The Nerve of That Customer To Wear Cute Shoes

I’m in line with my husband while our four hooligans are seated at a table in the chipotle dining room wreaking noise havoc on all the innocent eaters nearby. Pointing to the shoes of the gentleman standing in front of me, I say to Scott, “I love those, I could see you wearing those.” Scott nods and then says about the shoes worn by two people ahead in line he’s been admiring, “I like those! They’re cute, right?”

I did not like this woman. 

I did not like this woman at all.

(“This woman” was wearing the “cute shoes.”)

Here were her two offenses: She was tan. She was athletic.

I, on the other hand, had surgery recently to remove an irregular mole and wear 50 spf from head to toe even on days I stay inside; I am the hue of loose leaf paper (not recycled).

Additionally, in an effort to lighten the pressures on myself this summer, I begrudgingly freed myself from one of my favorite hobbies: running. I haven’t worn a sports bra or sweated beyond what it takes to wheel the trash out in 5.5 weeks.

PS. My husband has a high regard for all people - any gender will do - who improve their bodies through fitness. 

My insecurity, as you can well see, on this chipotle evening was at an all-time high. 

All he said was that her bubbly little set of bright orange-and-pink sneakers were cute. 

I didn’t care. 

I didn’t like her.

Wait: there was a third strike; she appeared to be alone. As I glanced back at my offspring and saw them engaged in a game of makeshift bowling on the table surface with Campbell’s plastic princesses as the pins, I became further dignified in my ridiculous inner criticism of this athletic, tan, ALONE woman.

But she sorta redeemed herself, for when Scott and I were confusing the hell out of the 17 yr old tortilla dude by trying to order our 6 meals by both shouting out incoherent contributions (really, families ought to have just one chief fast food orderer), I decided to save our marriage and scoot on away to let him take over and as I passed her while slinking forward through the line, she gave me a knowing smile. It said all at once, “Why can’t it just be a tad easier?”

So, I returned to our table to break up the idiot bowling game feeling a bit sheepish about my lively and immature head dialogue about someone who is likely rather nice. 

AND THEN I see her cute little neon shoes saunter to a nearby table WITH HER DATE. 

#1) she’s, after all, not alone.

#2) her date is an autistic teenaged boy.

I proceed to observe her caringly spoon the contents of their shared burrito bowl into his mouth between bouts of his hand flapping, the two working in synch - a sign they’ve done this a million times before and will a million times more. 

And I eat. Every. Single. Word. 

I eat all the words my mind conjured up moments before in line.

And I eat all the ones this whole ragged-edged summer has brought up in me the past couple months.

The ones that paint me as a victim and the ones that are jealous of others’ simpler lives. The ones that repeat, “It’s too much. It’s just too much.” when I’m deep in an overwhelmed pit. The ones that wonder how everyone else is doing it. The ones that dismally lament, too concerned with self-involved junk to look up. The ones that shake me off my seat as the hero writer of my own story and instead leave me feeling helplessly trampled under offenders’ feet. (Cute shoe wearing feet, no less)

I got a good laugh last night. 

At myself, mainly.

Laugh at yourself, too. With kindness, if possible.

For our minds sometimes lure us unwittingly into ridiculously pathetic spaces and then feeds us good reasons to be there. 

Don’t listen. Leave it. 

And sachet back to your actual life, pale and mushy and perfect just the way it is.*

*note to reader: pale and mushy interchangeable. try filling in the blank.

Five Things I Learned The Hard Way This Summer

#5
Those little make-your-own popsicle plastic handles should each have a tracking device.

I was all pumped about our koolaid popsicles. EVERYBODY remembers the nostalgia of this wholesome summer activity... pouring the sugary yumminess into the molds, awaiting their full freeze, the sense of accomplishment at licking one’s one homegrown icepop. But the lickers of said popsicles walk. Like around. Outside, to their rooms, to the neighbors’... We first made a six-sicle batch, the quantity it was designed to make. Next: a four-sicle batch. Now I have two handles. And that includes the one gnarled by the disposal once (ok twice). I APOLOGIZE TO ANYONE IN A 5 MILE RADIUS IF YOUR LAWN MOWER BLADE TAKES A BEATING; I cannot be responsible for the whereabouts of the 4 missing ones.

#4

When I wish upon stars all year long that one of my kids will become a Top Chef so I can be spared the orchestration of a meal or two per week, I am STUPID.

One of them DID pick up an interest in the kitchen this summer. And turns out “leave the kitchen as you found it” means NOTHING to a tween boy. I can’t find my honey. I have no idea where our oatmeal is. The 8X8 baking dish has had at least 12 homes in as many days. He tries, dear child, but fails, to return things where they belong, much less use a sponge properly (I didn’t think you’d have to teach WRINGING. IT. OUT!!). Next summer I’m investigating not kid cooking classes for him, rather cooking clean-up classes. I’ll pay anything. Bet he’ll be biting at the bit.

#3

I can’t kid myself that I am fully severed from my children’s bathroom management.

With Campbell’s potty training successfully mastered between last summer and this one, I was so elated to become richer and saner. No diapers! No changing poos!

But EVEN THE OLDER ONES shimmy and shake around in their shorts, their pjs bottoms, their swim trunks trying to add one more second to the activity of avoiding relieving themselves. They dig squirmily down into the surface upon which they sit like a drill, determined to have it stay up there as long as possible. Seriously?! When will this end? When will I stop having to declare: “GO TO THE BATHROOM, YOU ARE DAMAGING YOUR BLADDER!!” I’m going to start threatening to put them BACK in diapers. That’ll do the trick.

#2

When you spend thousands of dollars on a treehouse and then allow a hornet nest perched upon it to grow to exponential proportions, nobody uses said treehouse.

By my calculations, this summer we are providing an estimated 700 bucks per month in rent free living for our hundreds of little tenants.

And our kids stay grounded.

So basically, we paid all that money for a science exhibit.

#1

No two summers are the same.

Last summer was the bomb!!! It felt like a break! All light and fluffy and not-perfect-but-easier-in-so-many-ways. I honestly thought this one was gonna be even more of a freakin blast. Kids older. More independent. More fun. More simple to take places and do things.

More self-entertaining.

But while some of this was true, new things popped up (tween moodiness, demanding preschooler who gave up naps, major space cadet tendencies in another, rivalry between siblings putting a competitive edge on my attention, later bed times WHILE STILL GETTING UP AT SAME TIME meaning less adult quiet time...). Basically there just isn’t enough me.

And the scrawny little leftovers of me aren’t even enough for me.

You were expecting humor, a grand slam #1 to laugh your way off the internet.

Sorry folks, sometimes it just is what it is.

My hope is that if you are having a fantastic summer, you will read this and spend a moment in empathy with the mammas and papas who are eagerly ripping pages off of count down calendars. Moreso, my hope is to encourage the sisterhood who fall in my pathetic little boat, the ones who are barely hanging on, who are salivating over the stack of novels they never pick up, the ones who watch a movie about a woman gone mad, quarantined to a padded space in the manor, and think, “at least she’s got her own room,” the ones who crave alcohol at 11am. Power in numbers, girls. You’re not alone. You got this. And it’s ok to not be having the time of your life this Summer. It is. Remember: No two are alike, so there’s always next year!!!!!!!!!! (Do the exclamation marks translate my desperation?) Claim Summer 2018 is shitty. Own it. And then eat one of two popsicles in your freezer.

Preferably, with a bonus ingredient the 11-yr-old chef in the House didn’t think of: VODKA.

Of course, after 11am.

Hell, before even.

For more playful #1s, see Five Things I learned the Hard Way This Summer 2017 Here

And

Five Things I Learned The Hard Way This Summer 2016 Here

My Engine

Even my can opener isn't working. Sorta like my brain.

I'm standing in my kitchen in a moment of alone, all children in the care of others, school, or a crib. Prepping dinner seems the responsible use of this time, even though it feels wrong to me. Wrong and heavy and burdensome and demanding... another weight.

Last night I shot up from my pillow, erect, unable to take my pounding heart anymore. Husband says, "Bad dream?"

I think, "This would be a good dream, for it to be a bad dream." There's no way to wake from my quickened breathing, racing heartbeat, sweats, anxious thoughts; they are ceaseless. I settle for, "Something is not right. I'm not supposed to feel this way." Husband settles for holding me while I swirl.

Today I'm sleepless, aimless, worn down, uncertain, confused, foggy... Overwhelmed. By. Everything. And so I choose, in the only free moments of this day, to unnecessarily labor in my kitchen over dinner prep. Since everything feels do or die, the unexpected misbehavior of my can opener sends me into a complete hysteria. Unopened refried beans = everything falling apart.

Short fused is new. Flying off the handle novel. I watch this unhinged version of myself fling a can opener across the kitchen, blasting into things as it crashes across the island and comes to a halt on the kitchen floor. Startled by my rage, I crumble to the floor. Alone, trembling, scared by what I just did.

Over the months I journal. I yoga. I breathe. I meditate. I therapy. I exercise. I pray. I talk and talk and share and share. I seek medication. I call in for support with my kids, my home, my duties. I improve. I decline. I dig out. I fall in.

I wonder if this is the new me. Above all, this makes my heart race the fastest.

Meanwhile, I watch every other woman I know climb the Motherhood Mountain exhausted and harried, but not - like me - completely broken down.

Someone tells me: What if there is a reason for your overwhelm? I grip to this notion like it's a rainbow, a promise of hope. What if this unfamiliar anxiety is not tied to an emotional battle, a depression? What if what is harassing me is rooted in something plainly explainable?

I learn a metaphor that makes my compassionate self pat my downtrodden self on its worried little head. It is spoken by a specialist who diagnoses learning disabilities and, after testing me, he says this: "You are driving a car with two of its four tires flat. The engine is strong - a fine piece of machinery - but despite this it cannot produce what other cars can. It is overworked."

I realize my engine, my brain during this season, doesn't just run more slowly. It doesn't just grumble against the pull. It fully blows out.

I commit to learning about my learning disability like a ninja.

It takes years. It is not perfect. But I grow to treat my brain like a newborn baby, learning its coos and cries and protests - what is best for it and how and when to rest it.

I give refuge to my taxed engine. I buy a new can opener and more frozen pizzas for dinner. I sleep well again.

What's here + What's gone = Confused

It was June 2012 this last happened. I can remember it hitting me then the same way it hits me this weekend: so much fullness and so much goneness that the only way for them both to exist is to be confused.

People always ask if her birthday brings me sadness. That's an easy one to answer: Nope, it's my mom's death anniversary that gets me. It's the same for my dad - his death anniversary is when I mourn - but usually Father's Day gives me a run for my money, too, especially when it falls the day after Mom's death anniversary.

And that's the way it feels now. Mom died eleven years ago today; tomorrow is the seventh Father's Dad I'll experience without one by my side.

Like six years ago when they were back-to-back, What. A. Weekend.

But it almost seems that there would be sad beauty to the synchronicity, IF I were able to lock myself in my room for the entirety of the weekend and cry or drink from a vodka bottle or take long baths or watch sad movies where loved ones die before their time or journal or all. of. these. things. at. once. Now THAT would be depressingly delectable.

But, no, I can't do that.

I don't want to do that.

Well, maybe I do a little bit, but mostly I can't.

Cuz I have this powerhouse husband who is also a fully kick ass dad to our children. And tomorrow, Father's Dad, is about him, too. There's so much fullness in observing our four darlings spill coffee all over the counter and up the steps in an effort to serve him in bed, in their handmade cards and juicy kisses, in his smiles and misty eyes at the lives he gets to mold and mush around as best he can. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing the other half of Father's Day. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

And today: My mom's death anniversary, one I spent at the pool with my little brood - smearing sunscreen, propelling tooshes upwards that eventuate into cannonball splashes, wrapping a shivering body in a towel for a lap sit, Dairy Queen blizzards at outdoor tables on the way home. Living. Motherhood. Like. A. Boss. And experiencing all the love and irritability and sentiment and short-fusedness and moment-relishing and doubt and warmth that come with living like a mom who cares her ass off. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing my own mother. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

Surely it makes sense that holing up this weekend with my loss, fully honoring that which is gone, would be easier on my mind... I could be singularly unconfused.

But by now I've learned life is rather not-singular. In fact, it almost always overlaps and vacillates and blends and doubles up. It's never This-then-That, rarely Arrival, Departure, Next Arrival. It's almost always, "Here ya go," pouncing you with lots of both fresh and spoiled groceries with no bag and little time to sort the two out so that you are doing a little crazed juggling dance to keep it all in your arms.

I've decided to experience the spoil and the bounty simultaneously.

Which is why today I played at the pool and tomorrow I will spoil my husband. And why today I tear up writing this piece. And why tomorrow I'll record in my Dad journal and eat a BLT, his favorite.

Confusing? Yes. Impossible? No.

I can dance with all of it.

(But a bag to hold it all would be nice.)