sleeplesses nites

I stop rubbing my daughter’s back and her breathing doesn’t change.  The nose medicine has worked, whether psychologically or physically. She’s asleep again.

5:20am.

I’m not.

My husband patted the bed too many times at 3am, to get the dog up there, and it woke me up. Usually these days, nothing and everything in particular wakes me up. I’m back in the guest room, having vacillated between being mad at him and realizing it could well have happened on its own. Damn dog. What the hell?

Damned cold.

Damned.....well, not damned, but...uncomfortable pregnancy.

I apologize again in my mind to the women I know who wish so much they were pregnant. To myself, 10 months ago, who would have given me a piece of my mind had I complained about the cycle of hunger, heartburn, asthma and now a cold. Back off, I tell her. Just because I really want this and others do too but for random reasons that have nothing to do with anything doesn’t mean I have to ignore that it is hard.

If having no vision without glasses hadn’t meant an early death on the savannah, 20,000 years ago, the birth of my first child might have well meant it. And now it is round two. My body is not made for an easy pregnancy, and maybe neither is my mind.

I watch part of a Lou Reed documentary on TV and it doesn’t manage to put me to sleep. I think about looking up some things that were mentioned in the show but then my internet seems to be down, too, everywhere but my phone. And even that may just be my cellular network getting ready to drop a huge bill in my mailbox.

I eat a banana and wonder how long before I can lay down to try sleeping again without reflux. When was my last herbal anti-runny-nose pill? I don’t want any more medicine at the same time as I just want to drop a few Sudafed Extreme Cold pills down my throat and sleep again. But I’m pregnant, and I’m not going to do that.

Morning gets another 30 minutes closer. But not sleep. I wonder how I’ll feel in an hour, when I no longer have the luxury to pretend I can get another 2 hours sleep. When Monday morning, without daycare, starts. I wonder if I’m getting depressed or just feeling the sleeplessness-induced anxiety that goes away with 2 hours’ more sleep.

Damn dog.

Damn husband.

No one’s fault. Still sucks.

Depression. Is it coming back when the baby arrives? Like some cape tied to my neck, holding me down, keeping me from standing up, always tugging downwards. Tied with some fastener that my hands can’t untie. That only pharmaceuticals can.

I won’t always feel this way - the leap of faith that a depressed person has to keep taking. Because you’ve stopped feeling that way so many times before, each time you felt like it would never change. Ignoring, or even contradicting your gut feeling that this is how it is going to be until the end. Undoing your intuition.

I’m not depressed. I’m just not looking forward to feeling exhausted soon. To wanting to sleep so badly. To wanting to cry, because how can I feel like this about something I want so much. As if one wish that I felt different might bring some tragedy that takes this away from me. It doesn’t mean I don’t want this child. I just want this to be different. I want to sleep. I want to rest. I want to be capable of work. I don’t want to start another child’s life already exhausted. I don’t want this next time to be as hard as the last.

And yet that is what, at least theoretically, I’ve signed up for. I know it could be as hard as last time.

Just some more sleep before that, and maybe I can make better decisions. Maybe I can weather it better. Maybe my family can be shielded from my brain. Maybe this time I will flip everything around and opt for a planned C-section, formula and anti-depressants from the start. I’ll control it better. And find that in trying not to be overly idealistic like last time, I’m just at the other end of the spectrum, still trying to control it all.

Am I hungry? If I don’t eat, will I lie here getting hungrier for the next 30 minutes, losing another chance at sleep, and almost guarantee that I’m a mess in the morning? Or will I fall asleep?

I wish my internet worked.

I wish my body worked, too. And my gratitude.

I guess they don’t.

I guess I’ll have to decide it is okay.

I guess this post will have to wait for me to fix the internet.

(5pm next day. Internet fixed. Sleep fixed (husband let me sleep in an extra two hours in the morning, and happy to report that I didn't lay into him about the dog and managed to just ask about it.). Still sick, but happy to be online. )

1:30am and not learning German

I'm always curious. Why do I wake up like this (once a week it is in this mode) when I'm pregnant. This is one of the conditions my body has duplicated from when I was pregnant with A. This capacity, this tendency, to suddenly be awake (as in, just opened my eyes after closing them for a blink 2 seconds ago) in the middle of the night. Did the baby kick, or am I now waking him up instead? My heart is never pounding, and yet it feels like adrenaline. Or like that time in Boston when I was on Sudafed and had the most productive work and writing experience, so much so that I realized I should probably not take it once the worst of the cold was over, because a person could get used to feeling that alert-but-not-jittery.

I'm not wheezing - it isn't the asthma. I'm not hungry. And I don't think it was a super full bladder. Sorry, but I'm ruling out most likely scenarios. I imagine reading some blog post online someday that talks about this kind of phenomenon and I read it, fascinated (because it will be well written, witty, fun to read), and think "Oh, so THAT's what was going on."

Anyway, here I am. Waiting for some part of this to wear off so I can go back to bed.

While I'm up, I finally decided to write here.

It took me 4 1/2 years to get in the elevator I got in last week. Now, I mean, this is the elevator of my apartment building, and I've been in it many many times, but the ride I took last week was monumental. I had showered and even blown my hair dry. I had a bag full of papers. I had my insurance cards in my wallet.

I was going - get this - across the street to go figure out how to deal with health insurance policies in Switzerland. And maybe get some money back. Not a lot of money, so this special elevator ride (and building up to it, making myself call the company, making sure someone there would speak English, making sure I brought all my papers, organized by "first pregnancy", "back problems", "general problems", etc) was about motivating myself. No, motivating isn't the right word. It was about finally getting to this task, that I've dreaded so much because it involves all the things I'm not good at - new systems of bureaucracy, in a language I have not really learned (definitely not well enough to go learn something novel about forms and regulations), in a country where you're just supposed to know how to do this.

The Swiss don't like to pay for almost any of their health care. Not once they buy their insurance, that is. The pharmacists are always surprised when I pay for something out of pocket, and massage therapists are forever offering to check if their service is covered in my policy. Well, actually, they are forever telling me to call my company and check my policy, which means I'm forever feeling guilty that I find this task so difficult.

Of course, I was expecting the worst of this visit - to be told how remiss I had been, how simple this is, to be met with disbelief at how I'd ignored this and how seven plagues should, in fact, befall me and my family just to teach me a lesson. And really, I hadn't learned German yet? I really should be learning that, you know.

It was like the "perfect greeting card that captures your feelings exactly" of living abroad. Except this greeting card was from the fears and worries section. Now THOSE are cards I might actually buy, Walgreens. "Sorry to hear you're terrified of answering the phone." "Just know I'm with you in spirit when you go back to the fridge and finish that pie. I really wish I was there in person." "Too bad you don't yet know German and can't manage to learn about your health insurance in almost 5 years of living in a country. I'll still be your friend, although I may not always admit it."

Turns out, this time, my worries about how badly it was going to go were way overblown. Doesn't hurt that I'd talked to friends about this. Doesn't hurt that I'd had to organize files the week before for tax purposes (that post will someday be titled "We're moving back to America...because of tax law), doesn't hurt that the company across the street (I see their office from my bedroom window and did confirm for myself that you can't actually see what people in my bedroom are doing) bought our old insurance company, and it sure doesn't hurt that the woman I talked with on the phone was (a) NICE and helpful instead of dismissive, and (b) spoke English and said that anyone I came to talk with could, too. The woman I spoke with in person, who had most definitely not seen me getting dressed for said meeting, was kind, was understanding, did not laugh in my face at how long it had taken me to get there, printed out policy info in English and walked me through the kinds of paper I receive related to medical costs and what to do with each, and did I mention she was nice?

So it was good. Really good. It felt great. I treated myself to forcing M to help me get a Christmas tree 2 days later because I felt that accomplished about it. I will no longer have to hide my secret. And it will make a great story for a cover letter when I apply to be some sort of international student assistant at some university in the US someday.

No one in this room is hungry

Ok, there is no one in this room but me. Insomnia on my part (a mixture of the daily 3am bathroom trip, followed by sneezing and wheezing for about an hour) and snoring on the part of a few other individuals (both furry and not), has resulted in me sleeping in the guestroom for weeks now. And usually my wake-up involves some snacking. Maybe some snacking followed by an antacid.

But in 2 1/2 hours I'm getting a glucose test done, due to my "advanced maternal age", which just means I'm going to be a really hungry, pregnant, 40 year old woman, drinking something like a cup of sugar mixed with a cup of water. Soon. But not soon enough.

I may not be cooking a Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, but pretty much all of America is, and they are all talking about it on Facebook. Which is where I spend a fair amount of insomnia time, on my phone, trying not to sit up and wake my body up more.

There is nothing extreme about my condition. Nothing life threatening. I'm just up every night for 1-2 hours, too tired to read or think all that seriously, wheezing just enough to keep coughing and not quite falling back asleep, or sneezing and blowing my nose. And deciding between trying to fall back asleep hungry or with acid reflux. It is just annoying.

I don't wish it away. I'm happy I'm pregnant.  I've just got more people looking to me to have a coherent thought this time than last time - no toddler, no meetings. So I mess up more often, because there is more to mess up. I snap at my kid when she wakes me up with a container of glitter she wants to play with at 7:30am because I still haven't finished cleaning up from her birthday weekend and I haven't asked her to help much. My husband is lucky if there is one day's worth of clean underwear and two eggs in the fridge. My dog probably wonders whether I even know she's there.

But the point of this post? I'm just trying to do something to pass the time this morning. To get to 8:30am at the doctor's office. The baby kicks. I turn over one more time, readjust the pillow, I cough, I turn and sneeze and reach for a tissue. My stomach gurgles. I wheeze a bit and wonder if I can use my inhaler before the test. Then I hope I fall asleep soon so I'm not feeling exhausted when I hear my daughter's voice as she wakes up. I consider flipping through a magazine, but feel just tired enough not to want to think. The sound of traffic starts to pick up and makes me a bit more anxious about falling asleep before the sky starts getting bright. Tick, tick, tick. I feel vaguely like I could just wake up and start the day but I know the sleep-monster is going to hit in the next hour, so I just keep waiting. Trying.

Somewhere in the future, the me with a new baby is yelling back to just enjoy, to read something just because I can, to store up these early morning hours, or for the love of pete, to do something with them so that there is something I can look back on when I'm exhausted and feeling useless as a new mom. Or bored and exhausted. But that's not the way it works, is it?

I keep waiting.

Happy Thanksgiving, though.

The daughter as engineer

This video of girls making a Rube Goldberg-type course through and around their house is currently making the rounds of Facebook, especially on some very strong women's and moms' feeds. There is a lot of support for the message - that girls can make and build. And that there is now an engineering construction set to empower them, called Goldie Blox.

What has caught me a little off guard is how big the response has been that "finally, something has come on the market to help empower our girls!"

Don't get me wrong - I think the toy is kind of cool - a set of engineering tasks based around a story. It is just that I may have underestimated the amount of support I already give my kid. (I'm hard enough on my own mothering that I get to give myself kuddos, too). Now, maybe she likes to fix and build more than some other girls, but I'm thinking that I just name it more often - as engineering, as fixing, as problem solving. In trying to come up with things to call her other than cute, and learn ways to talk about what she is doing instead of how pretty or cool it is, I find myself often telling her things about her playing.

And my girl of 4 does a lot of engineering. She wants this doll stroller to have that cup on it and that blanket to hang off the dog crate. And, sometimes together with parents and sometimes on her own (I often ask her how she thinks she could do it, encourage her to try again if it doesn't work as planned, acknowledge how frustrating it can be, and am there to help if she asks), it gets hacked. We have lots of scotch, masking and Japanese tape at her disposal. Kid scissors. Laundry clothespins. Paper and pens/pencils/crayons. Legos and these big cardboard blocks.

Last night, after trying to put a baby doll carrier on her baby doll stroller with a velcro strap that was too short, she found another place to fit it, down below the stroller, and continued on her way, beaming, some 12 stuffed animals accommodated in the process. And I told her what a creative engineer she was. Praised her effort.  And then I stood back and smiled with my husband, mostly in awe of this little person who can do so much already.

Just because it is done with a traditionally girls' toy, doesn't mean it isn't engineering. Or problem solving. Our kids are natural problem solvers, and maybe one of the first steps is to identify that for them so they can know it is one of their skills already.

So, in addition to Goldie Blox this holiday, time to start recognizing and naming the multitude of skills our kids show already (compassion, sharing, fixing, persisting, all manner of creating, problem solving, etc.). My daughter may not choose engineering as a career for a multitude of reasons, but it isn't going to be because she doesn't think it is something a girl can do.

What skills and abilities of your child's do you name?

Getting pissed off

Hmm. I should check old post titles - that one sounds kind of familiar. It wouldn't surprise me to find I'd written about anger before. Probably wouldn't surprise you, either.

Anger is such a strange issue. One side of our family hides it, stuffs it down deep inside and lets it out as passive aggression, and the other lets it just explode in your face at the most unexpected of times. And now, as parents, M and I are having to navigate what is appropriate with a child. For us (what does acceptable behavior look like when you're angry) and for A (how much is she allowed to vent and in what ways?).

I'm bumbling through this issue kind of blindly. My first instinct is that anger is bad - I was taught to think that - and so the point is never to get angry. Or, if you have gotten angry, to deny that you were and to say it was sadness or something else. But that's not how life works, so I'm having to redefine how I "do" anger. Don't think I've gotten far - I haven't, really. I'm at the "it is okay for me to be angry" self-affirmation stage, at which point my brain just kind of turns off. Crickets. Silence. I have no idea how to be angry next.

If I'm not okay with A hitting when she's angry, then obviously that's off the table for me, too. I don't actually get that far, but the point is that I'm totally at sea with this and even extreme boundary conditions are helpful. Okay, so no hitting.

Yelling? Also not great. We don't want her to yell, and yet we get to the point where we do it. But I get there every other time I'm furious. (I also tend to put my foot down earlier than M so that I don't actually get as furious in certain situations. Don't worry, in others I'm way more unreasonable than him).

Walking out? Hmm. That one is a tougher call because it feels either like defeat or surrender instead of taking time to cool down. But as I write this and think how would I like it if A walked out and cooled down every time she was angry, I realize I'd be pretty happy with that. So maybe that is a new way to think about that option.

What I'd love to be is the person who can express verbally what I'm angry about in a way that vents it but doesn't (and my kid has just messed up some tape she's playing with at this instant, started making upset sounds, and I'm wondering should I duck lest the tape dispenser come flying my way) hurt the feelings of another person. And in a way that gets it out of my system.

I guess that last part is the other problem I have with my anger. I don't purge it very quickly. If I don't get an apology I have a hard time letting things go.

There is no neat bow to tie up this post and end with some epiphany. Just something I was thinking about. What is anger good for?

Furry, furry, furry

It has now been, what, 5 or 6 months since I stopped shaving my legs (and toes - yes, they, too are a bit fluffy). And it is almost winter, and I soon won't be able to bend down that comfortably anyway, so they're going to stay hairy.

Do I finally think my legs are feminine even with the hair? Nope. Doesn't look feminine to me. Or pretty.

But what I find interesting is that it is the looking feminine that I am less concerned with now. I still wear dresses sometimes, jewelry and makeup, even. But the leg thing doesn't come in to play as often.

Now, this isn't to say that I find hairy legs and a knee-length skirt normal looking. I don't. I just don't pack a razor with me on trips anymore.

I might shave again next summer. And I'm still on the lookout for a well-fitting boy-short swimsuit (Target, the one I got from you had a seam that was 50 shades of wrong). But I'm not going to worry about it as much.

I just look at my legs now, in my pajamas at home, without thinking so much about them. That's been nice.

Testing for Down's Syndrome

It is early days yet, but there now exist a number of companies that can use a pregnant woman's blood to detect DNA from the fetus. For certain conditions, then, this means no more amniocentesis - which requires sticking a large needle into the actual amniotic fluid (anything that is being stuck into my stomach, by definition, is too big) and carries a slight (read: unacceptable if you're worried about the pregnancy in any way and there is another way to go) risk of miscarriage.

We chose to use a test like this, which would tell us a limited number of things about the baby in my womb. Specifically, it looked for trisomies, triple chromosomes, four of which can lead to viable babies. First, chromosome 21, in triplicate, means Down's Syndrome. Next, there are two less likely, more extreme trisomies, 13, and 18, in which many major organs are severely affected, and many babies don't live past a year or two. Finally, there are sex chromosome trisomies, that may or may not affect fertility, and since they test X's and Y's, you also find out the sex of the baby from this test.

First of all, we didn't really care about the X's and Y's - in any way that would affect our birth preparation. Next, if the baby had Down's Syndrome, we wanted to know now, to help us prepare (and yes, mourn now, the ideal of a baby without), instead of being caught by surprise at the birth. I wanted to be able to smile a full on smile at the birth. Then, trisomies 13 and 18. This one was harder.

The reason we chose the test in the first place is because of my "advanced maternal age" - I'm a grand dame of pregnant ladies now, and that puts me at a higher risk of a baby with any of these trisomies. And to be honest, I just didn't know what I would do if we found out a positive on 13 or 18. A baby whose organs are failing. I would have had to spend a lot of time in books and talking to doctors and on websites to figure out what to do. Yes, I am talking about abortion. But do not make the mistake to think I'm talking about it in any way lightly.

Ever since the first ultrasound with baby A, almost 5 years ago, I've realized that what was growing inside of me was its own being. I had no right to terminate that life. I don't speak for other pregnant women, just myself. I could tell that that was how I felt.

But a baby with so many health problems, severe ones, that could cause death soon after birth? This presents me with another issue.  I don't believe in a god that is directly working in my life, and I also think that nature is dispassionate. Evolution does not save human beings from pain and suffering. There is no "god will do what's best" excuse for an agnostic. And as a parent, even of an embryo, I think it is partly my responsibility (a huge one at that) to think about my own children's suffering. I don't get to pass on the guilt, worry, any of it to a god who knows all. If I'm grown up enough to have a child, I'd damn well better be grown up enough to tackle the most difficult questions that life has to throw at me.

I didn't have to make those tough decisions in the end, because the tests all came back negative.

In the process, I read (albeit on Wikipedia) that: "A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United Kingdom and Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated." This shocked me. I was just still for some 30 seconds, trying to understand that statistic. (Some biology friends later explained that this was for people who had specifically tested for it, which means people who knew there was a risk but didn't test and kept the baby are not included, but still...).

I also found out the sex of the baby. At around 14 weeks of pregnancy. This was through a phone call - which probably shouldn't be the way the test results are announced, now that I think of it. But my OBGYN (the test was through a hospital and lab, not my doctor) was a bit surprised they told me the sex. Her surprise surprised me, until she explained that there is controversy over whether or not hearing earlier than around 20 weeks might allow for more gender selective abortions. It is earlier, you're not there seeing an image, with a doctor near you to discuss the outcome, etc. Interesting. For us, we were happy either way, so it did not make a difference. But it made me think more about the OBGYN/patient relationship.

So, in the end, we spent a lot of money (these new blood tests do not come cheap) on this journey, but it was a good use of the cash. And we are lucky to have been able to afford it. And I've yet again had time to be a bit more thoughtful about life, death, and babies. Never a bad thing.

Pregnancy loss and infant loss

There was a day last week that I posted a link in Facebook to a New York Times article - about pregnancy loss and infant loss. I don't usually do these kinds of "share if you know someone who has gone through...." posts on Facebook. I may have done once before for the issue of depression.

Still, it got me thinking. I'm pregnant now, apparently successfully, with my second child. I've been  through fertility treatment for both pregnancies, and it has taken an average of 3 years each time to get to a pregnancy that made it past 12 weeks. There were many many months of sadness and feelings of hopelessness (and a fair dose of bitterness at all the pregnancies around me) - something like 50-60 rounds of "Maybe I'm finally pregnant this month. Did it work? Shhh, don't hope too much. I'll just assume I'm not until I can take a pregnancy test. Why not just wait until after my period is supposed to come? But what if that was a pang of something other than cramps coming? Shit - no....there it is, I'm not pregnant. Again."

And after a miscarriage at 10 weeks a few years ago, most of my early pregnancy excitement got wiped away. We had told many people we were pregnant, and then, we had to go tell them we weren't. We had to un-imagine the due date and all those thing that went with it. I finally stopped thinking about the due date and what could have been, about 6 months after friends' babies conceived around the same time were born.

I am extremely lucky to be where I am right now, with one child here and one on the way. But it is luck, fortune. There is no greater purpose or reason I got pregnant and it stayed this time, but didn't 2 years ago. Or that the first time worked. I approach pregnancy in a very different way than some who have easily gotten (and stayed pregnant) without help from the medical community. But I am not more or less deserving (because of God, or because of what kind of person I am, or anything like that) of what I have gotten.

And the book I just finished, a memoir about going through the inability to have children (Silent Sorority by Pam Tsigdinos) got me thinking, once again, how going through pregnancy difficulties changes you. I found the author's writing to be extremely powerful, and helpful, for clarifying a sense of loss. In her case, the loss is of never having children. And there is nothing she can do that will erase that loss. She will have a different life now. It will not be all sadness, but Mother's Day will always be bittersweet for her, because there are things that happen to us in life (inability to bear children) that are not erasable by other, not quite same, things (being an aunt, an adoptive mother, etc.). What I appreciated most about her writing was the willingness to just acknowledge this fact - you don't erase monumental losses from life. It isn't fun, it is hard to know how to sit with someone who goes through them, it is scary, but it is authentic.

So anyway, here, at the end of a kind of meandering, not-so-well-written post, is my point. I've been thinking about pregnancy loss these last few weeks, and reading about how often it is a silent condition - to be not pregnant but really really want to be and have been trying. There are no un-baby showers, or cards, or such. And yet, infertility is a very real part of some women's (and couples') lives. And the lighting of a candle at 7pm last Tuesday was a beatiful gesture. But it struck me as still too silent - for me. This, then, is my add-on.

An empty womb, where no pregnancy has ever been but has been hoped and prayed and wept for. A womb that held a being, but only for a while, not long enough to be born. And a being that survived for long enough to be a baby, but only for a while. Each situation is different, and people have gone through each have gone through unique processes. And this is meant to recognize the feelings of loss.

It will be going up on my Facebook profile for a few weeks. Because even though I'm pregnant right now, seemingly successfully, my miscarriage has defined how I approach this pregnancy - with caution, and with reserve. And it has helped me in the past to know that others have gone through this, too.

If you've been through a lost pregnancy or baby, and want to put it up, too, feel free to grab the image.

No deal

I didn't get the job. Didn't even get called back for the second round.

Crap.

I'm not all that surprised since I can't do the teaching in German that they wanted (in addition to in English, c'mon, I'm not that out of it to have applied to an all-German job). But still, dreams of having found my new little clan, like, actual human beings to see on a daily basis, that just went out the window again.

They were nice. And even asked me to propose a workshop I could teach for one of their programs. And that is lovely. But it also means me sitting some more, alone, trying to be inspired. And that well has just about dried up, people. It is 2:30pm on a Wednesday and I have yet to leave the house. The one person I interacted with who wasn't family was the dishwasher repair guy. And let me tell you, he got an earful of my carefully constructed logical arguments on what wasn't the problem with the dishwasher. The German words I used to make said arguments were probably only right 60% of the time, but the arguments themselves should have been quite impressive coming from what appears to be a stay-at-home housewife.

Well, ok, is a stay-at-home housewife at this point.

Because I didn't get the job. Crap.

I'm gonna go take a nap now, and think about what I can do when I wake up (in addition to some dishes I'm going to have to go wash by hand...again.).

60 seconds more

My brain is usually revving like an engine, overflowing with ideas and thoughts, when I'm feeling normal. Which I'm not feeling these days. I'm pregnant again.

Which is also why I've not written in months.

I've been out of it. Only thinking one thought at a time. Or per day, even, other than "blech, I feel bad again, and I'm not sure if I'm hungry, but maybe eating something random will help."

I'm slow. I'm sure I was slow last time, with A in my belly, but I notice it more this time.

Until about a week ago, thinking about writing made me nauseous, as did trying to do anything in German. Thinking, in general, made me sick.

I'm better these days, a fact for which I am extremely grateful, and German doesn't make me want to throw up anymore. But I'm still slow.

And there is a sweet little silver lining to that slowness - I've slowed down to a better pace for many of those around me. I'm not as impatient, mostly because I'm just tired, and really happy to just sit for another minute. Or twenty.

I routinely take another minute, another 60 seconds, waiting for A to hear or comply with something I've asked of her. And with the dog, I take another 60 seconds to let her sniff a spot I would have formerly pulled her away from once she'd done her business.

I don't try to cram 3 events (or even errands) into an afternoon with A anymore, and it feels much more sane. More calm. I like this version of myself better.

Who knows if I'll be able to keep it up once I'm no longer pregnant. It is hard to calm my thoughts and impatience. And to calm the fears of not having accomplished enough in a day of errands and emails.

At least I'll have had a good many months' practice.

What to expect...

One of our nieces is pregnant for the first time, and while we were back in the US visiting family, she said "If you have any advice on pregnancy, let me know." Turns out M and I have about the same advice, at least at the top of our list - "don't read What to Expect When You're Expecting."

That may not have been the only pregnancy book to give me worries, but it definitely provided me with the most of them. It can read like a compilation of the worst things that can happen in pregnancy, aggregated over all women who have been pregnant. So it is like reading this laundry list of doom, and you wind up expecting to experience all of it. Varicose veins, ectopic pregnancies, listeria, stretch marks, vomiting, and on and on. And no woman has all of those. I mean, come on, those of us who have miscarriages at least don't go through Braxton-Hicks contractions and those who get to giving birth, don't go (at least during that 9 months) through miscarriage. It can't ALL happen to one woman during one pregnancy.

And it is less likely to, according to the book, as long as you fruit-juice-sweeten the hell out of your diet, in place of sugar.

I stopped reading that book pretty soon after picking it up, when I was pregnant with A.

I'd say my second piece of advice, especially for a woman who is used to being super busy at work is to give yourself a break. It isn't the rest of your life. If you can afford to, take some time off. Nap, ever day. Instead of trying to keep up being who you were (and will be again, sometime after they turn 12) when you could sleep in, not wake up at 1am with insomnia and heartburn, and weren't throwing up all the time. Rest. Your body is doing a really big job, and your brain can just step aside for a bit.

Oh, and, no one is every really ready for the baby, so don't wear yourself out trying to have the perfect pregnancy or birth, or being completely prepared. You won't even know half of what you'll need until the baby arrives (A didn't need the smallest size onesies because of her birth size, she came two weeks early, and the Swedish baby sling didn't work for us, but the Ergo carrier did). Each kid is different. There is no "best" stroller, carrier, or anything else, and you'll probably burn through your first one in no time anyway, if it works for you. We're currently on stroller #3 and it is falling apart.

Finally, at least in my case, dealing with my issues, my emotional baggage, all that stuff that stands in the way of me acting like an adult - that has been a much more vital part of my becoming a good mother than any matching outfits or appropriate toys or anything else I can buy. Therapy before, and especially after, were the best investments I made in parenthood.

Addicted

I don't really drink. This means that, yes, while alcohol occasionally passes my lips, it is most often at the urging of someone well-meaning, who likes the taste, trying to make sure I don't miss out. On an amazing beer (gross), or wine (almost worse), or mixed drink (I can still taste the booze, that's the problem). About once a year I'll have something like madeira or some other really sweet wine. But even then, I'd much rather have dessert itself. The whole huge piece of cake.

And I've never been addicted to things one can consume - sweets, caffeine, drugs, cigarettes, booze. The first two, I can live without (although I regularly don't), and the last three don't float my boat.

I may be a bit addicted to shopping as a means to making myself feel better.

I am more addicted, however, to feeling busy. To doing the right things. And it is this that I'm trying to do a bit less of these days. Trying to stop trying to cram in all that I could do, for about 20% less doing.

I'm currently missing a large piece of a tooth. It kind of just fell out last week. Instead of a rogue popcorn shell, I pulled out a quarter of a large tooth. And, hours before being due to leave on a trip, I was sitting at the dentist's, hearing that I'd have to come back 5 days later. So, suddenly my rushed day was quiet. I had an extra hour and a half left. More, maybe.

My first instinct was to do as usual - rush out to try to get even better rain boots than those I'd bought at the hardware store for this trip. I could make it into town. I could probably find a shop that carried better ones. It could make the trip better.

And then I stopped. Partially because my stomach told me to hold the hell on and go get some lunch first. But also partially because it is okay to be stationary. To not be rushing from one thing to another, in search of an even better thing to add to one's already nice day. Last Saturday, it was deciding to just sit at the train station with A's Kinder Egg and my newspaper, while she had time to eat, and we had time to just sit. To watch trains go by on platform 1. To watch people. To see the Jordanian Royal Army Band members in full uniform walk past us. To chat. This was lovely, and instead of rushing to get to the market, just 100 m. away and go buy Greek food for lunch, and make our Saturday even cooler.

So much better to have time.

I won't always be able to make that call. I'm new at this. But when I do, it has been worth it. No sky has fallen, no one on Facebook has unfriended me, and I get to slow down and notice smaller things. Like the fact that my kid thought a phone booth was an elevator, since she's never seen a corded phone. We took 20 min. while she ate her treat and then stopped in at the phone booth before heading home. She may not have wanted to touch the receiver or buttons this time, but she had the opportunity.

You talk what you want to talk

"Ma-ma. You talk what you want to talk and I talk what I want to talk. ok?"

It is amazing the power of humans to not notice the extent of some of our own behaviors. I was convinced that I mostly speak to A in Lithuanian when she and I are alone, and only spoke to her in English around M or with my friend.

And that she has stopped speaking Lithuanian due to some small change I've made. Not speaking enough once in a while. It was really emotional to be asking her to say words in Lithuanian and hear her refuse. To see her get upset if I asked her to speak it. What was I going to do? How was I going to make it something she wanted to do, instead of something forced (by withholding playing with her or something else horrible like that)?

I was going to start making Lithuanian kids videos! Yes! And find a summer camp in Lithuania to go to after our other travel this summer. And buy more books. Did I mention the Lithuanian Sesame Street that was slowly being planned in my head?

That quote above is something she started saying in response to my asking her to speak Lithuanian with me. Sigh. Heart-gripping sigh.

Ok, little one. Ok. I'll just keep speaking it. And planning and trying not to get too overbearing.

And 3 days later, I've now realized that I really had been speaking less Lithuanian. Because now that I'm back to all the time we're together, there are phrases she is parroting back ("Do you want white or blue?") in Lithuanian instead of answering only in English. I'm able to bring it back, without having to ask.

And sometimes we are both talking what I wanted her to talk.

It's a process

I first wrote "Its a process." I'm usually a great speller - especially out loud, for long words. You'
re, your - do not phase me. This short one though, I never, ever remember. I usually avoid it, spell out "it is" and sound way more formal than I've intended.

As for the process, it is my legs. Or, rather, coming to terms with them. Looking at hairy legs and not immediately thinking them ugly. Or unfeminine. I'm still smack-dab in the middle of that process. I still find they look strange. I don't like them very often, yet sometimes I get over it and don't care. And I think this may be part of the difficulty I've been having. With my legs, and with anyone (especially a women) who doesn't look magazine-perfect. My legs are a total failure of what fashion magazines tell me I should look like. The rest of me, I can do a pretty good job of molding into a "tall enough to hide I'm not skinny enough" image of mainstream advertised femininity. I'm lucky that way. What isn't up to snuff I can hide easily enough. I have great skin, and thick hair.

But the issue is that I've been trying to see my hairy legs as beautiful.

And I'm not so sure they are. I mean, I like my legs for what they can do, but the problem (even on blogs that encourage women not to care what people think of their legs) is that the question is still in terms of how I look. To myself, but really that means to others, too. I think what I'd rather feel is that they are strong and who cares how they look, it matters they can dance, and take me to work, and help me give horse-rides to my kid, and hang out on the side of the amazing coffee I can brew, next to the Sunday New York Times crossword I can actually solve, by Monday some weeks. By. My. Self. That is what I want to think about me, and not about how my legs look.

 

















This also goes along with the problems I have "just noticing, not judging" how people look. I've realized that in the same minute, I can see a woman, notice that she would not be featured in a magazine (the classifying my brain does immediately), and then also tell myself she is a perfect example of a human being. Not just a woman, but a person, who thinks, laughs, talks, works, cries, and is. This works much better for me than just trying not to judge how a person's body looks. And I'm thinking it can apply to me, too.

My hairy legs don't look like anything in a magazine. I don't know if I'll ever call them gorgeous. But some of this exercise, at least for me, is to think of myself as a human being first, and not in comparison to how someone in a photo looks.

And, based on a TED talk I watched last week, about the sexual objectification of women, part of what I stumble on in looking at these blog photos of women's legs only, is that it is only one part of the body you see. Instead of the whole person.

If that third photo is of a woman who wants to be elegant and gorgeous, I think that is a FAIL in my mind. If it is of a person, who can do and think and make, it is fine. It is good. And both the crossword and the coffee make me proud.

Ist es möglich, in Englisch zu sprechen?

I may have mentioned before how much I hate talking on the phone. That dislike is multiplied manyfold when it means speaking in German (possibly Swiss German) about anything I'm not well versed in in terms of vocabulary (I'm pretty good at symptoms of illness that toddlers and their parents tend to have, as well as talking about things that are broken in my apartment). When it comes to work-related things, I'm hopeless. I have Google translate open on my browser, but it takes one or two unfamiliar words from the other end of the line to knock me off my game completely and default to "Is it possible to speak in English, I apologize, please thank you."

Today there are two German calls on my list and they are the sorts of things (one for work, related to the university, and one about bank charges and apartment deposit info) that are so hard for me to actually sit down and do that I get to watch a movie if I want if I just make these two calls. There have been so many times that an interaction in German just went south, as soon as the person I'm talking to didn't understand either what I was asking or was classically bad at simplifying their own vocabulary and slowing talking. Seriously, people, have you not ever played charades or talked with a child? You can't just slur all the words together, or assume that I'm just poorly intentioned.

Well, I just made the first call, which gets put in the "good experiences where no one yelled at me" pile. The first person I called at the advertising division answered, was older, I thought "crap, I'm going to crash and burn", and when I asked the "Can we speak in English?" question, said "Nein, Spanisch, Italienish oder Deutsch." I almost cried out in happiness - Spanish I can do. Spanish, I have a personality and confidence in, even if my vocabulary is limited. I can get along well enough, and I don't break out in a sweat. Turns out, he was in deliveries, and the guy in charge of advertising schedules spoke English. And was nice. And informative. And I feel great about the call.

The next one, is our old rental company. And the woman I'm calling is actually friendly, but she is also not of the "I'll meet you halfway with simplified German". So, I have my three questions sitting on the Google translator window, and I'm about to jump off the cliff again.

Here goes.

Taking a personal day

I was all prepared for today to be a learning opportunity for A. She's got a cold, no fever, still up for lots of stuff, but somewhere between me asking her about her throat (still guarding against the strep throat I had last week), and M asking if she feels sick (no! don't give the answer you're hoping she doesn't say!), she asks to stay home because she's sick (in that universal, slightly pathetic kid voice....sniff sniff, cough, I'b sick, baba.).

And since it is summer and I mostly have errands and phone calls to make today, I decide it is a good time to show her what a sick day at home is like. The boredom, the not playing with me, the having to be calm, the opting out of going swimming in a cold pool later today. The watching every Baby Einstein video we have (that is still roughly the level of media she watches).

Turns out, she's pretty happy to have a day off of school, and mostly chill out. And, more surprisingly, turns out so am I.

I'm not able to procrastinate nearly as much as usual. I actually cleaned the whole kitchen during snack time, and have a list of calls I'm working on. It is nice to have the quiet, small company embodied by my kid. And she's doing pretty well with not needing me to play with her all the time.

Not so bad, actually. 

Now it is just the hippies

How did that happen? It is almost a month since I've written here.

I'm coming out of a short quarantine for strep throat (which we're all hoping only I caught this time around) and that second day of antibiotics (assuming you didn't wait too long to get to the doctor and you're not already delirious with a fever) is a bit magical. Your kid can go to daycare, your partner is at work, you feel mostly fine and yet you're not allowed to go much of anywhere. And you probably don't want to be all up in all sorts of food preparation yet, either. You get to just sit and watch a movie or read. If you want to do a telecon, you go do that. I got to just reschedule some meetings for next week and instead I gave myself the day off. Because M insisted I actually take it off, and not try to be productive.

But other than that, what I have I been doing all this month? Why have I not written? I'm in the middle of both diversity of thought (in the workplace) literature, and a load of TED talks about gender.

And still growing out that leg hair.

I'm not sure if it is as long as it is going to get. I'm not sure if I'll always have a hard time seeing it as feminine. And yet, how can something that all women have, be something that isn't feminine. What a strange concept that there are things that all women are trying to change about themselves to feel more feminine.

One thing I know, from taking a more than causal glance at all the various legs passing me by at the Zurifest yesterday (3 days of citywide celebration, that happens every 3 or 4 years), is that hairy legs are no longer a "European" thing. I was the only one out there, female, between the ages of about 12 to 55, who didn't have shaved legs.

Designing for diversity

I've been dipping my toes into the literature on the importance, the value, of "diversity of thought" in business lately. Yes, there is actually a literature on this - mostly from the business world - yet another example of things I never realized someone was doing well. So many things aren't given their due in the practice of academic life, that it is like one easter egg after another some months.

So the thought that surfaced sometime yesterday (anywhere between being barely awake to going to sleep, I don't remember) was that one measure of diversity is how much all participants in an organization have to adapt to it when they arrive. Because usually, it is the women or the minorities or someone else who needs to become more outspoken, more confident, more assertive, more this and more that. And I think this results in a group that is less diverse, regardless of the reproductive organs or skin color or native language of the group's members.

I mean, how often do you hear, in addition to women having to become more assertive, that the men in a group had to become more sensitive to the feelings of others, and more soft-spoken? Maybe you have heard of it, and in that case I'd love to know where. Because apart from a few token sexual harassment seminars that don't actually require anyone's behavior be different in order to succeed in the field, I don't see talks about how males should practice acting less confident and being better at service roles in academia.

Footie-blut

Or something like that. My kid has been going around saying "footie-blut!" as a sort of toddler curseword. I'm told it means something like totally naked, but in a kid sort of way. So, I've decided not to try stopping her from saying it on buses and trams and in public. And at home. As long as she's not going around yelling "sweet mother of jesus, what the fuck is that?!?!", she can toddler-curse, I guess.

Totally naked. Brings me to that discussion from the last post where she brought up body hair and I proceeded to skip happily down the rabbit hole of women on the internet who don't shave. I also managed to avoid, by careful forethought of Google search terms, all those other unshaven women one might find on the internet when one is in to that kind of thing in a way I am not. Phew.

It took me to lots of photos on a blog of hairy legs, which is meant to be a positive space for women to share photos of their legs (and all else clothed, thankyouverymuch) with hair. Lots of it, not so much of it, in sneakers, in heels. I have to admit many of the photos made me cringe inside. Not a reaction I'd like to have, but the "hairy legs = male" association is strong in my mind. So I just scrolled down, and kept looking. Kept thinking about how it made me feel, and why. About whether or not I was ready to do this thing, too.

I'm still bothered that I'm still bothered by women's hairy legs. But a few things came through all that rumination. This isn't about making all women stop shaving their legs or other, um, areas. It is about really feeling like it is a choice instead of a fear that small children will run away screaming as their adult counterparts make puking sounds in sheer disgust. I also learned that my legs and their fur lie in about the middle of the distribution, which is not something I ever imagined was true. Yes, we're mammals, but I honestly thought I was the furriest one around. And, after having a dream that my unshaven legs looked like Chewbacca's, and waking up to realize that is not true (probably not even for any human being on the planet, in fact), I went out today in a dress and whatever legs. It didn't matter. I may shave this summer (I probably will), but I don't have to do it to be presentable. I may be itchy if I shave, but if I don't, I'm presentable the way I am.

(Note: I found another site today, about not wearing make up. I wear lipstick about once every 10 days and mascara once a month. I don't wear foundation or anything else, so these photos were not so shocking to me. But I imagine this is the same feeling for women who do wear make-up daily as it is for me with the shaving. And then, just for good measure, I let my tummy pooch hang as I went to the grocery store. It was an anarchist sort of day over here in northern Switzerland.)

Sugar, and spice, and everything nice

The thing is, I don't want my daughter to think she can't also be made of snails and puppy dog tails. I don't want her to think she is most valuable (and powerful) for how she looks in lingerie.

This weekend we went to see a kid-circus open house. It was awesome. So many of the things I'd hope for in an environment for A: kids from 6 to 16 years old, in mostly unisex costumes that were neither too tight nor too gendered, kids doing what they could do but without big tears or worries on their faces if they made a mistake, boys and girls holding hands or bodies in a non-sexual way, not worried about touching. A chance to use one's body, to enjoy movement and skill.

Of course, one the way there, we had to pass an advertisement for women's underwear - "Why is that woman naked, mama?" It was the first time she has noticed that kind of ad for its strangeness. Nakedness is usually reserved for home, for the pool locker room, for quick changes at the beach. And I wasn't sure what to tell her. "Yeah, that women sure looks cold." Or my usual, clumsy fallback: "They are trying to sell underwear." Great, so we establish that is an advertisement (whatever that means to my 3 year old), but what about why a naked woman sells that. Because there is an element of seduction in every underwear ad I've seen - I have yet to see normal women's bodies in normal underwear in full color, large poster format. I swear I'm getting t-shirt post-it notes made up (and maybe sandwiches, too, because most of these ladies are looking not just cold but like they could use a meal) to stick up on posters like that.

I don't want my child to start learning, already, that women's bodies are for selling things.

On a related note, this morning we had a conversation about body hair, as we were all getting ready for the day. There were showers, and wiping of bums, and all sorts of naked in the process of 3 people getting dressed, and A noticed that we, her parents, had hair. Why did Papa have hair under his arms? Did Mama? Where else was there hair? Where did A have hair?

And it was yet another sweet/heartbreaking moment, as she took a good look all over herself and announced that she had hair on her arms and her legs. Statement of fact and nothing else. How lovely, how envious I am of that, and now how protective of her getting to look at herself and not make a value judgment.

My first instinct is to fiercely protect that for her. My second thought is to chuck my own razor this summer. Yikes - no shaved legs or armpits, although I may have to hold on to the shaved armpits, given the more "natural" deodorants I've been sticking with lately. But the rest? How else am I going to stop her (okay, at least slow her down) from shaving her legs at age 10, like I did, to get rid of those fine white hairs? How else can I mount the assault on her thinking of her body for how it looks instead of how it feels? And how can I try to calm my inner fears if I stop shaving this summer? What does it mean to be a women with hair on her body? (This woman gives a very powerful answer to that question). And then I got to this artist's website, where she had asked women to stop shaving, plucking and generally de-hairing their faces and took photos, and it has had the effect of a spring breeze, or a 10-minute meditative sit. Oh, the places (the conversational places) we could go, if only people looked more like themselves instead of each other. The shades of grey (those books just kind of messed up that phrase for the rest of us) we could explore, and find comfort in. The subtle and complex, instead of photoshopped and self-doubting.

There sure is a lot of walking-the-walk in parenting. I never thought it would be such a daily dose of reinterpreting our cultural norms. I like it, I'm just surprised at the intellectual work that goes into having a 3 year old for me. I find it refreshing. Just like this font.

What is it with goats around here?

For some reason, when I decided to write about being mad, this is the first thing that came to my mind: Mad Sesame Street goat.

I can't help it, I get mad at pregnant women. And women with small babies. And women who are  gonna just pop that next one out, whenever they decide. Not all of them, mind you, and not all the time.

I can still be happy for a friend who is pregnant or has a new baby. I can even handle the gonna-poppers okay.

But not all the time. Not when I'm in my own little world, trying to think of other things in my day, and I get caught unawares. When I'm happily spinning some tale of meaningfulness of something I'm about to do, workwise, or otherwise, and I turn a corner and there they (or she) is. Whoever she is. Pregnant women I don't know, I stay away from. Pregnant women I do know, depends how much we have in common. I can have entire coffee or lunch dates in which my throat doesn't catch, and where I even hold a newborn. And it is nice. And I'm not spiraling down some dark slide.

Other times, I can't. I think it is mostly the caught-unawares times that get me verklempt. For a while I've been trying to stop feeling mad or sad (I'm guessing the mad is just a less powerless feeling to substitute for sad), trying to understand why I react that way. I try to feel more grateful for the one kid I do have. For the fact that I am amazingly privileged compared to so many women around the world.

But not only is that goat singing about being mad, he's saying me that it is okay to be maaaad. Today, I'm going to agree. It's okay. It is okay to just go away. It is okay not to stick around. It is okay for others to be happy and me to not be sometimes. It is okay to be mad (although not okay to throw a grown-up tantrum where cups and mean words go flying...I've never done this, I'm just checking in that this would, indeed, be in bad form).

You tell it, goat. Tell it.

There is another part of this, though, that is also hard to navigate. That when I actually tell people that I'm having a hard time getting pregnant, they often switch into fixing mode and start firing off questions about what I'm doing to change my situation. I know I do it to others, too. That doesn't help. Especially not from someone who has not been through this. I have not spoken up in order to ask for help fixing my problem - I have a husband and some doctors working hard with me on that front. We're set with the working on the fixing. I have spoken up because I'm not going to be able to smile the "yeah, I know, right?" smile along with the group on this one. It is okay just to say "Oh, I'm sorry" to me and we go on to some other topic of conversation. I don't do it because I want to make someone feel bad, but I also can't just sit with a half-smile and not nod. That shit just gets awkward after a while, and soon people think you're mad at them for something they did.

And technically I am, but it isn't something they did to me.

And there have been many times I've stuck my foot in my mouth in a similar situation, and just wish I'd known earlier that I was talking down a road the other person really didn't want to travel. And the further down that road I talked in the end, the worse I felt. Because there are so many other things to talk about on any given day.

I'm not really mad anymore. I'm not sad right now. I'm also not easily incorporable into some groups. And that's okay. 

Saying sorry

My kid is crying. Not screaming. But crying pretty loud. It has been a few rounds of asking her to do things and her ignoring me, and continuing to play to stay in the bath, or, or, or. One of those evenings when nothing I say is listened to. When she screams my name from the bathroom instead of saying the "I'm sorry mama" I've asked for. I'm the only parent on duty tonight, and I get that she's tired and that I'm tired, but I'm not finding my way out of it right now.

I haven't gotten and "I'm sorry", a "please" or a "thank you" for most of the afternoon. There have been loud protestations of "I get all the dessert! Not you get any! Or I won't eat any!" There have been ice creams and trips to the park to play in the sun and special dinner pies from the English pie lady. There has been a lot. And not enough.

And how to teach a child, and only child (is this the problem? probably not all of it), to share instead of throwing a fit when she can't have all the dessert on the table? Or to say she's sorry? Or to say please or thank you? Does it come later than 3 1/2 years old? Does all of it come later?

Because it isn't coming tonight. I'm close to crying myself. As soon as I engage again, she starts playing or not listening. And I don't think this is all conscious on her part - or at least it isn't meant to piss me off more, it just does. But I have no idea to get an I'm sorry.

Even though I give them - if I've hurt her feelings, if I've yelled, if I've hurt her by accident while I'm stopping her from hitting me during a tantrum. I say "sorry." I want her to hear it, to know that it is important to say, to learn it, to remember being told her feelings matter.

And I guess that is what this is about at some level. My feelings not mattering.

Yes, I go to a dark little place where I'm the kid again, and again, my feelings don't matter enough for some adult in my life to say and actual "sorry" that ends there and not a "sorry, but...". Or someone who can't say "I love you." And although my husband is great with the "I love you"'s, he's still learning to say "sorry" as well.

It is now 8:15pm and A is asleep, and it took some 5 minutes after the one book we had time for, after she gave me a big hug and a kiss on the chin, after I told her that a big hug and a kiss on the chin could be our special secret code for "I'm sorry", after she told me she didn't say she was sorry because sometimes she is shy, after she told me she said "enschuldigung" to a baby the other day for squeezing her hand too tight, after we talked about if she says "sorry" to any of her friends ever, after I talked about how sorry can mean "I wish I could take it back" or "I didn't mean to hurt you" or "I want things to be ok between us again."

After we both calmed down and sat on the bed, after I raised my voice and told her that if she can't say she's sorry to friends she's not going to have any (yes, I know, I'm sort of dying a bit inside to see myself write that right now), after I raised my voice and said something like "Why can't you say I'm sorry? Why can't you just say it?!"

I'm going to have to apologize for that last part tomorrow morning.

(Before you unfriend me, or decide I am scum or some such thing, I did actually have the presence of mind to tell her that it is wonderful she is learning to apologize to her friends and other kids and she will have friends. I know that one was a mistake to say in the first place.)

If I could've recorded the smell, I would have.

The dog would have loved it, probably. But as for us humans in the house - the smell of whatever the backed up drain was spewing into the kitchen sink, from the plumbing direction of the washing machine, wow. Intense. And not a good intense like balsam or orange blossoms. Not even the "depends on your personal taste" intense like some people's liberal application of perfume or aftershave. We're talking puuuuuutrid. Foul. Rank. Disgusting. Nauseating.

You get the point. Third time this month the repair guys have had to come clean the kitchen plumbing. This time, they came with an electrical camera and snake. Let's see how long the freshness lasts this time. And yes, repair guys, I know about not putting grease down a drain. I also know I was half-expecting you to pull out a whole, belching goat with that snake and say "Well, see, here's yer problem. Ya gotta goat in the pipes. Ain't nobody got time fer that. Always gonna have problems when there's a goat in the pipes."

The goat might even say that. This kind of goat would. 

Didn't happen. But I did sit in my living room for hours. On my laptop. Attempting to be productive. Checking everything I walked near the pantry whether Computer Guy was at work.

See, we have a view from the dining room into the courtyard of our building. And all the apartments. I think their dining rooms face ours. And there is this guy. First time M noticed him - well, the first 20 times - it just bummed him out. Here was M, drinking a coffee and feeding a toddler and not getting work done, and here was Computer Guy, again, working at his computer. Typing while leaning towards a screen, looking at the keyboard, looking at the screen. On and on for hours.

We come up to have breakfast at 7am or 8am, he's sitting there working. We have lunch on weekends, ditto. Us dinner, him typing. The man rarely stops. But then M realized, the man rarely stops, and pointed him out to me, and I'm now convinced that either he's hiding out and trying to crack some code (a wormhole may appear at his apartment soon) and it would have been better that I not report on him like this on the internet, or he's addicted to some role playing game.

That latter option is not very likely though, as he can still seem to afford rent for that apartment and is never shouting at the screen or doing joystick moves. So, the part of me that watches shows like the Mentalist is thinking we should not even try to figure out what he's doing because in the season finale we're going to wind up hostages in some Swiss bomb shelter, wishing we'd payed attention to the other apartments instead.

Hei Pipi Langstockings, la la la la la la la!

One of A's best friends got her a Pipi Longstockings book for a birthday gift last year. Two books, actually, one in English and one in Swiss German. And at first A was too young to understand them, but she's gotten into them lately. She and this friend, L, are like two peas in a pod, and at daycare they will drive the teachers a bit nutty singing the Pipi song. So much so that they wind up relegated to the nap room to sing ad nauseum. I approve of this solution.

I also highly approve of Pipi. She's the strongest girl in the world. Stronger than the strong man at the circus. She can carry her horse on her shoulders. She wears mismatched socks, plays "don't touch the floor" around her kitchen furniture, gets eggs and hot chocolate in her hair when she cooks, and is generally a bad-ass.

And last weekend, when we had to go under the train station to get to the tram, and A had her scooter with her, she didn't ask us for any help with it. She hauled that thing up on her chest, and headed down some steep stairs. As only a proud 3 year old can do. And all she said, pleased as punch, was "I'm strong like Pipi."

My little girl was trying to emulate a female role model by being strong. And liking her own strength. Feeling good about it.

In this underpass, filled with Beyonce's new clothing like for H&M that makes you wonder are they selling clothing too cheaply or selling female sexuality too cheaply (answer: both), my daughter was only concerned with how great it was to be able to carry one's own scooter by oneself.

I love Pipi Longstockings.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope it rains.

This morning A and I spent a few hours at her best friend's house, and while the girls ran around the apartment keeping each other gloriously busy and happy, I got to talk with L's father. And have coffee. There is very little not to love about your 3 year old kid having a best friend, when the friend's parents are also good fun to hang out with.

I told L's father about our balcony garden that I've been slowly buying plants and pots for. Lots of toddler parents have the same first goal for their balconies - kid-proof the railings. Mine is a 15 foot long stretch of what could be a seating space for guests, edged with a tiny, 10" high rod, and then 6 stories of empty space down to the hard concrete. Not good for kids, dogs, or even slightly physically uncoordinated guests. So there are now 10 plastic IKEA pots up there, filled with soil, low and wide, and really not going anywhere soon.

There is, however, no faucet on the balcony.

This means that when I went to fill the pots with dehydrated IKEA soil, I had to make 50 trips to the kitchen faucet and back. This doesn't bode well for the trees and bushes I'm hoping to put in soon.

Sure, the roof of the balcony is open, and that will water things when it rains (except, actually, those 10 IKEA pots which have a overhang above them which just manages to keep the water out of them. Great.

And my experiment in harvesting water was a good reminder that it is all about surface area. Put a small garbage can out on your balcony and if it rains 3cm, you get about 2 cups of water at the end of the day. I need to collect rain from more of the balcony area. But how? The roof doesn't leak into our balcony - and it really should if the the architects weren't going to put in a tap. Upside-down umbrellas over buckets, with a hold poked in the middle to funnel the water? Kind of clunky.

Which is when it hit me - a table that is slightly concave, that funnels water into a middle column or pot. And chairs or ottomans that also do that. Fill the seating and eating space with furniture that harvests rainwater! I was going to be rich. Or at least well known in the eco-community.

But it is times like this I've learned that if I've thought of it, so has someone else. Turns out, not too many people, though. And there is still room to make it look different.

When one person wins, you both lose

Just another usual Sunday. Waking up with all sorts of hope that some scrap of sitting iwth a coffee and reading the NYTimes might happen, only to end up with a kid in her room in time-out because she was kicking me after I took her away from the table after she shoved her cup and plate across it, after I told her she had to mix juice with water if she wanted any juice.

One of those golden moments in parenting that never seem to make it onto any mother's brag list the next week. Sheesh, how did we get here again?

Time out (two of them actually) over, in the living room now, and this time it is M coming up with 10 reasons I shouldn't start building the IKEA shoe cabinets until I know 100% for sure which ones have to be returned (two of the three I bought have a slightly - 2cm - different height listed on the box, probably due to some phasing in of a new design under the same barcode), after telling me earlier this week that the thing he hates most are the moving boxes we are currently using for shoe storage in the hallway. Now I'm on the receiving end of the lose, and it is clear to me why this tactic sucks. At least, being on the receiving end. And that is where A was this morning. I was winning and so we were both losing.

Winning an argument through logic often leads to alienating the person you "won" against, and that isn't the end of goal of most relationships. Not an easy lesson, especially for an academic (either me or M) who keeps seeing logic held in the highest esteem in daily life. Academics can really suck at cooperation and giving in. Turns out, we bring it all too easily home to the breakfast table, too. And then the living room, the bathroom and a handful of other places where it is the last thing we should be emphasizing.

Given how I felt after M won and I put the pieces of the dresser I'd chosen to build back in the box, no wonder A was kicking me earlier this morning.

Mama, I want a baby in our house

Out of the mouths of little ones.

Being a kid is so many things - confusing, emotional, frustrating, and also joyous and full of big dreams and ideas. And an ability to ask for what they want, at the moment they think about it. Without all that adult baggage we develop, of what it means to want, if it is okay, should we say it, should we even want it.

And so, at breakfast this rainy morning, towards the end of eating a kiwi, A said "Mama, I want a baby. In our house. Like you had when you had me when I was a baby." She has a best friend who is a big sister to a 1 year old baby, and babies are all the rage at daycare right now (more in an accessories, I want to be the one who holds her/him, kind of way).

By the time we had talked about which babies she was basing this on, and it was my turn to respond, I started choking up a bit. Saying "I want one, too" without breaking into tears was rough. But I managed it.

That we might all have moments again like that where we can just say so easily what we want at a certain moment.

I want one, too, little one. I want one, too.

Having to ask for every dance

Two calls of "maaaama" at 3am just got me out of bed and out of one of those disturbing dreams where you can't find your way out of somewhere you don't want to be (this time, a hospital, a really big one with suffering people all around, but in a science fiction film, less human, more focusing on the fear of the diseases sort of way). And I had just been trying to drop off an ex at his bicycle before I headed back to my time machine. It just went all wrong and I never got back to my time machine.

Aaaanyway, my daughter called my name twice and then went silent. Must have found her pacifier. And now I'm up, in part trying to drain off the disturbing, lingering emotional state-of-mind from that dream.

As I was laying in the dark, trying to fall back asleep at the same time as not remember the dream, a striking similarity between two parts of my life struck me for the first time ever. My current employment, in which I am constantly needing to hustle, to cold call other researchers, people who work at the university, or anyone who I think might help me think through some of what I think through in academia without a research group to call my own (either above or below me), feels like being at a huge swing dance night, in a new city (yet again), in a scene I know no one in, and having to ask for every, single, dance.

No wonder I find work so disheartening sometimes. Because let me tell you how many car rides I've been a part of where a bunch of us women were coming home from a dance that just made us mostly feel like crap. Where no one asked us to dance, and since we weren't there to hook up (on that particular night or in general, say), and didn't know anyone, we had to ask for dances or just sit there. Yeah, I know, women and liberation, blah blah blah. Having to ask for every dance is painful, no matter who you are - guys, don't think women don't know what that feels like when someone who accepted a dance acts like it is a big favor they are doing you.

And it can just drain your enthusiasm for the activity, no matter how great the band or the venue was. So much hope and excitement goes down the drain. Self-esteem tried its best to do that, too.

How great it was to be driving home in a car full of people who experienced the same thing and to laugh, swear and, by the end of the hour, have some of the hope back and think "maybe I'll try dancing there one more time." And how lonely and disheartening it is not to have the same kind of support group right now as I ask for every dance academically these last few years.

I just went to a local swing night, in fact, and it was kind of the same - I knew no one, most people came in pairs or groups, all first contact was going on in German (my language skills do not include the subtleties of asking for a dance), there were many more followers than leads, and being 40 years old isn't exactly the quality one desires to have to get more dances. It was a pretty bleak night, emotionally. M had even insisted since I was going alone that I leave my wedding ring at home in hopes of playing the flirting angle. Sweet husband. Let's just say I might have been better served giving off "I'm married, just here for the dancing, don't worry, I won't follow you after this dance" signals at 40 than "I might be a cougar" signals.

And the band wasn't all that great, either.

Tampons and maxi-pads

Why do I even worry about typing in that title?

Why does it even warrant a second thought, as if those are swear words?

A few weeks ago, on the morning of my 40th birthday, I broke out in a rash. Well, I may have broken out in that rash in the middle of the night. Not sure. But by morning, I was fully broken.

The doctor told me she thought it was an allergic reaction and we went through possible culprits I may have engaged with recently: nuts (check), shellfish (check), new body wash (check - even if you ARE a bar soap person, how can you not start using the bodywash in your new, not-for-sale-in-Europe shampoo and soap dispenser?), new creams (check - or at least ones not used in a while). Well, hell. So now I might be allergic to nuts and Body Shop products?

Dang.

We even decided together to chuck the menstrual cramp meds I started taking the day before I broke out. Oops. I did it again. This time I wrote the word "menstrual." Seriously, why is that such a problem? Have we all forgotten that women's periods are the reason any of us exist?

Well, the anti-histamines worked. My skin calmed down. I have since eaten nuts and shellfish. And used some of those creams. No problem.

And then I pulled out the one other, new thing I hadn't remembered I'd bought. Maxi-pads. With some horrible "scented, anti-smell" pearl "technology." Because, what, showering isn't an option when you have your period? You have only one pad for the the whole week of....ok, sorry, if you're not a woman that may have been just a bit too much for your delicate sensibilities. I apologize. Please, try to forget that imagery, and continue playing Grand Theft Auto. Anyway, I have decided the culprit was the perfumy pads. They have been since banished from the house. The rash was worse on my stomach and thighs, and that is evidence enough. (Well, thanks to my cousin L, I was reminded that I didn't have to go do the scientific thing and actually try them out on myself again.).

I threw them out and then looked for other pads. Single ones, loose in the house in various handbags and pockets. And it made me wonder why I have to be so embarrassed to pull one out of a bag while searching for something else. I don't turn shades of red when I unpack a pack of unused tissues (because that's what we're talking about here, unused, people). I once worked with a guy, back in college so he must have been mid 20s, who told me that a box of tampons in a woman's bathroom was as good as an international border. He couldn't even bear to reach his had over one. We're talking international border, airspace included.

It would be nice if people weren't so squeamish about this stuff. Which, as usual, means I need to also start acting more normal about it. But this is just me thinking. There will likely be no action taken. I'm not now going to go out and find a maxi-pad shaped iPhone holder or anything. But can you imagine pulling that out of your pocket and answering it?

Can't be a manager and a mentor to the same person.

A while ago I wrote a post about this dilemma in academia - that professors are supposed to be both managers (getting projects done on time, papers published, grant proposals submitted, fitting postdoc candidates recruited) at the same time as being mentors (encouraging a person to really think about what they want to do with their career, and academia may not be it) to the same people. Which I think is a huge problem.

And I'm not the only one. So many graduate students and postdocs run into trouble with this - the judge and the cheerleader are wrapped up in one person, so of course there will be problems. There is no way for the judge to stay home when she or he goes to be the cheerleader at a student presentation. There may well come a time when that professor has to write recommendation letters for two people from her or his group, for the same position, and will be asked to compare them. How can you possibly be this person, the letter writer, and say "no one is judging you" to a student giving a talk in a journal club or seminar? It isn't possible to not form an opinion. Of course that talk impact how that student will be evaluated some day.

No wonder students don't speak up at journal clubs. More on that later. A lot later. Like, "I'm looking into it research-wise" later.

But the same holds for parents, I think. And I finally made that connection this weekend.

Because, see, we have one child. And that may be where it ends, like it or not. I may never have another. And part of coming to terms with an only child is my confusion about how to teach her to share and play with others. I often find myself stuck between letting her win, take many turns in a row, draw on my drawing, take my food, etc., and asking her to be considerate, holding out until I get a turn, too, etc. And although I think at some level a parent can be both mostly the giver but also ask for consideration, I realized this weekend that I can't be both her sibling/friend and her parent.

I am the parent. That will never change. She'll have to learn more about sharing toys and turns from friends who get grumpy when she doesn't. I can't play that role for her because it will start edging into my parental role - which is also nurturer.

Now, I don't mean to say that I'm not going to get grumpy myself when she keeps kicking me in the ribs when I've asked her not to. And I've already decided that I may not be able to stop the boogie-licking, but I don't have to stay in the room watching it like some horror film I didn't mean to buy tickets so. But I do mean that when we play, I don't have to push so much for equality. I'm not her equal, I'm her parent. I have significant power over her emotional landscape, and that needs to be taken into account when I play with her.

So, I'll let her draw on my drawing, and eat all the last bites of my dessert. She still has to ask about looking in my purse, but if she want to build a puzzle halfway and then chuck that badboy across the floor, I'm not going to stop playing with her. Probably not even when she does it to my puzzle.

I may just not play as long. Because, after all, I'm also an only child, and we don't stand for that kind of thing.

Sandpig, sandpig.

Just as I was thinking that Zurich winter was going to be the end of me this year, our Easter trip happened. We'd been through a bunch of ideas for getting back to North America for some sun, and they just had not panned out. Too long of a flight (27 hours?!) or too high of a price ($6000 for the three of us) for the Easter week. And then the memories of the jetlag that would not be conquered at Christmas time. So, we decided to learn from our Yuletide mistake and stay local. Swiss Airlines has a great feature which lets you dial in a price (which is a pretty good tracker for flight time) and, get this, a TEMPERATURE RANGE. I dialed in between 70 F and 90 F, and we wound up booking direct flights to Palma. It was the warmest place we could manage, while still being aware of State Department concerns and assuring non-stop travel.

We nailed this one. A small, family friendly hotel (Hotel Migjorn, near Campos) run by British expats, full of kids' amenities and in the countryside; a brand new rental car big enough for just our stuff, and 4 days of almost no clouds and about 72 F. Four beaches of silky white sand, many meals that were memorable (including the most gorgeous plate of tapas I've ever met at Perla Negra in Es Llombards), and three (or was it four?) trips to the island's best gelato shop (in Cala Sant Jordi) for a whole loving boatload of gelato in cones dipped in chocolate.

The water was still really cold, but nothing else was. The people, the food, the weather.

Now, I do have to say that our return to Zurich started promptly upon boarding the flight. Before we even got near the snow-covered Alps, we were surrounded by the surliest-looking, sun-burned people I think I've ever seen. No party atmosphere on that flight out of Palma. 

Best thing I learned on the trip - mostly a reminder, that we have to keep taking vacations, that are not about doing almost anything. Sure, I bought a few pairs of linen pants that I hope to someday wear to a very casual part of Zurich, and M saved me from buying a flowy, white shirt that would have never made it out of my closet. But mostly, we were looking for a beach to visit each day, to play in the sand, and as long as we got that and some food at regular intervals, we were great. No checking the phone, no texting or Facebook, and no trying to visit with others. Family trips, those to visit family, are rarely about taking things slowly. And although they are also vital, as A is growing up, and so we stay connected, they have about as much in common with vacations as mentoring graduate students has with managing them (which, really, given that professors are supposed to do both, should probably be reviewed by someone in charge somewhere at some point).

Best thing we did on the trip? Hard to pick, but the recurrent building of a sandpig sculpture on each beach kept things pretty coherent for the three of us.

Final thoughts - a bit more thought on the inflight programming that everyone has to see. Tom & Jerry and a chicken that shoots upwards of 1000 eggs out of its....egg-producing-organ? Not so bad for toddlers. The Best of Mr. Bean? Not so good for toddlers.

The internet is the shizzit.

I've been interspersing getting moving and work to-do-list things done with dreaming about how to decorate our new apartment. Now, in my brain, this can range from casual thinking all the way over to crazy obsessing and not sleeping as a result. I get antsy. I get unsettled, until things are most put in place and decorated.

In the process, I find website like this one, with 100 things I'd love to remember to think of doing with or for A, and another 100 that are just "c'mon, who has the time?" ridiculous.

I've also seen a lot of artwork. Again. On so many websites. I now belong to DailyPaintworks.com and have a variety of still lifes (I have yet to buy one, but food still life paintings intrigue the heck out of me), clouds, and trees marked. And some landscapes. Wow, are there both extremely talented painters (two of my favorites are Carol Marine and her still lifes, and Karin Jurick who I just found today and whose composition and colors and all of it have me really inspired), and the not-so-talented. The latter is the category my art would fit into, if I were a painter, and that's just fine. Perhaps not so much when you're charging as much as the more, what, talented? creative? folks, but whatever.

I've also been all over Etsy again, where I think I first saw Carol Marine's work. Again, wow the range of people painting and then asking others to pay money for their results. And again, I find myself thinking "man, maybe making a living as an artist isn't quite for you, huh? maybe just do it for yourself."

But then again, I can be a downer like that.

Writing just to write

We live in a new apartment now. In a different part of the city.

All three humans in the house have strep throat, although if the medical forums are to be believed (and, really, they never are), the dog could easily be carrying it, too. Pacifiers, sippy cups and toothbrushes will be discarded and replaced on Monday, when I should also finally be not contagious.

All three humans in the house have spent a LOT of time in said house these last 4 days.

We've done an awful lot of hanging around, random art projects, building with A's new cardboard blocks that my mom brought over for her, bathing, taking medicine, running out of things to do, and going to sleep and starting all over again in the morning. Voluntary quarantine gets old. Then again, losing friend with kids because we went out and had playdates anyway, would be worse, so we chose the former.

You'd think, with life being this slow, I'd be writing all the time. But I'm not. I'm also not reading, or ever in the mood to watch a movie after A goes to sleep. I may have gotten on this kick when my mom and I started packing up the old apartment and there was no time for anything. I've been mentally stimulated to my limit a lot, and imaginary-decorating a new apartment in my head ranks right up there. I downloaded the new issue of Oprah and couldn't do more than look at the shopping pages. I could hardly read the half page little snippets of interesting people and their interesting lives. The book section didn't even merit a stop to read titles. Too overwhelming.

But I've also done a lot of hanging out with my daughter these last 5 days, and that has been a good thing. We are both sick and slower. And I'm getting to practice just being around. And letting go - she was back in diapers for a few days - and I did my best to just let that go.

That's about all I've got right now. I thought I should write something before I just stopped blogging altogether.

Cleaning the pantry

We are preparing to move apartments.

One of the minor, yet strangely satisfying, parts of this is my challenge to myself to cook through the freezer, pantry and fridge ingredients I'd rather not pack, and are not yet expired.

Yesterday, that meant my lunch included whole wheat farfalle pasta, sardines and black olives. With a healthy dose of mayonnaise and lemon juice.

Dinner included fish sticks. Dessert was a compote made from dried prunes, a pear, frozen apricots and the last of the honey. With fresh mascarpone mixed in just to make it truly spectacular.

Also appearing on the cooking-through-it menus have been IKEA crepes, frozen creamed spinach, the last of the ketchup, orzo pasta, baby cereal for A (which has actually helped us in her desire to play at being a baby these days), and canned beans of all sorts. Oh, and two kinds of pancakes last weekend for breakfast.

Could get dicey in the coming week. But, there are still IKEA meatballs waiting to save some lentil soup mix, and at least one batch of Whole Foods' chocolate chip cookies or brownies. Oh. Yeah.

Exercises in calming-the-f*()&$#-down

My daughter's daycare is celebrating Swiss Mardi Gras this week. So the plan, as approved by the little one, was to dress like a snowman today. As an homage, I expect, to her favorite (and, really, only) cartoon, the British Snowman, and Snowman and the Snow Dog.

Saturday we found some black felt for buttons and last night M found some short sticks to be her hands for the initial reveal at school. You know that, after 5 minutes, the face make-up will be smeared, the sticks will have to go away lest a mini spiderman, or baby crocodile get their eyes poked out, and the hat and scarf will be in a puddle on the floor. But that's okay. That is why we take photos before leaving the house.

I'm so zen about it, eh? What calm, and ease. Had she said she wanted to wear the puffy vest inside out so the animals were showing instead of the snowman-perfect white, I would have said "Fine." Had she not wanted a hat, she would have hear "Sure, little one."

And had you been at our house last night you would have seen me trying to convince her of all sorts of things that this costume absolutely had to include, because I had yet to realize this wasn't about me. It wasn't about putting together the perfect costume. It wasn't about me getting really creative (partially to get back for all those fall-carved-radishes that blew mine away in November) and making the cutest snowman. It wasn't about my voice expressing hurt feelings because she didn't want to go along with what I wanted for her costume. 

Well, let's just say that after an initial 10 minutes, it was no longer about that. But it took a lot of stuffing my comments back into my mouth, consciously, to let it go.

And M read her a story about a little bear who doesn't want to wear the costume his Mami made him for Fasnacht. And he doesn't end up wearing it. I probably should have read that story with her, too.

Come this morning, and she's actually pretty excited to get ready. One good thing - the costume involves face paint, which is always a bit hit with kids her age. And new or old clothing she hasn't worn in a while. And white shoes to go to school instead of usual boots. And the fluffy vest is on, white side out. And the mask with carrot. And the hat and even Papa's red scarf.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the littlest snowman.