Ma Ingalls, supermom
How did she do it? I read Little House in the Big Woods last week, partly to Owen and partly for comfort reading, and for Chrissakes, I want to know Ma Ingalls’ secret. How did she take care of a baby and churn her own butter? How did she get all that shit done by herself in a log cabin and parent three kids? How can you nurse a baby and cure smoked hickory venison at the same time? I realize that venison does a lot of sitting by itself but the baby? I don’t understand.
It’s not like she had a babysitter or Baby Einstein. Husband’s away all day fighting black bears and catching otters. Daughters Laura and Mary are admittedly satisfied by playing with corncobs but still, they are only 5 and 7, there’s only so much they can do to help with the cheesemaking and the hog-butchering.
I want to know the precises details. Did Baby Carrie cry it out at night? Did they co-sleep? Did Ma Ingalls nurse on demand or according to a schedule? Did she carry the baby in a sling or leave her in her cradle? WHAT IS THE ANSWER, Ma Ingalls?
Permission to make a mistake, Cap’n?
On the phone with a good friend the other day, talking about all this Modern Day Anxiety bullshit, when I was gently reminded that sometimes? People make mistakes. And guess what? Nobody died. It isn’t the end of the world, no matter how much I think it might be.
Just granting myself the human right to fuck up now and again has taken a huge load off my shoulders. That and all the awesomely awesome comments from friends and strangers in the last, oh, however many days it’s been that awesomely awesome people have been helping me out. Thank you all. I feel better, despite any manic closet-cleaning episodes to the contrary.
Bugs in my sweaters
And you know I hate bugs.
I think we have sweater moths. Some of my sweaters are moth-eaten and holey. So I spent the day washing all my woolens, taking every last item out of my closet, scrubbing it down, airing and rehanging and in some cases rewashing all my clothes, and vacuuming.
We have a 1950s Cape Cod. The closets — there are two — are the size of your pinkie fingernail. Yet with two kids under three , cleaning out my closet took the entire day. Dawn to dusk.
All with that fucking Eminem song running through my head, too.
I need a week in the woods
I also need to throw away my television.
This week I have given up caffeine and made a deliberate change for the better in terms of my diet (meeting the RDA for fruits and veggies several days going!). But I still feel anxious and overwhelmed. I still worry about chemicals leaching out of the bottles and cups I use to feed my children and I worry about the mental and neurological impact of all that football and commercials on my kids’ growing brains and I worry about this burning face rash that I still have and whether it was the antibiotic after all, or maybe it was something I ate, and if so, then what?
As I was explaining to my friend Matt, the anxiety is so crippling because every single decision I make has the potential to be dangerous, or deadly. Letting your kid chew on a toy? Could be setting him up for deadly levels of lead exposure. Eating that banana? What if that’s my trigger food? What if the next banana I eat sends me into anaphylactic shock? Owen took a nap this afternoon, which is unusual — maybe he has mumps! Or lead poisoning! Does the fact that he has several imaginary friends mean he is heading down a path of mental instability? Should I be getting him checked out? Should I be cleaning the bathroom to get rid of the mold, which is a potential allergen, or looking for bathroom cleaners which are not full of toxic chemicals?
Living and parenting in modern society is enough to knot my knickers to the point of paralysis. I’m still waiting for the hysteria to pass. Coping mechanisms welcome.
Keeps on comin’
So! Back to the ER for the third time in two weeks yesterday. Developed a full body rash and then my tongue started swelling up and one of my lymph nodes swelled as well. I had a panic attack, thinking I was going to suffocate.
They wanted to do a line of steroids for the rash and benadryl for the tongue and fluids for good measure but I couldn’t tolerate the idea of another IV and I was wary of the steroids. So I explained to the P.A. as I was hyperventilating that I would like to please skip the IV and the steroids and the preventative Pepcid and just take the benadryl. She acquiesced and offered an Ativan for good measure. It was amazing. I would like more of that. So many trains of thought which would have led to a racing heart and feeling dizzy couldn’t even leave the station.
My anxiety has been ramping up lately. I worry about everything. I worry that I have vitamin A overdose. I worry that the waterproof bed liner on Owen’s bed is making him sick. I worry that not having a bed liner on Mac’s mattress is making him sick. I worry about Owen’s health and the baby’s bowels and whether I’m eating something that’s going to make me sick. I worry about germs and I worry about my boys getting sick and I worry that I am going to have an aneurysm die and no one will know until Iain gets home from school.
I felt like this when Owen was a baby, too. I remember it got a lot easier when he turned one. But that’s six months away — Mac turning one. I have to find a handle on this in the meantime. The panic attacks are exacerbating everything. I need a way to get them under control.
Ahem: a meme!
Tagged by Jennifer of Chrysanthemum: Five facts about myself, some random, some weird.
Bonus fact: My sunglasses never cost more than $6.
Uno. I’m on a new diet. And I don’t mean, like, diet as in I need to lose weight diet. More like, diet as in this is what I’m eating diet. When I was in the ER the other week for dehydration and heart palpitations and electrolyte imbalance due to living on saltines for a week, it struck me: Woman cannot survive on Pop-Tarts alone. Time for a change. Time for: Spinach. Going well so far.
Dos. I keep a notebook. Wee pretty little notebook, about the size of my hand. I like to think of it as a housekeeper’s diary. I keep little to-do lists and sewing ideas and chores written down in there. It’s also where I’ve been writing down what I’m eating and whether I got all my food groups. Iain has already made fun of me for this.
Tres. I have one party trick. Removable tooth. Relatedly: Ask me about my Efferdent habit. (Denture, kids. It’s a denture. Owen likes to watch me brush my tooth in the morning.) Not a party trick but I drag it out at parties anyway: This one time? I interviewed Yoko Ono? And it was sweet.
Cuatro. I am a freak for the Muppets.
Cinco. I always sneeze in threes. True story. Guess what else? Mac does too. Genetics FTW.
Memes got rules?
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Don’t break the chain!
I dasn’t break the chain! (DASN’T. Yeah, I said it.) I solemnly tag these people:
chair. Chair! What’s your dang url? Doy.
Shopping today, unfortunately
Big ol’ cold front swept through last night. About five minutes after we sat down to eat, the power went out and the sun set. Power stayed out all evening, through candlelit diaper-changes and teeth-brushing in the dark and bedtime stories made up from our own heads. It stayed out all night, through Mac’s midnight snack and all the way to the break of dawn.
I woke up this morning to a constipated baby and a counterful of souring Thanksgiving leftovers. I have a refrigerator full of perished perishables. And I will be buying bread and milk and eggs today, shopping on the most congested shopping day of the year in what feels like the most congested metropolis on the most congested coast of the country.
But not willingly, dammit! And probably, truth be told, not very cheerfully either. Bah.
Grateful and not dead!
Well, one of our fish is dead. I think it was Yellow. They’re an inch and a quarter long, so it’s hard to tell who’s who. Very sad.
But I am not dead. In fact, I’m going to venture forth and say that I am on the mend. Er, again. As I wrote to a friend, it’s amazing what proper nutrition, adequate hydration, and a shitload of antibiotics will do for a body.
So, I’m grateful for that, that I’m feeling so much better. And I am on-my-knees grateful that it was me who was knocked sideways by this and not my boys. They are still (touch wood) healthy as horses.
I’m also grateful that, although I was too sick for us to travel to the in-laws’ for the holiday, the holiday was delivered to us, in the form of a full Thanksgiving dinner. Iain has some very thoughtful and very generous friends, and that’s all I can say without crying.
Anyway.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Spoke too soon
Drove myself to the E.R. again last night. Severely dehydrated. Do not ever get a stomach illness while breastfeeding.
A couple-three liters of fluids and 3000 mg of potassium and i am slowly feeling like I am not running a marathon with my heart.
Gaaaahhhhhh.
Slowly mending
Am recovering, I think. Feel a little bit better. Got lots of sleep. Got some answers at the doctor’s office and a plan of action. Hope it will help.
Nablopomo is certainly shot, for me, but I think I’ll try to get back into the daily posting groove for the remainder of the month anyway, just for the spirit of the thing.
Thank you for all your well wishes, Supa Friends. I will leave you with this: Star Wars knitting and crochet charts, via Craft Zine. If I could make a witty knitty pun for you right now, I would.
recent flickr
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my sewing tutorials
See my tutorials featured on SMS' Handmade Holidays!
