Cats

We ran out of the cheap-o, buy-in-bulk Meow Mix dry food this morning.  So tonight, I got down a can of the obscenely expensive Science Diet wet food that we had left over from when the kitten, Daisy, was having some really unfortunate intestinal issues.  All five of the cats (Five, I KNOW!) descended on me like a swarm of furry locusts as I doled the food out, shrieking at the top of their lungs because I wasn't moving fast enough.  Wet food is usually a rare treat around here (because it makes me gag to smell it).  I got the stinky ambrosia portioned out and put up on the table out of reach of the dogs who had homed in on the odoriferous fumes and were slobbering to get at it.  Then collectively, all of the cats turned their noses up at it.  Maxx glared at me like I was possibly a moron.  Kendall was so disgusted she went back upstairs.

 

Everyone looked at me questionably and then Pluto, our slightly retarded cat decided to give it a try and proceeded to inhale everyone else's portion while they continued to beg for their beloved Meow Mix.  He was eating so ravenously that he will probably vomit it all back up in a steaming pile here shortly.  Possibly on my pillow, if he can't find a pile of clean clothes.

 

 

Pretty bra phenomenon

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."  I get that.  But what about those of us who DO know the history, but still repeat it?  A few months ago, I wrote about this. And yet, when I got home...did I throw the offending garment away? No. No, I did not.  I asked the hubby to try to salvage it by poking the wire back in and sewing the hole where it had squirmed free.  (He does all the repair work.  I don't sew. Anything. Ever.  I can't. It's an affliction.)And then I put the bra in the back of the bra-drawer "just in case."

Today, I pulled it back out & wore it to work.  In large part, because I've been on a business trip for the past three weeks, a majority of my wardrobe is making its way through the laundry.  But also, because it was exactly the right color of hot pink to wear under the shirt I was wearing.

Then, around lunch, it happened...the underwire had worked its way past Jeff's diligent mending and started stabbing me in the armpit.  I went to the bathroom. I worked the wire back in. I went back to my desk.  I typed an email. Stab.  Went back to the bathroom, worked it back in, went back to my email. Stab. Stab. Stab.  Finally, around 2:00 I grabbed a pair of scissors and stalked back off to the ladies' room.  I get the danged thing off, widen the hole and pull the whole wire out.  Get re-dressed. Look in the mirror.  Am definitely, noticeably a-symmetrical. Crap.  Get the God-forsaken undergarment from Hell back off...cut a hole where the other wire is...try to nudge the wire out.  The wire doesn't budge. I poke and prod and smoosh material up and try to work the wire out.  No dice.  I snip some more material. Nope.  I briefly consider using my cell phone to text a coworker to bring me the pliers out of my desk...then realize that 1) There's only so many times I can ask Jennifer to smuggle me a tool in somewhere and I shouldn't waste one on this. 2) I will not be defeated by a freaking wire.  So, using the scissors much like a pair of pliers, I clamp down on the wire & leverage it and it slowly slides out.  And I didn't even stab myself. (with the scissors or the wire).  Huzzah! I am victorious.  I redress AGAIN and (though I am a little less perky than I was upon arrival, both my sides match) go back to my office and finish up my day.

 

I'm just appalled at myself for getting back into the EXACT same situation I was in just a few months ago.  How does this happen???  Well, I chalk it up to the "pretty bra phenomenon." It's happened to us all.  We have a bra that we cannot stand to wear for any appreciable amount of time...it's scratchy, or it pops loose, or the straps slip off your shoulder, or it viciously stabs you in the arm pit with it's Satan death-wire.  But you don't throw it away.  And why???  Because it's pretty.  And maybe you paid $45 at Victoria's Secret. So you put it in the back of the drawer until you forget how it wronged you and you get the traitorous thing back out and try it again.  And here we are.

Separation Anxiety

About a week before my daughter was born, I had my very first (but by no means my LAST) motherhood-induced panic attack. I was just sitting there, mashing around on my massive belly to see if I could get her to kick when it hit me: I am about to have this baby. In a matter of days. DAYS! And I FREAKED. THE. HELL. OUT. Not because I suddenly felt like I wasn’t ready for the responsibility. Not because I wasn’t just dying to see her and hold her. But because of her safety. It had JUST occurred to me JUST right then…right that very second, my daughter was the safest I could ever make her. Because right then, nothing could hurt her unless it LITERALLY came through me first. And I would never, ever be able to have her this safe again. I spent the entire evening bawling my head off…trying to articulate to Jeff what had me so completely TERRIFIED. Poor Jeff. He just responded by hugging me and smoothing my hair and telling me everything would be alright. Months before, he had accepted the fact that pregnant women are COMPLETELY INSANE, and sometimes potentially dangerous. He, of course, was more than ready to have his daughter here with him, and as importantly, see his wife return to normal. He’d been doing an admirable job living with the weepy, often-times irrational virago I had been…but really, nine months is a LONG time to cohabitate with the emotional hand-grenade that I was and he was ready for the hormones to return to reasonable levels. And they did. But I was right…since the day she was born, I have gradually become less and less able to “protect” her.

However, I underestimated the joy and satisfaction I would feel watching her grow and learn and NEED the protection less and less. Being a mother has been the greatest joy of my life. It has been the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered. I found out there was a lot more to my personal makeup than I had ever known. Both good and bad. I found I had the capacity to put someone else’s happiness before my own WITHOUT A QUIBBLE…without even seeing it as a sacrifice. I also found that there was a potentially dangerous component to my personality that I never knew I had before the first time someone REALLY hurt my child. I’m not talking about the playground scuffles, or hurt feelings…I think I was pretty reasonable dealing with that. But the first time someone really and truly and cruelly broke her heart??? I was shocked at myself by what I honestly and in reality wanted to do to that person. I joke about it…but a teenie less bit of self control and I might have done something to land myself in prison. No lie. 

Being a mother is a funny thing. I am so proud of the person my daughter is turning out to be. She is so beautiful, it can sometimes make my heart hurt to look at her, especially when she’s sleeping and I can look at her face and see a little of myself and a little of Jeff, but blurred into features that are somehow more refined and I don’t know, just PRETTIER than either one of us. She’s incredibly intelligent. She’s already surpassed accomplishments either of her parents had made at her age…and we were considered pretty damn sharp in our day. She’s assertive in a way that I never was, but with an empathy and kindness to everyone around her that her father was only able to show to a very few and that I sometimes lack at all. She is both easier to hurt and tougher than I will ever be.

 But along with the pride…there’s also the slowly growing separation. It started slowly in the toddler years, when she started developing her own opinion about what she liked and disliked…opinions that were sometimes different than mine. As an only child, I think the pulling away happened a lot more gradually, and probably started a little later…but by her tween years, I could no longer correctly pick out styles and fashion she would like. And then she slowly lost the need for physical contact with me…by the time she was 10-11 years old, she didn’t want to cuddle up in my lap anymore. By 13, she wouldn’t let me kiss her on the mouth anymore…these days I’m lucky to get an occasional hug. And her thought processes, though brilliant, have become incredibly foreign to my own. We have both had those personality-typing tests…and we are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. It blows my mind that she can be so absolutely different than me! I made her! I raised her! How can she really truly exist apart from me?? And yet she does. We are now reaching the end of her childhood…and again, the pride wars with pain. She is an incredible person. (A friend of mine called her “formidable” the other day). She is an incredible individual. Individual, apart from me. 

Yesterday on Facebook, a friend of mine commented that her youngest child had officially moved out and that she and her husband were now empty-nesters. I don’t know why, but that lit off a panic-attack like I haven’t felt since I realized I was going to be exposing the most precious thing in my life to the big, wide world. In a year, I’ll be in my friend’s shoes. My daughter will be out of my house and away at college. I won’t see her every day. I probably won’t even talk to her every day. And God knows how much I’m going to miss her. But there’s also that feeling again…that I will no longer be the barrier between her and the things that can hurt her. I know I’ve raised her smart. I know I’ve raised her strong. But the urge to stand between her and the bad stuff is KILLING me to suppress. 

I think I will be able to deal with the loneliness…But how do I deal with the fear?

Not a real post

Actual text conversation between me n’ Jeff while I was on my business trip (names have been changed, including the chicken's):

Me: BTW, apparently Jim and his wife keep chickens now…and they had one that got an egg stuck and might die and needs prayers.  Not making that shit up.  The things people put on Facebook!

Jeff: Wow.

Me: Yep.  People are effin’ weird

Jeff: Totally messed up.  How can you even type “Pray for my chicken?”

Me: Try “Pray for my chicken’s prolapsed vagina.”

Jeff: They wrote “Chicken vagina” on their Facebook page?

Me: Not exactly…I think they called it a “vent.”

Me (a second later): Oh, sweet Jesus!  Do NOT Google “prolapsed chicken vent.”

Jeff: Noted.

Me (A bit later): Hey…they’re trying to decide whether it would be better to break the egg or soak the chicken in warm water and apple cider and then apply honey.  Are they marinating this chicken already?

Jeff: Have you taken your Ambien?

Me: Maybe

Jeff: Get off Facebook before you get yourself in trouble and go to bed.

Me: The chicken’s name is Strawberry

Jeff: Bed!

Me: Fine.

Week three...

Week three of business trip. There's a toilet seat cover in the elevator.

I'm ...confused? Concerned? I mean seriously...what the hell?

BEEEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEEEP!

Hey guys! Guess what Maryland has??? A way to send a warning out to ALL cell phones when there's a tornado warning!! At 5:00 am! When you're sleeping soundly in your hotel room! It sounds just like the emergency response noise you get on your radio or TV! Except it comes straight to your phone which is somewhere in your dark hotel room! Fun!

I woke bolt upright from a deep sleep with my phone screaming at me in volumes that would bend metal. After throwing the sheets, the eleventy pillows off the bed and turning on the light. I found the source of the noise shrieking out of my iPhone. For a split second I wondered if we'd been invaded my aliens. But no...it was a tornado alert.

This is how I started my Tuesday.

Blink of an eye

Have you ever sometimes blinked in such a way that you fold your contact in half and force it to go up behind your eyelid? And then when you stick your finger in there to fish it out you realize that you've got vindaloo sauce on your finger? Which feels like what you've always imagined being Maced would feel like?

(Side note...just looked up the ingredients for vindaloo seasoning...they include nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, MACE, cloves, anise and cardamom.)

Then you run to the bathroom and wash your hands and your contact pops out and lands on the mirror while you try to decontaminate your eyeball? Which washes all of your makeup off of one side of your face? And because you are on a business trip to your company's headquarters, you OF COURSE run right into the new Operations Manager as you wander around with your contact pinched between your fingers , mascara down to your chin asking complete strangers if they have some  saline solution you can borrow? Because asking folks you don't know to borrow their toiletries isn't awkward AT ALL. Then finally you just go back to the bathroom and pop the contact in your mouth for a sec (I know!) before putting it back in your eye? 

Just me?