Ok. Seriously Now.

I am terrified of something. It haunts me as I lay next to Lila during story time at night. It creeps up on me when she wakes up in the morning and wants to sit on my lap on the couch. It eats at me a song I like comes on the radio and she declares, "I LOVE THIS SONG"!!!

I am afraid that this is the most I will ever like my kid.

We're not talking about "LOVING" because I am pretty sure I would (actually do) subject myself to all manner of torture to ensure that she doesn't suffer. But LOVE is not the same as LIKE.

My profile pic says it all.

As many of you know, I started this blog because motherhood is sometimes hard and sometimes boring and sometimes frustrating and sometimes just sucks. I also had pretty severe post-partum depression and spent the first several months of Lila's life not "liking" her very much. She screamed 16 hours a day for 6 months and slept in 20 minute spurts and that meant that I slept in 10 minute spurts because it took me at least 10 minutes to fall asleep. Needless to say, I was pretty sure that my child was sent specifically to punish me for whatever the hell I did in my past life.

If I invented shit like this, I probably deserve it.

The other problem is that over the last 4 years, I have struggled with major depressive disorder and that pretty much makes you not like anyone or anything. I spent a lot of time just trying to stay sane, and having a toddler around (and then a preschooler) generally accomplished exactly the opposite of that. Although I absolutely adored her and knew that she was the most wonderful child anyone has ever had (and I'm not saying that because I am her mother, I am saying it because she totally is) and I wanted to enjoy spending time with her, kids are kind of a huge pain in the ass.

As you can see, age 3 was worse than age 2.

And then last summer, something happened. It all started with my nervous breakdown and a brief trip to a "recovery resort" (read: mental hospital). When I came home, I was still weak but something had clicked while I was away. I felt different. Suddenly I felt like I was really a mother. Perhaps it was just some delayed reaction or maybe it was the drugs they had me on, but I like to think it was because Lila had turned 4, and suddenly she was learning all these cool things and not throwing so many tantrums and actually learning that it isn't okay to scream in the house.

This feeling has been a constant since then. Lila is a really good kid. She is smart and funny and loving and well behaved (when she isn't at Grandma's). I find myself excited to spend the day alone with her where before the idea of it terrified me (seriously, I would have panic attacks). I love doing bedtime with her because she talks about the things she loves and always includes me. She likes whatever I like, wants to do whatever I do, and I know everything about her.

And that's when the fear kicks in. What happens when she goes to school all day? She will learn about things that I can't control. She'll make new friends and those friends will begin to teach her things that I don't want her to know and she'll start realizing that the things that I like are actually really awful and lame and she'll tell me so. What if I just don't like the person she becomes?

What if she thinks this ass basket is cool?

YES, YES, I know this is probably not going to happen like that. That I am ignoring all the incredible things that she will be doing and that in all likelihood, I will grow to enjoy her even more. But this isn't about being rational. This is about realizing that I lost time during my darkest periods and fearing that this happiness will be fleeting (by the way, I totally got all teary-eyed typing that last sentence and that is why I am would rather just complain all the time).

This is when I need to be assured that it isn't just my medication (because I don't trust that at all) and that at some point I will realize that it isn't just a fluke (at least until she hits the awful teen years).

Not a resolution...Just total bullshit.

I started drinking coffee when I was about 4 years old.  Not regularly of course, but my Grandmother used to see nothing wrong with handing me a lukewarm cup loaded with sugar and milk as a treat.  She was also always yelling at me to "knock it off" and "quiet down" and "sit the fuck down you goddamned lunatic."  For some reason she was always worn out when I left and constantly threatened my parents that she would not babysit me anymore because I was too wild (?).

Coffee is my one vice.  I don't really drink.  I can't handle drugs (pot turns me paranoid).  I don't have the money or the credit to shop.  So I drink like 6 cups of coffee a day.  I love it.  I love trying new flavors and roasts.  I buy the good stuff because I am going to spend all day with it so it should be awesome. 

I am pretty sure it is.

Then about a month ago, I started noticing something strange.  I was getting nauseous around 4:00 every day.  I was having heartburn for several days in a row.  I talked to my mother about it and she said something that shook me to my core.  "It's the coffee."

"HA!" I said.  No way.  Coffee is my friend.  We're close.  Coffee would never hurt me.  But deep down inside, I knew it was true.  I was going to have to dramatically cut down on my coffee consumption. 

I stocked up on a few different kinds of tea (TEA!  An abomination). I knew that when you are used to having that much caffeine it isn't smart to just stop.  The plan was simple.  I would have ONE cup of coffee in the morning, then I would switch to tea for the rest of the day.

I need to have this right now.

I have been doing this for about 10 days (why wait until the new year.  It's a necessity, not a resolution) and I have noticed a difference where I am feeling less pukey throughout the day.  But here's the thing.  Now I am waking up with heartburn.  And although it is uncomfortable, I am not ready to walk away from my coffee completely.  I take a few Tums and knock one back.  Usually that does the trick.

Getting old is total bullshit.

Battlefield: Dinner

I am a firm believer in family dinner times. And experts seem to agree that family dinner time, where the ENTIRE family sits around a table for dinner and communicates and enjoys themselves is essential for a happy, functioning family.

This is how I imagine dinner time should be.

But what do you do when no one enjoys it?  My kid has turned dinner time into this drama-filled temper tantrum and by the end of it, her dinner is not eaten and Ben and I are the ones flailing on the floor kicking and screaming.

Lila does not like to eat.  At least not actual food.  I refuse to call her a picky eater because it doesn't really matter if we serve her the one food she is willing to eat this week (which is usually either mac and cheese or chicken nuggets) she still refuses it.  She's more like a non-eater.  Not that she isn't hungry.  As soon as dinner is cleared from the table she asks for ice cream or cake or cookies and cries because she's "starving".  We offer to heat up her chicken nuggets or mac and cheese and she cries and goes to bed hungry.  We don't give in.  But for some reason she STILL doesn't get that eating crap like ice cream and gummy fruit snacks are not acceptable dinner time foods. 

This is what I actually see at dinner time.

And this is almost entirely a dinner time problem, when we are all sitting down at the table.  At lunch time, when it's just her and I, she usually eats with no problem (although she isn't a big eater and has never finished an entire meal) and at breakfast, when she is usually eating alone, it is no problem at all.   It's as if she is completely against it, which I don't understand because this is what we have always done, and it's always been a problem for her.

In addition to refusing to eat and generally being totally bitchy about it, she also has to go to the bathroom as soon as the food is set on the table and has hundreds of excuses to get up every 45 seconds.  Even when we order pizza and eat in front of the TV, something about sitting together with us at dinner time causes her to not be able to sit still or concentrate on the task at hand, even though when there's no food in front of her she can sit catatonic for an hour and a half watching Alvin and the Chipmunks.

For me, not having dinner together isn't an option.  This is important to me.  My parents made every effort to have dinner at the table whenever they could and as an adult I really appreciate those times where no one was too busy or preoccupied with work and we got to just sit and focus on chatting. 

There is one train of thought that says that you should never force your kid to eat and should just let them do what they want and eat when and what they want and they will come around.  But honestly, I don't believe that we should work around her and her whims.  She's FOUR.  If it were up to her she'd want nothing but Lucky Charms and Popsicles and would eat dinner just after brushing her teeth, hearing a story and turning out the light at bedtime.  She refuses to "snack" when I just leave decent foods like carrot sticks out for her to nibble on and seems to only want to eat something when I am in the middle of a task that I cannot drop to prepare something for her. 

There is the other faction that says that the eating habits they learn early such as eating a variety of foods (my kid doesn't) and viewing eating in a healthy way (she obviously finds it stressful) will be carried on for life.  If this is the case, my kid is going to be either a "food is comfort" over eater or processed food junky.  Perhaps she will develop an eating disorder since her entire goal in life seems to be to use what little control she has to refuse to put healthy food into her mouth.

What do you guys think.  Should I just stop with the family dinner times? 

I aim for some kind of middle ground and it just isn't working.  I fear that my kid is going to have some serious food issues if I don't get this under control.

It started last weekend...

Ok.  You know that whole "get in shape reasonably" thing I was going on about last week?  Yeah.  Um.  Well the week has been rough.

Here is my progress:

Weigh-in:  156 lbs. 

I gained a pound.  But in fairness, I have had three cups of coffee and that's a lot of liquid.

Well, I walked twice.  I also had dessert twice and ate after 9pm once (but it was just an apple so I think it shouldn't count).  Although I THOUGHT about my goals every time I poured a glass of water, I seriously am just not thirsty enough to drink that much liquid throughout the day. 

I am not giving up.  Today I will start again.  I am going to go grocery shopping and plan my meals this week (which I failed to do last week which led to fast food twice and a lot of crap).  I am also going to pick up a Weight Watchers cookbook and see if I can find some good stuff in there to cook so that I don't eat so much cheese (mmmmmm...cheese!).

My other goal this week is to write at least one GOOD post where I am not just bitching about what a miserable fat ass I am. 

For now though, just watch this.  If all dessert looked like these, I would have no problem avoiding it.

Selfish Mommy fucks it up again

Ben had a car accident yesterday.  He was driving home after picking up the kid because I had an appointment to see a therapist after work.  We got a monster thunderstorm yesterday which flooded the highway and so traffic was absurdly backed up all over the surface streets.

About 15 minutes into my session, my phone rang with Ben's stupid ringtone and I turned it off because HE SHOULD FUCKING KNOW I AM IN MY SESSION trying to get myself together so that I don't have to be a total bitch who screams at him about shit he already knows all the time.

When I got out, I looked at my phone and there were 2 text messages from Ben.  The first said, "call me as soon as possible."  The second said, "I totaled my truck".  Now, perhaps you understand that my first reaction was kind of like, "THAT SEEMS LIKE AN UNDER-REACTION!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!! IS EVERYONE OKAY???" And then I thought, "What the fuck!!!! Is my kid okay?"

So I called him immediately and he assured me that everyone was okay, not a single scratch or bruise, and that the seatbelts did exactly what they were supposed to do.  By that time he had gotten home and Lila was resting on the couch watching Pingu (if you are unfamiliar with Pingu, think weird Japanese Penguin Gumby who doesn't talk but has some jibberish language).

I rushed home and was met at the door by an angry and obviously traumatized 3 year old who said, "We tried to call you because Daddy crashed and I was crying and you DIDN'T ANSWER YOUR PHONE!"

"Mommy was in with her doctor and didn't have my phone with me," I tried to explain. 

"I was scared and I cried and I wanted you and YOU DIDN'T ANSWER!!!"

Yet another failure under Mommy's belt.

Rationally I know that it wasn't my fault and I could never have known.  In my mind I assume that if I had a CAR ACCIDENT or some other emergency, that I might call more than one time knowing that the liklihood that a person would answer the phone when they were in therapy is pretty slim.  But hey, I'm the insane one going to therapy, right?

But a part of me feels sad that I wasn't there.

Later that night, I tried to talk to Lila about it to figure out just how upset and traumatized by it she really was.  And it turns out that she was more concerned about the thunderstorm and the fact that lightening is made of electricity (which scares the shit out of her now that she knows that...thanks Cat in the Hat Knows a lot about that) than she was about the car accident.

Before she drifted off to sleep, she asked me if Daddy was going to get a new truck and I told her we didn't know yet.  She said she would be sad if he didn't have that old truck anymore because he had it when she was a baby.  And I told her that we would all be just fine.

Nickjr.com - Destroyer of Lives.

First off, I need to note that this is my 100th post!!!I feel like someone should throw me a party or something but that's pretty unlikely.  Anyhow...onto the real post:

I am pretty sure that if I had put a computer in front of Lila when she was 6 days old, she would have known exactly what to do with that mouse. 

Kids today seem to crown knowing how to make technology work and I suppose that's wonderful because it means that they can learn so much so quickly, and also make me feel like an idiot (much the way I did to my parents when they couldn't figure out how to leave an outgoing message on the answering machine).  And I have no problem with this.  I actually LOVE to set Lila up in front of my laptop and let her poke around the Nick Jr or Sprout online websites.  It gives me time to think without having to entertain her and aside from the occasional random "look what I did!", she leaves me alone!  She can't spell so I know she can't go far and we have talked about the buttons she can click and the ones she cannot.

But as of Friday, I no longer have a laptop.  And do you want to know why?

Because NickJr.com is fucking evil.



I bet this lady works at NickJr.com.

 The first time my computer burned out, Lila was playing on NickJr.com and started crying because it wouldn't load and then the screen went black.  It turned out that the hard drive needed to be replaced.  Luckily, Ben's uncle hoards computer parts and I only had to wait for about 2 months for him to get around to replacing the hard drive for me at no cost.  At that time, I just chalked it up to a shitty hard drive and moved on.  That was roughly 3 months ago.  And here I am again, working on Ben's shitty, 10 year old, extremely SLLLLOOOOWWW (it took me a full minute to see that last word show up) computer because my computer has gone black again.

And what the hell was going on when it fizzled out?  Lila was playing on motherfucking NickJe.com again.

I was in the same room.  I was checking on her.  And the volume was on so I know for a fact that she was just playing some stupid Dora Dress Up game.   She was not doing anything weird and suddenly the screen went all wacky.  And when I tried to restart it, it stayed wacky.

This little bitch is out to
destroy my blog!

So...needless to say, that is why I am not visiting and commenting and posting and being my usual web-addicted self.  I get really depressed when I can't blog and obsessively check my Facebook for interactions because I live in my imaginary online world and this is seriously adding stress to an already precarious situation.

I have no idea what I am going to do about this as I don't have the cash to fix it and I certainly can't afford to buy a new one. 

I fear that my head is going to explode because I have no outlet for the dumb shit that happens throughout my (truly lame) days.

I think I should just send the bill to NickJr.com.  Anyone have an address? 

Yeah...I feel like that. 

(all these images are from random google search. Not mine.  Just FYI)

Saturday Shitlist

I spent a lot of time tooling around the interwebs this week and thanks to #1, I really found a minimal amount of things to put on the list this week.  Feel free to add your own.  I will even give you a grade for participation!

1. The Cold Virus or the Flu, whatever the hell this shit is.  It LOOKS like a cold- all coughs and sneezes, but it FEELS like the Flu, in that I am so exhausted and miserable that I called in sick to work and haven't left the house since Tuesday. 

2. Harry Hunters.  Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! Have you seen these assholes?  (If not, read this )
Yeah, you're going to find Prince fucking Harry and marry him by stalking him for several weeks before his brother's wedding.  I am sure he'd be thrilled to marry some slutty American chick who has a stash of postcards of him and his brother rubber banded together and shoved in her bra. 

I think Harry said it best:

Good luck ladydouches.

3. The entire world.  Has everyone gone fucking crazy?  Because I thought that crazy was my domain.

Hot off the runway for Summer '11.

4. My local community health center.  For adding an large dollop of stress onto my already thoroughly thinly stretched finances and still not managing to cure me.  It's bad enough that I don't have health insurance and have to sit in the ghetto-ass waiting room but then you can't even get my paperwork right so I'm not billed $400 for a Thyroid test that I only got because you told me it was going to cost "next to nothing"?  AND you can't find the results!  FUCK YOU ASSHOLES!!!

5. Thomas the Tank Engine.  Wait a second!  I LOVE the NORMAL Thomas.  The simplicity of narrating a bunch of model trains around a neat little model city.  And two of my FAVORITE people on earth narrated!  FANTASTIC!  What I'm talking about is this bullshit computer animated, the trains all talk and have different voices bullshit.  Now it's just another lame cartoon.  And nothing even blows up!

And there was this.  Now it's a lame cartoon.

5. Old Navy's new annoying "Layer Player" bullshit commercial.  As I mentioned above, I have been sick in the house for several days and I don't have cable.  So on my 6 or so channels, I have seen this fucking commercial about 4,793 times.  I have broken down the dance moves in my mind.  They are playing it one every channel during every show.  No, really.  I refuse to embed it on my blog, but here's the link if you want to torture yourself with it:  LINKY

6. The Lottery Mega Millions $312 Million Jackpot.  I don't play the lottery because I am the unluckiest person I know.  But Ben did play and I would have been happy if he matched like 2 of the 6 numbers.  He played 10 different quick-picks.  You know how many of the final 6 numbers he had TOTAL on all his plays?  ONE.

The other reason I don't play the "numbers".
(If you don't get this one, you're not a Lostie)

7. Which reminds me, I am STILL FUCKING PISSED about the ending of Lost. 

Water Trauma and Other Signs of Insantiy.

There is a new fantastic way I have found to completely traumatize my kid.  I found it by accident, since I NEVER would have seen it as something that would create such an overblown and emotional reaction and I really try not to do it but she is traumatized by it at least a few times every day. 

Every time Lila washes her hands, she ends up coming out of the bathroom having suffered what sort of resembles a total nervous breakdown.  If we don't dry her hands enough, she will cry and shed actual real tears because she says her sleeves are wet.  Apparently she also has super human ability to detect moisture because I almost never feel anything remotely wet and don't really understand why this is so upsetting to her suddenly.

This is a kid who would pull a chair up to the kitchen sink at her grandma's house and come away looking like she was thrown in a pool.  She never wiped her own hands and used to think it was hilarious to run up to me with her wet hands and get her hand prints on me. 

Tonight before dinner, her father went in to "help her" wash her hands (because suddenly she is afraid to do it herself) and she got a DROP of water on her shirt.  She cried and cried and cried and cried.  She cried like someone ran over her puppy, it was so pathetic.  She cried some more, and when I asked her to show me where the water got, she couldn't.  Because her tears had gotten her shirt ALL wet.  Needless to say, we had to change that shirt.

Is this something kids go through or is this just another obvious sign that my kid is going to be insane?