Leery Polyp

Bidness

1. Have finally added a search widget. However, am unwilling to remove Google protection from blog, so choose another engine from the dropdown. Am looking for a better widget, but pressed for time. Y'all will take what you can get, says I.

2. FitDay rocks my OCD world.

3. Working on a new blog -- not all THAT different, but a little bit. Coming This Fall.

We Interrupt Your Esoteric Comment Discussion...

...to let you know the blogger is very, very worn out.

Shortly before Sophia turned two, somebody flipped the tantrum switch to ON and then turned the dial to ELEVEN. Today there was a supernova when I did not allow her to run in and out of an elevator; overtiredness after lunch ended with seventeen blocks of SHRIEKING while I pushed the stroller upfuckinghill in the hot sun. There were many lesser explosions along the way, and escalation to freakout is pretty much instantaneous.

Having the benefit of other mama friends, some experience with kids this age, and lots of reading, I know that this is normal; I know that her big triggers are developmental things, tiredness, and that whole development-and-exercising-of-will thing. I know how to handle tantrums, and most of the time we do pretty well, although I'm sure the man at the front desk enjoyed the eight or ten minutes of screaming in the lobby while I held my child bodily in an attempt to calm her or at least prevent an elevator accident. (I will cop to making faces while I pushed the Stroller of Screech, and at one point saying Just shut up! in -- yes -- a peevish tone.) Whatever it is in her brain that is now driving her to say: "Godzilla wanted to go to the ice cream store! He held his mama's hand very gently and he asked, Can I have ice cream? And Godzilla asked, Can I have chocolate?" is causing some signal interference in that little brain.

So I'm not taking it personally or blaming either of us here, but Lord God, I am worn out from it. After the Stroll of Sadness I felt so beaten that I was literally unable to do anything besides read all the posts on Go Fug Yourself that I had already read. Uh-huh. I don't know how on earth I'm going to finish my application for an organization that shall remain unnamed, and I don't know how I'll be able to study this semester, if I can't use (still sorely needed, but now unreliable) naptime or the time after she goes to bed, since I'm generally ready to pass out myself at that point.

How do you handle this?

Comment Spawn

I love when a comment spawns a whole post! Thomas commented on the last post:

"Since the basic underlying principle of the Atkins' diet is the biological equivalent of saying 'your car will run better if you never put any gasoline into it,' you're probably better off eating what you like and going for a long walk every night."

A better analogy would be that Atkins is like saying your car would run better if you put ONLY good-quality gasoline, and not Berry Blue Kool-Aid, in the tank. (Presuming you had a habit of combining them. Okay, not a great analogy. Jade's in the comments was a better one.) My point is that even the "healthy" standard American way of eating -- lots of grains and fruit and potato -- is so dysfunctional for many (maybe even "most") people's metabolisms, that something as severe as the Atkins induction phase is needed to reset the system -- then you can go on to eat like this, for the rest of your life.

It's so easy to say "eat what you like, get a little exercise." But when you spend a year eating brown rice and lentils and vegetables, a little lean meat, and plenty of yogurt, dairy, and whole grain, and then you gain forty pounds and feel horrible all the time, it sounds both laughably wrong and a little bit dismissive. Another cruel irony is that unless I eat a very low-carb diet, I'm not capable of doing much exercise -- my blood sugar plummets immediately and I'm left with the shakes and a cold sweat, barely able to get back home.

There are different kinds of metabolisms, and some, like my husband's, allow a person to eat whatthefuckever they want, do a little walking, and stay thin as a rail. Nice for the metabolism's owner; enraging to the rest of us, who have to adhere to a slightly more paleolithic style of eating. Some of us are genuinely addicted to carbs -- and the word "addiction" is not one I use lightly.

My reproductive endocrinologist, my GP, and my CNMs all suggested I follow an Atkins way of eating to preserve my health and fertility. When I eat this way, I don't get crazy-hungry and shaky and mean; I don't bloat up. My hormones sort themselves out, I lose weight without thinking about it, I can walk for hours, I have tons of energy. My cholesterol drops. I feel great! Remember, I did induction years ago -- too bad I fell off the wagon. I self-medicated my infertility-related depression with -- you guessed it -- sugar. Therefore resulting in further infertility, until I found metformin and straightened out my eating. I'm taking a slightly different approach to induction this time, skipping cow dairy products and going very easy on the cheese. Do that and pass on the artificial sweetener, and Atkins dovetails nicely with a Paleo diet. (Confession: I am drinking some sucralose-sweetened soda, for those craving emergencies. However, I also have been putting stevia into flavored sparkling water -- cheaper, less scary. I also use some xylitol, which is pushing the limits of "natural.")

In Atkins, the gasoline is meat, eggs, nuts, dark green leafy vegetables; the gasoline is protein and fat and phytonutrients and trace minerals. All that other crap? It'll just give you engine knock.

The Good Kind of Kick in the Pants

According to the same principle that makes signing up for a homestudy the best way to get pregnant (Oh God! I kid! I kid!), ditching Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution for ten cents at a garage sale is the best way to find yourself with an urgent need to know the carbohydrate content of a serving of eggplant. Or perhaps, if we're being truthful here -- are you? Confess something quickly so I'll know it's okay to proceed -- we might say that the best way to decide it's low-carb time is to eat LOTS of cake, and cookies (which were at least gluten-free), and cow's milk, and wheat, and just basically scrap everything you know to be true about your own body, and even the power of Shangri-La isn't helping set you right -- and thence to realize you feel like utter crap, and your skin is all gross and cloggy, and this is NOT helping the whole amenorrhea situation, now, is it?

In other words, it was time to return to the fold, before the Return of the Folds. Of Atkins dieters and subcutaneous fat, respectively. You know, in case you hadn't gotten that. I'm pretty tired, and not the best judge of how comprehensible my writing is, right now. Anyhow! It's kind of fun to be back in the world of induction, and while I don't really need to lose the kind of weight I did when I first did Atkins (then: 185 pounds. Now: 149) it's so rewarding to watch the first five just slide right off (yes, yes, because it's water, whatEVer). Since the maintenance phase is how I need to be eating for the rest of my life anyway, and since it's how I usually do eat until I get caught in a sugar-binge cycle, it's not painful to think OH GOD I have to do this for HOW LONG? No, it's just two weeks of nonstop pepperoni, and then another month or so of no beans or rice or popcorn (during which time I'll add back in the daily oil doses of Shangri-La, upping them along with my carb intake to keep things on an even keel). These days, that kind of time passes in a flash.

August Was Gray

...from Robyn Hitchcock's "Feels Like 1974." Which sort of sums up nicely the feeling of August, anyway -- waiting for the return of structure and responsibility, trying to wring that last bit of fun out of what was awfully frenetic for a relaxing vacation. Everything is overshadowed by what comes next. It's the Sunday afternoon of months. The light slants gold and full of motes.

The summer Sophia was born was even more intensely like that -- the heat, the days post due date ticking on by, waiting to finally, finally be a mother. Waiting to see what would happen to that big hurricane headed for the Gulf; waiting to move to a new house. I used to let August run over me like tepid water. Now I pay attention; I relish the waiting, the memory of the waiting that one year and every elementary school year before it. Time stretches out forever and then all of a sudden September slams into you, the outlying chilly rainy day becomes the norm, all those new clothes with their tags, too hot even to try on before, start looking worn and familiar and smelling like your regular laundry detergent.

She'll be two on Thursday. I can hardly believe it, but then again I can. May your skin always be so perfect and milky, honey; may you always be so proud of yourself when you poop.* May you get a baby sister or brother one of these days, and, as you specified yesterday, a tattoo of a pink apple on the side of your leg. (I am to receive one of a ladybug named "Furniture.") May your mama never forget how badly she wanted you, and how she was overjoyed beyond her wildest dreams when you turned out to be you.

Happy birthday, Tiny Gorilla, a couple of days early. Sorry I ate most of your leftover cake while you were napping.

*If your mother and aunties are any indication, you will be.

Only Good Things

Remember that song by the BoDeans? Man, I loved that song. I'll make it number one...

1. Beloved '90s soft rock readily available on iTunes
2. Sophia can sing most of the words to Iko Iko
3. I have been acupunctured back into my customary good humor
4. I didn't go here, but I'm excited it exists
5. Best friend of my youth, with whom I'd lost contact, emailed me. Feels like somebody returned a missing limb to me
6. Job postings are starting to come up for Sean, in cities we want to move to (that also have accelerated BSN programs)
7. Found this yarn store, accessible via public transportation
8. Sophia turns two! Next week!
9. I am enrolled in my first ever college statistics course!
10. Babysitting work out the wazoo
11. Leaky toilet repaired
12. Discovered a vintage (1930s or '40s) wooden office chair by the trash chute. Just what I didn't know was looking for
13. Brazil nuts are high in selenium -- good for the asthma
14. Really nice weather lately. Little on the dry side
15. I wished out loud for an air popper for popcorn, and the next day, one appeared on the free stuff table in the laundry room

You got any good stuff?

Arrrrgh. With Update.

1. Reports of the return of my menstrual cycle have been greatly exaggerated; therefore
2. My system is doing that revving-in-neutral thing again, which is causing
3. Constant irritability on my part, as well as
4. Baffling cervical mucus. The former is making me a
5. Cranky, yelling mommy, whose best efforts at soothing naptime ritual consist of
6. Me growling, "Go to sleeeeep!" at a child who is alternately wailing from exhaustion or keeping herself awake by whacking herself in the head with a doll
7. (Who she recently named "Carrot". Hee). So now
8. I feel irritable AND guilty, not to mention that
9. Skin-crawling, get-it-off-me feeling when I nurse the kid, which is certainly caused by
10. HORMONES
11. and which continues unabated, thanks to my
12. Motherfucking endless anovulatory cycle.
13. Tomorrow I will list the awesome things. There are many.

Appendix A

1. Aaaaaaand somebody rear-ended us an hour ago. Car is unblemished, we are likewise, though I have a real asshole of a headache. Skeeeery.

Long View

From my window I have a quite a view: the multicolored dome of the church of St. Francis de Sales, the dense foliage of my neighborhood, the airport off in the distance, and -- oh yeah -- two refineries and the gasworks. In the late afternoon the sun sets the towers aglow in salmon-pink; at night they glitter orange. You can gauge the wind speed and direction from the ever-present column of billowing smoke, and atop some of the towers burn bright-orange petroleum flames, visible even in the daytime when the sun goes behind a cloud.

It's a little bit like having an unobstructed view of the Eye of Sauron. Kind of neat, if you don't think too hard about what it actually is. And unsettling, in a chronic low-grade way, if you do.

My mother hates the drive up 95 into Philadelphia; you have to go past those same refineries, and in the Delaware distance the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant are visible. She would probably hate the New Jersey Turnpike's Exit 13 (does anyone like it?) for the same reason: it's hatefully, indescribably ugly. It's frightening in appearance, nasty in odor, and it's an inescapable reminder of the cost of the way we live today, a concentrated dose of our own medicine. I hate it too, of course -- who likes it? Maybe the CTOs (Chief Texas Oilmen) running the country -- but at the same time I feel there is some virtue in actually having to look upon it. Everybody ought to have to see this, all the time, this evidence of what we're doing to the atmosphere and the water and the soil. But that privilege (as well of the privilege of maximum toxin exposure) is generally reserved for the less fortunate, here and around the world. And most of the shrinking middle class is too squeezed to buy the more pricey non-toxic alternatives to everything and retrofit their cars to run biodiesel (a stopgap measure anyway). Maybe the answer is to require the people who run the corporations to live and house their families next door to their factories, and then everything would be non-toxic and clean and green, and cars would run on happy thoughts generated by free-range grass-fed unicorns whose keepers are paid a fair wage.

Ha ha. A girl can dream. Anyway, cars suck and must go, so screw the unicorns.

There's just something about Philadelphia, and I say this with love -- it's just so downstream. We end up living with the consequences of everything, from polluting refineries to coal-burning power plants in the west to cyanide spills in the creek and god knows what in the rivers, from a fracturing society to economic hopelessness and dumb social policy. It's hard to live here and not carry some awareness of all these things (although causes and solutions are, erm, considered debatable). I wonder if that's why some people depart for the burbs -- just to shed the weight of the consciousness, not to mention the little tweaks in daily living that the city requires. If you're conditioned to the American way of life, living in the suburbs is certainly easier -- but you lose a lot too. It's a lot harder to talk to your neighbors when you're all in your cars.

Is it too much to ask, that we could have cities with breathable air, without a bajillion cars zooming around, with trees and urban orchards and gardens and green roofs on the buildings, with local independent power sources (small windmills, solar "farms")? I think we could do it. I think Philly, with its urban farms and leafy neighborhoods, could totally do it. We just need a little push.

I wonder what that will be.

Going Back to Cali? No, Man, I Don't Think So.

Free guac to the first person who recognizes the reference. Well, virtual guac.

So, California. The Pacific Ocean! The 5! The habit of referring to highways using the article "the"! It was beautiful, yes, there along the Pacific, oh, that blue-green water, the seals defecating therein. The weather, ye gods! I wore a sweatshirt! (Here in Philadelphia, at 10 p.m., it is still NINETY FUCKING DEGREES.) The breeze. The guy who actually talked like Bill and/or Ted. There were sandwiches with three different kinds of sprouts on top of the avocado; there was a store (this was, frankly, my favorite part) that sold the Klean Kanteen sippy-top bottle along with gorgeous cloth diapers and organic bras and all kinds of other hippie crap that I would so happily stock my home with if I were a billionaire. You would think I would have been in hog heaven there, in a land where slings were commonplace and every single toddler penis I saw (more than two, fewer than five) was intact. You'd think I would fit right in.

And yet. Lovely as it was, we never really felt at home; we never felt it would be a good fit for us, not for real day-to-day living. I always hate it when someone comes to one of my beloved cities and begins ticking off the things they found offensive ("There was garbage all over the streets, and twice I heard gunshots, and people get mugged there, and the air is like sucking a tailpipe!")(Guess where.) and it seems like they've missed the culture for the street crime, so I will spare you the list of things that made me feel not-quite-right, but there it is. It was a great place to visit. Good people live there. We weren't looking exactly at the places we might be living, of course, and the subjective experience as a resident is always so different from the tourist's drive-by, but still...I don't know. We'll see, I guess.

And now we're back and it's the thick of the sticky, and Lord, remember two years ago I was pregnant in this weather? What was I thinking?

The Bendy Straw is Key

Every time teeny baby Sophia would snatch at my credit card, a cashier or the person behind us in line would quip knowingly, "Oh-oh, she's already going for the money! She's a real little girl!" or whatever. Drove me nuts. So too with the heretofore only overheard playground conversation that goes: "How old is he?" "Just turned two!" "Oh no, Terrible Twos!" Insert rueful laugh. Yes, stranger in the store, tell me about the world! Perhaps you also feel that my child needs a hat/not to be wearing a hat/shoes with hard soles/no shoes at all. Either way, color me interested.

I refuse to lend any credence to the "Women Be Shopping, Even Before They Can Walk" school of thought, but at some point over the past two weeks, Sophia has begun to respond to any unwelcome suggestions with a guttural shriek, which quickly devolves into outright tantrum. While I enjoy her newfound and developmentally appropriate bossy streak ("Mama! You don't sit on the bed! It's daaaaangerous to sit on the bed! Pico! Don't stand on the sink! It's daaaangerous to stand on the sink!"), I could do without the tendency to respond to well-meaning offers of the potty or a drink of juice with "NNnnnnnaaaaaaaaauuuughhhh!" and a facial expression that suggests the introduction of fire ants to the greater Philadelphia region beginning with her tiny cargo pants.

So. This is all normal, yes, and there is an upside, which is that Sophia can now hold her own in a mixed-age group of children, and happily greets everyone in the building, and does all sort of charming almost-two-year-old things. But I am considering contracting a special run of tiny little wine-in-a-box thingies for stroller trips, late afternoons, first thing in the morning...kid gets an Apple&Eve with Elmo on it, and I get an affordably priced workhorse cabernet in a convenient single serving. With a bendy straw.

And if sometimes the boxes should get switched, who's to know? Ha. I jest. But I imagine everybody else on the big old jet airliner (tomorrow! crack of dawn! nonstop to California!) will wish I meant it. Sorry, fellow passengers. And sorry, readers, too, since now marks another several-day break in the action (which is such that you might not have even realized I was taking a vacation, had I not mentioned it). Yes, we're off to San Diego*, and while on principle I have made up my mind to hate California** (oops, I almost typed Coliformia! Ha ha! No, really!) I have looked at the weather forecast, which is something like Hi 75/Lo 68 as far as the forecast will go, and in that regard it is certainly kicking Philadelphia's ass. Our forecast is Hi 98,352,785/Lo Does It Even Matter? It's Still Muggy as Fuck, So Don't Even Bother With the Towel After Your Shower with a 20% chance of stepping in feces on the sidewalk. Dog feces IF YOU'RE LUCKY.

*Aside to DebbieS: I greatly appreciate your kind offer of the pass! We are, however, traveling on someone else's nickel, so it's basically all expenses paid. Niiiice.

**Because Sean's career keeps trying to run away to California, and we are fighting like heck to keep it on the East Coast. And if I were to actually like California, which I have never visited, well, all would be lost, probably.