The Wise (*Young*) Mommy

Three’s company anyone? No, not the hilarious “original” 70’s show that I loved to watch as a kid (even though I was naively unaware of the premise behind it), but the age-old question. Is three good company or a crowd? This is a question that I may be finding the answer to, although I was pretty sure yesterday that I knew that two was the better number. We all know that one is the loneliest number, and then again, two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one. Now that I have you all properly confused…let me explain.

I was fairly comfortable in the decision that I most likely would not have any more children. (OK mom, stop hyperventilating, I am NOT pregnant). But after the discussion that my husband and I had this afternoon, I’m not so sure. I’ve been so tremendously wrapped up in raising my daughter, my first blood, my baby girl–that I felt like I would never be ready to even think about another child in my life. Plus, I have a boy and a girl, they get along great and I didn’t think I wanted to bring another little alien into the mix to possibly screw up the nice little life we have. However, today something shifted. My stepson voiced his opinion (again) about his need for a little brother, what with all the little girls running around in his life. And the thousandth person in the last few months told me that it was “time for another one,” before the age difference spanning between my daughter and the next got too large. The difference today was that instead of rolling my eyes and coming back with a funny quip about how hell would freeze over first, I tilted my head, pursed my lips and marveled at the lack of sarcasm ready to roll off my tongue. My mind even flitted to an image of me with a bulging belly, hands running over the little swelling of a life inside it. I don’t know what changed. When I went to bed last night, I didn’t want a baby. But today, somehow, I think I do.

So I asked my husband.

“Do you want to have another baby now?”

“Not really.”

That was it. “Not really.” Hmm. That didn’t leave me with all that much closure on the topic so I probed a little further.

“Well, do you think you might want to consider it soon? Or do you still think you might not want another one?”

This got me a roll of the eyes (which I was expecting). Because men think that it’s always “the wrong time” to have talks like this. Really, they just don’t want to talk at all. And you better believe that if women could get pregnant from blow jobs I would have gotten a resounding “Yessiree!”

“I don’t know. Let’s move into the house and then we can think about it. We were unprepared last time and I want to be prepared this time. Let’s make sure we’re ready.”

Wow, that sounded really mature and responsible, didn’t it? Yeah, but there is one thing that men just don’t seem to understand. It is this: when that clock starts ticking again, there is NO controlling it with maturity, level headed-ness and responsibility. When we want a baby, we want it NOW.

I frowned. Not the answer I wanted. Of course I wanted him to say, “Yeah, let’s ditch the little jelly bracelet you have to stick up your vagina every month, have sex like bunnies and wait for the blessed event to happen!” But, the little angel voice in my head (that I tend to ignore most of the time) said “He’s right. Now’s not the time.”

Poo. Double poo. I was already designing the nursery for my little baby boy. I had already envisioned my husband finishing the basement in the new house so that my stepson could have a room down there to make room for the nursery upstairs. (Just so you know, I would NOT go with something lame like ducks, I was thinking skull and crossbones…what do you think?) I mean, I have already had the name picked out since I was about 12 years old, so that should be considered being “prepared,” shouldn’t it? Nursery–check. Name–check. How much more prepared could you be?

Alright, alright, he has a point. We have a lot on our plates right now. I would have to re-route my thought process to get the visions of dancing skulls and crossbones out my head and realize that we needed to get some other things kosher before we skidded down that road again. So I thought to myself, “Self–there’s something else you need to get done before you can have a baby anyway.” And you know what that is?

LOSE THE BABY WEIGHT FROM THE LAST ONE!

So now I have a goal. Now I have a little carrot dangling from a stick to help motivate me to get my fat ass moving and lose these extra ugly pounds of adipose that I feel smothering me. Maybe with this little extra motivation, I will actually stop shoving the food in my mouth and make the time to exercise. Believe me, I do NOT want another 30 pounds of fat hugging the 30 pounds that are already rudely clinging to me, unwanted and despised. Plus, with the extra weight, I would put myself in further peril with the threat of gestational diabetes during my next pregnancy. Aha–now there is greater meaning, there is true NEED, and if I ignore this, I and my unborn son will be the ones that suffer.

Little Barney is counting on me.

(and no, that is not really the name I have chosen…stay tuned to find out!)

OK, I promised all of you something more substantial to feast your little minds on, so today I am going to share with you my experience of LIVING WITH MY IN-LAWS. Mind you, this story is not for the weak of heart or stomach and if you are prone to anxiety attacks, you might want to navigate away from this page and find something about rainbows and kitty cats. I would also like to say, for liability issues, that I do not endorse or condone living with your in-laws for any extended period of time, so please DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

I will start three and a half years ago, when the evil plan was originally hatched by (OK, yes, I am the villian of the story) me. I didn’t say that I was innocent, so stop being all shocked and dismayed. Yes, it was my idea. But my bonehead husband took it and ran with it, which I never expected him to do. So really, it was a joint boner (haha, I love that word) that brought us to where we are today.

Once upon a time there were two extremely good looking and talented young people in love and anxiously awaiting their wedding day. But alas, they were missing one very important piece of their dream life together–a home. So the beautiful bride-to-be suggested that they convert the handsome groom-to-be’s parents’ basement into an apartment for them to live in so they could save money and buy a fixer-upper, fix it up and move in to live happily ever after…

OK, I am going to stop here so that I can explain that it really was a good idea. Well, it would have been if housing prices didn’t SKYROCKET the minute we made this decision. The plan was to live there for ONE year and buy a two-family house that needed some work. That way, we wouldn’t be paying rent while we were fixing up the new house, and then the income from the other unit would help pay the mortgage. BRILLIANT! It was brilliant, really. But the economy didn’t cooperate and we ended up not finding anything for two years.

During this time, we got pregnant–OOPS! (My husband will say that I planned this all along, don’t believe him!) I had fertility issues so we were told it was going to take a very long time to get pregnant. But this time it was mother nature (that saucy little minx that she is) that had something else in mind and POOF! after three months of fertility treatment, I got pregnant on my own. Now, this was all for the best because we got my beautiful and fabulous little girl out of the deal, but keep in mind, we were living in a space about the size of a studio apartment, with my then 6-year-old stepson sleeping upstairs in my in-laws part of the house. We were going to have to squeeze Unexpected Baby somewhere and just hope and pray that we found a house soon.

Lo and behold, we did find a house shortly after my daughter was born, but it needed A LOT of work. Structural work, to be exact. Which basically means that my dad, the 65-year-old contractor and my husband, the guy taking over the family business forced to work 12 hour days, were going to rebuild the entire first floor. Literally. OK, let’s do it! (What were we thinking? you might ask. Well, we were thinking that we were so DESPERATE to get out of my in-laws’ house that we would do just about anything. So we did.) We were bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to rip the house apart piece by piece and build it back up again into our little love nest. We thought it would take about six months to a year. It didn’t.

Fast forward to two years later. And we are still here. Sigh. The house took EVEN MORE work than we expected, and every time we started one project, we unearthed something else that needed to be done (gotta love 150-year-old houses!). Thankfully, the work is coming to a close and we should be moved in (hopefully) by Thanksgiving. (Hopefully is the operative word here.) If not, I think I might just run away and live with some hobos on a train for a while until the work is done. I could acclimate, I’m pretty flexible, and I could learn to like beans from a can.

Now, don’t get me wrong, my in-laws are VERY good people, and I get along great with them. But the fact of the matter is, kids are just not meant to go home after they have left the nest. There are a few things about having your own place that you get accustomed to, such as privacy, closet space and the ability to have sex wherever and whenever you want. These things are hard to leave behind. Also, the option of doing laundry whenever you want was a feature of my pre-in-laws life that I miss desperately. Right now I share a washer and dryer with my mother-in-law so I have to catch them at just the right time to be able to do laundry (and on really hot days I am not allowed to run the dryer because it heats up the house). Yes, this sucks. Laundry piles up and my husband complains and I end up doing it all in one day and I hate it. I used to complain at my old apartment about having to lug the laundry downstairs to the basement to do it. Now I would KILL to have the only thing between me and clean clothes be a set of stairs. Honest to God, I didn’t know how good I had it.

The moral of this story is probably not what you think. Although I would not recommend the road we travelled for many reasons, I do not regret the decision that we made almost four years ago. What we did allowed us to buy a two family house that is going to bring us income for years to come. We wouldn’t have been able to do what we did without ditching the rent we were paying every month and cutting back on expenses. But most importantly, moving in with my in-laws gave me a gift that I never would have received had we not made this decision: it made me appreciate the freedom that we had before, and therefore, when we move I will be so grateful for what we have. People have it a lot worse than we have had it for the past few years, and we are lucky and blessed that we had family that was willing to take us in so we could reach our goals. And now we can move forward, into our new home, and know that we worked hard for it, sacrificed for it and that we are so fortunate to have it.

So now, can anyone lend me a hand with this laundry??

Well, I am feeling rather uninspired (otherwise known as lazy) today, so I am going to post something that requires very little effort on my part and I hope you will forgive me. Seeing that you guys read my writing (otherwise known as verbal diarrhea transcribed to blog) every day, I figured I would share a little piece of who I am with y’all (that was my best Southern accent for my readers down south, did you like that?). I just know you are DYING to know what I am listening to on my ipod, so here are the first 10 songs that queued up just now when I put it on shuffle:

1. Blackbird–Beatles

2. All About You–McFly

3. Under Pressure–David Bowie and Queen

4. People Watching–Jack Johnson

5. Gone–John Mayer (This is an N’Sync cover–rock on!)

6. All My Loving–Beatles

7. Rent–Rent Soundtrack

8. Silly Love Songs–Wings

9. Man in Black–Johnny Cash

10. Cecilia–Simon and Garfunkel

Ahem, as you can see, I have quite the diverse tastes (and I love the Beatles). I tend to gravitate to older music, and I don’t have much current stuff that I listen to. I guess I feel like the stuff on the radio generally all sounds the same to me. I also loves me some show tunes and Rent is my fave! I am a little embarrassed that Wings came up and I almost skipped it, but in the spirit of honesty to my readers, I left it (you’re welcome).

So there’s a glimpse into the haphazard world which is my life. Hope you enjoyed it and didn’t laugh at me. No, I take that back, I hope you did laugh because at least that meant you got some enjoyment out of this sucky post.

Today was not a good day. The main reason for this is that my beautiful, cherished kitty cat of 19 years, “Bogie,”died last night. My mother called me this morning to give me the sad news. She was crying, and described to me that she found her curled up on a towel in her bedroom as she got out of the shower. She was still and peaceful, and she just knew. She picked up her lifeless body and put her on the bed and sat with her in silence for a while before bringing her up to break the news to my father. My heart is aching, yet I am so glad that she went in peace, in her sleep, in my parents’ home, because we were considering having her put down and it was such a gut wrenching decision to make. She was sick. She was old. She was ready to go. And now she is at peace with my other cat, Lily, who was hit by a car last year. So although I am heartbroken because this was my very first kitty, and I loved her so very much, I am also relieved that she can finally rest in peace.

The hard part about all this is sharing this experience with the kids. My stepson, the 8-year-old, is a seasoned veteran, having gone through this last year with our other cat and a few years ago with his mother’s dog. He was sad when I told him. He cried a little bit, but in his wise way said that he was glad that she had a long, happy life and that she was happy in kitty heaven. His understanding of the world sometimes transcends what I would ever expect of an 8-year-old boy and I wonder how he could possibly wrap his little head around death. But he can. He does it with grace and intelligence, and most importantly, compassion. This is the little boy who can’t sit still to eat dinner or do a piece of homework, bounces off the walls on a daily basis and has difficulty completing the daily activities of living. Yet, when faced with something as profound and abstract as death, he just gets it. And he steps up to the plate to be supportive for those around him and says all the right things. I am reeling from his maturity and the love he has in his heart.

My daughter, on the other hand, is only 2 years old and I believed had no idea what it meant to die. I couldn’t imagine that she could possibly grasp that the cat that she so adored would not be there anymore, even though she had just stroked her lovingly the day before. I told her that Bogie had died and that she would going away. She looked at me and said. “Goodbye Bogie?” I said “Yes, honey. Bogie is going bye-bye’s.” She looked at me with her eyes shining, so old for a baby and said “OK, bye bye Bogie.” I figured she had no idea what this actually meant, and we proceeded to travel to my mother’s house so we could see her one last time before she was buried in the backyard next to my other cat.

When we got there, my mother had Bogie wrapped up in a towel in a basket in the livingroom. This may sound funny to you, but if you are a pet owner, you may understand. My mother just couldn’t bring herself to put her in a plastic bag, or even to put her away where she couldn’t be seen. It was as if she was holding a little wake for her and we all had our chance to pay our last respects. I was relieved to see that she looked very peaceful, just as if she were just resting her eyes, catching some much needed sleep. My 8-year-old was so appropriate and talked to her, telling her how we would miss her and that she was a great cat–”the only one that let him pet her all time,” and that he loved her. I wasn’t surprised. I expected nothing less of him. But I wasn’t sure how my daughter would react. Needless to say, I was surprised.

She walked up to the basket and saw the cat’s fluffy head peeking out. “Oh Bogie,” she said. She looked closely, and touched the tips of her ears. “Night nights Bogie.” She pet her head and pulled the towel up over her head. “Sleep tight,” she said as she tucked in the towel. “Sleep tight.”

As you can imagine, my mother I were awash in tears and sniffles at this point, because really, it seemed as if my daughter understood what was unfolding. It was amazing. It was touching. It was therapeutic. But most of all, it was dumbfounding. How could a 2-year-old, virtually a baby, possibly understand the concept of death? But then it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t so much understanding the “definition,” so to speak, of death, but that she could feel the spiritual departing of her soul. We are all connected, all cells and energy that affect each and every one of us alike. So if one of us leaves, wouldn’t it make sense that we should feel that lack of energy? It is not intellectual, so it doesn’t matter the age. We all share energy, young and old alike.

I am not really sure why my daughter acted so appropriately, right down to the fact that I handed her a flower outside at the cat’s grave and she was the first one to place it on the mound of dirt. I have no idea how she would know that you put flowers on a grave. Maybe it is television. Maybe it is intuition. Or perhaps maybe it is a spiritual connection that we will never fully understand. All I know is that today my daughter made me look at her in a whole new way. She was this little person, dealing with death, understanding things that should just go right over her head. And I wondered how else she was going to surprise me. I am bracing myself. Because I think that she has a lot more up her sleeve. I have always believed, since she was born, that she was special. I think I have my proof.

Working at home. It sounds so appealing doesn’t it? How many of us out there always thought how great it would be to be able to work from home. Working in our pj’s–mmm, no travel time–fabulous, and best of all, being able to stay home with our adorable children! That is certainly what I always thought and pored over the “work-at-home” ads online practically every day, searching for that one telecommuting job that wasn’t an MLM or pyramid scam, where I didn’t have to sell anything or where I didn’t have to chat with some fat, old pervert about how I was “taking off my nightie.” Then, one day (while at my outside of the home job) I stumbled across an ad on Craigslist that peaked my interest. A week later, I was signed on for training to edit a web site from home! I was thrilled, couldn’t wait and immediately quit my job as a massage therapist at an upscale spa. This was the break I was waiting for, I could finally work completely from home!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do love it. It is great to just be able to sidle up to my laptop (at home or anywhere with wireless internet) and log on to do my work. However, I didn’t anticipate the downsides being such, well, downers First of all, the last thing you want to do when you are in your pj’s on the couch with a cup of coffee is work. It’s much harder to motivate yourself (and keep yourself from thinking about all the things that need to be done around the house) when you are sitting at home than when you are in an office where everything around you screams “WORK!” And believe it or not, your children REALLY don’t care when the clock turns to the time you have to start working, and they still REALLY NEED some chocolate milk or decide they have to use the potty (which actually means sitting there talking and playing with the toilet paper). I think I need to have someone set up a hidden camera because I think I would get millions of hits on YouTube for the hilarity of watching me try to type while my 2-year-old daughter climbs all over me and my 8-year-old son is telling me an hour-long story about the Pokemon he has collected. “Mommy has to work” really doesn’t mean jack to them. When Mommy is home, she belongs to the children.

Which brings me to my next point. I am not getting paid for doing two jobs at once, but essentially, that is what I am doing. Instead of being able to drop the kids off with someone else (so they can do my “Mommy” job for the day) and go to my paying job to devote all my energy and attention to the tasks there, I have to do both at once. Which means sometimes my day consists of going back and forth between changing pull-ups, making lunch, cleaning up spills, and changing the DVD; and working on the computer, checking e-mail and logging my hours. Let me tell you, it’s not easy.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I think how great it would be to get in the car, drop the kids off and go off BY MYSELF to a job and be able to just concentrate on that all day. Then, at the end of the day, I could go pick them up (where they would be SO happy to see me), go home and resume my motherly duties. But then I remember the reasons that I decided to work at home. And here they are:

-At work I can’t be interrupted by my daughter because she needs a kiss
-At work I can’t listen to my son’s hour-long story about his Pokemon collection
-At work I can’t feed them lunch
-At work I can’t sit in the bathroom with my daughter for 20 minutes while she decides whether she has to go potty

These are all the things I didn’t want to miss. These are the things that my kids are doing TODAY, RIGHT NOW, that I would miss out on if they were not with me all day. I don’t want someone else doing my “Mommy” job. It’s my job, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.