Archive for July 2008

It continues.  It grows worse, even.  Or maybe that’s just because I’m looking for it now.  I’m finding little bits of evidence scattered around, like little Lego pieces in the rug that find your bare feet when you are busy trying to go about your business.  My growing hunger, my growing idleness, my growing lack of motivation to do much of ANYTHING, my growing inability to deal with any sort of chaos.

Of course, life with small children is pretty much nothing BUT chaos.

It starts in with a sense of panic.  It doesn’t take much to trigger it; a slow loading laptop, a child crying in the background, another child asking constant questions, noise from the television, a deadline to get something done.  It all amounts to feeling as though the walls are closing on you and FAST.  And it gets worse and worse and worse.  Before you know it, you blow your stack.  Someone gets yelled at.  Something snaps.

If I’m lucky, after the smoke clears and everyone and everything has settled back down, I feel blank.  An almost unwilling calm.  A deadpan expression, a numbness.  The limit has been reached and Marilyn has checked out for a while.  Please leave a message and she’ll get back to you.

I almost wish I could feel that way all the time.  Because the panic and anxiety are so much WORSE.

For now, the numbness remains.  I am lucky.  For now.

Tags: depression, hypothyroid, thyroid
Filed under Sucking a Tail Pipe |

I have zero concentration this week.  I have about a bazillion things buzzing around my head but I feel like I’ve been unable to concentrate on any one thing at any one time.  Even now, I’ve gone and laid Evie down up in her crib in her room (with the monitor within arms reach of me down here, of course) and Liam is distracted by “Jack’s Big Music Show” (LOVE) and a pile of plastic blocks.  But do you think I can concentrate long enough to gather my thoughts into a cohesive post?

NOPE!

I feel like I’ve been pulled into a million different directions lately.  A little piece of me is needed here, a little piece over there and another piece needs to be thinking about that over there too.  Nothing has my full attention and that is worrisome to me.  I’m scattered, is what it is.  I’d quite simply forgotten what it was like to feel this way.  Friggin’ thyroid.

Here’s just a little sampling of what is buzzing around in that empty cranial cavity at the moment:

• I’m trying to make an appointment with a new doctor.  Our new primary care physician on our new insurance has a web-based appointment maker thingie.  I filled it out yesterday but haven’t heard back yet.  I hope they haven’t tried to call because our landline is at the mercy of two very f’d up phones that can’t hold a charge for more than two minutes and the charging stations are nowhere NEAR where I sit and nurse Evie.  So if they’ve called, chances are I’ve missed it.
• You’d think, then, that I would check voicemail to see.  But I haven’t.  I should probably do that.
• Speaking of phones, I won one.  You know, nothing much. ;)  Those that follow me on Twitter probably saw me lose my freakin’ gourd over it last week.  The only thing is that since we’re already AT&T customers, I need to wait until the end of August to renew my contract in order to get the reduced cost.  I think.  I’m still rather confused by the whole thing, to be honest.  But very excited to get my hands on it.
• Evie is sleeping in her crib RIGHT NOW.  That freaks me out.  She didn’t sleep in there very long last night.  Only an hour or two and was in bed with us by the time we went to bed but STILL.  Baby steps.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not too excited to get this particular milestone achieved just yet.  She’s only 4 months old!  SHE MAH BAYBEE!!!
• I’ve discovered Rockstar in the last week or so and I really kinda like it.  MUST GET MORE.  May just be the only thing to punch through my Thyroid Fog right now.
• Still haven’t seen “Dark Knight”.  Am pretty sad about that.  Hoping to remedy this little problem at the drive-in this weekend.
• Am so glad that Noggin’s monthly theme will switch in a couple days.  Am rather tired of the “Are we there yet?” song.  Actually, I think I was tired of it after the first day, to be honest.
• Where was I?
• My anniversary is this month!  TEN YEARS, yo.  Do we have any plans made?  NOPE.  Not that I know of, at least.  Crap.  Should really start thinking about this.  Anyone want to take bets on if I can get a DSLR or laptop out of this?  (That hysterical laughter you’re hearing is my husband.  He thinks I’m SUCH a kidder!)
• Liam goes in for a speech therapy evaluation tomorrow.  I haven’t really mentioned much about that, have I?  I don’t know why we’re not doing Early Intervention or if Nevada even DOES Early Intervention.  So in lieu of that, we have to journey clear across town to see this therapist.  And pay a standard office visit copay to boot.  Oh well.  It’s for the Good of the Child, which you can’t ever really bargain away, can you?

I’m sure I’ve got more.  But my brain keeps slipping away and thinking of stupid things like, “Should I do diaper laundry before or after lunch? This evening?  How about a shower?  Should I try to take one today?  Oh!  Don’t forget to Evie’s prescriptions filled at the grocery store!  When should I go to the grocery store?  Tomorrow?  Yeah, right, as if I’d go by myself.  Dang, when’s lunch?”

So… yeah.  Sorry about that, folks.  I’ll try harder to whip my lazy brain into shape for tomorrow’s post.  In the meantime, feel free to read yesterday’s post which I have on good authority is a pretty good one.

Tags: anniversary, co-sleeping, crib, Evelyn, iPhone, Liam, Noggin, Rockstar, speech therapy, thyroid
Filed under General Snark |

So we’ve already established that Marilyn (which is me, I’m talking about myself in the third person, apparently) is in something of a mood this week.  But even if I weren’t, I would probably STILL write this post which is why I’m going to go ahead and publish it, even if it does push the boundaries of the sort of cattiness I prefer to talk about on my blog.

I guess my point here is: There are a LOT of whiners out there.

Honestly, I think BlogHer is almost just an excuse at this point.  These are feelings that course through the community in general and the mommy blogging community in particular all year long.  The jealousy, the bitterness, the snarking and complaining.  And I am SO SICK OF IT.

Let it be known that I am most definitely NOT a member of the “a-list” (whatever the heck that even MEANS).  I never have been, my entire life.  Shoot, according to that one website, my blog is “c-list”.  So it’s not like I’m sitting up here on some magical perch looking down on the minions or anything.  Growing up, I was never at the “bottom of the pack” but neither was I ever at the top either.  I always had a solid group of friends and was pretty content with my status.  GEE, kinda like I am now, huh?

What I’m sick of most is the people who are complaining who didn’t even GO TO BLOGHER.  But they’re blaming not going on… what… that they don’t think the a-list will like them?  WTF?  Or that they feel like the conference is one big “clique” (it’s called a spell-check, ya’ll) and they’ll be hopelessly on the outs.  OH PLEASE.  Feeling this way is one thing, but whining about it on your blog is another.  Then there’s whining about it on your blog and then inviting the “a-list” over so you can, what, get traffic?  Or something?  WTF??

What you perceive as a clique might actually be a group of friends who are happy to see one another after an entire year has passed and they are excited to spend time with each other over the course of a two-day conference.  Just because they are “a-list” doesn’t mean they don’t have their own group of friends.  They don’t HAVE to want to hang out with you.  That’s what doesn’t make sense to me.  We can’t get on these bloggers for not spreading themselves around when we do the same thing with our own little groups of friends.  No one is trying to make anyone else feel bad.  Which means one thing:  If you feel bad it’s pretty much due to your own insecurities.  Sorry to have to break it to ya.

I think T at Send Chocolate said it best in her post from earlier today:

I guess what I am trying to say is that there were over a thousand women attending BlogHer. And you couldn’t find anyone to connect with? Really? Or you just couldn’t be part of the A Crowd, and it felt too much like your experiences in high school so you sat in a corner to pout? If I see one more post that compares BlogHer to high school or college, I swear, I am going to lose it.

AMEN, sister.  Preach it.  I feel 100% the same way.  SO WHAT if the big names didn’t give you the time of day (did you even try to say hi?)?  SO WHAT if they don’t visit your blog and leave you comments and follow you on Twitter respond to your @ replies.  SO WHAT.  There about a bazillion other blogs out there authored by equally awsome women that you could always fit yourself in with. That’s the way I feel about it.  I don’t go to BlogHer harboring any notions that I’ll sit down for lunch with the Big Wigs.  But I do expect to find a bloggy friend or two, someone I know I can connect with.  And I do expect to meet new people and make new connections.

Some people want it easy.  The fame, the popularity, the respect, the admiration, the traffic, the money… Being friends with the “a-list” is a fast pass to that kind of life, isn’t it?  It just doesn’t work that way.  I don’t know why some bloggers are “popular” and some aren’t.  I imagine a lot of these “a-listers” would tell you the same thing.  They don’t really KNOW why they’re popular.  You can’t always say it’s because they’re good writers because there are plenty of awesome writers out there who haven’t been discovered.  You can’t always say it’s because they’re friends with so-and-so, because someone else is too and no one hardly ever comments on their blog.  It just is what it is.

And really.  WHO REALLY CARES.  We’re all bloggers, and if we’re mommy bloggers then we all have someone’s butt to wipe at the end of the day (and the beginning of the day, and the middle of the day… ).  How about instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you pull yourself out of your Pity Rut and engage in the community.  Find peace with yourself and with your blog and your own little niche of blog friends.  You will be MUCH happier in the end for it.

Tags: a-list, BlogHer, BlogHer 08, cliques, community, mommy bloggers
Filed under BlogHer 08, Peevish |

I don’t want to talk about the topic that is currently buzzing around my head because it’s full of venom and I could potentially get myself into deep blog-trouble here.  Not too deep, because I know you guys (my peeps!) would pull me back out, but I would hover very dangerously close to being an unkind blog and I don’t really want to go that way. Not right now at least.  Maybe tomorrow.

I also don’t want to talk about how even though I appreciate every one of your comments on last night’s post, I STILL have not called a doctor (I have to find a new one, which is providing to be a lion’s share of the problem here) and made an appointment and now it’s too late in the day and MEH, I almost even don’t care anymore which means, of course THE THYROID IS WINNING.

Ahem.

So instead, I will talk about my husband’s latest post about Evie sleeping in her own crib.  Now, I fully recognize that he’s trying to engage me with his inflammatory language about me making excuses and wah wah wah (I don’t do that, do I?).   But I want the Internets to know that I did have some good excuses for why we didn’t start putting Evie in her crib over the weekend.  Kile’s parents were visiting and were staying in that room so it would have been a little CROWDED and I’m sure they wouldn’t have cared for me stomping in there at 3am to fetch a crying baby, right?  That’s also my reason for not putting her in there last week after we got home from my parents’ house and before his parents came.  I figured why start something we can’t continue with consistency, right?

You’re on my side, RIGHT?

ANYHOW.  The point of this whole vignette is that Kile put Evie in her crib last night shortly after 9:30 and she stayed there until after 2:30 this morning.  Even then, I’m not sure she wouldn’t have just gone back to sleep but I just wanted to go in and get her anyhow.  Because as nice as it was not to have her toes stabbing into my stretch marks and being squeezed out to the edge of our enormous bed, I wasn’t sleeping all that great without her there.  I think I was listening for her on the monitor.  Plainly put?  I missed her.

I put her up there for her afternoon nap but she didn’t stay in there.  I put her down about 12:30 and she would sleep and then wake up and cry a little and fall right back to sleep like a minute later.  At about ten after 2, she seemed to be awake and crying more so I went in and got her.  I nursed her in my bed and she fell back asleep (yanking me in after her, like she often will do).  She slept up in our bed until about 4:30.  WOW.  Girl got her nap ON today!

We’ll see what happens tonight.  I think I’ll let Kile lay her down again, since that seemed to work well.  I won’t deny that it freaked me out having her up there in her crib all alone.  Where I couldn’t see her.  Even now, I’m gazing at her in her bouncer seat (where’s avidly playing with her own fingers) and I just want to snatch her up and cover her in kisses.

So yeah.  That’s what I’m talking about instead of the other things on my mind.  Anyone else have any good stories of moving their babies to their cribs that can bolster my fragile mommy ego?

Tags: co-sleeping, crib, Evelyn, hypothyroid, thyroid
Filed under Evelyn |