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agony

Eff You Economy.

by Myg on November 12, 2009

This blog. Ah.

My boys are 9 months and 3 weeks old today. They are in a magic phase where every mundane little thing sparkles, boo boos can be healed in seconds with a kiss and a hug, and little arms start to reach for me when I come into the room in that heart exploding “I want Mommy” way. I know every developmental phase has its perks, but this one I think is really special and will stay with me in a way that the newborn phase or the six month old phase probably won’t.

And all that is to tell you, I just don’t want to work. I want to be home with them so badly it just hurts. That’s what we planned on, it’s what I said I was going to do months ago and it’s what I always intended, but it is not what is.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about my career in the past few months. I’ve been beating myself senseless over my lack of direction, focus and commitment. I’ve hit a professional ceiling, not because I’m at the limit of my skills or abilities. I’m stuck because I’m doing something I just don’t want to do right now. But I have to.

It’s a strange problem, you know? Pick a career path you think you’ll love. End up not loving it. Have babies in the middle of an economic melt down.  s/s Be grateful you can go back to it so you can keep the family afloat. Resent it. :| | (D.S. al coda to the be grateful part through the resent it part. Repeat daily forever and ever.)

I don’t feel well. I have a cold. And I am upset right now about all of this.

I want to be home with my kids. My husband wants me to be home with my kids. But I just can’t be right now.

And that really sucks. EFF you,  economy.

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Not about the shit I don’t want to think about.

by Myg on November 3, 2009

Let me just start by saying I’m not in a good mood today. That right there would make not writing this post a good thing, but who was I to ever heed my own good advice, abide by my own excellent council? I wasn’t.

Lately I’ve been doing two things compulsively that make no sense, occupying valuable real estate in my brain: obsessively playing frakkking Farmville on Facebook and looking at real estate in Hunterdon County. As to the first thing, please know I’m sufficiently humiliated and hoping that sharing this time wasting behavior publicly will shame me into stopping. But oh, the ribbons! The cute little veggies and flowers and fruits that you can watch grow! The horses! Hey look, if I didn’t have a gazillion and one unfinished projects and lofty goals for my life, that’d be just fine. The truth is I HAVE NO TIME for things like Farmville. I am a working mother of 9+ month old twins, and any time not spent A) working or B) mothering would be better spent on any of the below:

  • bathing
  • sleeping
  • cleaning my ears, or maybe my toes
  • re-organizing my underwear
  • buying something
  • arranging my books by page length
  • researching bizarre medical procedures
  • tending to any of the 5821 things in my Things program
  • writing, anything!
  • [insert anything here except hard drugs and sugar bingeing, and it will be better than spending time on Farmville]

Incumbent Governor Corzine is right now, as I type this, losing the Governor’s race in NJ. Asshole. No, I’m not happy about it. But he is an asshole. Only an asshole would lose to that dumbshit Chris Christie.

I’ve been looking at real estate in Hunterdon County because it’s beautiful and there’s some unstoppable part of me that wants to raise my boys in the country. Yes, New Jersey has countryside. It’s in Hunterdon County, where I lived as a little girl. The problem is that it’s nearly all white and Republican. They actually like and voted for that dumbshit Chris Christie there. Oh, the property taxes are high too, but they’re high where I am now. And it’s far from everything. And looking is a waste of time anyway because, to be honest, financially we are still digging our way out of the disability/gradschool/holy f*ck we have two twins $$$$$$$$uck hole. So why do I keep looking?

So I don’t have to think about shit I don’t want to think about. I have a bit much of that these days.

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While biting my nails…

by Myg on May 14, 2009

So, the meeting with my boss where I was going resign was pushed back to 2:30pm.

This shouldn’t be such a big deal, only excepting that it is. On so many levels.

I am really thankful to all of you who’ve written privately to me or commented about this. I have observed, very interestingly, that nearly everyone who weighed in on this is a working mother. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not, but I’m going to go with the theory that working moms are the ones who have the strongest feelings about this issue.  And I want to point out the sacrifice that working moms make to support their families on the financial front as well as the home front is no small thing. And this may be sexist and unfair, but I believe moms who work make the bigger sacrifice than dads who work.

I’ll explain why as soon as I have a reason. Right now I only have a gut feeling.

Let me also say that I whole heartedly support and agree with women who work, whether by choice or by necessity. I hear ya. I really do. I am in your boat right now.

The issue for me is that I don’t want to be here, and I’ve come to recognize something about myself over the years and that’s this.

If I follow my heart, even when my head tells me I am crazy to do it, I will be okay. If I follow my head when my heart is wrenching inside my chest, I will not be okay until I align my life with my heart.

I am terrified to let go of a good position. I feel stupid, on so many levels, to do it.

But my heart is wrenching inside my chest, so I know I’ve got to change what’s going on here.

Please, wish me luck.

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Waiting for you. Week 22.

by Ms. Myg on October 31, 2008

It was pain week. Yes, that’s what I’ll call it.

I have a history of back/neck injuries sustained from two totally excellent places:

  1. Flipping over the handlebars of my Sears Freedom bike when I was 7 years old. It was real bad. So bad, I cracked my brand new adult front tooth in half, landed on my head in the middle of the street and was knocked unconscious. Hospital time!
  2. Rock and Roll. I played guitar and sang in an indie rock band from the time I was 19 until…well I last played a show in December of 2001. I was 32 then. (Ugh. That long ago?) Anyway, I had some terribly shitty posture and managed to herniate two discs in my neck, which became very problematic for me in 1999. With treatment (physical therapy, chiropractic adjustments, drugs) I fully recovered. Or, did I? Herniated discs are like that.

I haven’t had a lot of complaints about these issues in the last few years. I’ve been lucky. Every once in awhile if I was feeling achy I’d make a trip to the doctor and get an adjustment, then be fine. I maybe saw him a couple of times a year. Then came pregnancy. With twins.

The pain I now have in my back is different. It hovers somewhere in the middle, (“Really? Not your lower back?” most formerly pregnant women, aka mothers, ask me. Now, I may know absolutely fucking nothing about being pregnant, but I can tell you exactly where it hurts, damn it.) The pain was particularly vicious on the left side, right under my ribs, every night at around 8:30pm until I went to bed, when it would wrap itself around to my abdomen, making me ponder whether or not I was getting an ulcer. Then magically tonight it appeared on the right side, and behaved in much the same way. I was relieved for the change in scenery, as it were.

This pain started gradually. I first noticed that if I spent much time on my feet, I’d be screwed for days. I learned, hey, don’t spend so much time on your feet. Now it’s to the point where I can’t spend too much time sitting upright, either. I need to spend a significant part of the day laying down. Which sounds a lot nicer than it is – especially when you still sorta have a job, like I do.

Know what’s really killing me? I had to stop walking the dog. Couldn’t make it down my street to the corner without my mid back feeling like it was being ripped apart. I feel so, so bad about not being able to do things with my dog! Soon enough he’s going to be relegated around here to actual, you know, dog status. I was hoping for a little more time I could really dote on him. Poor guy – he’s just 19 months old – still a puppy for labs. [Insert gratuitous adorable dog pic here:]

Man, he still does that head cocked to the side thing when you talk to him too. He’s too much.

To alleviate the pain, I had a full on therapeutic massage last weekend. It was nice, but it didn’t fix shit. On Monday I begged my doctor to squeeze me in and got an adjustment. I think that helped – some. My pain is more localized now. But it still hurts. A lot. And for a lot of the day.

The OB/GYN told me to order the “prenatal cradle.” It’s a crazy borderline S&M looking contraption that will support my back in holding up my belly.

Wear it UNDER your clothes, dummy!

Wear it UNDER your clothes, dummy!

With that shoulder support, it should alleviate some of my mid back woes. If you need one, google it, but don’t order it from the maker, Prenatal Cradle, or you’ll pay about $20 extra for one with shipping. I ordered mine from Target for around $60, shipping was free. I’ll let you know when it gets here if it works. I really pray it does because if all goes well, I’m looking at another 15 weeks of this shit!

So that was my week.

Oh, the kids? Here’s what Bing and Doot have been up to:

  • They’re growing. How do I know? Well, I don’t exactly, other than the fact that I have been growing. And they seem to be crowding my internals a bit more. Conventional Wisdom says they should be about a pound each and a foot long a piece. That makes me crave a Nathan’s. Or two.
  • They are now producing their own hormones. Great – just what we need around here. More hormones!
  • Moving around. I still worry about whether or not I feel them moving enough. But I do feel tap, tap, tap every now and then. First this side, then that. Every once in awhile in the middle of the night, somebody kicks me hard enough to cause pain in a vital organ. It’s reassuring.
  • Other than getting bigger, I’m not sure what’s left for these guys between now and showtime.

And as for me, the pain thing is really tantamount. If you’ve ever experienced chronic pain, you know of what I speak. It just flavors everything in your day. So since I devoted so much of this post with that, I’ll skip it in the bulleted recap of the state of me:

  • Getting clutzy and moving in the vertical plane is more complicated. Unplug something? Pick that sock up off the floor? Okay, I’ll do it, but it had better be REAL important to you.
  • Worrying. Like up at 3am thinking about every single thing that isn’t done. From the hall closet being a wreck to the nursery to work related things to my wedding photo album (yeah, I got married 6 years ago, but still.)
  • I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT I’M DOING HERE! SHUT UP! GO AWAY! DON’T LEAVE ME!
  • Denial. Sometimes I just don’t believe they are really, truly in there. Just as I was typing this, I received a message in the form of a swift kick from Doot in the liver. Thanks, buddy.

I’ve got a lot more internal state of mind stuff to spew at you, but it’s late and I’m tired and oh, jeez, did I mention my back hurts? Makes even blogging a bitch.

You may be wondering, as I have, given my complaints above, do I still think pregnancy over 35 = AWESOME?  Well, yes. I do. But I will qualify this with the fact that awesome doesn’t mean easy. It doesn’t even always mean good. The big bang was awesome, wasn’t it?  Mother nature must have gotten a serious damned back ache from that, right?

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In or out? The Moms Only Club in the post-infertility world.

by Ms. Myg on October 22, 2008

This has been a hard post to write, let me say that up front. I think I need to eat some humble pie. We’ll see.

As a long time outsider to mom culture, I had no idea what kind of club I was going to find myself inducted into with this pregnancy. I sort of speculated when we adopted Mason, because dog-owners-who-love-their-dogs-too-much have a similar “us-ness” that you join when you do things like spend time at dog parks. But this experience is far beyond.

I admit, I’ve always found the “moms only” club irritating once I reached an age where most of my female friends and relatives were members. See, when you’re in your thirties and childless you eventually stop getting invited to your friends-with-kids’ parties and dinners, presumably because you’re thought of as someone who doesn’t want to be around kids.

But now that I’m pregnant, we’ve been welcomed back into this group of people – some of whom I’ve known forever.

It’s just, well, weird. It’s not bad. But it is the process of becoming a part of something you’ve resented for years. You definitely don’t want to opt out, but you don’t forget how you felt a few short months ago either. And that’s weird.

See, when you’re infertile you really don’t want to be around other people’s adorable children or around pregnant women. At least I didn’t. Whenever possible I avoided them. I was such an ass I didn’t even respond to several invites for baby showers, let alone RSVP with a polite “no” and send a gift. “Fuck it” said I. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of someone else having a baby that wasn’t me, not even long enough to step into Babies R Us to buy a stupid gift. I was really that bad. So bad that at one point I remember being at a party last fall where the host announced his wife was expecting, and I had to lock myself in their bathroom and sob. I left early.

Of course, that’s me. In case it’s not obvious yet, I am nothing if not overwrought with intensity at all the inopportune moments in life. My struggle with infertility shook me to my foundations – challenged the very meaning of my own life. IT SUCKED BALLS.

Despite my best efforts to contain myself (and I’m a licensed therapist, so you can honestly consider me a pro at that), perhaps my personal hell was noticeable to my friends with kids after all. I’d like to think that’s the reason we were excluded from their social lives for awhile, but truthfully I think they had more reasons to bond with other parents who could share child watching, toy sharing or other concerns. I don’t blame them at all for that. During the same period, mostly due to my frequent sour moods, we became far less social and offered invitations to our home only for rare special occasions. I can’t say the loosening of ties wasn’t a mutual process.

But I will say I was surprised to see how proactively our company has been sought now that I’m pregnant.

Would I suck if I said it makes me nervous?

I want to join the club and you know what? I really need to for my own sanity. I want to be able to ask people stupid questions like, “How do you go to the bathroom in a public restroom with twins in a stroller? Should I even bother to go out in public with them for the first six months? Where should the babies sleep? For how long?”My problem is, I hate, hate HATE to ask anyone for help. With anything.

Lucky for me, I didn’t have to ask. Help is coming, whether I’m able to ask or not. That’s one of the small miracles of motherhood I’ve discovered. Mothers can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to helping others.

So, I’ve found myself the recipient of this incredibly sweet outpouring of attention and support the likes of which I’d never imagined. I am humbled by the generosity especially of other women who have kids – many I’ve known and paid little attention to for years (some in my own family) and even several I’ve never met other than from their interest in this blog.

Other than being pregnant, I can’t understand what I’ve done to deserve such commeraderie. So I try to understand it like this.

Being pregnant is the dichotomy of a truly unique experience and a truly common one. It’s special beyond special. More special than Christmas morning waffles and more special than shooting stars. It’s the specialist thing I’ll ever do. I know that, even despite the ever present spasms in my shoulders and twenty pairs of shoes that don’t fit. And so do all these women who are reaching out to me now.

I think it’s partly to welcome and honor me for partaking in this continuity of the life force. And I think it’s partly their way of honoring and remembering the experience itself.

So whatever happens now, consider me in.

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39 year old’s Second Trimester Fashion Crisis

by Ms. Myg on August 27, 2008

I don’t consider myself anyone who’s ever been terribly hip, nor stylish, nor in the know. Even growing up in the terminally awesome 80’s with a fine sense of post-punk and an even finer sense of 90’s indie guitar rock, I never did figure out how to dress.

I have to say, being pregnant has made this problem all the worse.

I looked at myself today, 13 weeks pregnant with twins. I’m digging the new shape of my body, as much as I was pretty unhappy with my former one. Since starting IVF treatments in January, I have gained a ton of weight all over – my face, arms, belly, thighs. Even my fingers have felt swollen. I chalk it up to drugs, hormones and the god awful depression that comes from failed IVF attempts, (which made me eat all the more, and all the less healthy stuff).

So my form is a bit, well, doughy. I am sad to admit that it droops in a lot of bad places, like my upper arms and thighs. My butt has those awful dimples on it and seems to get wider every time I check. (I’m checking a lot less frequently now, so I hope that helps). But what draws my attention in the mirror now is not the sagging heaps of flesh from just below my armpits. Instead, I’m hopelessly drawn to the tight expanse of bellyness extruding over my belt. Yes, there’s a bit of a cushy pillow on top, but to me the overall shape of my naked body clearly says, “PREGNANT!” And that’s really rad.

However, without a moderate investment in a half decent maternity wardrobe, that awesomeness of looking pregnant is reserved for nakie time. Otherwise, consider my look big and baggy like so many trash bags over a pile of wadded newspapers. I’m wearing my husband’s pants, which sounds much more darling than it looks.

I really swore I would try to be cool, even as a Mom, even as I get into middle age. I don’t want to dress “comfortably” in cheap elastic waistbanded pants and billowing tops. I want to be pregnant in punk rock t-shirts, dirty jeans and high tops.

But the other day, I looked in the mirror and saw myself in a pair of Orange Crocks and elastic waist banded capris tucked under a billowing floral print SNAP (for god’s sake) top. The ultimate picture of middle aged laziness in fat fashion.

Something had to change. So I finally did it. I finally went out and bought maternity clothes.

Now these aren’t the jeans I actually bought, but I did buy two similar pairs, one with the belly like the picture, and another with that full belly stocking thing.  Having never been pregnant before, and suffering the last several weeks as my mid-section revolted against the button of every pair of pants I own, I was simply AMAZED by how incredibly wonderful maternity pants are. I told my husband, “This is life changing.” And I sincerely meant it. The experience of sitting has completely altered for me. No more persistent discomfort in my midsection. No more sitting at my desk at work with my pants unbuttoned and unzipped, hoping nobody walks in unannounced. No more leaning back precariously in my office chair, trying to get my damned pants fastened clandestinely before I stand up. Life changing.

Why did I wait so long? Well, I am really quite fragile still about being pregnant in the first place. I am terrified that if I make it too real (by buying maternity pants, say) that it will cease to be real. I don’t know if I’m overly superstitious given the four years of struggle it has taken to get pregnant. Maybe I’m just like this.

In any case, in my new maternity jeans and retro striped t-shirts I may not yet look the paragon of hip impending over-35 “I grew up in the 80s so fuck off” motherhood I want to be, but now that I can breathe while sitting, I have to admit – I feel that way on the inside.

And it’s what’s inside that counts, isn’t it?

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