I have no idea how it got to this point, but I am not happy with the road I’m walking down.

I have no idea how to dig myself out of this, how to get myself back to being a runner, to feeling pride in my body and what it can do, to get myself back into a routine that works for me.

This is exactly what terrified me about having children.  The extra thirty pounds.  The vast time suckage. The loss of my time to do what I wanted to do with.

I used to come home from work, make dinner, eat, and then run. Every damn day. It worked for me. I didn’t have to get up early, and I had a running path outside my door. I could run in my spare room on my treadmill in front of the tv and I had a bunch of fall shows and closed captioning.  I was tired out afterwards and would fall into bed and sleep the sleep of the virtuous and I had just eaten dinner so I didn’t have to worry about fueling up before running. And after I ran food grossed me out so I didn’t have to worry about eating all night long in front of the tv.  This is how I lost sixty pounds. It worked for me.

Then I had Eli and it all fell apart. I don’t know what works for me. I hate waking up early and I hate trying to squeeze in time for a run when he might nap. Right now he’s standing next to me screaming because I am won’t pick him up, I am DONE, and he can’t take it. I had to put him in his crib and walk away because I was shaking with how angry he was making me.

I don’t want to count points. I really don’t. But I also don’t want to weigh what I weighed when I was 38 weeks pregnant, only not pregnant.  It is so discouraging that you can work so hard to carve out a routine, to make something work by sheer insane force of will, by herculean efforts, only to have it derailed, so quickly, so totally, so fast.

I am right back in that spot where I can’t sleep. I feel angry and defensive and coated in a hard thick layer of something that slows my responses. I am scared that I can’t do it. I am afraid that I may never get a routine back, that I may never find my way back to what works for me. I am terrified that I will never get my groove sorted out.

The only way out is thru, so they say.  Nothing will happen if I do nothing.  One step at a time.

This morning I dug out my running shoes and my too small sports bras. I need to find my IPOD and pump up the tires in the jogging stroller.  I need to find a good running route and I need to put together the treadmill in the garage and I need to sleep train my damn child, because this just is not working for me anymore, something has to change.

I am terrified that I have lost something I might never get back.

Terrified.

I loved that orderly life, I loved the way it all fit together. It worked.  I loved that.

I wouldn’t go back there, I wouldn’t. When I really think about it, that life seems lonely.  A bit dull. Empty.  But I feel the desperate need to get some thing going, of my own, some kind of fit to my day.  Some point.

My best friend and I are registered for the Sacramento Half Marathon on October 5th, my birthday.  I do not have enough time to train, I will not run fast or set any PR’s. I might walk the whole thing.  I might have to run with an eighteen month attached to my leg screaming.  But dammit, i am going to do it. It’s the only way I know how to get there from here.  One foot in front of the other.

My husband just tried to hide his Otter Pop wrapper in a plant pot in the living room!  !!!! Good god.

Speaking of the living room, we have the worlds most awkwardly shaped living room, I believe I have mentioned that before.  This weekend we had an enormous fight in which I believe I was referred to as Sassypants several times.  I may have used a few choice expressions (cough “dickhead” cough) myself. After we had that out, we rearranged our living room, and it looks way way better than it did before but I had to repurpose my beloved $50 Target hallway table into a behind the couch table, and so now I need a new hallway table.

Which brings up my decorating philosophy.  Did you know I had a decorating philosophy?  Well, I do.  In general, I’m a fan of modern design, just because I hate clutter and I like clean lines.  But I’m also a big fan of vintagey, cottagey, pottery barney, french industrial, farmy, spanish, hollywoody girly shabby chic and so I try not to get all worried about what exactly my style is.  I am huge believer in the idea that if you buy things you love, regardless of labels, eventually they’ll all just fall together in a way that works and that looks like you.

My taste changes from day to day anyway.  Some days I want nothing more than a whole house full of that chippy paint furniture.  Other days I wish everything I owned was made of cool clean stainless steel.  Some days I dog ear every page in the Pottery Barn Teen catalog and oogle pink refrigerators.

Regardless, Mr. E isn’t really a pink refrigerator type of dude, and he has expressed a distinct dislike of chippy paint.  He really loves California Modern, but our house was built in 1935, not 1955 or 1975, and I think trying to shoehorn an era onto a house feels awkward and themey and it might surprise you to learn this but “awkward and themey” is not the look I’m going for.

This is just a really boring and long winded way of saying that I get around all of this decorating schizophrenia by semi unconsciously decorating my house in zones.  Eli’s bedroom is the vintage/classic/potterybarn kids zone.  The dining room is the french/hollywood regency/craftsman zone.  The kitchen is trending towards farmhouse with a little Martha Stewart thrown in.  The bathroom is a war zone where flying toilet germs launch themselves towards my toothbrush on a regular basis.  The bedroom is the cozy retreat zen zone, and the living room is the midcentury modern zone, and the hallway/foyer is going to be the farmhouse/shabby chic/country zone.

Anyway, it’s empty right now, but I’ve got some big ideas.

I’m thinking this pendant lamp, which I can only sort of afford, someday, but which I love so much I must have it anyway, and I am I the only one wondering if I could make this out of one of those fluted tin jello molds from the thrift store:

This is the table I want but can’t afford.  LOVE.

And another one I love and can’t afford,

and these are the two tables I can afford that I am choosing between. I would replace the knobs on both of them with white milk glass knobs.  I’m not going to tell you where either of them is from because I don’t want to influence your decision.

Mr. E hates number two and thinks it’s too country cabin.  I think it would be nice, with white knobs, and I am worried number one is too small, and it gives me a teeny bit of an asian vibe, which is not what I’m going for.

I won’t buy either one until I check out the Alameda Flea Market, but I want to have a plan in place so I am not emotionally devastated when I don’t find anything there.

Hey, I take my tables seriously.

Opinions?

By the way, if I ever do find a table I’m going to put a bunch of trinkety knicknackery crap on it, including one of those glass bell jars, so that Mr. E can bitch at me every day for putting breakable items on wobbly tables, because that’s the kind of fun that money just can’t buy.

*Zone Awesome Is In My Pants

Is anyone else so ready for fall?

Fall is just such a movie season, at least in my head.

I like to sit around while I’m sweating balls and sucking down another Extreme Gulp full of lukewarm Diet Coke and romanticize fall. You know, in my spare time?

I’ve already scienced out a project involving my front steps, candy corn, and some mason jars.  I’m thinking dreamily of my first pumpkin spice latte.  I picture myself walking down a country road covered in fall leaves, wearing plaid.  I have the strong urge to tail gate something. I’m planning my FOUR YEAR blogiversary.  I am way way way way way too excited for the season premiere of One Tree Hill and I might have thought a time or two or ten about buying a pair of shoes just so I could take pictures of them for NoBloShoeMo or whatever the heck it is.

Fall, when I think of it, is always that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Harry and Sally are walking around the city doing that weird Indian accent and Sally is wearing that wool jacket and that long purse?  In the movie of my life fall happens like that.

Of course I am the girl who has declared many many many many many many times in her life that she’d like to move permanently to the land of Endless Summer, and live out the rest of her days wondering whether tomorrow was going to be 82 or 81 degrees.   Yesterday the heat wave broke and I had to wear a HAT because it was 90 degrees and my ears got cold. I don’t deal well with cold, and I have never, since the dawn of time, wanted it to be fall before.

Maybe I just have an Olympic hangover.  I tried really hard to care about the Olympics, I wanted to get on the Michael Phelps bandwagon, I tried to find some underdogs to root for, but so far, eh.  It’s on too late at night and also, Michael Phelps is just not my type.  My type is much more the boy who would dislocate something just looking at a pool.  That or the boy who’s already been kicked out for smoking in the locker room.  Or Apollo Anton Ohno.  Maybe I am just a product of our over stimulated society. I did find myself watching the synchronized diving and thinking, “why stop at two? Why not three, or four? Hell, why not FIVE?!”

Perhaps I am ill.  I did get  baptized with my first projectile vomit on Friday night, courtesy of Senor Pants.  Projectile vomiting whole bananas onto his mother since 2008.

Anyway, for whatever reason, this is the first time in my entire life I have ever gotten my fill of summer.  You know, I am strangely tickled by that.

And also I am going to San Fran again this weekend so that Mr. E can go listen to some ear bleedy hipster noise disguised as music, and San Fran is the land of perma fall, so there’s that.

I’m putting up some new stuff in the shop today and tomorrow, go check it out!

Yesterday was not a good day.

Eli got stung by a bee.

And I know.  In the grand scheme of things, in the face of pain and death and abuse and loss and all the horribleness out there in the world, this is not a major trauma, and also probably not something I should still be shaken by, a day later. Especially when, as you may note, I am not even the one who was stung.

We were playing outside, I was hosing down the patio, and Eli started fussing, and he does this about a thousand trillion times a day, so I ignored it, and then he started crying harder, and I thought maybe his feet were hot from the concrete, so I sprayed them with the hose, and then he kept crying, and started grabbing his foot, and really screaming that wailing injured scream, and then I saw the bee squirming on the ground and finally got it.

When it was all over and the stinger was out and tears were wiped and cuddles were administered, my hands were still shaking.  They shook all day, after that.

It was not that something hurt my baby and I let it happen, or that something hurt my baby and I didn’t know right away, or that something hurt my baby and I did not stop it.  It was simply that something hurt my baby.

Something hurt my baby.

For the first time. Something hurt my baby.  And in that moment, it felt as though all the air had been sucked from the world, as if time had stopped, as if something evil had passed through the spot where we were standing and left us cold.

When you become a parent, a drumbeat begins, and most of the time it stays distant, in the hills far away from you, nothing more than background noise.  At times you will forget it is even there.  And then it will come rushing in without warning and bang in your ears,  as loud as you can stand it, an endless amplified heartbeat pulsing in your head.  Either way, and no matter how distant, it is always there, repeating.  “I must keep him safe. I cannot keep him safe.  I must keep him safe. I cannot keep him safe. I MUST keep him safe. I CANNOT keep him safe.” And yesterday it rushed in and slammed me to the ground, as loud as it has ever been before in our lives.

It was just a bee sting.  But something hurt my baby. And it floored me.

Later that same night an errant deuce got the better of us and wasn’t changed right away, and Eli had a sore bottom as well as a sore foot.  He ended up naked, lying on a towel next to me, with the remote in one hand and his, uh, 11th finger in the other, with a bottle near by, and Roadhouse on TV.  Mr. E assured me that for a dude it pretty much doesn’t get better than that, and that he was certain E dog would be ok.

But still. That moment. That moment will be with me until the day I die.

So last weekend Mr. E and I packed up a ton of totally unnecesary shit and folded ourselves into our tiny Jetta and drove on over to Sausalito to check out the Heath Tile Factory and then have a picnic with some friends of ours brave enough to eat our food and help us wrangle our child.

Have I ever mentioned that Eli doesn’t like the car seat? He tolerates it, occasionally, but he is FAR FAR FAR from one of those creatures known as the babies you always hear about that you thought you would have that just fall asleep every time they get in the car.  Oh no.  Most of the time he is happy to let you know that he is well and truly pissed about the car seat situation, and that in fact he would like to be let out right the hell now and he would also like to explore the car and by the way from now on he will also be doing the driving, thank you very much.  I think that to Senor Pants the car seat is just another instrument of torture designed to keep him from exploring and walking and poking things and throwing rocks and sand and it’s actually a lot like his mother. Harshing his buzz since 2007.

Anyhoo, this particular trip, last weekend, was a rarity.  A most excellent rarity, because god love us, Eli was an angel child. Not a peep came from the back seat, despite the fact that the radio was broken and we couldn’t placate Hell Boy 3 with a soul destroying medley of soothing Jack Johnson tunes, which is usually the only thing that can calm down his incessant screeching.  Although to be fair,  sometimes in a pinch he will tolerate Elliott Smith.  So, no tunes.  Instead we just sat there like assholes talking about how good and quiet our child was and how freaking awesome it was.

In our defense, when Hellboy is quiet, you DO NOT make eye contact.  “Don’t taunt the beast” is pretty much the front seat policy when we’re in the car, and really, what’s he going to do back there anyway? He’s strapped into the Defcon4inator or whatever the hell that overpriced car seat is called.

So we arrived at the tile factory after a series of wrong turns and shouty cell phone calls and staggered out of the car into the blinding daylight they pipe into Sausalito, made special just for the very rich, and I opened the back door of our tiny car to dig Eli out of his car seat and What the hell?  I started gasping in confusion and I scared the crap out of Mr. E who came running over to see what was wrong, and then I figured it out and said “Oh my god.  OH MY GOD.  Your child is sitting next to the apple pie and he has smeared THE ENTIRE THING ALL. OVER. HIS. HEAD.”

Eli had lifted a little corner of the foil covering the pie and had been systematically digging out apple pie filling for the better part of an hour and carefully smearing it into his hair, swirling chunks of it into his curls and pasting it smooth.

Please note, however, that at NO POINT did he actually eat any pie.  His pacifier was in his mouth the whole time.

At least we’ve figured out how to keep him quiet in the car.

Do you ever feel like the world is just one big joke that you don’t get? Like maybe somewhere someone once thought something was funny and everyone else was afraid to look stupid and admit that they didn’t get it so they just pretended it was funny too and then we everyone laughed SO harrrrrrrd at the big funny funny and meanwhile, I’m just sitting there scratching my head going “Huh?  I don’t get it.”

That’s how I feel about Ben Stiller.  Not funny.  Or rather, that’s how I used to feel, until the reviews for Tropic Thunder started rolling in, and I discovered that it’s totally ridiculously horrifyingly offensive, and now I just plain hate his weasely little guts.

In case you’ve never heard of this movie, in the words of Special Olympics Chairman Timothy Shriver, it is “an unchecked assault on the humanity of people with intellectual disabilities — an affront to dignity, hope and respect.” They also apparently say retard about seven trillion times through out the course of the movie.

Nice.

If you’ve read my blog for awhile you know that I have a sister with Down Syndrome. You know my feelings on the R word.  You could probably guess that a movie like this makes me sick to my stomach. I believe this sort of behavior, putting this out into the world, is shameful and disusting and evil, and while I will and always will protect your right to free speech with every fiber of my being, I also believe that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  That you would willingly create something that tears down the innocent of the world just makes me physically ill.  What shoddy shoddy behavior.

I ask you, if I have ever meant anything to you, if you care one iota about my feelings or the feelings of my sister or anyone else out there who is little less fortunate than you are, to vote with your feet. Raise your hand and say “NOT FUNNY.”  Join with me and others across the world in boycotting this movie.  I’m adding Ben Stiller to the Permanent Lifetime Ban and I’d love nothing more for this movie to put his career in the absolute toilet. Although when you’ve gone so far down the road of the unfunny that the only thing you can pull out of your ass to try to get laughs is making fun of the mentally retarded, maybe you’re already there.

Vile. Just vile.

Dudes, this is terrible, but I totally haven’t written anything since Tuesday because the only thing I can think of to write is a Slynnro style What’s In Your Blankety Blank type post and I ordered some new face wash and some new shampoo and it’s not here yet, and I couldn’t take an incomplete bathroom picture that was missing two new bathroom products, could I now?

And yet, here we are.

Can I ask this? Does anyone else find showering to be like, so incredibly boring, except on those days when you’re trying some new product for the first time?  I started thinking the other day that showering could actually be kind of fun, instead of a big waste of my time, if only I had a new products in there every day.  Too bad Ahnahld has decided to pay my husband minimum wage and no I am not kidding and haaaaaaaaaaa minimum wage doesn’t even pay our mortgage so um, not okay? Well, whatever, let’s just say that Mr. E and I did not spend fourteen years living at the poverty line while he got a PhD for him to make MINIMUM wage.  Boo.

So, my bathroom, let’s talk about my bathroom.  God, I am thrilling, aren’t I?

But seriously, please observe, this is the world’s smallest bathroom (TWSB), and we almost didn’t buy this house because the fact that it is so insanely tiny made Mr. E really nervous, but please note, it takes aproximately 30 seconds to clean. I used to have a HUGE ass bathroom with two sinks and all that whole shebang and the thing took literally HOURS to clean.  Also,  please note that we have a tankless hot water heater which means we never ever ever ever run out of hot water, I literally could turn on the hot water at 7 am and it would still be hot at 7 pm when  I got home from wherever I would go while I ran the hot water for 12 hours in my house.  How’s that small bathroom looking now?

The only bad part about having a tankless hot water heater, aside from the hole in my bank account where many thousands of dollars used to be, is that everyone asks you how it works and all I can say is that there is this box thingee and it makes a fire inside it and then there is hot water. Gah, I don’t know, don’t you have a computer?  Just google it like the rest of the free world!

Also, I am for certain there is a better way to design this bathroom, layout wise, and I am totally going to redesign it myself, by which I mean I am going to make my friend who is an architect come stay with me and tell me how to fix my bathroom and where to put the toilet and then I am going to order seventy million dollars worth of cabinets from Pottery Barn.

Also, remember when I said we were putting IKEA hooks on our door for towels and all that blah blah blah? Well, that was fine and worked well until the hook thingee fell off the wall.  Despite the fact that Mr. E looks constipated whenever they are mentioned I ordered an over the door towel holder thingee and it is actually much better, way less messy and bulky looking than having fourteen towels hung on hooks basically all up in the hallway’s business  - although I did just notice that my husbands’ towel is on the bedroom floor so I hope I didn’t accidentally buy the dreaded boy repelling variety towel rack.  Sigh.

Confidential to Mr. E: HANG YOUR TOWEL UP OR I AM GOING TO BLOW MY NOSE ON IT AND PUT IT BACK AND YOU WON’T EVEN KNOW.

Ew. Gross.

If the door appears to slant open at a bizarre angle it’s because we had to put those rubberized stoppers behind the doors all over the house because Eli’s number one favorite thing to do in the world is to slam doors open and shut all day long, bang bang bang bang and it was making dents in the plaster.

Oh, also, isn’t my toothbrush holder lovely?

I totally put that up myself, and by put that up myself I mean I forced my friend Andrew to do it when he was here visiting.  Sometimes Mr. E tries to actually use the cup and then I give him the evil eyes of “don’t you know that cup is for decoration and certainly not for boys to drink out of.” Also I am now wondering if the towel bar which I hate and the toothbrush holder which I love should go below that thing I call the white wood stripey thing and which those in the know apparently call “wainscoting.”  So fancy! I bet you call your car hole a garage too.

Whatever, I won’t be moving any toothbrush holders today, so let’s just hold it together.

I do have all white towels and such and I love them, for years we used these scrappy brown rough JC Penney towels and although we always talked about getting new towels we’d always say, no, these are fine, even though the dog had chewed on one and that was the one I always ended up getting, but we wanted to save money and so we used the ratty towels and then when we moved somehow a bunch of them ended up getting thrown out and so for some ridiculously tiny amount of money like $48 dollars we went to TJ Maxx and got all new white fluffy Ralph Lauren towels and it was worth every penny.  It was a bargain AND exactly what I wanted so the moral of the story is that sometimes money is ok to spend and also when it comes to buying nice towels TJ Maxx is your best friend.

Also, I hate to tell you this but my favorite thing in the entire bathroom, by FAR, is that ledge that I keep all my shower shit on. No need to have a crappy wire hangy thing in the bathroom! Tall enough that my son can’t eat my $26 dollar shampoo!  Plenty of room for way way way way too many bottles of conditioner and other assorted crap! No bottles of shampoo falling all over every time I move! LOVE IT. Every shower needs a random wall ledge, IMHO, and it is totally worth having TWSB as a trade off.

Also, here is a question.  I was so going to rip out these glass doors and put in a shower curtain because that’s like, what you do, right? But then I realized I kind of love the glass shower doors. It’s so…all enclosed. It’s like shutting yourself in a little shower room every morning. But is that sort of terrible? Like are people going to someday come to look at the house and maybe buy it from us and think “Ech, I can’t live here, they don’t have a shower curtain!” or am I being crazy? I mean is the glass shower door the equivalent of having a Bathtub Mary in my front yard (which I honestly have always kind of wanted) or is it no big deal?

Also, what I really want is a claw foot tub but I don’t even know if that would fit in TWSB and I also haven’t figured out yet how to get a claw foot tub into a Jetta, so that might have to wait for a little while.

Christ, I can’t believe I still haven’t told you what all is in my shower. Good god.  Ok, here goes, from left to right:

1. Mario Badescu Enzyme Cleansing Gel - One of the new products.  I tried a sample, and then lost it, so I am hoping this is the one I really loved.  Only I did just notice that it has Alpha Hydroxy in it which normally my skin HATES, so we’ll see.

2. Some random Aussie shampoo - this is bad bad bad, but this is the fake shampoo I put in here so guests don’t use my $26 dollar shampoo! I know, bad. But hear me out - I just feel like if you KNOW (as I do) that my shampoo cost $26 dollars, you use a tiny amount.  But I can’t tell a guest that! I can’t march into the bathroom and say “Oh, hai, this shampoo is very very expensive, but good news! You only need a tiny amount!” So instead I just take out the $26 shampoo when guests come and they use the Aussie and if they don’t like it, they can bring their own shampoo, right? I am terrible, I know.

3. The $26 Fresh soda shampoo -  This was ok. I never really find shampoo I like and I’m still in the hunt. It definitely felt like it got my hair really really clean, but I never loved the smell, and my hair smelled like it for ages afterwards. I’m going to try to the equally overpriced Kiehl’s Tea Tree shampoo and see which one I like better, because I’ve used samples of the Kiehl’s before the price scared me off and I think I liked it more.

4. Orange bottle - Cheap conditioner, see #2.

5.  California Baby shampoo/baby wash/combo dealio - For the child. We buy it because it’s unscented. NO PHTHALATES ON THE BABY!

6.  Aveeno Skin Brightening Daily Scrub. So it turns out I have the kind of skin where if you aggravate it at all, it gets pissed, so I really should never ever ever use scrub on it, really at all, but I can’t help myself, you guys, because sometimes my face looks just dull or not dewy or something and I just want to scrub it. I know. But my skin always feels so clean afterwards and also this stuff smells just freaking UNBELIEVABLE it is my favorite smell of anything ever, so I use it and then I break out for three weeks afterwards and I curse myself every day and then I use it again. Clearly I have a problem.

7.  Clinique Mild Face Wash. Eh. I liked it, it cleaned my face, I’m bored of it, and also I still have breakouts, so who knows.  It worked for awhile, I think, but now I’m over it.  If I hate the MB stuff I’m moving on to Origins, then I might try this again, who knows. Maybe it’s the best I’m gonna do.

8.  Rene Furterer Initia Shampooing Volume - The green shampoo in the small bottle.  You cannot buy this shampoo in the US.  I have tried googling the hell out of it, trust me, and it’s the BEST EVER but I have to conserve it because my step father brings it back from France for me one tiny bottle at a time. You can find the brand here, but not the flavor.  I have greasy fine hair that needs to be washed all the time and this stuff is the best.  I save it for special occasions and such.

9.  Alba Volume Conditioner - Rec’d by Slynnro, works well.  I got a little bored with it but I’ll probably stick with it. Also, that’s a good deal there on Amazon, with the free shipping and all.

10.  MOP Lemongrass Volume Conditioner - I like it. It seems to work, maybe the same or not as well as the Alba, it’s so hard to tell. I don’t hate it, though, and it has a fairly innocuous smell. It rinses clean and it doesn’t turn my hair into an oil slick, so there’s that. It was kind of pricey though, now that I think about it.  Maybe better to stick with the Alba for half the price.

11.  Trader Joe’s Cream Shave. I prefer the Alba Cream Shave stuff that this is clearly ripped off from, but this is $2.50 or something and readily available at Trader Joe’s. It does the job, it just sort of smells like pipe tobacco to me.  It doesn’t have that delicious “are you sure I can’t eat this or just roll around in it” smell like the Alba stuff does. But again, it’s like, a quarter of the price.

12.  Wella Color Conserve Volume Conditioner - Eh.  This is really hard to rinse out of my  hair.  Also, I can’t find this except as “Color Conserve” and since I don’t have colored hair, that’s weird, and also, I think the Alba is the cheapest of the bunch and none of these other ones are noticeably better. I’m still waiting for the conditioner that’s going to give me crazy volumerized hair, but so far, it’s just a matter of what doesn’t turn my hair into limp sad hair, and none of these conditioners do that, so take that for what it’s worth.

At a later date I will go into what’s in those fascinating green and striped bins and then we’ll really get into the volumizing products. Bet you can hardly wait.

Also, stay tuned for a review of the Kiehls Tea Tree Shampoo which has not yet arrived. Grrrrr.

Also not pictured: Ivory bar soap, which is the only kind Mr. E and I can agree on, and whatever random pink razor with eighty blades I use, the Venus Hot Pants Lady Parts Shaver or some such thing.

Thank goodness for naps - I finally had time to add a bunch of cool vintage things to my Etsy store, so check it out if you have time - hopefully you get a nap time today too.

Sometimes I wonder if I will spend my entire adult life unlearning my childhood.

I am very slowly unlearning the cheapness I inherited from my father. I love to shop but I love a bargain even more, and I can’t stop myself from buying something on sale, even if it’s not quite right.  I have done this over and over again and it just makes no sense, but it’s so hard for me to stop.  I finally bit the bullet and spent an unconscionable amount of money on a bedskirt, and it wasn’t on sale and I didn’t have a coupon, and it killed me.  I found about nineteen bedskirts that weren’t quite right but that were So! Much! Cheaper! and it was so hard to make myself buy the perfect really expensive one, the exact one I wanted, but I did it. Yeah for spending money on overpriced bedskirts!

Another thing I am unlearning is my constant second guessing of other people’s emotions.  This is the legacy of my emotionallly abusive childhood.  I am hardwired to guess as quickly as I can what you are feeling, so that if you are about to explode I can head you off at the pass.

And this is what made Blogher so scary and so liberating to me.  Before I took that leap and went off and met a bunch of people I didn’t really know, I spent SO much time not leaving comments and not making contact and not sending emails because I was worried that people wouldn’t like me.  If I did leave a comment and someone didn’t write me back, I would worry about that.  Was it was because they didn’t know who I was and they were offended that I had appeared out of the blue and said “OMG I love your blog.”? Did they think I was weird or annoying?  Did they hate my writing or my blog name or my jokes?

Hundred of bloggers who I know and love have never heard of me because I was afraid of what they would think if I dared to leave them a comment.  And that’s just nuts.

You could drive yourself insane wondering whether people love you or hate you or think you’re weird, and I am going to unlearn that shit right the heck now.  If someone thinks I’m weird or not funny or wants me to leave them alone, they can tell me. Otherwise, I can’t worry about what they or may or may be thinking.  Chances are pretty good it isn’t about me and my lame comments. And if I want people to read my blog,  I have to be willing to put myself out there, and let go of the fear of what people may think.

By the way,  if you ever wonder if you should leave ME a comment, the answer is always yes. Even if I have never heard of you,  I will be thrilled to hear from you. If you read all my archives, I am honored.  I do not consider you a stalker if you take time out of your day to say hi or email me or click on my About Me page.  I am delighted you are interested enough to read what I have written and to tell me what you think of it.

I am also unlearning that fat equals bad, thanks to the excellent comments I got the other day. Those comments made me cry.  In a good way.  I have spent my whole life thinking fat = horrible.  And I am going to try to unlearn that as best I can because unlearning that feels like freedom, a freedom I have never known.  I will most certainly spend the rest of my life unlearning my fear of fat, but just the idea that it’s possible feels like a miracle.

In the midst of all this unlearning, I learned that 18 month olds often go through something called a mini adolescence. and hoo boy, do they ever.  (Maggie, GET READY.)  Eli has been the hardest he has ever been.  He is clingy and whiny and from the moment he wakes up he never stops crying to be picked up.  I tell him that I will never stop loving him more than anything else in the world but that regardless of that fact I cannot hold him every minute and even still, people, I am here to admit that I sometimes hold him while I GO TO THE BATHROOM because the screaming is KILLING me.

But I am also unlearning how I speak to the people I love, to my family.  I needed help, and so I checked out a bunch of books and one of them was a book that I am now going to recommend to every parent I know, and the first chapter is how we allow ourselves to talk to our children in ways that we would never talk to anyone else we know.  Disrespectful and angry and argumentative.  And what it comes down to is that no one wants to be argued out of their feelings.  When you are upset, it does not help to hear why you shouldn’t be.  I read the first chapter out loud to Mr. E and when Eli had a melt down this weekend and I didn’t get to go to the flea market, as I was crying as we drove out of town and I said “that was the only thing I wanted to do this weekend and everyone else got to do what they wanted to do” he said “I would be very upset if that happened to me.” And people. It was the first thing that made me feel better all day. It made a world of difference.  I felt respected and listened to and understood, and then I let it go, because I no longer had to work to convince my husband that my feelings were justified.  And then I remembered how my entire childhood, my mother tried to argue me out of every feeling I’d ever had, and how I just wanted someone to listen and agree with me, and I am telling you, it ends here. Love is not enough to raise a child. Love and RESPECT go hand in hand.

And while we’re at it, I am going to unlearn my slavish devotion to what the experts say you must do and must buy and must have to raise a child.   I read this post by Arwen awhile back and damn, did it speak to me. I so agree with what she had to say.  Your child needs your love and respect, not a $350 car seat.  YOU are your childs parent and you know what is best for him or her.  I need to unlearn my lack of faith in my own parenting and my own instincts, and I need to unlearn my desire to please everyone else.  And with that being said, if we don’t come to visit you for, oh, aproximately 18 years, it’s because I have learned the hard way what my child needs and what he needs is to take two naps a day in his own bedroom and I know that’s inconvenient for the rest of the world but that’s just how he is.  Polite Elizabeth is being unlearned, as we speak, because everyone else’s needs are coming before what I know is right for my child and I just can’t have that anymore.

Finally, I am unlearning some of the judgment I’ve been carrying around for 18 months. Remember when I said that one of the hardest parts of parenting for me was how heartbreaking it was to hold baby Eli in my arms and wonder how my own mother could leave me when I was 16 years old? And here I am. I love that child more than life itself, and yet, I get it now.  I am no more capable of walking away today than I was a year ago, but I understand how you could need to. I understand why you would.  I am unlearning heartbreak, I think, as I learn understanding.

Let’s just put it this way. Mr. E has a lot of fans.

I am fairly sure my mother likes him more than she likes me.  Any time she has ever gotten the slightest inclination that there was a chance we wouldn’t be together 4 EVA, she would fuh reek the hell out and inform me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t really think I was going to do any better and I should make sure not to mess this one up.  I once worked for a small university press in a shitty basement office and for some reason Mr. E came to visit me and after he left all the boring drones I worked with practically wet their pants over how damn hot he was.  I swear to god one of them was yelling “WHOO HEE” and fanning herself with an invoice.   At that point I felt I had to inform them that he sometimes Febreezed his pants instead of washing them, but they didn’t seem to care.  I used to joke about writing a newsletter called “Not As Fine As You Think” and handing it out to his students, because every semester one or more of them would send him an anonymous email asking him to father her children or telling him he was the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on.  One of the other TA’s finally decided to just start the year off by announcing that Mr. E was taken, and to please for the love of god to quit asking her about him.  Someone once left a pack of cigarettes and a condom in his mailbox.  We spent New Year’s Eve in San Francisco one year and Mr. E wore a shirt that said something to the effect of “Tickle Me” and he got, uh, let’s just say, tickled, A LOT.   And one of our friends who is a LESBIAN (IE doesn’t like boys) told me awhile ago that it seems like Mr. E is a very interesting person but that she wouldn’t know because she has a hard time paying attention to him when he talks because he’s just so dreamy.  My best friend met Mr. E when he stayed with her one year for a work conference and for an entire year afterwards she would call me up and say “OH MY GOD WE LOVE MR. E SO MUCH”. His own mother adores him, his sisters still talk about when used to baby sit them, the neighbor lady might be in love, his dog never leaves his side.  I can’t think of anyone that doesn’t like him.

So, he has a lot of fans, it’s safe to say.

But of all the people in all the world, of all the people we know and all the people who love him, I am pretty sure that one Eli Ekd@hl is Mr. E’s number one fan.

When Mr. E walks through the door, Eli yells “DA!*” as loud as he can, and drops to all fours and scrambles to the front door as fast as his mad little scramble can carry him.  If we’re outside and he sees his dad come walking home from work, he’ll stick both hands straight up in the air, and point, and scream, and take off running, all the while emitting a high pitched “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” and shaking his whole body from side to side, vibrating with happiness.  At dinner time, he wants to eat only what his dad is eating, sitting on his dads lap, using his dads fork.  They share grapes and sit on the floor and color and Eli doesn’t like to be too far away from his dad at any time, and from the moment his father arrives home at night, he is intent on showing off, as hard as he can, out to impress his father with everything he’s got.  Last night he spent an hour toddling into his room, opening his pajama drawer, dragging out a pair of pajamas, carrying them into the living room to show his father, waiting for approval before carrying them back.  Over and over again, each time gauging the reaction, as if to say “See, dad, see what I can do? Don’t you think I’m cool? Do you like my tricks? Are you impressed?”

I am also in the Mr. E fan club, despite the whole leaving beer cans/socks/underwear/leftover tostadas lying around, so I get it, it’s nothing new to me, but it’s still delicious to behold.  I am starting to think there are no finer moments to be had in this life than those spent with the music cranked up, watching your husband and son dancing and laughing and spinning together, each so impressed with the other, each so madly in love.

*Please note, the child NEVER says Mama, but we’re working on it.