Uncomfortably Numb

~A. L. Tennyson

I wish they warned me about this in Psychology class. I think there should be at least a whole semester devoted to how depression makes you unfit and unable to handle being a mother. Because that’s how I feel.

I remember watching a video a few years ago about a high school track athlete with Multiple Sclerosis. She was explaining that after intense exertion, the MS causes her to lose all the feeling in her extremities, even while her body keeps going through the motions. Besides feeling completely in awe of her perseverance in spite of her diagnosis, I thought that was such a similar description to what I feel like, parenting with depression. When it takes all the energy and motivation you have to simply get up and get out of bed in the morning, I feel like I spend the rest of my day numb - going through the motions. There is just nothing left for when the day doesn’t go as planned, or the kids are being especially cruel. And they’re kids. For the most part, they shouldn’t be to blame for expressing themselves when they’re frustrated and confused and unsure of how to show it meaningfully. But at the same time, it hurts. It hurts so much when they yell at you and tell you that they think you don’t care about them. Because - unbeknownst to them - the fear that you’re not able to care enough plays on repeat in your own head all day. When all of the daylight hours feel like you’re running a track race completely numb, using every amount of effort you have just to make sure your kids are content, and fed, and washed, and dressed. When you’re foregoing eating, and drinks, and the rest you so desperately crave, just to make sure that you are there, and present, and engaging with them so you don’t lie in bed later agonizing over all the wasted minutes and hours that slipped away when you were so lost and struggling with your own body and mind - just to have them turn around and scream at you that all your best effort isn’t worth it...
Not worth it, and not worthy. Their words repeat what your depression is telling you, every day. When the message echoes around you in stereo, its so hard to tune out the noise. But your one job as a parent is that you must not give up. Sometimes I wonder if the pain is my blessing in life, just so I know that the numbness isn’t all there is.

In Wonderland

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

Most days, I still feel like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole. It has been two long years to get to this point. Two years of doubting myself, second guessing myself, and losing every ounce of confidence I had about being a good mother. About being a mother who could help her kids, guide them in the right direction. Help them learn and grow. Its two years later and I feel that I have none of these qualities anymore. And still I have no answers.

After a personality change, a near complete withdrawal from extra curricular activities, and an academic freefall, my wish for an evaluation for Monkey was finally granted. But even if we get a diagnosis that deviates from simple ADHD, I still feel like it will get us nowhere. It's almost May already. The white rabbit would agree that we are late in every sense of the word. Even with an IEP, there is no magical cure that will create passing scores in her two suffering subjects before June. No magical drinks or edible mushrooms that will instantly make her ready to be promoted. I'm trying not to fixate on a future of summer school or a repeated grade, but the possibility looms over my head every day. And still no progress report from the school. I just get to sit and wonder what is going on in the otherwordly dimension of the Upper Elementary. It's frustrating to go from such open communication in her last school, to having none whatsoever in the next. My imagination does me no favors filling in the blanks in lieu of actual information.

So I drift in this stagnant ocean of helplessness and anxiety. Wanting to know, but dreading what they have to tell me. Fearful that I won't be strong enough to help my child navigate the next chapters of her life with my sanity intact. And on and on we cycle through the same repeated behaviors and conflicts, just like being stuck at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with no escape. With the depression in the background calling me like a siren, trying to seduce me into its arms.

My only solace is to keep distracting myself with other things. Keep pushing, and living, and moving forward, to distance myself from my own mind. Doing anything I can not to go through the looking glass in my mind to the other side.

Shadowboxer

"Defeat is not final when one falls down...it is final when one refuses to get back up and fight."

Proof that mind over matter is real….I have barely been able to get out of bed in the last three days. There is nothing physically wrong with me, except that my mind won’t let me go. I try not to think about the fact that my mother would be turning 65 in less than three weeks, a big milestone for her if she were still here (since she always said she could never imagine herself as a “little old lady”). But surprise, surprise, my mind remembers. And has been holding my body hostage accordingly.

Its a little exhausting when your biggest opponent is yourself. Everything is a fight, from getting up in the morning to going to sleep at night, and all the little tasks that need to get done in between. Nothing seems so hopeless as battling an invisible opponent who is beside you and around you every moment of the day. Most days, I wish my depression could take on a physical form so I could give it one good crack to the face. I am so tired of its bonds restricting me. I am so exhausted from trying to push past it so I can get on with my life and plans and daily duties. There is no motivation in the world that will work if the mind doesn't want to. And right now, my mind is dictating that we don't get out of bed for a few days. It is body-achingly exhausting to even think about getting up and going about a normal routine. Thank goodness for an understanding husband who doesn't question my inability to function and simply picks up the slack. A man who just congratulated me for getting dressed and downstairs, because he knows its not what I felt like doing.

I will get back to myself. And this too shall pass. Slowly but surely. I just need to keep fighting my way out of bed in the morning.

It Was Not Death, for I Stood Up

"I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it.  If you don't, you feel even worse.”  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Robin Williams was one of my mother’s favorite actors, and very quickly became mine. I think I was about Little Bear’s age when I first saw him in Popeye (and became acutely terrified of octopi immediately after that). I also think I was the only six year old to watch Good Morning Vietnam, and The World According to Garp - parts of which were blocked by my mother’s hands over my eyes and ears - because I was begging my mom to let me see him again in a movie. Thank goodness we got a copy of Toys a few years later, although I still sometimes yell “Watch out for the under toad!” while running into the surf at the shore. When I heard the news on Monday afternoon of Robin tragically taking his own life, my first thought was one of sorrow, that the world was a little bit darker without his light in it. My second was that my mother would be overjoyed to see him again in “person,” besides the one time she ended up seeking him out to apologize for her son kicking him in the leg in a hotel pool. But as I read the comments on every article and news posting, and have absorbed all the backlash pieces that have popped up, my main feeling is grief. For everyone out there that condemn his death, malign his name, and call him a cheat, a coward, a weakling, and - worst of all - selfish, I applaud your ignorance. And my wish for you is that you keep it your entire life. I would rather you shouted your stupidity at the top of your lungs till the end of your days than to ever have to be afflicted with something as dark and insidious as actual severe depression. I don’t like to talk about my health problems. Especially my depression and my anxiety. I know I’ve mentioned it, I’ve wrote about it, but I don’t like to talk about it. Mostly because of the opportunity for judgement from the blissfully ignorant masses that thankfully have no idea what its like. There are a slim few that I share this darkness with, in some ways to protect them from it, and in other ways to protect myself. Nothing irritates me more than those inspirational photos that say people need to just choose to be happy everyday. As if I chose this disease for myself, and was happy living with it. Might as well tell a cancer patient to choose not to have a tumor when they wake up every morning. Part of the misunderstanding I think lies in the word we use as the label itself. You can feel depressed without having depression. But having depression is nothing like being a little low in spirits that feeling depressed means. Let me just say that again to let it sink in. Having depression is nothing like feeling depressed. I’ve mentioned actual depression is insidious. You might even personify it as a kidnapper, or a jailer, because the first thing it does is isolate you. It isolates you from your family, your friends, the world in general. You start to feel irritable and angry with those around you, then awkward, and alone after you’ve driven them away. You can easily identify that something is different, something is wrong, which almost immediately translates into something being wrong with you. Everyone else seems to be able to laugh, or cry, or sleep at night, or wake up in the morning. Why not you? It also isolates you from the rational parts of yourself. That self esteem that your wonderful parents gave you, the compliments from your friends, the praise and promises from the love of your life that everything will be okay, and they love you anyway….they can’t get through. There is no cell service at this island you find yourself stranded where those encouraging messages could be received. You’ve become the new lead in Cast Away, but instead of having a benign volleyball to talk to, you’ve been left with a deceitful forked tongue serpent that likes to lie to you. You are on this island, trying to communicate with the people in your life, whom you can see, but not really hear or understand. Especially since they are shouting from so far away, and that serpent is right next to you, drowning out their words by speaking directly into your ear. And the longer the serpent is next to you, the more chance it has to wrap itself around you. At first the contact might even feel nice, or comforting - you can actually feel something for once! But ultimately, you realize that the closeness will eventually kill you if you don’t do something about it. So you struggle against its bonds hoping to free yourself. You struggle with those python-like bands around you every day, every moment. Some days its just too exhausting to fight them. The thought of making the effort to even get up out of bed in the morning is so overwhelmingly tiring you just don’t. Trying to smile, and converse, while those bands are squeezing around you, making your bones ache and your lungs pinch from lack of air is sometimes too painful. Every decision you make is weighed against the effort of moving, and carrying this burden wrapped around yourself. No one can reach you past its coils. You long for real contact. An actual true sensation of feeling something touching you besides this insidious serpent. With depression, the most vital decision is when you actually admit to struggling out loud. Sometimes, with the right support, you can get medication, and therapy. But its still a process. The pills don't take the serpent away like aspirin resolves a headache. The psychologist can't pry the lies out of your brain or stop their hissing from sounding in your ears. The bonded sensation still squeezes the breath out of you some days, and then feels like its fleeting the next. Or sometimes, it just doesn't help at all. And when the pain wears you down so much, and the people yelling can’t reach you, or hold you, and you have just been listening to the lies murmured about you for days, months, and years, unending, sometimes - like Robin - you do feel like the only recourse, the only relief, the only escape is to do something. Anything. The only thing you feel you really can do. Something drastic.

I want to tell you something else about depression. It might fly in the face of what you believe in - what every psychotherapist, psychologist, doctor, priest, rabbi, friend, parent, or child may tell you - but ending your life is not a weak, cowardly, thing. It takes someone strong to actually go through with it. To actually decide to act, to choose to go through with something so final and permanent that goes against the basic human instinct of survival, is, thankfully, not something everyone can do. And to be so desperately embattled with a serpent that it seems your only viable option to free yourself, is to end yourself, does not deserve condemnation or criticism. It deserves reflection, and empathy, and at the very least, understanding. In mourning, we all, selfishly, cry for what we have lost. We should also remember to find joy in what Robin has gained by finally being released from his bonds of disease. The cessation of his pain. "Genie, you’re free!"

~ I pray you've found peace and laughter in heaven, Mr. Williams. It was a privilege sharing time with you. My thoughts are with your family and friends. Say hi to my Mom for me. XOXO

Illuminati

Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we'll need no other light.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My depression most often makes me feel isolated. Unreachable. Unrelatable. Its the hardest type of battle because the entire time I’m feeling so cut off, the knowledge is there in the back of my mind that this is a prison of my own making. Not purposefully, but nonetheless. I know that the shadows and darkness I live in aren’t real, but constructed by my head. Yet, the invisible wall separating me from the rest of the world still seems unbreachable to me. Until there are instances that make me feel like I’m at the end of a light tube. When the moment of connecting to something or someone kindred to me beams in like sunshine of the outside world reflected in off of a series of mirrors to illuminate me internally inside the dark little cave in my mind.

This was posted a week before my Mother’s birthday - but I didn’t see it until months later, until after passing the anniversary of her death. I was true to my promise from years before, and planted a garden that day. Trying to use the anniversary of her death as a day to remember to celebrate life instead of dwell on the loss. But I still have been walking around numb and isolated until I read this; a letter Joan Carpenter’s daughter, Karin Cook, wrote to her mother over a decade after she passed. Another mother, another daughter, another lifetime. But the pain, the love, the loss, the uncertainty are all the same. Transcending the differences between us and uniting me to her, if only for a few minutes.

Dear Mom,

What time was I born?

When did I walk?

What was my first word?

My body has begun to look like yours. Suddenly I can see you in me. I have so many questions. I look for answers in the air. Listen for your voice. Anticipate. Find meaning in the example of your life. I imagine what you might have said or done. Sometimes I hear answers in the echo of your absence. The notion of mentor is always a little empty for me. Holding out for the hope of you. My identity has taken shape in spite of that absence. There are women I go to for advice. But advice comes from the outside. Knowing, from within. There is so much I don't know.

What were your secrets?

What was your greatest source of strength?

When did you know you were dying?

I wish I had paid closer attention. The things that really matter you gave me early on—a way of being and loving and imagining. It's the stuff of daily life that is often more challenging. I step unsure into a world of rules and etiquette, not knowing what is expected in many situations. I am lacking a certain kind of confidence. Decisions and departures are difficult. As are dinner parties. Celebrations and ceremony. Any kind of change. Small things become symbolic. Every object matters—that moth-eaten sweater, those photos. Suddenly I care about your silverware. My memory is an album of missed opportunities. The loss of you lingers.

Did you like yourself?

Who was your greatest love?

What did you fear most?

In the weeks before your death, I knew to ask questions. At nineteen, I needed to hear your hopes for me. On your deathbed, you said that you understood my love for women, just as you suggested you would have fought against it. In your absence, I have had to imagine your acceptance.

There are choices I have made that would not have been yours. Somehow that knowledge is harder for me than if I had you to fight with. My motions lack forcefulness. I back into decisions rather than forge ahead. This hesitancy leaves me wondering:

Did you ever doubt me?

Would you have accepted me?

What did you wish for me?

I know that my political choices threatened you. Your way was to keep things looking good on the outside, deny certain feelings, erase unpleasant actions. Since your death, I have exposed many of the things that you would have liked to keep hidden. I can no longer hold the family secrets for you.

I search for information about your life. Each scrapbook, letter, anecdote I come across is crucial to my desire to understand you and the choices you made. I have learned about affairs, abuse, all things you would not have wanted me to know. Yet they explain the missing blanks in my memory bank and round out your humanity.

Who did you dream you would be?

Did you ever live alone?

Why did you divorce?

Did you believe in God?

One thing you said haunts me still. When I asked about motherhood, you said that children don't need as much as you gave. "Eighty percent is probably plenty." I was shocked by your words. Did you regret having given so much of yourself? Now, those words seem like a gift. A way of offering me a model of motherhood, beyond even your own example.

Becoming a mother is something I think about a great deal, almost to the point of preoccupation. I have heard it said that constant dreaming about birth often signals a desire to birth one's self, to come into one's own. My process of grieving the loss of you has been as much about birthing myself as letting you go.

What were your last thoughts?

Were you proud?

Were you at peace?

What is it like to die?

How frightened you must have been shouldering so much of your illness alone. The level of your own isolation is a mystery to me. In my life, I try hard to reach out, to let others in. I fear loss more than anything. I turn on my computer. Make things up. I tell the truth. My daily work is toward connection. All these questions move me to search, less and less for your answers and increasingly for my own.

Love,

Karin

“My process of grieving the loss of you has been as much about birthing myself as letting you go.” I never thought one little sentence could embrace me so completely. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be understood, truly empathized with, instead of just pitied and consoled. And just like that I can remember myself. Light pours in, and I can see a way to go on. Up. Out of the darkness.

Thank you for the light.

Paying for Permanence

You may lose your most valuable property through misfortune in various ways.  You may lose your house, your wife and other treasures.  But of your moko, you cannot be deprived except by death.  It will be your ornament and companion until your last day.  ~Netana Whakaari

My mother's Grace Kelly photo

As an adult myself, most of my regrets about my mother are about never knowing her as a grownup. I was right on that cusp of learning all about her past and fleshing her out as a 3 dimensional human being when she passed, so all I'm stuck with is my childhood perception of a woman whose favorite color was orange, loved to teach and to sing, and hated anything that tasted like raspberries.
I might be biased, but I think it makes an impact on your self image when you really have no archetype to guide yourself by growing up besides the airbrushed models in a magazine. Getting older now is even harder.Choosing clothing becomes an exercise in toeing the line between kosher and Cougartown. Its not like high school when you knew what not to wear. Over one hundred fellow classmates created quite the learning standard. Nowadays I just follow the rule of keeping as covered as possible while I try to keep up the New Year's resolution of exercising and eating better. And most days I wish I had my mother to talk to, because I know she would empathize with me. I imagine her growing older more gracefully than my blind man's stumble I've got going on. She had already mastered Weight Watchers, and Mary Kay, and how to apply Loving Care by the time she was my age. And thinking about this reminded me of a happy discovery many years back.
For her 43rd birthday, she got Glamour Shots done for herself as a gift. I remember this distinctly, because she was very dissatisfied with her looks and her weight. And she left for her appointment grumbling that she didn't think they'd be able to make her look any younger. I thought she looked like a movie star, and fell in love with one of the proofs that she didn't have printed. As a surprise, she had the proof copied for me and presented it to me in a frame. After she died I wanted to re-frame it and was surprised to discover an inscription on the back.

Just recently, while being dissatisfied with my own self image, I remembered about the whole thing; the pictures, her grumblings, and the gift with the surprise message on the back. I realized this would be a perfect memory to keep in my face day to day. Not only my mother's love, but her whole perception about love and beauty. Maybe I was the influence for her that made her decide that middle age wasn't as bad as she thought. Perhaps her eleven year old daughter's adoration over her looking like Grace Kelly made her feel better about herself. I'd like to hope so. And I'd like to remind myself that, every day. So, I concluded it was time to do something for myself that would make me feel beautiful, and decided to get her words inked on my arm as a tattoo. A permanent message to serve as my reminder that not only am I loved from above, but that my own daughter is watching me, and seeing, too. If anything I need to keep my eyes open and upward for her. To try and remember to see myself through her eyes. Hopefully it will help me be kinder to myself as well.
Missing my mother is an evolving beast. I've gotten over it in some areas, substituted in most, and still wallow in a personal pity party in one deep, buried, corner of my emotional closet.  Its also hard not having many tangible things to remember her by. My sentimentality about objects didn't kick in until after she was gone, so I never kept birthday cards or the little notes in my lunchbox she used to leave me. But this I can carry with me. Not just in my heart, or my memories, but as a part of me. Solid, beautiful, and permanent.

Rearview Mirror

The most valuable lesson man has learned from his dog is to kick a few blades of grass over it and move on.  ~Robert Brault

I  have a tendency to hold onto things. I always firmly grip the belief that things can be salvaged or repaired. I sometimes even see objects as what they could be instead of what they are. When its things around the house, I have to make sure I'm not setting us up for the next episode of Hoarders. But when it comes to the more intangible areas of feelings and relationships, its a much harder struggle to justify the decision of giving in or letting go.

I think that sometimes its just a matter of getting to a tipping point. You let things roll off your back, but the feelings tend to not brush away as easily. You think they've washed away when they really are just settling down into the dark crevices of your mind. Lying in wait to rise up again in a swirl when faced with another rush of emotional onslaught. And I try not to make my decisions when immersed in the murky sludge of the moment. I try not to be petty, or vindictive, or locked in the memories of the thousand past little hurts and injustices that came before this new moment. But sometimes, the act of continually offering the other cheek starts to feel a bit like assault and battery. Sometimes, always saying "yes" to someone else is actually saying "no" to yourself. And sometimes it just hurts too much to keep holding on.

Sometimes, you just have to let it go, and leave it behind you. And sometimes, the hardest thing about it, is not looking back as you go.

Eyes front. Let's roll.

Motivation

Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now. ~Jonatan Mårtensson

I own an entire closet full of clothes I can't wear. I also have at least four 18 gallon Rubbermaid containers in the attic full of the same. What you see in the picture is the broken belt loops on one of the three pairs of jeans I own that actually fit me. Three pairs of jeans for seven days a week. I'm sure you can see why the belt loops are in that condition. Especially when you consider that those loops are my "thumb hooks" for hiking my pants up because they have no good place to sit since I no longer have a functional waist. I was at a good weight before getting pregnant with Monkey. I gained 40+ pounds before she was born, and lost all but 10 of it before starting all over with Scootch. After he came along I was even bigger, but I worked out enough to be within breathing distance of my goal. I was doing so good I decided I'd never go back to my heavier weight again so I eliminated all of my "fat" clothes, save for 3 pairs of jeans. Cue the pregnancy with Little Bear.

Well, now Little Bear is a year old, and I still need to drop at least 12 pounds if I want to get into any other pairs of pants. If I drop 25 I could probably take back my entire wardrobe. I've tried just watching what I eat, but that wasn't doing much, so I got a Jillian Michaels DVD to work out to at home. Over a year and I keep making it to the Level 2 workout, then slacking off so much I have to start over at Level 1 again. My list of excuses is a mile long for not exercising. I don't have time to myself since Scootch stopped napping, I don't get up early enough to do it before my day begins since Little Bear has stopped sleeping through the night, I don't have extra cash to afford to sign up for classes.....on and on and on. But New Year, new you, right? That's usually the trend. And I decided to make some resolutions for myself this year. #3 - I want to run around with my kids without getting winded. #2 - I want to be able to try and learn to surf this summer. And #1 - I need to make at least an hour of "me" time at least once a week.

You see the underlying theme, right? There is no weight goal in there, and no outright promise that I'm going to exercise so I'm not setting myself up for failure. But I don't see any of the latter two on the list happening if I don't start working on my strength or endurance. So, last Tuesday I signed up for a combination Zumba and Core class that meets for an hour every week. "Me" time that will help me tackle number 2 and number 3 on my resolution list. Multi-tasking at its best!

If You're Happy and You Know It, Share Your Meds!

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Almost every morning, I find myself downstairs in the kitchen with three separate kids having three separate meltdowns and think to myself "Only 14 more hours till bedtime!" The truth - I'm not at my best right now. Physically or emotionally. Everything is building on that and in the end, it shows. The kids are out of control, the laundry is out of control, and I have almost completely given up on keeping the kitchen in any semblance of order. As long as we have enough spoons to keep mixing the chocolate milk, I feel we're in business. And at nightfall, I argue, nudge, and cajole through what is supposed to be an enjoyable, relaxing, wind-down ritual of putting my kids to bed, and end up curled up on the couch too drained to even fold the basket of laundry at my feet. I don't like it. But I just have no motivation or urge to try and change it. Because changing it just leads to fighting.

I am completely at a loss as to what can be done at this point. That whole united front of parenting has turned into a baton race, because I am constantly three paces away from throwing the stick into the stands. I feel like I'm in a parallel universe with my kids. Monkey is an argumentative, mean spirited, nagging dictator of an older sister. But at school she just won a golden award for being an exemplary pupil, and got a prize from the class treasure box for earning Bee stickers (bee polite, bee kind, bee respectful, etc.) I felt gypped. I wanted to email her teacher and ask if this is the same kid who comes home everyday, berates Scootch, and then body checks him over a toy rake and holds him down in a headlock. The elaborate fanciful storytelling method of evasion is in full effect as well. Instead of a straight answer or confession, we get a long and winding tale of what so-and-so did or said at school/the other day/on the bus, etc., that usually ends with some nonsense about lions and elephants or there being 100 kids in her classroom today. Frustrating doesn't even begin to cover it.

And then there is Scootch. Taking after his big sister in all the worst ways. He likes to goof around with his food at every opportunity. Mealtimes are a minimum of an hour at the table, and then hand washing afterwards takes at least another 15-45 minutes. He also is already sporting the selective male deafness. When I talk right at him, or make a request, I get "What, Mommy?" Yet if I'm in the kitchen talking to Daddy and he's two rooms over, he will hear certain words clear as day and comment or come running. He is also becoming more exuberant in his physical affection, much to Little Bear's detriment. Kissing and hugging his little brother almost always also comes with the added caveat of a wrist bend or chin pinch or plain knock over resulting in the baby's head hitting the floor, tears being shed, and mommy losing her temper. There are only so many ways I can tell him to be more gentle and careful with his brother, to which Scootch usually responds, "But he likes it!" Regardless of the fact that Little Bear is in tears and absolutely not enjoying himself.

And I just kicked Little Bear out of our bedroom because his screaming periods between three hour sleep stretches all night long were driving me to the brink of insanity. So now the three kids are shoe horned into one bedroom. Did I mention bedtime was the highlight of the day? Me having to zombie walk to retrieve the shrieking baby at 4 am, however, is not a benefit of this arrangement. Although, to be honest, that really seems to be the only time he still consistently wakes up, so his sleeping stretches are longer (or my sleep is just getting deeper).

The worst part about all of this is the hopelessness. I literally feel like there is nothing I can do to improve anything. I've read parenting articles, three books on discipline methods, trailed through blogs and news features, all to no avail. Against my better judgement, we even instituted a rewards chart for good behavior a 'la the Kazdin Method. The novelty of earning stickers to buy prizes fizzled within two months, though (exactly like I thought it would.) Lately, anywhere I've looked for help has just felt like a validation that I'm terrible at this job of being a mother. The most recent little un-helpful article in the Family magazine had 5 tips that I already employ, but without the benefit of getting the same results. The killer was the small author bio at the end of the read that stated "Sarah and her children are often out and about, and she never counts to three to extract good behavior." Well good for Sarah! For the record, I don't count to three. I change it up between three and five to keep the kids on their toes! But seriously, its enough to make me feel like a failure. Other kids enjoy outings and are taken to the mall or the store. I dread leaving the house with mine in tow, wondering when I'll be defeated once again by a tantrum or sullen attitude that ruins the fun activity I was trying to do with them in the first place. My oldest comes home chattering about how they had a puppet show about respect in school, then interrupts me at church three days later to tell the friend I was chatting with that she has a fat face and fat belly. The middle child tells me he wants me to take Little Bear out of the playroom so he can play in peace, but as soon as I get out something to keep the baby occupied, here comes Scootch to rip it away from his brother and decide he needs to play with the baby toy instead.
People tell me I have lovely children. Most of the time I just don't see it. My MIL had something optimistic to say about it though. She told me I have to be doing a good job, because my kids are well behaved and show the effects of my teachings around others. I told her I need someone to tape it for me next time, because I would love to have some proof.

A Hairy Situation

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way. ~Aristotle

Ever notice how the littlest things seem to send you down the most altering paths? I got fed up with my hair around my birthday. I've always fought with it, so the feeling was nothing new. It's curly, and temperamental, and likes to give me greif. I had a pretty good system for taming my hair that worked for awhile, but ever since having kids I've felt like it could look better. I dyed it on a whim, and that became a disaster. I ended up re-dying it, then using Color Oops to get the leftover green tint out of it. Soon after that I just decided to lop it all off, so I had hubby cut it for me as a long chin bob. This look really required straigtening for it to look its best, but lets be real. Its summertime in the Northern East Coast, where the humidity level frequently exceeds the temperature. My hair grows like a ChiaPet in concurrence with the rise in moisture in the air. So I decided I should try to go back to curly. Except everything I normally did to style it wasn't working out with the same results. And to top it off, it felt like all the products I were using were leaving a greasy coating on my hair. So I decided to check in with the Google gods for some advice or direction. Enter the world of Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey.

Basically the philosophy is this; curly hair is more prone to over-drying than normal straight hair, and therefore, most of the harsh chemicals used in many commercial brands of hair products strip the hair and make it misbehave. So Lorraine suggests a different approach of using more natural products to cleanse, condition, and style the hair. I figured what the heck. It's worth a shot. And I'm not going to go into the specifics since the majority of you don't have my hair problems, but I find myself laughing at, well, myself on an almost daily basis now. People always arch their eyebrows when they learn we cloth diaper(ed) our kids. The forays into organic, vegan, and natural substitutions for Scootch's allergies have led me to become acquainted with many health food stores, co-ops, and on mailing lists for many forward thinking newsletters. I love to craft and sew which ultimately translates into making the occasional clothes, or quilt, or draperies. My husband and I were recently discussing how great it would be to install solar panels to offset the cost of the electricity we're using to cool the house. And now I'm in the kitchen making my own hair gel from flax seeds and boiling water using a recipe adopted from a hair care handbook.

I feel like my house is thisclose to becoming a hippie commune.