jobs, not something you actually did. Should I finally break through that mentality now, even in the face of a paid opportunity? Hmmmmmm…

Oh, and more on that second decision up there: why is it that strong and resourceful women who politely and repeatedly ask for help are brushed off until they reach a breaking point where they freak the fuck out and demand it or else? Why must we be driven to extremes, then get slapped with that pervasive bitch/psycho label (societally speaking, nobody is calling me that around here, balls would be nailed to the wall as a trophy) when the fact is if you cage or corner any being on Earth you will incite depression and wrath? Why is asking not enough? It is so very frustrating. A damsel-in-frequent-distress I know has the world laid at her feet every time she so much as tears up over something, while ol’ Bianca could be bleeding and dying alone on the side of a road somewhere but hey, she’s a bitch, she’s nobody’s sweetheart- she’ll figure it out, she always does. I do not believe there is such a thing as a woman being too self-sufficient, but given my experiences over the past 2 years or so, I can see the attraction to tactics such as swooning and feigning helplessness. Not that I’ll ever use them, hell no. I just see now how much easier life can be if nobody expects that you can handle it on your own.

Ahem. Back to choices. I have them, and that is a very, very good thing. Thank you most kindly and reverently, Foremothers!