Category Archives: Parenting

I Stand with Planned Parenthood

Posted on February 24, 2011 | 5 comments

Edited to add: I wrote this on February 24, 2011. It makes me super sad that this is still relevant.

Recently House Republicans voted to stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Presumably because Planned Parenthood performs approximately 1/4 of the abortions in the United States. It is important now more than ever to speak up about what Planned Parenthood really does.

There are not a lot of things I get up in arms about. But my reproductive rights and how I feel about being a mother are two of them. The mother I am today is in some small way directly related to the woman that Planned Parenthood helped me to become. And to the mother they helped me to not become so very long ago.

Dear Planned Parenthood,

Thank you. Thank you for more than a dozen gynecological exams in times when I was without adequate health insurance. Thank you for the many condoms you gave me when I was too chicken shit to purchase them. Thank you for the birth control prescription, and for filling it for free on a few occasions when I was dangerously close to letting it lapse. Thank you for not making me think I was stupid or that I had been careless for getting my first HIV test in 1996. Thank you for having a rapid test available. That was the longest hour of my life and the very worst cup of coffee I have ever had. Thank you for making me feel like I was strong and smart and brave to not have a child when I was 21 years old and for believing me when I said that I had been on birth control and it had failed me. Thank you for making me feel like an individual even though you perform abortions in groups of eight to minimize the time that the physician needs to be there and to keep the costs down. Thank you for all of the negative results you called to give me for sexually transmitted diseases. And for the very reasonable waiting period to receive them. And for making it seem like a perfectly good idea to go ahead and get tested before making sex a part of a new relationship. Thank you for making me feel like the kind of strong and sensible woman that would ask a partner to do the same for her. Special thanks to the Planned Parenthood in Hampton Roads for being next door to a Party City and across the street from a Mattress Discounters. This provided me endless laughs. Planned Parenthood, in allowing me to not become a mother when I was twenty one years old you empowered me. And I became a woman that was strong. And brave. And proud. And cautious. All things that made me a great mother ten years later. I don’t know about you, but those are all family values in my book.

Sincerely,

Kelly

I don’t use this space as a soapbox often. I write a lot about being a mother, and my journey to becoming the woman that I am. Please take a minute and voice your thoughts to Planned Parenthood and our Congress. Planned Parenthood hands out health care. And confidence. And safety. Every day.

My 21st birthday. I was still a baby….

Day 74: Express Your Views Today! The book asks you to go to their website and log on and express an idea, but I abstain from jumping through their hoops designed to drive traffic to their website. I will take this opportunity instead to speak up about something that matters to me.

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Posted in Family, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Reproductive rights, This Book Will Change Your Life

Day 69: Downsizing Day

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Day 69: Today fire someone from your entourage.

Today’s challenge was actually accomplished a few days ago. I laid off my dish washer, my bus driver, my babysitter, my laundry fetcher, my glass of water getter, my “what did we need at the store, again?” remember-er, my dog walker, my cat feeder, my bed warmer, my cell phone phone caller and finder, my entertainer, my audience and my DJ. All at once.

MQD has been gone since Sunday afternoon and this morning I yelled at the dog. And at Emily. I am tired. I am frustrated. I am, admittedly, without caffeine, as well. But mostly I just feel spent.

The picture below was taken on the very first afternoon that MQD kept Em. I don’t recall now where I was needing to be, work, perhaps , but it was a picture he sent me to indicate that all was well and they were having a good time. The day that picture was taken I did it all every day. And today, not even a year later, I can’t remember how to get us all out of the house on time all alone.

Like childbirth, being a single parent is one of those things you forget all about once it’s over. I’m okay with that.

*I hope you’re having a good time, baby. But come home soon, ok? And don’t be alarmed when you get there. It’s a wreck. But all the animals slept in our bed. And Em, too. And Floppy Dog. And Snoopy. I checked to make sure the doors were locked at least four times before I went to bed every night. We’re safe and sound. Don’t know how I ever did it without you… For the record I plan to re-hire you on Saturday morning. xo
-Kel

Fashion Sense

Posted on January 21, 2011 | 1 comment

“But how, how do you know everything, Mom?”

And I answer, as I always do, taking the first sip of my morning coffee,”Because I have an enormous brain.” And through the holes in her skeleton ski mask I can see she’s not buying it this morning. “And because I have lived for a long, long time.”

“Oh. And your mom taught you everything?”

“Yes, Emily.”

Although, I suspect she’d say she is not responsible for our fashion sense, or lack thereof. When Em came in to the bathroom and said “Can I wear this to school?” she must have seen me hesitate. So, she followed up with “It matches.”

And off to school we went.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged Emily, Fashion Sense, Skeletons

The Kool-Aid

Posted on January 8, 2011 | 7 comments

I never imagined I would understand what it felt like to be an evangelist. But I drank the chiropractic Kool Aid. And now I want to spread the good word!! I believe!! And now I will make it my mission on this Earth to spread the word….

Last week was a big week. I was equal parts worried about both appointments. And now that they are both behind me I feel a tremendous sense of relief. The quick and dirty run down – the chiropractor on Tuesday morning thought I had a bulging disc in my lower back. He adjusted me and gave me a brace (which, let me tell you is s.e.x.y.) and took an x-ray. We discussed a treatment plan and I felt at ease enough to be frank. I told him that this was not the only appointment I had that day. He told me that his wife is a chiropractor and practices a wide assortment of psychotherapies grounded in chiropractic care if I was interested. (On the off chance it was ye olde head making ye olde back a hot mess.)

I also discovered that lower back pain, anxiety and depression can be a result of a copper toxicity from my IUD. Interesting to note.

Years ago when I started seeing a midwife I felt a dynamic shift in my thinking. A holistic approach to my health suddenly seemed the ONLY way to approach it. And I felt like the previous care I had received had actually been neglectful. When is the last time your dentist asked you about your marriage? Or your general practitioner really analyzed your diet? But shouldn’t they if you, for example, present with pain in your jaw or weight gain? I had that same feeling when I left his office. Like I had been bonked on the head by the “hand of chiropractic care” and had been saved. Someone was really looking at my symptoms and trying to treat them all, from the inside out.

I resisted the temptation to google my little heart out all day. Wait and see the results of my x-ray. And see what the therapist had to say. Tuesday evening I had a really excellent appointment with an LCSW in Carrboro that is a retired doula and childbirth educator. I picked her so I could skip past the “you breastfed for HOW long?” and “your daughter slept in your bed until WHEN?” questions, not defend my AP parenting and get to the meat of what was going on in my head. And I was not disappointed. While I felt reasonably secure in my answer to Karen’s question the other day regarding depression I was pleased after she ran through a series of questions regarding both anxiety and depression that I failed (?) or passed (?) them both. When she suggested medication as a quick fix for my blues I resisted with the explanation that it is not an ever-present feeling but a passing one. And it is not unbearable, I am wholly unwilling to trade my extreme highs (and the accompanying lows) for a constant neutral. Once we started talking about my menstrual cycle and I showed her my charts (not a link to my actual charts, c’mon, I will spare you that, but a link to the sahweeet app I use to keep them) it became really clear that I experience extreme lows twice a month. I had written off my emotional lows as PMS oriented previously because I was failing to take in to account the fluxuations in my hormone levels during ovulation. Once I was seeing ovulation as a factor, too, it became remarkably clear that my mood swings were in line with my menstrual cycles.

And then I saw the light for the second time that day. I left her office feeling better than I have felt in months. I had TWO different practitioners come to the same conclusion. I wasn’t a mess. Or nervous about my coming marriage. Or not over my divorce. Or a bad mother. Or a lousy partner. I had a jacked up back, aggravated by my IUD very likely, and probably was suffering from some hormone imbalance. While that might not sound like the best news to some it sure sounded good to me.

I had another appointment with the chiropractor the following morning and didn’t mention how things had turned out at the therapist. Reviewing my x-rays I can see the spot where my vertebrae are crunching together in my lower back. Again, seeing it with my eyes helped me to disassociate the pain in my back from me, from who I am, and I started to feel better instantly. If I wasn’t already flying high – when he told me that I was retaining anywhere from twelve to sixteen pounds of water (assessed with some magical machine that figures out your intracellular water retention and a bunch of other numbers that seemed totally relevant when he told them to me) well, I could have jumped for joy, bad back and all. “You mean if I get this all in check I will magically lose ten pounds? I have to tell you, that is all I just heard from what you just said.” He laughed.

When we started to discuss the possible reasons for this water retention and overall swelling his first suggestion was estrogen dominance. Which is… you may have already guessed…. the same suspicion the therapist had the night before. So, there you have it. My back is a wreck, in a manner that can take up to ten years to develop in to this kind of pain. My hormones are out of whack. Making me angry and sad and irritable. And I am pursuing treatment for both. Making myself and my health a priority. I feel like I have answers. Answers to why I have been feeling worse and worse in the last several years, even though I have been taking increasingly better care of myself.

I’m thinking with continued chiropractic care, assessment of my diet, balancing of my hormones through natural therapies or supplements…. I’m gonna be looking at this face a lot in the coming months. And that’s good news.

7 Comments

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Bad Mood

Tagged Chiropractor, Hormone Imbalance

Day 58:Our kids shall inherit the earth….

Posted on December 8, 2010 | 1 comment

Day 58 challenges you to think about what it is you will pass along to your children, specifically what skills. The suggestion that they offer is whittling. Not being particularly fond of whittling I had to come up with something else. While I was thinking about this, letting the challenge roll around in the back of my head until somethign crops up organically, Em was having herself a dance party in the living room.

Dance parties consist of a lot of various moves. But the single move that she has embraced from a very young age has been the air-guitar. She employs it mid power-slide, while head banging, even while absent-mindedly looking out the window. But recently she has added a new element. The “wheedling.”

I looked all over youtube for an appropriate clip showcasing this skill and I can’t find it. And she will not do it for the camera. If you don’t watch Metalocalypse on AdultSwim you should . Dethklok, the band on this cartoon show, features Skwisgaar Skwigelf , the fastest guitarest ALIVE! When he is playing sometimes he makes the sound we’ve all made, usually when all alone practicing our air guitar. It can best be spelled out “Wheedly, wheeedly, wheeedly, wheeeedly….” etc.

So, anyway… I am thinking about whittling when I observe MQD assisting Em in her wheedling. And there you have it… what skill have we passed along to Emily? Wheedling.

Perhaps it goes deeper than that. Like her mother, Emily will do anything for a laugh. She values the joy of those around her more than maintaining decorum. She has no problem making herself the butt of the joke, so long as the joke gets a laugh. And I could be no more proud. The kid is funny. She had me rolling last night at dinner.

Is it okay to call your kid an ass? As in “My kid loves to make an ass of herself.” I hope so. Because man, does she ever. And I fucking love it.

In lieu of a wheedling video I will share here my all time favorite Emily June original tune… (only slightly better than last night’s “I wanna RED! RED!” song about popsicles to the tune of Twister Sister’s “I Wanna Rock!”)

I present to you… My Pet Maggot

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Posted in Family, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Air Guitar, This Book Will Change Your Life

10 Day Challenge (10!)

Posted on December 2, 2010 | 5 comments

Day Ten: One confession.

The last of the Ten Day Challenge has me a little uncomfortable. I don’t have a lot of secrets. So, a confession isn’t easy for me to come up with. The only real option is to say something “out loud” that makes me uncomfortable. It is not a secret, so it isn’t really a confession, that I want to get pregnant next Spring.

The confession is that I am terrified. I am scared I won’t be able to get pregnant. I am scared that something will go wrong with a resulting pregnancy and I won’t know how to not be heartbroken, even though I “have a perfectly healthy child already.” I am scared that my age will have caught up with me and another pregnancy might not be as easy as my last. I am scared that “trying” to get pregnant will become the most unromantic thing ever, thereby ruining whatever honeymoon phase MQD and I get to experience after our wedding. I am scared I will get pregnant and everything will go beautifully until I have an infant in my arms. And then I will begin to mourn the loss of the time when it was just me and Emily and I will never love another as I do her. I am scared that the peace I have come to with my post-baby body will not come back to me again. I am scared. Of everything.

I am scared to say it out loud. That I want another baby. I wanted another child not long after I had Emily. I loved being pregnant. I want Em to be a sister. I want MQD to experience fatherhood from conception. I want him to be a Daddy and not “just a Mike.” Even though I absolutely know he is not just a Mike, and I hope against hope he knows that, too. I want to trust that it will happen when it’s right, if it’s right. But I want it so god damn badly. And as I have written about in the past… I don’t feel really comfortable when I want something so badly. Because wanting something opens the door for failing to achieve it.

The scariest part? I truly believe it will all be fine. I do. But I sure do love worrying about things I can’t control. Call it a hobby.

Super pregnant with Emily…. this reminds me, I need new Reefs. They are fabulous flip-flops. I loved this day. I felt huge. And ready. This was about two weeks before Em was born.

About five months pregnant at a Panic show in Portsmouth. Proof that I stick my tongue out if you point a camera at me, even when I am not drinking.

About two month’s pregnant at Scott & Lauren’s wedding. Proof that I hug my brother occasionally, even when I am not drinking.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting, Ten Day Challenge, This Book Will Change Your Life

Day 55: A Test of Patience

Posted on November 24, 2010 | 10 comments

Day 55: A test of Patience, Flip the Perfect Pancake!

Today’s challenge is called a “test of patience” and invites you to learn to flip the perfect pancake. Well, I can’t. And it is not for lack of trying. In fact, I can’t even cook the perfect pancake. And I think it is largely because I lack patience. When MQD and I first started dating and he first started hanging out with Em and me he would make pancakes pretty frequently on the weekends. I didn’t realize that I had managed to do this, (and it was not my intent) but one morning Em asked for pancakes and specifically asked MQD to make them. I thought she just liked his better than mine. Until she pointed out that she didn’t think I knew how to make pancakes. Only Mike and Daddy. Perfect. Em thought I didn’t even know HOW. I was off the hook permanently.

And truthfully? I don’t think I have made pancakes since. I make waffles. And they’re tasty. But they don’t require patience. Don’t open the waffle iron until it beeps. Done.

Several weekends ago we had a weekend guest. A guest that can flip the perfect pancake and I thought about asking him to teach me. But in thinking about that I realized that he has already taught me patience. It’s funny that I am sitting down to bang out my feelings on this today of all days, the day before Thanksgiving.

Three years ago I had a turkey sandwich from the Kangaroo in Newport News on Thanksgiving day. I had just dropped off Emily with Jer and my in-laws for Thanksgiving. I was invited to stay but elected to get on the road so there’d “be less traffic.” Truth be told I couldn’t keep myself from crying and would rather just rip the band-aid off. It was the first holiday I’d spend away from her. I drove all day towards Chapel Hill. I pulled in Amy’s driveway in Hillsborough at about six that evening, stopping for another gas station turkey sandwich. She wasn’t home yet and I called her parent’s house to see if she was on her way. I had my laptop and I could get on her wi-fi from my car. I double-checked my email, again. It was still there. The email from a landlord that was happy to show me an apartment the following day. A landlord that didn’t care to check my credit. A landlord that would walk through the apartment I’d later rent and turn his face while I weeped, pretending he didn’t see me.

That weekend was messy, full of tears and wine and laughs and new friends. On Monday I went back to the beach. And I moved the following weekend. I might be the only woman in the history of the world that ever separated from her husband and enlisted him to help her pack and help her unpack, but I did. When he left my apartment the day I moved in my family was still there, and a few of my friends. He gave me a hug and he said I was “gonna be okay.” A question I asked him often for years, always “is it gonna be okay?’

That day I thought we were starting over. That our friendship would begin anew that day and somehow we’d be this unstoppable force, parents, ex-spouses, friends. The following year brought many arguments and ugly phone calls. We were “friendly” in front of Emily but the ease we’d always had with each other was gone. As my life moved forward and his did, too, we didn’t share the day-to-day. We didn’t know each other anymore in the familiar way we had and nothing had moved in to take its place. There was just an empty spot where our marriage had been.

A couple years later when MQD and I got more serious and I could see the future I was building I felt like it was important to try to extend my hand in friendship, again. Jer came to visit, to get our Christmas tree. It was awkward. We were polite. I invited MQD over that evening so that Jer could meet him. And then I beat feet outta there as fast as I could. I spent the night out with MQD that night and argued with Jeremy when I got home in the morning. I was ready. Ready for us to talk about my relationship with MQD and about the future and about how we’d work it all out. He didn’t want to. Worse than that he wouldn’t even really argue with me. He was just gone. Christmas passed with more polite conversation.

In February of 2009 I sent him an email.

I know you’ll likely not reply to this email but I wanted to talk to you. I think it is really important for us to be able to maintain a dialogue about Emily in order for us to be the best parents we can be. And I think we’re doing a great job with this. But …. I also think it is important for us to be able to have a dialogue about well…. us. Not about you and me, but about you and about me. No one has known us, either of us like we know each other and I hadn’t bargained on this. Losing our friendship all together. Maybe I’m naive, but I thought we could do this, and still have each other.

It was about twenty months later that he called and said “Hey, can you call me back when you have a minute? I need to run a few things by you, figure out what I am gonna do.” It was my friend Jeremy. Calling me to ask for advice. Because no one has known him longer.

The following week the house guest, the one that can flip a perfect pancake, came to stay the weekend. We all stayed up late, laughing, talking about music and telling stories, playing games. We made Chicken Penne. We took Em out to run around downtown. We all went for pizza. And ice cream. And beers at He’s Not Here. We watched the SweetWater Brewing Co painter paint a new logo on the wall. We talked about Jer’s plans to move off the beach soon. Maybe to Colorado, maybe someday settling closer to his little lady. MQD and I talked excitedly about wedding plans and the band that we hired. We all talked about the future. Not the past.

He left a day later than we’d planned. At MQD’s suggestion that he stay another night so he could go by Em’s school on Monday morning.

So… three years. It took three years. My old friend, Jeremy, came to visit. He came to visit my home, my amazing fiancée and our, all of our’s, beautiful daughter. It was worth the wait. And pancakes are over-rated. Friendships are never perfect, anyway. I’ll take friendship over a perfect pancake.

This post is for you, Mike. Oddly. Your patience with me has given me the strength and the capability to heal. I know it has not been easy. I know it has been maddening at times. I do not know how you have held my hand through the last two years. I hope that you did it because you knew this day would come, and that it was worth it. Because while my friendship with my ex-husband will benefit Emily, and it will benefit me, surely, it stands to strengthen you and me and our marriage more than I ever knew. I have moved on. I have let go. I can love you with all of my heart, with everything I am and not look back. And I have only you to thank for this. Your understand and your encouragement and more than anything your love and your commitment. You made me see a future where I’d never thought there’d be one. And god damn… it looks good, babe. That future looks really good. I love you, babe.

10 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, Single Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Divorce, This Book Will Change Your Life

10 Day Challenge (2) & Day 53

Posted on November 18, 2010 | 2 comments

Quick and dirty, right to the point…..

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

I miss my family even more now that I am happier. That seems backwards to me.
Lists like this make me very self-conscious.
I don’t read as often or as much as I wish I did.
Of all the things I no longer have a budget for (booze, smokes, shoes, drugs & rock and roll) the thing I miss buying most is underwear.
If I hadn’t encouraged Em to wean at 3.5 I think she’d still be nursing. And I am okay with that.
Watching shitty television, while it is an embarrassing habit, is more relaxing to me even than napping. Because I have an awful time falling asleep.
Locking the doors to the house at any time other than before I go to bed makes me feel unnecessarily frightened. I feel more comfortable with the windows open and the doors unlocked than I do barricaded in my house. Even after our home was broken in to last year, I still rarely lock my doors when we are home.
I would much rather be cold than hot.
I think I cry once a day. Sometimes more. The Happiness meter is judged by whether or not I was crying over something silly and sentimental or something sad. But I’d rather be over-emotional than a robot.

And as for Day 53’s challenge to “Return to Sender” all my junk mail, I finally got some last night. (Heh, some junk mail, I mean.) However, none of it is really worth sending back.

Can’t send back catalogs, they provide countless hours of entertainment in our house. They barely qualify as “junk mail.” And while I generally consider unsolicited requests for charitable donations to fall in the category of “junk mail” I am not going to go to mail it back to them, costing them time and money in processing its return. So, in order to keep today from being a total wash, I did look up the way to stop receiving ValPak coupons. Because they annoy the crap out of me. I have never used one. Ever. And yet, I’d bet there are a few on my fridge right now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I am gonna wake this lazy bag o’ bones and take him outside for a few.

2 Comments

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Parenting, Single Parenting, Ten Day Challenge, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged Fisher, This Book Will Change Your Life

Day 51: Sense-less Day

Posted on November 10, 2010 | 2 comments

Day 51: Go through your day without your sense of sight. On a scale of one to ten how vital is your sense of sight?

I have been putting off this challenge for several days because day light saving time has not afforded me the opportunity to do much of anything in the evenings. I am trying to take advantage of the desire to wake up mega-early to get back in the habit of going to the gym early morning. And although the gym would be an ideal place to be without the sense of sight I couldn’t really think of a way to pull that one off.

So, I did what I usually do when I absolutely don’t want to blow something off. I told Emily. A child of her age will not let you get away with changing the plans. Unless the plans revolve around postponing bedtime. So, I told Em we’d go for a walk as soon as we got home from work/school on Monday evening. I thought we’d take turns wearing a blindfold and stroll around the cemetery, seeing if the things that we hear or smell were different when we were without our sense of sight.

Monday evening when we got home it was nearly pitch black dark. I decided that we would probably look like creeps strolling through the cemetery blind-folded but I didn’t care. And when I suggested that maybe we wouldn’t go at all she reminded me that I had promised.

And then I was saved. Not by a bell. But by shoes!!! I ordered (read: my mom ordered for me, thanks, Mom!) not one, not two, but THREE fabulous pairs of potential Wedding Shoes on Saturday evening and they were already here. Em won’t change gears for just anything, but damn that kid can appreciate a spectacular cherry red satin sling-back. By the time we’d gotten them all out of the boxes and assessed the potential of each pair, it was far too late to take a stroll through the cemetery.

Feeling pretty great about myself this evening (since I had been successful in Mission: Get Your Ass Back to the Gym this morning) I contemplated, yet again, blowing off our mission to take a walk blind-folded. I wanted to make sure MQD had time to get some exercise, and I had dinner to prepare, and a stop at the store. When I suggested to Em that we might need to stop at the grocery store on the way home and postpone our cemetery stroll it was her bright idea to walk through Food Lion with our eyes closed.

So, off we went. When I first took her hand and closed my eyes, standing next to our car in the parking lot, I realized that this wasn’t really the brightest idea I’d ever had. Allowing her to maneuver me through the dark parking lot was not actually any different from letting her set off on her own. In fact it was doubly dangerous. So, I opened them back up (well, one of them, I just peeked) until we got to the door. “Mom, while we are here, I need to pee.” And off we went to the back of the store. While we walked hand in hand through the store I realized that I was very conscious of everything she said. (Now this is no earth shattering discovery, take away one sense and the rest are bound to be heightened.) But it did make me very aware of how very little I actually “listen” to her chatter when we are out and about. Now I consider myself to be a parent that engages with her kid pretty regularly. But as I relied on her words to guide me though the store I was more actively listening than I usually do. Thus when she said “Just come right this way, Mama. We are gonna go down the wine aisle, since you know that one really, really good” I giggled but didn’t interrupt her. Or correct her. “Really well, Em. Really well,” I thought.

She guided me all the way to the back of the store, to the creepy area where you find the bathrooms. Observation #1 re: being blind. Public restrooms pose a whole new danger. I was completely skeeved out. I was totally gungo-ho to try to pee without “peeking.” But as soon as I entered a public restroom I could feel myself freaking out. I said “Pick a clean one, Em.” Hopeful.

I could hear her opening and closing doors, assessing each stall. And when she said “This one has something brown on the floor, but I think it is candy” I caved. And determined that opening my eyes was the only way I was going to get in and out of here without feeling like I needed to rub hand sanitizer all over both of us. (FYI, she was right. It was a Reese’s peanut butter cup. But I am awfully glad I didn’t discover it later, say, on my shoe. The parental “Is this shit?” sniff test is really only an option when in one’s own home.)

We left the bathroom and she took my hand. I was proud of how well she maneuvered me through the dairy section. And we talked through the various shredded cheese options. I was even able to explain to her which cheese we wanted and felt reasonably certain she had picked the right one (although I did take a peek.)

At the register we switched places. She closed her eyes the rest of the way to the car. We stopped on the sidewalk and listened. We talked about how different it was to just listen than to listen and see. I was watching her face. Watching her thinking. Watching her when she is not “performing” for me is a rare pleasure these days, as she is a ham like her mother. As I watched her I was thinking about what I’d write about for today’s challenge and I felt the tears well up in my eyes.

So Day 51: How vital is my sense of sight on a scale of one to ten? Ten. I can’t imagine not being able to see her. Every day. She is changing so quickly. The Emily June I see today will be gone by the end of next week. Replaced by a new Emily June I will somehow love even more than I do today. Even though that seems unimaginable. I don’t know that I could believe this unless I saw it with my own eyes. As she held my hand and directed me through the aisles, I could hear in her voice how proud she was of being “in charge.” How excited she was to participate in a page of “your book, Mom. The yellow book.” The temptation to open my eyes didn’t come from my desire to see the end caps in the grocery store. Or to not trip over an errant can of green beans. I didn’t want to miss her. To miss seeing her experiencing something. Already as a working mother I miss so much. And being with her, sharing time with her and not seeing her was very uncomfortable. Add to that the fact that in seeing her I see myself. And it was a positively excruciating 15 minutes.

Today’s challenge convinced me I really do… need to see it to believe it.

(This post was brought to you by the Sentence Fragment and the Lines Around My Eyes that I didn’t know I had until I looked at the above picture. Enjoy!)

2 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life, Wedding Planning

Day 49: Citizen’s Arrest

Posted on November 3, 2010 | 3 comments

Impropriety: The quality or state of being improper, not in accordance with decorum.

Day 49’s challenge was to make a citizen’s arrest. While it would have been a lot funnier to “arrest” a stranger the opportunity to arrest my mom and step-dad was too great to ignore. MQD and I had plans to get our “wedding tattoo” on Friday evening and my parents were coming in to town, too. We planned to meet at Carrburritos and then stop in to Glenn’s to go over our art work, leaving Emily with my parents for a bit. MQD and I anxiously awaited Paulie finishing up the last-minute tweaks to our artwork while Em took a stroll around Franklin St with my family, stopping at Time After Time to do some shopping.

Our idea to memorialize our eternal wedded bliss on our skin was to combine the Sailor Jerry anchor and the “Stewed Screwed and Tattoed.”

I think we were successful. I couldn’t be any happier with the way they turned out. Not only did I get to share this occasion with my betrothed. But…. as I was laying on my stomach, teeth clenched, tattoo gun buzzing away behind me, making idle chit-chat with the other fellow in the shop getting work done I heard my favorite sound. “Hi, Mom!” And I looked up to see my sweet five-year-old girl. In her Cinderella dress. And four new bracelets. And a new ring. And new pink fuzzy hat. And my mom. And my step-dad. And buzzz….. fuck that hurts.

And I was getting a tattoo. And my daughter was there. Surely worth a citizen’s arrest of my mom and my step-dad, David. Who brings a five-year-old to a tattoo shop?