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.

Happy stuff I am doing for myself

Growing an indoor herb garden - hullo, Yum, so good to meet you. The dried stuff is an expensive insult to my tongue in comparison.

tmi: Making sex dates with Huz. No, not regularly scheduled “it’s business time” stuff; we have to ask ahead and plan just as if we would if we had never been together and were trying to seduce each other, albeit quickly, for the first time. It’s the hotness.

Decorating, decorating, decorating, (does that sound too Martha? should I say beautifying? art-ifying? whatevs, you get me) with both found and self-created objects. A living environment is an evolving organism as far as I am concerned. I adjust it accordingly, in small ways, as needed depending on my mood.

Daily dance parties with Bean. The kid is a nut for “party favorites” on our cable music thingermawhatsit. His moves absolutely KILL me.

Doing the T-Tapp Basic Workout (the production is cheesy, but dammit, it works) and using About.com’s Calorie Counter (it’s free and way better than WW) so I can get a handle on my recent post-weaning weight gain. Now listen, skinny is not the goal. Skinny is NEVER the goal. I eat, baby. I am married to a classically trained chef. Fat is flavor, salt is life!!! Voluptuousness, sway, and zaftig-iosity are what I am all about. Besides, serious curves throw the very best shadows on the walls in candlelight. Sure, my boobs fell down a bit with pregnancy and my stomach pooches out more than ever, but to a good man like Huz, that just means I housed and fed his beautiful baby. I do like to look and feel healthy, though (which to me is roughly 20-30 lbs heavier than what a typical magazine tells me I should be) and I haven’t since Bean weaned 6 weeks ago. T-Tapp and CC are just helping me keep me looking like ME.

Taking care of a crazy ass fish named Fred who is only a “simple, great first fish” in opposite world. He is a loony mofo. He’s my kind of feesh.

Reading/watching art, craft and travel books/shows at every single opportunity. World and your wonky, curious inhabitants, I love you lots.

Staying informed of rampant injustice. It hurts to do so, and yep I am merely a drop in the bucket but together, baby, we can create a downpour. Signing petitions, writing letters, marching and yelling is what I was born to do. I used to feel pressure to shush, to be less angry, less loud. I don’t acknowledge that pressure anymore.

Re-reading my acoa stuff and joining a virtual support group for it because dammit, you just cannot run away from that shit, no matter how far you go or how many fathers you stop having contact with. 

Actively declining offers of high-paid work that takes place in an office cubicle. I know from experience that it sucks my soul dry and I am now just saying no, no matter what the pay. I will find work elsewhere (elsehow?). I realize this choice is a major luxury even with the discomfort it causes us financially. I am grateful daily.

Going to the park with Bean and talking to strangers even when I don’t feel like it, which I usually don’t. I have met some truly kind and funny people. I love the humbling, unifying moments of parenthood they help me stumble upon. They are gorgeous: the moments and the people.

Enjoying the hell out of the view from my windows.

And finally…oversharing about my life with you all. Ha!

I hope you are doing many good things for yourselves, peeps.

 

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.

Ohhhh, now I get it…

Okay, I’m a little slow on the uptake, it’s true. It seems that the cause of my current financial problem of needing to come up with an extra $13,500 this year and who knows how much more next year originates with our first home loan.

As I’ve said, we got 100% financing. Many people will say we are getting what we deserve by going that route. It does sound a lot shadier than it seemed at the time. At the time, actually, it seemed pretty straightforward. We were tired of throwing away money on renting and started casually looking for a place to buy. We unexpectedly came across this place, only 1.5 miles away from Huz’s work a a quick bus ride to mine. Since we had just started planning to buy and had only meager savings toward that goal, we were offered 100% financing by the mortgage company that was hired by the developer (red flag #1). We had excellent credit and could easily afford the estimated payment as outlined by the mortgage officer. During his lengthy, ahem, counsel with us a first-time buyers, he told us that a tax escrow account was a formality required by the mortgage co, that of course we would pay our own property taxes when we were billed by the county, and that he would simply assign a $50 a month payment toward it to fulfill that obligation on paper (red flag #2). The thought of getting downtown space so close to work for just over $200 per square foot in a booming area seemed like an opportunity that would be foolish to pass up (almost sounded too good to be true, red flag #3). Besides, we knew we would refinance to a more stable loan within a year or two. We did just that. No problems, yay us. Until now.

Our naivete led us to our current situation. We thought we did our due diligence: we took a non-bank-sponsored, first-time homebuyers e-learning course, we read everything we could about the process, we asked tons of questions, and we hired a lawyer who told us that everything looked standard in our contract. We trusted the people we hired to tell us what to do and give us accurate and honest answers when we asked questions. What we did not understand was that our original loan officer factored in the lowest escrow possible only so he could lower the estimated monthly payment enough get our loan approved. He very likely knew we could not afford the actual projected tax escrow that would be required in another year or two by the mortgage company (the banks require almost triple the actual tax amount in many cases to cover themselves). He also knew the banks would not let us pay our own property taxes when billed by the county; typically, you must have 35% of your loan paid off to do that. What did he care of we later defaulted because of a negative escrow amount? He sold our loan within a 60 days. Yay him. He’s a superstar. We suck for not catching it, for not understanding enough.

We are not alone. People all over the place are foreclosing for the same reason. If the market hadn’t taken a dive, we would sell and go about our merry way with lessons learned. We can’t. On this page, we are the #3 case study. So it goes.

There are over 22,000 dead in Myanmar and survivors that are barely that. My sitch is such a silly trifle, isn’t it?

We will manage to work this mortgage shadiness out somehow. Of course, if my employer hadn’t reneged on our tentative teleworking agreement and made me so tremendously uncomfortable during my pregnancy that felt I had to give up on the organization, if our baby hadn’t required emergency medical care when born and NICU care for 10 days after that resulting in tremendous medical bills, and if if if if if if if, this unexpected negative escrow expense and the related fallout would have been no big problem. Ifs can torment a person. I’ll try hard to stay away from them. They don’t actually matter and they certainly don’t help. What matters is that home is wherever the three of us are together.

Have fun with your karma, Michael G.

Here’s me talking to a recruiter

Her: So wow, your background, blah blah blah

Me: Yep, I’ve done some of this, some of that, yadda yadda

Her: It looks like your last professional experience was in 2006, is that correct?

Me: Yes. I’ve volunteered to be a consultant to non-profits since then, but yes.

Her: That was the date of your last employment? In 2006?

Me: Yes.

Her: What have you been up to?

Me: Doing a lot of writing, I write.

Her: Oh really? What kind of writing?

Me: A novel. 

Her: Oh! So someday I can say I knew you when…

Me: Ha! Perhaps in ten years or so.

Her: Other than that, no employment? And you are just looking for part-time?

Me: Right. I’ve been focusing on my art and writing since my last job in 2006 (at that national organization for parents and children that has no support in place for parents and children). I’m just looking to keep my skills fresh and earn a little money using my experience. I’m not looking to be a superstar; I’m not that kind of placement for you (she’ll make $ off of placing me, you see). My resume and education are excellent. Anything your clients need, I can provide. Most projects get larger in scope than anticipated. I am the perfect extra pair of hands. I can certainly be on-site to meet the client and as needed for meetings, but I am primarily a teleworker.

Her: (after asking me some ridiculously basic professional questions to try to show that she really understands the tenets of the field I’m in and she wants to make sure I do, too) Okay! So can we meet soon? Can you show me some of your project samples?

Me: I’d be happy to.

aaaaaand scene.

Why didn’t I tell her the reasons for my last paid employment ending in September 2006? Because it’s none of her business.

I know if I tell her I have a small child at home, she will think I equate teleworking with free childcare on the clock. Anyone who has ever teleworked long-term knows you must regularly prove you are working five times harder than anyone back at the office. You cannot do so and look after another human being at the same time. You need to hire help. I know that. I don’t need to expend energy convincing her that I know that. Give me the work. If I do it well, keep me. If not, fire me. Don’t require face time just to make sure I’m not playing SIMs all day long. My work output will be enough to make that determination.

I feel a little lame, actually. Why do I not have my act together enough to create my own work? The thought of being an independent educational contractor exhausts me and I have yet to be disciplined enough to really apply myself to writing. I have been making excuses, excuses, excuses in my head. I am now essentially saying to someone: tell me what to do because I haven’t figured it out for myself yet.

I’ve got to hand it to her. I’ve got no car to get to her farflung suburban office, I’ve given no explanation for why I left my prior job, and I told her that I am only interested in a part-time telework placement, but she is still coming into the city to meet me. Maybe she’s hearing what I’m not saying…

 

 

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.

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!

Relief

Well, maybe not for you if you keep reading this, for I am about to whine loooong and hard.

Huz has committed to taking one consistent day off a week in the coming year. I am quite excited and relieved. Sound pathetic? Welcome to the life of a wife of a chef. Bean’s first year on Earth was hell on me largely because I had no help and I was in the house with him almost constantly (for a long time, he wasn’t a fan of going out and about; thankfully he likes it now). Huz had just been promoted and his world was rocked. I recovered from surgery alone, had Bean 16-18 hours a day alone (I accepted no offers of help from friends, I just didn’t know how to at that time, and in retrospect I wish someone had beat down the door and forced me to). I basically learned how to be a parent alone, alone, alone. Huz has since lived at work. I never know until each morning if he is going to be home for a bit or gone from sunrise until 1AM or what. One consistent day a week when I know I will have help will make a world of difference for me.

Here is an excerpt from a convo in my home:

Huz: My career makes it possible to live how we live.
Me: Your career makes it impossible for us to live any other way. We live in this expensive place because of proximity to your job; I wanted to go to a much cheaper neighborhood but you refused.
Huz: If we moved to a cheaper, further-away place I would never be at home.
Me: How would that be any different?
Me again: I need you to promise that you will schedule the same day off every week. Tell them I am going to be working and it is a non-negotiable day.
Huz: I will do my best, sometimes things happen though.
Me: How am I supposed to work if “things happen”? I will get fired within a month. It is going to be hard enough to find something I can do one day a week that isn’t in the adult entertainment industry.
Huz: There are lots of things you can get hired to do once a week. And if I have to go in I will make it at night after you get home. Chances are you will work during the day.
Me: Okay, that is one more limit you are placing on me. And what are the many things that I can be hired for once a week? Cleaning houses? No thank you, did that as an undergrad. Maybe piloting private planes? That would be a perfect idea if I had a fucking pilot’s license. I’m going to substitute teach so I can put my education degrees to some kind of use. It’s not ideal, but it’s the only thing I can think of under these circumstances. Still, I can’t create something even once a week if it is always going to come after your career.

(return to start of conversation and repeat in a neverending loop)

It’s kinda like the “who’s on first?” gag, except not at all charming.

I feel for him. He has worked so very hard to build something for himself, and for us. Yet my sleep, my food, my showers are not my own. His are. I go for walks by myself once a week if I am lucky. He goes for walks every day. I just need something for myself.

I can’t believe I am about to say this cliche thing, because we are us, and this wasn’t supposed to happen to us, but at times I feel like am like a second-class citizen as the person who takes care of the child and makes no money. Either one of us was willing to stay home (and ideally work from home with a sitter for Bean in the next room) in these first few years when we had a child, and I was the one who was making less money at the time that Bean arrived. It was just a matter of circumstance. Huz was my muchacho de la casa until I made the kinda insane decision to leave my fast-track corporate shizz to go back to non-profit (I had grown miserable feeling like I was devoting my life to making a bunch of old white men rich; money schmoney, said I, because once you grow accustomed to eating $800 meals for two, there really are only so many clubs and restaurants and hotels out there that can knock your socks off unless you are maybe in Dubai). I returned to non-profit only to get the shit-end of a ” choice to opt-out” after what was supposed to be a virtual gig fell through via office politics. I gambled and lost.

I digress. 

It made sense that I would stop working and I am grateful to be able to be home with Bean right now. But somehow in this transition to me becoming a sahp (I like that better, thanks for setting that example, Theresa!) Huz’s sleep, his debts, his everything have become the priority. How did this happen? How did our financial inequality create such vast inequalities across the board? I am just as much at fault as he is, for wanting to “protect him” from many of the realities of raising his own child this past year so he could perform optimally at work. I was scared out of my mind to be relying on his income and insurance benefits. I wanted him to be a superstar at work, to the point of my own mental and physical deterioration. Should he have swooped in to save me from this way of thinking? Or should I have said fuck that, you are getting up with this baby even though he just screams louder when you do, I don’t care if you just worked a 16 hour day and have to go back for another in 6 hours?

And does it really matter whose fault it is, anyway? Huz is a stellar husband and dad, I can’t stress that enough; he is just a very tired one who is not yet sure how to get out of the cycle he is in, and I’ve learned how to enable from the best.  The bottom line is that we are trying to function in a dysfunctional situation. Like my dear Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his final published book, “When a couple has an argument nowadays…what they are really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: ‘You’re not enough people!’ A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.” - A Man Without a Country

It’s exhausting to think about, this loop we are currently in.

What’s that you say? Hire childcare? Oooh, yes, let’s pay someone 70% of whatever I will likely make in my initial return to social services. I would looooove to be away from Bean all the time to make what amounts to a few bucks over minimum wage after we pay the sitter/daycare/whathaveyou (my heart hurts for the many people who do not have the luxury of refusing this option like I do). Besides, until Bean learns to speak, everybody scares us. We only trust our moms and sisters to look after him while he’s pre-verbal, and they live over a thousand miles away. Talk about a tough commute.

Okay, I’m done for now. Thank you for your eyes and your brain. Don’t think badly of me for being a whiney schlub when my situation is 1. self-created and 2. a billion times better than oh, at least a billion other people. I am just doing the best I can to make sense of it all and be a happy person.

When “choices” clash

Ahoy.

I’ve been asked to look after the infant of a family friend,”for money, of course”. You know, because my current role as a layabout sahm has left me desperate for cash and something to do.

Seriously, the choices (if they can be called choices…more like coping mechanisms in an anti-family society) of some dear friends have always been very different than ours. The fella and Huz seem to have the same discussion of the pros and cons of daycare vs. one-income living every time they talk. The fella and his wife feel that I am wasting my education and ruining my career prospects, and not giving Bean proper socialization nor the opportunity to build up his immune system by my not working for pay outside the home and sending Bean to daycare. They are unaware of the circumstances surrounding my ”choice to opt-out” (ha! ha ha haaaaaaaa!) and I don’t particularly care to enlighten them on the specifics. No point. Their minds are already made up and I am not here to convert them to my way of thinking. It has been annoying to be judged like this, but I’ve just agreed to disagree and told Huz I don’t know why he gets sucked into the debate time and time again.

But now: their second child, at three months, is not coping well with daycare. He’s got a bad belly, it seems; loose poops, problems with formula, ongoing minor illnesses, etc etc. The daycare keeps sending him home. The center doesn’t want the liability of dealing with what I guess they feel is a less-than-hearty infant. So in seeking a solution, their thoughts have turned to me. If I am already hanging around at home, I should be happy to have the opportunity to make a little money, right?

Nah. It is already unnatural for a person to be alone all the time with one baby, let alone two, especially with them being so close in age. I told Huz to say I wish them the best but have my hands full with Bean and my writing projects. I suppose there is no polite way to tell them I would be happy to donate a few ounces of breastmilk every day for the baby. I’m still nursing Bean so it would be no trouble. The fella can easily pick it up on his way home from work each night. 

They would probably stop talking to us if I offered.

I’m not trying to be political with the suggestion. I just believe that breastmilk could help. Of course, I also believe that they should not have bought more house than they could afford, requiring them to put both kids in daycare full-time and almost negating the salary one of them is making, and that if I were them I would sell the place, move in with their nearby family and have one spouse quit working to be with the kids at least until the baby gets better, but I’m not going to say that, either. I know how much it sucks to be judged based on incomplete information. It also sucks to feel like I am letting down people by refusing to help them in a time of need. I simply believe it would cause more problems than it would solve if I looked after an infant in addition to Bean, no matter how well I was compensated (although it’s likely that the compensation would be quite low).

Here I am once again, with new revelations brought on by parenthood. Who knew I would ever consider it a great idea to essentially be a volunteer wet nurse for friends? Who knew I would ever feel so strongly about any of these things? I am surprising myself daily.

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In another parenting “choice” convo today, I was told by someone who had two healthy deliveries and uninterrupted nursing during both of her minimal hospitals stays that she “wished she could have had a c-section” like me. She wishes that her child’s life were in such danger that it required major emergency surgery to extract him quickly so he could be saved? She went on to say how common c-sections were in her mother’s group. That’s right, they are rilly, rilly popular. It’s the in thing to do, the top-notch choice of the weak and the too-posh-to-push. I’m sure that all of those women were pleased to death that they ”got to be taken care of for so long afterward”. Never mind the mind-numbing terror of it all, the catheter, and the physical and emotional pain that lingers for months. Just think of those fabulous 3 extra days you get in the hospital before they kick you out! Hell, some babies like Bean even have to stay behind! What a great break for the parents!

I know she was just trying to say that she wish she had been able to rest more after her deliveries, but damn, what a misguided way of saying so.

I am having one hell of a time trying to maintain my friendships with other parents during these past few days. I won’t even get into the guns-in-the-house-with-kids debate I recently found myself carefully navigating through. 

I seem to be allowing myself to feel very defensive for some reason, too. I need to stop that. They can all bite me. Bring on The Beavers.

Gah!

Why is this a giant leap for womankind? Good for them, I am thrilled for them. They are qualified. Is that such a surprise?

It makes me sad that one of the astronauts said she’s “luckier” because nobody is making public comments implying that her job will be to clean to fucking shuttle. I know she means she has it easier than the women who went before her, but it has nothing to do with luck. It was hard fought and hard won. I’ll forgive the word choice on a personal level, but not what it represents on a societal one.

And why does the article’s author get into who has kids and who is married to whom? What does that have to do with being an astronaut? Do they get into the personal lives of the male astronauts in articles about their roles and accomplishments? wtf, Marcia Dunn? Do you realize what you are implying with the way this article is written that these two women have made it further because they have no children and are married to scientists, while the others never made it to commander or quit and oh by the way, those are the ones that have kids?

If my hair hadn’t taken so long to grow back, I’d be pulling it out. Why do I still read things posted on msnbc? I get pissed off every time.