I Am A…
Cross-posted from Eclectic Journey Photography
Clickin Moms, my home away from home, has a great project going on now to benefit RAINN, an anti-sexual assault organization. They call it the I Am A Photographer project, but it is really about sharing who you are apart from being a photog or a mom. You are to shoot a photo of yourself (or have someone else shoot it) holding a sign that completes the sentence, “I am a…” It can be serious or light-hearted. And for each submission, CM will donate $1 to RAINN.
I had so many possibilities swirling around my head for weeks, but it took until today, the final day submissions are being accepted, to land on the right one. The result is not fancy, but it is honest and real.
I strive every single day to be a better role model for my daughter than some focus-on-my-looks-must-appeal-to-a-man-someday-my-prince-will-come-to-rescue-me stupid Disney pink princess.
Thank you CM for starting such a great project!
Anatomy of a Family Photo
Crossposted from Eclectic Journey Photography
Hi Friends,
So here’s the question for the day: how many photos does it take to get the ideal Clark-Schecter holiday card picture? Now before you answer remember that this involves my being in front of the camera and not behind it. That added a degree of difficulty of about 200%.
What do you think?
- 5 shots
- 50 shots
- 100 shots
- 200 shots
- 417 shots over 3 separate sessions
If you chose any option other than the last choice, well, you must be one of those optimists!
Our first foray was on December 4th. I was going for a sun-going-down, golden hour look. It was unseasonably warm and the kid was cooperating. Honestly after that shoot, I thought I had nailed it then and there. Got some great shots. Rocked the backlighting. Of course when we had started, I had forgotten to tell AdoringHusband to take off his damn Transitions glasses! Those things have plagued me for years. I’ve spent way too long in previous years attempting to restore visible eyes behind those sun-darkened lenses.
But that notwithstanding, I was able to find some goodies. I then posted the ones I was considering for the card on Clickin Moms to get some feedback.
So I’m thinking to myself, these both look pretty good, if I do say so myself. Though I prefer the second one to the first because of Zara’s expression, I think the softness in our features from the backlighting might make it the weaker choice.
And then the feedback started to come in.
“Gorgeous shot, but that tree is too distracting,” one commentor said. From another: “I agree with the previous poster. Wish you had positioned yourselves differently.”
And I’m thinking to myself, OMG, there is a tree growing out of our heads. Am I mental? How did I not see that?!
The truth is that I had seen the tree but ended up at a loss about how to position us in relation to that tree. Somehow I thought that if there were three of us, it wouldn’t look as if the tree were growing out of all of our heads. But there is it, up close and personal. The tree IS growing out of our heads!
Other commenters attempted to assure me that those I would send the card to would not be nearly as distracted by the tree as we photogs are. Of course, by that point, I could see nothing in the photo BUT the tree! I decided to reshoot.
Unfortunately Saturday the 10th was nothing like Sunday the 4th. It was about 20 degrees colder and the ground was wet and mucky. The kid was cold and uncooperative and the hubby was surly because she was cold and he felt that I hadn’t dressed her warmly enough. I ended up rushing the shoot despite doing all I could to keep her in the warm car between set-ups. I then made the mistake of asking her to smile showing her teeth. She’d never had any problem with that in the past, but after getting back to my computer and uploading the images, I found that my kid must have decided that she was a beaver! I saw some of the most silly faces she has ever made.
I was so sad that night. What kind of photographer did I hope to be if I couldn’t even get a photo of my own family?! So my dear, supportive husband made me get right back in the saddle. The next day, he insisted in going out and doing it all over again. He’d dress Z in more layers and he would stop breathing down my neck in order to allow me to relax and do my thing. Of course Z ended up in one of her oppositional defiant modes again, but a total of 417 shots later, we had some good photos that didn’t have trees growing out of our heads!
Here are some of the outtakes:
Note the wonderful Transitions lenses in these:
Yes, this still has the tree, but I love this shot!
So which photos made it to the card?
Front:
Inside top:
Inside bottom, flanking holiday message:
Not so bad, despite all that work, right? I’m going to use these to make a canvas wall photo collection for the house.
But I do have to show you guys the beauty of digital editing, though. Now you all know that I’m massively huge these days thanks for my steroids. Even though I’m in a feel good about myself because fat is better than dead place, I still shuddered a bit at how round both Mason and I looked in these images. I opted to use a can-be-used-for-good-or-for-evil editing tool called liquify. Using this PS tool, I managed to give us a bit of a digital diet in some of the photos:
Before is on top and after below. We lost a good 20 pounds with the use of technology! Mason wanted me to go even further, but no. These tools cannot be used to suspend all connection with reality!
So there you have it, my friends. The fun of a family photo shoot when you are both photog and subject!
Hope your holiday was wonderful! Best to you in the new year!
Combating Genderism over Ice Cream
This afternoon, while AdoringHusband was indulging his man cold, I decided to take Zizi to the movies. She’s not yet at the point where she will watch a non-animated feature in the theater, so I decided on Puss in Boots, in IMAX 3D.
We had a really good time together after the mother with the whining/crying/loud child finally moved away from us after repeatedly being shushed by many of the patrons. Even Zara turned around and offered some shushes of her own. The mother’s response? The typical, he’s just a child. Yeah, like it was our fault that we didn’t accept and indulge her noisy offspring. Sure, I really wanted to pay $35 for two tickets to a movie neither of us would be able to hear.
The movie was cute, Zara was entertained, and I could eagerly listen to Antonio Bandaras read my shopping list. I did spend an inordinate amount of time during the film trying to identify Humpty’s voice (Zach Galifianakis).
Afterwards, we stopped by the empty Coldstone Creamery for mommy-daughter ice-cream bonding. Zizi gushed on and on about the cats, the golden goose and so on. She’s at an age where it is really fun to talk to her. That little mind is just fascinating.
But in between spoonfuls of dark chocolate ice cream with M&Ms, she said something that made my heart sink to my feet.
“I want to be a hero, too, Mommy, but I can’t because I’m a girl.”
I tried to keep my expression relatively neutral but it was clear that I had failed miserably when her eyes widened considerably as they moved from her spoon to my face.
I had an immediate feeling of anger and outrage that little girls in 2011 are still getting messages from the media that courage and heroism belong in the male turf and beauty/appearance and princessness are female turf. I was also very saddened that my and AdoringHusband’s “fierce girl” egalitarian messages were not enough to counter society’s onslaught of genderism. I had hoped that she would never think such a gendered belief, much less utter it as if it were fact. But I knew I had to get the warring emotions under control so that she would not get the message that she had done something wrong.
The first thing I started with was in clarifying why I had reacted to what she had said.
“Mommy is not upset with you about what you just said, honey,” I started. “Mommy just doesn’t like that movies and TV shows make kids feel like the hero is supposed to be a boy and the person he rescues is supposed to be a girl. You are a hero when you put on your SuperZara cape to go rescue people. And you are a hero with your sword and shield you use to slay the dragon. There is no ‘girls have to do this‘ and “boys have to be that‘ in our family. We can all be and do whatever we want. There are no limits.”
She looked a bit relieved that I wasn’t upset with her, and smiled a lot when I recounted SuperZara’s and Zara the Dragonslayer’s exploits. There seemed to be a yeah, I am a hero, recognition inside herself. I took that opportunity to recount Grandma Ericka’s story.
“You remember how I’ve told you all about Grandma Ericka?” I asked.
“Yes, she is up in heaven with God,” she replied reverently.
“Well when she was in school, she decided that she wanted to become a doctor. The problem was that way back then, there weren’t very many doctors who were women. Her teachers kept telling her that she had to be a nurse.”
“That’s silly, Mommy! You’re a doctor,” she interjected.
“Yes I am, but back then you didn’t see women doctors like you see now. And because of that, people tried to tell Grandma Ericka that she was being ridiculous. But you know what happened?”
“What?” she replied, ice cream forgotten.
“She went to her father, my grandfather, Papa, we called him. She went to Papa and told him that she really wanted to be a doctor but that her teachers were telling her that she couldn’t do it. She should become a nurse instead. And Papa, who had only gotten to 8th grade in school told her that if that is what she wanted to be, that she should become a doctor and never let anyone tell her that she couldn’t do or be something if she wanted to. He made her a promise that if she got the good grades, he would find some way to pay for school so that she could become a doctor. He also went down to her school and told off the teachers for telling his daughter that she couldn’t be a doctor!”
“And then what happened, Mommy? Did he beat them up!”
“No, silly! He didn’t have to. Grandma Ericka made excellent grades and got into medical school. When she graduated only 4 of the students in her class were women. Can you believe that?!”
She shook her head, no.
“She became a doctor, and so did Auntie Marsha, and Aunt Jade and Mommy. We don’t care what other people tell us we should be or should do (except for behaving and listening to the teacher’s instructions in school). We do what our heart, brain and soul tells us is RIGHT. And you, my lovey, are just like Mommy and Grandma Ericka: whatever we want to be, we go for it and never let anyone stop us. Right?!”
“Right!!” she chimed excitedly in response.
I know that this was just one of many battles that will need to be fought for her benefit. I also know that ages 4-6 are the prime ages for gender awareness and gender conformity. But good lord…how do I fight Hollywood, the Disney Princesses, hell, our genderist society to give my girl child the best foundation she can have?
I’ve been chatting with another mother during Z’s ballet class time. I’ve made no secret of my anti-princess crusade during our talks and she admitted that she feels similarly about them, yet her family makes her concerns out to be much ado about nothing. Yep, that sounds familiar. Recently her just turned 4-year-old kidlet told her one day before school, “Mommy, I have to wear a dress today because otherwise I won’t be beautiful and no one will marry me!” The child is barely 4 years old and she has already received the loud message that as a girl/woman your worth is your appearance first and foremost. How do we allow this to be done to our girls…to our children?
Some days I just feel ill. But I’ll keep fighting…for her sake.
This is what a hero looks like:
For more information about ways you can help address genderism in the media and raise healthy girls, check out the following sites:
Miss Representation
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media
7 Wonderlicious
Parenting Pink
Girls Inc.
Hardy Girls, Healthy Women
What Do Normals Do?
The really cool and fun thing about blogging about yourself is that no matter how out there or different you think your experiences may be, you can usually find another traveler who has also journeyed along your particular offshoot path. My doppelganger is my fellow blogger-doc-mom Kayla.
She was quick to let me know that she too shared my oddball, raised indoors, decidedly not normal upbringing. And like me, she seeks to simulate normal as much as possible for her daughters.
So my last post resonated with her a good deal. This led to a discussion of how we wish that there was some Manual for Being Normal that people like us could follow. I think I forgot to tell her that I was so daunted by the idea of free play with my kidlet during her toddlerhood that I actually bought books to help me think of things to do (beyond let’s play nap and be quiet and stop bothering me, two of my mother’s favorite games).
She started us off with a list of things that she’s heard that normal families do. We then began exploring these ideas with the zeal of social anthropologists studying the parenting rituals of the long-isolated Zuglut Tribe of outer Mongolia. (Yes, I just made that up. Don’t go off and start searching for “Zuglut!” Stay with me now!)
Here was her list:
1) Family game night
2) Pick their own fruit
3) Watch their kids compete
4) Start sports/activities before 7th grade
5) Display affection
I was all like, yes, I’ve heard of these activities. When I was a kid, I thought only the people on TV actually did these things, however. I would have sooner heard my mother announce we were taking a trip to Mars than going apple picking! Game night? What was that? All I could remember were drunken holiday games of Monopoly that degenerated into accusations of villainy and treachery before the night was done. We won’t even start on the rarity of kissing or hugging.
However my parents did come to watch me run track in 4th grade. It remains one of my most infamous memories.
It was my first real race where a starter pistol was used. I jumped straight up, startled, when the shot was fired. By the time I had recovered, I was in last place since the others had known to run forward and not straight up into the air. I tried to catch up but couldn’t. I was devastated. And then I had to face my family…
My mother was nearly hysterical with laughter. “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” she exclaimed, oblivious to my rising shame. “You looked like you had lead in your shoes, you were so slow!” Then she dissolved into another laughing fit.
Yeah, at that point I would have preferred that she had kept her ass home.
I decided to add a few more items to the list Kayla had started:
6) Take family vacations together – I don’t mean the immediate family. I mean collecting the grandparents, siblings, cousins and their families and heading off on a cruise together. It seems like the most bizarre thing ever. The most my family has ever been able to manage was dinner together…with great difficulty.
7) Go as a family to pick the Christmas tree
Go to a parade, neighborhood festival, fireworks display or other celebratory congregation of local strangers
9) Share food – Do you know how hard it was for me to learn to share food with friends, boyfriends, my husband? No no no! Your food was the food on your plate, plain and simple. If, as small children, we dared reach for something on Mom’s plate, we found ourselves stabbed in the hand with the quickness. Thus in later years when someone said a “let me try your” whatever it was at the time as his/her fork angled toward my plate, it took all my self control not to commit forkicide. I learned to tell myself, “this is what normals do” and “put the fork down.”
10) Have or patronize garage or rummage sales – People in our little subdivision love to have community garage or yard sales. I think I still look at them as if they are speaking in parseltongue whenever they ask me if I want to participate. Sell my old stuff?! To my neighbors?! What the what?
Why would anyone want to buy any of my old crap? And why in the name of all that is holy would I want to buy their old crap?! It has been used, right? This is likely to be one of the normal rituals that I’ll just have to pass on…seriously.
So OK my peeps. Help me and Kayla out with more lessons on normal family activities. I know you have a ton more you can add to our list, right?
Being Normal
Last Sunday was such a beautiful day. Clear skies, great temperatures. Just gorgeous.
Now had I followed my usual habits that day, I would have slept as late as the kid would have allowed, rolled around in my jammies for too long, and then start trying to balance the work that I need to do with the kid’s need to “do something fun” as she likes to put it. The “doing something fun” part is always a struggle for me. Between being chronically exhausted with batshit moods, fun isn’t always in my arsenal. Luckily AdoringHusband is much better finding fun for her, though he does tend to repeat the same tried-and-true fun again and again.
But last Sunday was different. I had a photo shoot scheduled in West Chester, PA for 9 AM. That meant no rolling around in bed or in jammies. It meant getting up, packing up the car and driving for almost an hour to take photos of some adorable kids. It was on my drive back that I got some inspiration. It was a nudge toward being normal. Being normal is NOT something that comes easily to either me or AdoringHusband.
Those regular readers of the blog know that my childhood did not tend toward normal. Some might call it strange, bizarre, extremely sheltered or overcontrolled. Of course I didn’t realize any of that while I was growing up with Mummy. I thought it was normal for some people to just remain housebound…for long periods of time. I remember a Christmas vacation spent indoors 90% of the time…in California. We didn’t often go anywhere as a family and we certainly weren’t allowed much freedom to go and play outside if my mother wasn’t home. Add to that the fact that my mother disliked well, people, so we rarely had visitors either, ergo…decidedly not normal.
It didn’t bother me too much at the time. I was so involved with reading, crocheting, and soap operas that I wasn’t as bothered as one would imagine. And we did have school and day camp that allowed us to be socialized so that we didn’t act like primates around the normals. But a day, or weekend spent in the house was my version of normal. It was what I knew.
AdoringHusband’s childhood was similarly not normal as well. He too had a parent who shunned people and thus didn’t get out and do much. He, even moreso than me, is still perfectly happy staying in the house all day, in his PJs playing on the computer or watching TV. To my surprise, I ended up being the one exhorting us to get out and do something during our early years together. Quelle suprise! But in my adulthood I came to learn that normals don’t spend weekend after weekend roaming the house in their pajamas. They do things! So I was more likely to agitate for doing something, even it was going to the bookstore, getting a cappuccino and reading there (as opposed to doing so at home).
Zara’s arrival changed us even further. First, I found myself fearful of following in Mummy Dearest’s steps and raising another broken chronically housebound child so I ended up pushing even further when she was an infant to get her out of the house regularly so she could see things. I would kick myself if I did nothing more than walk her around the block in the stroller. That wasn’t enough!
Then Z’s innate personality kicked in. As soon as she could formulate the thought (even if she was unable to express it fully) the kid wanted to be outside. Like all the time. Though her first word was “shoes,” her fifth word must have been “outside.” She felt the calling of the breeze, the grass, and the sky. (Her mother, on the other hand, had a fear of grass most of her young childhood because her mean ol’ auntie told her that there were bloodsuckers in the grass that would suck her blood in 2 seconds. It was only when she reached 3rd or 4th grade that she learned of the trick that had been played on her!) Thus very unlike her mother and father, Z would have loved a bedroom located on our front lawn! Being indoors was seen as torture. How dare we take her inside?! AdoringHusband and I both realized that we had to step up our game for this kid.
That’s when we really began trying to simulate being normal as best as two not-normal adults could possibly achieve. We’d ask ourselves, what do normal people do on the 4th of July? Then we’d do our best to emulate normal with variable success. Sometimes we executed flawlessly: take kidlet to see Santa and have her picture taken…easy peasy. Other times there were challenges: AdoringHusband said our township’s 4th of July parade started at 1 pm. Yet when we drove near the parade route, all we saw were torn streamers and no parade. We got to the starting point and found that the parade had started at 11 am and by 1 pm had long been finished. This caused AdoringHusband to get defensive about what he’s sure he read as a 1 pm start time, as Z kept asking in that repetitive way that 4 year olds do, “Where’s the parade, Daddy?” All the while I’m both pissed and amused, thinking, see what happens when you try to be normal? We get it wrong as often as we get it right.
Which brings me back to last Sunday. As I drove back from the shoot, I noticed many cars with bikes attached as they made their way to the park, bike trail or wherever people ride bikes. I had a flash of inspiration. What if we went on a family bike ride too?! That’s something normals do!” Whoa! I almost had to fan myself after that bit of normalspiration!
I arrived home just before noon to find both AdoringHusband and Z still in jammies (what did I tell you?) playing Dora Rescues The Ice Princess on the Wii. I took AH aside and shared my bright idea. Brilliant, he concurred. But where do we go for such a ride?
This is where the normals have us beat by a mile. In order to figure out where to have our great family bike ride, we must take to the computer, making extensive searches for “family bike trails.” Why? Because we have no freaking idea where normal families go to ride bikes. Our neighbors, who we like to emulate in their being normal, have not shared that secret with us. So AdoringHusband found a few potential places, agonized over the length of the trail and our 4 year olds ability to ride 20 miles (NOT!). Then he got into the perfectionistic worry of choosing the wrong bike trail for The Family Bike Ride, a fate that will not only earn him a D- on his report card of life, but will cause untold need for therapeutic intervention when Z gets older. I then had to validate his choice of Nockamixin State Park‘s 2 mile trail surrounding a lake as being an A+ selection. I then went to entertain Z while he got the bikes ready and the rack on my car. 40 minutes later he announced that he was done, though I was a bit surprised that though the bikes are outside, they have not been attached to the car. Clearly his done and my done are a bit different.
I went back in and packed snacks, filled water bottles and debated about plates and napkins or just napkins? What is the right choice? Just napkins, I decided. Z got the picnic blanket and we waited for AH. He was not out putting the bikes onto the car. Where was he? Comatose on the toilet, I thought. 15 minutes later, he returned downstairs. Z and I have all our supplies in the car.
“Are you going to get the bikes onto the car?” I asked.
“Yes, but I can’t find my wallet?”
“How do you lose your wallet in the house?” I started.
“Well I guess I don’t need it…I’ll just go without it,” he decided.
And then I had a flash of him getting plowed over by a passel of skateboarders on the trail, having a head injury and no ID for the police to figure out who he is. (Where Z and I are in this twisted fantasy, I have no idea.) “Oh go find your wallet,” I grunted.
Z and I got into the car and waited for a year another 10 minutes before he came out with wallet to put the bikes on the rack. It then took a century 15 more minutes to get the two bikes secured. (Z’s went into the back of the wagon). He got into the car.
“Do you have the address of the park?” he asked.
“Of course not,” I snapped back, “you had all the printouts!”
He went back into the house. Z and I waited another millennium for his return before I decided to call him from the car.
“Yes honey” he answered.
“Will you be out soon?” I asked trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
“I’m just not sure that the park we chose is the right one. There’s another in Doylestown but it is 40 minutes away…”
“You’re back on the computer?!”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure…”
“Fine, we’re going to get gas. Will that give you enough time to figure it out?”
“Yes, you go get gas,” he answered hurriedly.
I then needed to convince Z that we were not leaving Her Daddy, but were going to get gas and come back for him. This accomplished, we returned to find Her Daddy ready to go to the original bike trail. And with that, we set off for our Family Bike Ride!
A fabulous time was had by all.
These photos were taken with my crappy point & shoot.
Z took this one herself. I think it is perfect. Her mommy & daddy reflecting their cockeyed version of being normal for the most important person in their lives.
As we went riding down the trail, Z asked, “When are we going to find something else fun at this park?” We just had to laugh…
Excuse Me While I Go Batshit For A Moment
Last week in my return to blogging post, I wrote that I’d be doing a lot more real life, everyday blogging. And then I disappeared.
In my defense, there was a mini-vacation over the holiday weekend: Hershey, PA. Fun, but no diva vacation like I had hoped. The kidlet seemed to have a great time, though.
But back to the no blogging thing. I swear that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to blog. It was more that something else came up. And that was my falling into being batshit again.
Maybe batshit is too harsh of a term. I’m not hearing voices or seeing the green tooth fairy riding an elephant out of my bathroom mirror. But my mind and the delicate equilibrium of medication and pure will that keeps me halfway functioning has been thrown completely out of whack.
I’ve had depression since adolescence (though at the time it was hard to tell whether it was actually depression or being raised by my narcissistic, love-withholding mummy. Those things can be hard to sort out for even the most aware of adolescents!). There were many, many rough years, but sometime during residency when the on-call crying jags became almost career-limiting, I found that medication helped me feel what, I guess, others call normal.
Coolness! It was as if someone had changed the television of my life from B&W to color. I was like, wow, this is really amazing…until it stopped working. Then there was a dose adjustment, and woo-hoo, the blue skies were back again! All was well for a little bit, a few years actually, and I managed to wean off completely. Hooray!
Yeah well, unfortunately my brain’s wiring was still screwy. Gradually a couple years later, both depression and some phobias began to creep into my life. Sigh. It was time to return both to talk therapy and medication.
I’ve adjusted to the fact that I have mood disorders that require medication. There’s no shame in that. It’s just a genetic twist of fate that has to be managed. But what ticks me the heck off is that I can’t just have ordinary depression. I’ve got to have atypical depression or treatment resistant depression that requires the combined brainpower of a psychiatric think tank to medicate properly.
Sure you’re saying to yourself, what’s she got to be depressed about? She should just exercise more or hang out with good friends. That’s all she needs! You’re probably even thinking about saying something helpful like, don’t be depressed, so that these words will snap me out of my stinking thinking. I will warn you that if you ever utter any such words in my direction, I will travel through your computer and bitch-slap you for uttering such ridiculosity to me! I have been through enough, tried enough, and seen enough specialists to know that my brain needs assistance through meds. I’m so talk therapized by now that I could BE a therapist. But my brain neurochemistry that controls my mood (and my phobias and assorted other DSM-IV crap) needs medication. Well that is IF and only IF I want to function, be employed, and resemble a normal human being,
So where was I? Oh yes, medication. In the mid-90s I managed to find a psychopharmacologist (I didn’t even know this specialty existed until then) extraordinaire in Dr. Nick the Diligent. Nick knew his meds inside and out. He was finger on the pulse of the latest data. He took me off the 3x/day v@lium another doc had put me on (yikes!) and tried a little of this and a little of that until we found a regimen that worked. I had graduated from a plain ol’ simple antidepressant prescribed by a simple psychiatrist to something resembling witchdoctoring. I was that complicated…until Nick found a newish drug (at the time) that worked on both serotonin and norepinephrine. That drug was Eff@xor and it was the mainstay of my mood/phobia/crap management for 15 years.
That is until I started that whole trouble breathing thing last Thanksgiving. You may remember that the best what the hell caused this lung hypersensitivity pneumonitis theory we have relates to a very rare side-effect of a medicine I’ve been on for 15 yeqrs. Yes, you see where this is going. The best guess was that it was the Eff@xor (though I believe it was probably the generic version that my prescription company switched to mid-last year that caused the reaction). I then had to wean off of my mainstay drug.
At first I was sorta-OK. Hell, high-dose steroids can get you feeling better than you have in decades (if you don’t mind the insomnia, chipmunk face, and long-term badness that can happen with chronic use). And it took me a month to fully wean off the Eff@xor. (That med is a beeyotch to come off of).
Yet after being off for about a month and also decreasing my steroids, I began to notice some batshit moods developing. My current psychopharmacologist, Dr. Sarah the Patient, tinkered here and there with this med and that one. I’d get a little better, then have a bad day, and then do better again. But it was hard to figure out how much was:
a) being off Eff@xor
b) being on steroids (yes, steroids can make you batshit)
c) not sleeping at night (my insomnia was terrible)
d) putting stepfather into assisted-living
e) managing stepfather’s finances (a hot mess)
f) trying to negotiate the dysfunction that is my family with regard to my stepfather
g) the job
h) the unemployed husband
i) the wonderful but challenging 4-year-old
You can see how it might be a tad difficult to sort out what my freaking problem was.
We had managed to achieve some semblance of stable, though not good by any stretch, when I decided (yes, I do decide some stupid things at times) to take myself off of one of my helper meds. I didn’t think it was doing that much and it’d been replaced with a different helper, so gee, did I really need both? I stopped taking it.
It.did.not.go.well. AT ALL.
I called Dr. Sarah the Patient. “Start taking it again,” she counseled. She is wise. So I started again. And I got to relative stability in a few days. But then I went back to my, well can I take less of it, mode of thinking. I did ask first this time. And we talked about the possibility of moving from 40 mg to 25 mg at some point in the future. OK, I thought. But a week later I found myself running out of 40 mg capsules and unsure whether to get a new prescription for the same dose or move to the 25 mg dose. So what did I do? Did I call Dr. Sarah? Nah, it was a holiday weekend. Did I call myself a refill? Nah. Why pay the copay when I’m not sure which dose I should be on? So what did I do? I found the 80 mg capsules I had from before and (I can see your face scrunching up already…the train wreck is about to hit!) proceeded to open the capsule each day and dump out what I perceived with my discerning eyes to be 40 mg from the 80 mg capsule.
Guess what happened? I went batshit again!
Last night with my kid was a horror that I do not wish to repeat. I was so wound. I felt like David Banner right before he changed into the Hulk. I was so angry. My muscles felt coiled and ready to strike (and no, I did not strike my kid, but there was a lot of batshit yelling involved in last night’s horror). I could not stand down. And did I mention that I also had a migraine? Bad mixture. Awful, awful, awful.
Before I put her to bed, I told her that I was sorry that I was so grumpy. I also explained that I didn’t know why I was so grumpy. But one thing I did know, it had nothing to do with her.
To that, my amazing child replied with a question, “Is someone else making you grumpy?”
“No, my sweetie,” I said hugging her and fighting the tears, “Mommy just doesn’t feel OK right now. Something inside her is making her feel grumpy.”
“Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe you’ll feel better if you get a good night’s sleep and not stay up too late,” she offered.
Once again I felt so undeserving of this incredible child. I kissed her goodnight and felt both shame and relief. Once the house was quiet, I felt the rage leeching out of my muscles. The shame continued, however.
Today I called Dr. Sarah the Patient. She made recommendations and I listened. I know she can help me. I know that it will take time to find the right regimen. But the struggle against batshittedness is exhausting.
Once Upon A Blog
Once upon a time I had a blog. I blogged to share, I blogged to vent, I blogged to process all that was my crazy life. It wasn’t always pretty or profound, but it was a great outlet for me.
Yet somehow things began to change for me and blogging. It became more about crafting the writing than it was my lifesharing tool. I ended up doing my lifesharing (or microblogging) on Twitter or Facebook because I began to believe that if I blogged, really blogged, it had to have meaning and depth. In order words, it had to be an oeuvre rather than brief missive from the brink. And there I lost sight of how important this sharing has been to my life over the years.
There has been so much crap going on in my life of late. I don’t even know where to begin in deconstructing the dramas. Most nights, I’m so zoned out that all I do is lie across the bed and play the latest Hidden Object game I have on my iPad. I don’t feel depressed, per se, but there is a certain lassitude to my mind that doesn’t feel right at all. It is of no help that I had to be weaned off my trusty antidepressant of 15 years since there is a very good chance that it caused all my lung disease drama. Since then I’ve been coping with steroids (I’m down to 10 mg/day now) and a combination of an antidepressant and an ADD med. Other than obsessive-compulsive hair pulling, I’ve been relatively stable of late…much better than the flying batshit banshee that I was when my steroid dose was higher. But now I don’t have any idea whether my lassitude (love that word) is related to my mood dysfunction, the steroid decrease, or the fact that so many other whack-ass things have been going on in my life that I’m just freaking spent.
Yep, AdoringHusband is still unemployed and is a bit too comfortable with that status.
Yes, my little spitfire, Z, continues to put me through my parenting paces. (Difficult to cope with when you are alternately batshit crazy or suffused with lassitude)
And yes, my stepfather, who we moved from his home to assisted living during a difficult trip in June, has had 4 hospitalizations in the past 6 weeks. Did I mention that I’m tasked with paying his bills, dealing with his creditors (people with dementia can spend a lot more money than they have), convincing people that my having his power of attorney and being appointed the successor trustee of his living trust is enough to allow them to talk to me about his IRS bill? Did I mention that I’ve spent so long on hold that I’ve started to appreciate good Muzak?
Then there is the dysfunction that is our family. We were never the most normal or supportive of families, but now our interactions have moved to the twilight zone of the ridiculous. Between who isn’t speaking to whom and who is upset about one thing or another, it can kinda be hard to rally together to manage yet another crisis.
Once upon a time, there was a blog that helped me keep my sanity together during some tough times. It’s time that I revisit that blog again.
Sure there will be the occasional oeuvre, but right now, right here, I need release more than I need to create art with words. I hope you’ll stick around for it.
Vacation As Diva
I need a vacation. I say that with no equivocation whatsoever.
I want to relax in the sun, preferably by a beautiful body of water, and clear out the mental detritus of the past couple of years. But alas, circumstances being what they are, I’m having great difficulty coming up with a respite plan that meets my usual criteria. You see, the problem is that when I vacation, I vacation as a diva.
Now I’m not trying to say that I jet off to far away lands in my private plane, to be waited on by my adoring staff. That would be vacationing as a super diva. No, I am not there. I’m just an ordinary diva who flies coach when she has to.
There are, however, certain things I look for when I travel:
1. Peace & Quiet: The whole point of a vacation is to relax and renew, right? So traveling to noisy, stress-inducing locales, like say, Disney World with a 4 year old, is likely to have me return home with greater stress than when I left. Thus I attempt, as best I can, to find off-the-beaten-path areas full of P&Q. Now, I’m not going totally off the beaten path, like say, camping in the wilderness (or camping any other place). But I want to find places that aren’t full of everyone plus his/her second cousin.
2. Novelty: I must immediately explain this one. I don’t mean going on vacation to see a novelty attraction like the world’s largest ball of string. I am not that diva (truthfully, I don’t know many divas who would visit such an attraction).
What I mean is that I enjoy going to interesting places that I’ve not visited before. Again, I’m not talking about Paw Paw, West Virginia (a place I have visited several times, in truth). I mean like Albufeira, Portugal, Guadaloupe, Moorea, as examples. If I need a passport, there’s a beach and I haven’t been there before, I am so there! (Well as long as there is little chance of political strife suddenly breaking out since that would take away from #1 above.)
3. The Fewer Americans The Better: So I totally get that this makes me sound totally like a country-hater who should move to France, start smoking, and wear berets. Please don’t get me wrong. I love my country. I’d just like to be apart from my countrymen and women when traveling abroad. Americans can be so…American. There can be an insularity and…well I’ll say it…superiority to some American travelers abroad that makes me pretend that I am, in fact, from France. (My accent is good enough to fake it.)
I remember the vacation I took to Guadaloupe with the Irish guy I was dating at the time (the one who after me hooked up with his current lifepartner, John, who he has been with for the past decade…but that’s another story). Guadaloupe is (or was at the time) one of those places where you had to speak French in order to make it there. There were some English-speaking tourists, but the majority of the tourists were from that frequently-mentioned-in-this-post country, France. The guy and I had this hit us like a brick at the airport when our resort shuttle was nowhere to be found. We were pulling out long forgotten French from the nether regions of our cerebral cortex like crazy. Then we had to contend with the fact that Parisian French is different from Caribbean-accented French. “Répétez s’il vous plaît” soon became our catchphrase.
The first night there after managing to find our way from the airport, getting to the resort, having to change rooms because they had given us twin beds (!), stumbling down to dinner, blundering through ordering, then trying to find our way back to the room, we passed an American (!!) fussing at the front desk clerk. He was increasingly escalating because of her inability to understand him given her poor English. “Isn’t there anyone in this goddammned place who can speak English!” he yelled loudly in full pique. The guy and I passed him attempting to look confused and very French. We did not want to be associated with this American. I mean, come on. There is a bit of hubris in being angry that there is no one in a French-speaking country’s tourist resort that caters to French-speaking people, who speaks good ol’ American English. But see, a lot of Americans traveling abroad can be like that. Everyone should speak English and there should be a hamburger on every menu. Groan. Leave your comfort zone. Try something new. And if you are traveling to a place that doesn’t normally have a big American (or British or South African) tourist trade, then bring someone with you who does speak the language!
I will admit that I can get a little American while traveling abroad with regard to one thing: breakfast. It’s my favorite meal. And sometimes you are in places where their idea of breakfast is NOT what you’ve got your mind ready to eat. Breakfast in both Beijing and Salzburg was…interesting. But I don’t blame the country. I don’t demand to have some home fries made right away! (That would make me a super diva, or Oprah.) I do, however, pout, ever so slightly, and eat my bread and raw fish (OK, I’m making that up) and dream about the waffles I’ll have when I return stateside.
So again, the thought of a Florida vacation filled with Americans makes me want to stay home. And what is this sudden issue with Florida I seem to have? Hmm…
When we had two incomes, it was much easier to take the Big Diva Vacation. Club Med Portugal, Club Med Punta Cana, we were so there. They have Petit Club for the kidlet and French people! (Yes, you are sensing a theme here.) I could and did justify the expense because it was a medical expense: vacation in support of my mental health.
But since we’ve been on one income, it is much harder to justify the Big Diva Vacation as medical expenditure. My initial hope was that we would soon be back to double incomes and could then take Z on the BDV. Yet this has not happened. And the kid is so vacation crazy these days that I’m afraid she’s going to try to stow herself in my luggage on my next business trip. She wants to go anywhere, even if its the Motel 6 down by the airport.
So what to do, what to do? Do we stow our passports and travel to Florida (shudder) with all the other Americans (shudder shudder) to visit the Disney state? She’ll be thrilled, but I’ll probably need a medication adjustment.
Is this the only answer, friends? What say you all?
Lucky Duck
Sometimes the people you think you know end up surprising you…and not always in a good way. Even with long-time friendships, there can be facets people reveal that can both stun and sadden you.
To be clear, I understand completely that one needs to accept his/her friends as they are, good, bad or in between. Yet it can still be jarring to suddenly learn about attitudes that you didn’t know existed. Attitudes that, despite all attempts at neutrality, leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
I’ve been friends for years with a married couple. They’ve been wonderful and supportive friends despite our ideological awk, Fox News! differences. They also happen to be a couple affected by infertility and as I went through the latter part of my infertility journey, they were both, individually and together, people with whom I could share my fears and pain.
Their infertility journey has lasted the 10 years of their marriage. Though some ART was tried, there was a discomfort with the process. There was talk of moving to adoption, but the husband has had cold feet. Seriously cold feet.
His is a “you never know what you’re gonna get” fear about adoption that he readily admits is irrational. If I’ve talked to him about it once, I’ve talked a thousand times. He knows it’s nutty, but just can’t seem to get over himself. His wife, however, wanted to move forward with adoption. His reluctance proved to be a stopper. So they’ve achieved a type of détente, living child-free, traveling many times a year, and enjoying life.
Of course that didn’t stop me from feeling empathy with his wife. But for his admittedly irrational fear, she could be enjoying the parenthood she wanted. It isn’t my place to meddle in someone’s marriage, but I did always feel bad that this issue seemed to be one he couldn’t move through, even for her. And that man loves her so much, he’d drink her dirty bathwater. I’ve seen that love that borders on adoration in his eyes. It is beautiful.
Recently we had a business dinner that allowed me to catch up with the wife for the first time a long time. She asked about my kidlet and I lamented described my recent challenges with my spitfire of a daughter. Somehow I segued to the controversy I had inadvertently started on Facebook when I asked for advice/strategies for continuing to teach my then 3 3/4-year-old Zara to read. She shook her head with disbelief when I told her that some “friends” felt that it was traumatizing to a child to encourage early reading.
As I finished recounting the whole saga, she turned to me and said, “Zara is so smart!”
“Yep, she is,” I agreed, thinking of how her intellect is both blessing and curse for us as her parents. That child is smart enough to employ manipulation tactics that would make a teenager proud.
“You are so lucky,” she stated.
“Lucky and challenged,” I agreed, reaching for my martini.
“What would you have done if she wasn’t smart?” she asked lightly.
Thinking that she was joking, I quipped, “encourage her artistic side and keep her off the pole.” (I wasn’t sure she’d get the Chris Rock reference but I thought it was worth a shot…)
“But see, you guys are so lucky. You and AdoringHusband are both very smart. What would you have done if you had adopted a kid who turned out not to be smart?”
I realized then that she was absolutely serious. What kind of question is this? Have I traveled so far into Parentland that this reasonable question from a non-parent is raising my parent-hackles? Or is it that this is one of those incipient train wreck questions that shouldn’t have been asked in the first place? Like when people upon learning that my child joined our family through adoption would ask, “how much did she cost?” But this was no ridiculous stranger or near-stranger. This was someone who had been around since the loss of my pregnancy, the grieving, the steps toward adoption, and the glory that is my kid. Why is she asking me such a question? I thought to myself.
I opted to play it straight (naturally) and give the honest answer.
“If our child didn’t have intellectual strengths, we would encourage the talents and gifts that she did have. That’s what any parent would do.”
“But it would have been so bad if you two smart people didn’t have a smart child,” she said sadly.
By now the hairs on my neck were rising to attention, though the vodka did impair the erector pili musculature a bit. She sounded as if the greatest tragedy in the world would be for smart parents to not have smart offspring. Give me a freaking break! Then I got a hold of myself again. She is entitled to her feelings and thoughts. I don’t have to agree with her, but I need to respect her right to feel as she does.
“But even if she were our biological child, there is no guarantee that she would have been an intellectual like we are. There is no genetic guarantee that the offspring will possess the features, temperament, or intellect of the parents.”
“But at least if she were your biological child, you know that the fault of her not being smart was with your genes and not somebody else’s genes.”
What fucking difference would it make? I exploded inside my head. Would it be easier to assuage myself that Johnny didn’t get into Yale because of my genetic screwup versus the intellectual deficits of his biological parents?! What the hell are we talking about here? Genes, traits, biology…shit! Is Eugenics next? I was not liking where this was heading.
“The fact of the matter is,” I began carefully, “your child is your child, period, be they biological or adopted. Full stop. End of story. Your role as a parent is to love, nurture and support them as they grow into adulthood. Whatever features, talents, or traits they possess, your job as their parents is to help them successfully play to their strengths and bolster their weaknesses. Fault doesn’t even enter into my consciousness because it doesn’t freaking matter. She is my daughter. Even if she had the IQ of a pet rock, she would be my daughter and I would love her unconditionally no differently than I do now.”
I felt my voice rising a bit, so I paused for another sip of what was an excellent martini.
“I hear what you’re saying,” she began, “but with adoption you just never know. It’s kinda scary.”
“Girlfriend, you might want to think about that a little more. Parenting is scary whether the kid shot out from between your legs or was brought to you by Martians. Parenting is one of the most scary things a person can ever do. Sure if you had birthed the kid and s/he turned out ‘wrong,’” I said making air quotes with my fingers, “you could just blame it on some recessive genes or whatever floats your boat if that makes you feel less responsible somehow. But real parents don’t look for fault or external places to lay blame. Real parents focus on the kid and doing everything humanly and inhumanly possible to raise that munchkin into a happy, self-sufficient, productive adult because that is the real endgame.
“If you think adoption is scary, don’t adopt. Just don’t. But I can tell you quite clearly that it isn’t adoption that’s scary. It’s being a parent responsible for raising a child to the best of his/her abilities and aptitudes. That is really fucking scary.”
By now, I realized that having crossed well into the land of profanity, I had a good pissedoffishness going on. I took a moment and opted to check my cell phone rather than continue my little rant. Her husband had started talking to her on her other side, about the wine, the food, or something else less emotionally charged. I smiled as I saw the beauteous face of my daughter on my cell phone screen, knowing that by the time I got home, she will have pushed all of AdoringHusband’s buttons and then some, as is her wont.
I looked over at my friends chatting mildly with each other and the pissivity drained right out of me. Instead, I suddenly felt sad…very, very sad. I felt so sad that two good people could have such limitations on who they could love. Though their love for each other is unwavering.
Yeah, I am lucky, I thought, sneaking a peak at my kidlet again on the iPhone screen. My heart is open for love in its many forms, and I am so much the better for it.
Here’s What I Hope
to do this weekend.
Yes, I know. This is a pitiful excuse for a blog post. Not one of those lazy listmaking blogging attempts! Really, Liana? For shame.
But I’m afraid that every time I think about crafting a well thought-out essay, life has gotten in the way. And before I knew it, it’s been over 6 weeks since I last posted. Geez. I’ve even posted on the Eclectic Journey blog more often. Yes, I suck.
So today I decided to take 15 minutes to bust out my hopes for this weekend. Here’s what I hope to accomplish:
- Write a real blog post. (I have one 1/3 brewed in my head.)
- Sew the pompoms onto the newborn hat I’ve knitted (photography prop…don’t think anything else!)
- Make my light lemonade cake
- Play with my kid
- Make heads or tails of my stepfather’s bills and accounts, now that he’s been moved to assisted living and I’m managing these things
- Play iPad games
- Go see fireworks
- Catch up with life
You heard it here first, my friends. It’s a holiday weekend and I’ve got plans!
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