cleaning out the bathroom closet

I may as well memorialize it here, because it ain't happening again for another 4 years: I cleaned and organized half of my house last week. Well, maybe a third. I cleaned the aforementioned filthy dining room floor, vacuumed and found a literal dust bunny--a rabbit toy abandoned under the buffet table, covered in thick grey fuzz. I went through the bathroom closet and cabinets, and made the place spick and span for D's little birthday soiree. It was really just a few folks playing cards, and I felt a cold coming on (all that dust, you know, and exertion) so I was in a less festive mood. But I felt the urge that only comes every Leap Year or so to clean, so I had to go ahead with it.

The bathroom closet was the most interesting piece of historical reflection, since it contained many things I haven't needed since A was born, things that I almost cried for joy to throw away. A packet of iron pills, black and shiny and bloody huge. Breast pads for those uncomfortable nursing days (were there comfortable nursing days?). The breast pump. Travel size everything that I will never use. Expired medicine for thankfully expired maladies. The sitz-bath, in the second-most hideous color created. The inflatable hemorrhoid pillow in the most hideous color created.

The pillow was for me to carry around after I broke my tailbone, to convert any painful chair into a slightly less painful one. Or convert my bathtub into a place of comfort instead of a torture chamber. I took the pillow with me to school, but covered it with a crummy pillowcase because it was so disgusting to look at. There are some colors that should not be allowed in the vicinity of one's bottom, and this brown was one of them. You couldn't even improve the color by calling it milk chocolate, because it had a grey tinge to the warm brown. Revolting. Abhorrent.

The sitz bath, for those of you who have not had the pleasure, is a little thing for soaking that sitz under your toilet seat, which you fill with warm water from a suspended bag with a clip to keep the water from flowing more. Sounds confusing? Well it is. When the water gets cold or tepid, you "simply" unclip the little hose, let hotter water come down into the bath that you're sitzing on, clip it back fast, and the excess will magically drain into your latrine. Unless you are me, and for some reason there's not enough space for the water and it just splashes out onto the bathroom floor. While you are also soaking your swollen-out-the-wazoo ankles in a footzbath. And crying while drinking a beer and Woolite-ing your stretched nursing bra for the twentieth time that week. And trying to pump out the clogged duct in your boob with a reluctant breast pump. Brings new meaning to the word multitasking.

Ah, but those are things of the past. Happy Day. They have become one with some lucky landfill, to plague me no more, God willing.

Soon after I finished cleaning (or more like gave up on cleaning the rest of the house), I found out why I don't enjoy cleaning: if someone makes a mess or drops some crumbs, I get totally pissed off! If the house is already dirty, a few more crumbs aren't going to spoil the look. But if there is unbroken smoothness to the wood floor and a slight gleam of sunshine and then Someone throws some toost crustes onto it, I am extremely annoyed. Then out comes the dustbuster and things are ok, till Someone gets down from his high chair.

So to restore domestic harmony, I will not clean this thoroughly again until I can throw away the diaper pail.

another necklace

I just can't get enough. I really like doing these necklaces. This one is in a silk/mohair blend, with amber and tortoise-shell glass beads. My favorite so far, I think.

back in therapy

To the tune of Willie Nelson's "On the Road again:"
Back in therapy,
I can't believe I'm back in therapy
Dredging up awful shit stored in my memory--
Oh I can't believe I'm back in therrrapyyyy!

Ah, the lighter side. A very long and complicated story short, I have figured out that I have a form of post-traumatic stress about the birth of my son, and the events of the surrounding months. I will spare my readers the catalogue of distressing events, as most of you know them already and I want to write about something different. Because when it comes down to it, it's not really the events but my warped perception of them, and how they have colored the life I lead now, that are of consequence. I am in the process now of dredging them up and confronting them, and trying to gain some healing from the lingering pain and fear. Needless to say, I am exhausted.

I wrote earlier about the absolute terror of having another child, and my reasons for that. And after reading a few interesting articles on post-partum PTSD, I feel like a large chunk of guilt has been removed from my overburdened mind. Many women interviewed for this article expressed the same fears and the feeling that they just can't get over their traumatic childbirth experience. That they are frightened of visiting doctors because the last time they did, they nearly died, or the doctors treated them like a nuisance for being in pain or whatever. I felt so overlooked, having been sent home with the instructions, "Just take it easy for a while, and take this inch-wide iron pill every day," and then I was pronounced Fine at my six-week postpartum checkup. So I thought for the longest time that it was just my laziness or lack of mothering aptitude or something that made it so impossible to "bounce back." I mean, A was a very easy baby. I felt like, jeez I can barely function here, and my kid doesn't cry unless he's hungry or pooped all up his back, and sleeps well etc etc...and I know moms who would kill for a colic-free hour, and more than ten minutes of sleep consecutively. I somehow didn't put it together that having a near-death experience and operating on a half tank of blood would qualify for a bit of special treatment from the medical profession, and a valid excuse to myself for feeling unwell. So I just thought it was my problem, my usual inability to deal with reality.

One of the biggest causes for depression I think, is the feeling that I am the only one thinking or feeling this way, and that there must be something wrong with me, that I am not a good mother or a good Christian or some other rot lie to keep those feelings in the dark, for fear of exposure as the Fraud Lazy Apostate Child-Abusing Ingrate Hack that I really am. Those thoughts often come into my mind, perhaps not all at once, but they are still there when I look around at the filthy dining room floor, the pile of dishes in the sink, or I find that I have been reading for a half hour as my son plays by himself and I hadn't noticed the poop smell filling the room. Or when I see a Christian mom who has just popped out her 4th child and looks like she'd like nothing better than twenty more. And she wants to homeschool them all.

It's very difficult to remember that different people want different things for their lives, and are happy doing things I dread. Like having lots of kids and wanting them around all the time, for example. I'd rather be a part-time mountain hermit myself, and come out of my cave once a day to check on the family. I know I would miss A and D, but I would still be a hermit and deal with it alone.

Seriously though, this motherhood gig is so full of self-doubt, second-guessing and judgment that I wonder what possessed me to skip the birth control in the first place. There's so many conflicting messages in the media, in the Christian subculture, parents and friends that I find myself agonizing over giving A chicken nuggets for the second time this week--microwaved processed food that's easy to put together and he'll only eat half of it and shouldn't he eat some vegetables but he won't chew them up, should I force him to eat something green and assert my authority as God's representative in his life or just say screw it, he's going to hit puberty early because of the hormones in these God-forsaken chickens and on and on. And they're not from Trader Bloody Joe's and I give him white bread with real butter and I don't like giving him apples because he craps his brains out afterwards. But then I think, I ate vienna frigging sausages all the time when I was his age. I had scrapple and spam, and ate sugary cereals and drank coke, along with all the good-for-me foods my mom made too. It just feels like I'm making some political statement when I am feeding my kid, and he doesn't give a damn. Just give him something to dip, and he's happy. ---But don't drown your food, like the Saturday Morning cartoon said! It's no fun to eat what you can't even see, he said. I disagree. Pour on some Hollandaise and I am happy as a clam.