i obsess.

pleah.

Kind of sick of everything.  The weather - the eating-at-my-marrow cold and rain (believe me, I can withstand rain, having the webbed duck feet of a true Oregon native, but this cold - it is wrong, and sick, and rude, and tiresome, and it has worn out its welcome for having stayed far too long; winter is OVER, yo.  Please take your pathetic cold and store it for the next time we're due, which would be, yes, NEXT WINTER).

Kind of totally sick of the Obama/Clinton bullshit.  Really over it.

Am so tired of being cooped up inside with a toddler who is practically fourteen of a sudden, minus the attention span or ability to prevent peeing all over the bathroom.  Unless someone decides to inform me that even fourteen-year-olds aren't super-good at that, either.  In which case, yay.

Yay.

Not even CHOCOLATE is helping.

Goddamn overlong winter.  *shakes fist menacingly*  *realizes pointlessness*  *decides to just get drunk*  *again*

i was right about stink-eye.

Disclaimer: this post will not be polished.  Just spitty.  Er, shitty.

We didn't get a lot of sleep last night; J woke up several times and it was a rough one.  We all woke up late.  Etc.  I'm already worked from this week of pink-eye and the medicine that we were applying four times daily.  It stung, according to J, and we were really fighting him to get it into his eye -- it was a salve (kind of like vaseline) and I was supposed to, with perfectly clean hands (what a laugh - esp. when having to repeatedly aim for the eyes only to end up wiping it in his hair and then having to rewash, multiple times), deposit a thin strip of it inside the lower pouch of each eyelid, but when I was trying to do it solo it was ridiculous.  Impossible.  I managed it on Tuesday, but Wednesday I enlisted my dad's help, and yesterday I'd already thrown in the towel because I scheduled an appointment to see his pediatrician in the afternoon and, though she said to keep using it (it *is* an antibiotic, eurythromicin, and so the obvious attempt was being made to use the whole round, blah blah), I tried once, totally unsuccessfully, to get him to allow me to apply it, and then I was just like, you know what?  Fuck this.  It wasn't even working, anyway, because his eyes were just as red and swollen and goopy as the first day I observed that something was amiss, so I really didn't give a flying fuck if I got a lecture for not applying it, because it was such a total pointless endeavor.  So the appointment, it blew, because when the doc was checking his ears she noticed that the right drum was slightly red, but couldn't get a very good look with the chunk of wax that was in the way.  She tried to remove it with that little white plastic spoon thingy, which is part of our routine, because he's inherited my predisposition for wax build-up, something I'm not thrilled about, but whatareyagonnado *shrug*, only it wouldn't budge, and he was starting to get really uncomfortable, and his sobs were starting to crescendo, but I had to help her, I had to know whether he had an infection in his ear (he started complaining about ear pain a few nights before the appointment so I suspected that it might be a problem prior to her raising the issue during the check-up).  I held him, dutifully, but it was so hard to listen to him sob and say "Mommy" over and over again, and cling to me, with "Nooo!" mixed in, and that clinging, it was hurting my heart so much, but I thought it was right to find out if he had an infection.  I mean, shit.  I don't know.  I just melt into the hands of the doc when I'm there, she's a good person, we've been seeing her since J was just a few months old, I trust her.  I do.  I know that's probably rather naive but I -- she really does care about him, I know.  I'm a good enough mom to be able to determine that.  I think.

Anyway.  I was holding him and trying to reassure him and then our doctor said she'd rather have the nurse use a syringe and some warm water to help coax out the satanic wax chunk, and not chance scratching the ear drum, which I was all for avoiding, too.  But then between the time that the doctor left and the nurse came back in, he'd gotten cozy on my lap reading the book we'd brought, and didn't want anything to do with the business she was undertaking, especially once she started using the syringe, and I was trying to soothe him but it was fucking impossible.  Squirming and shaking and screaming, he was a wet, hot mess and it was all I could do to hold him in place.  She was unsuccessful, too, so I had to hold him again while she applied some iodine to soften the wax, and we waited and I got him *somewhat* calmed down, and we read again, and then she came back and he saw her coming toward him with the syringe and it was worse than before, and I had to tell my head to SHUT UP, because I was doing the right thing even though my gut said, JUST FUCKING RUN AWAY NOW, just run, grab your baby and run out that damn door.  I wanted to, I was crying because he couldn't see my face, his face was pressed into my neck like he was trying to get back into my womb through there, I cried softly and without anything shaking so he wouldn't know I was upset, and I turned it off, *snap*, when the nurse started opening the door to rinse his ear that second time.  But I cried.  Because my heart was open and bleeding on the floor of that white-and-gray space.  And the wax came out after the iodine had softened it, but also because I was praying openly at that point for it to do so.  Me and my personal jesus were at bat for that wax to leave.  Well, okay, the iodine and warm water may have had some effect as well.

And *then* the doctor came back in to look, and she used the scrapy-spoony thing again, and I was literally spread across his body, pinning his elbows, thinking, with that teeny-tiny piece of brain-space I was allotting myself to look down at the whole thing, detached, I suppose that's the id, right?, saying, um, IS THIS REALLY RIGHT?, and feeling like it wasn't.  But then she still, STILL couldn't determine whether the ear was infected but did happen to notice that after all that skirmish, his ear canal had gotten scratched and was now bleeding. 

Awesome.

So we quit with the antics and I got him dressed and quieted him down and we departed from that tiny, dank space of fucked-up-ness and out to the lobby so she and I could actually hear ourselves because he was no longer screaming insanely, instead, he was happily exploring the toys that probably gave him eighteen new illnesses to carry with us to Cali on Sunday.  But at least he wasn't screaming anymore.  And I got the instructions for the new medicine, eye drops this time, not salve, and it sounded like a dream of ease and luxury to apply it instead of having to somehow keep him pinned down while simultaneously grappling to get each of his eyes squeezed open wide enough to smear that salve into, rather, with the drops, to just drip one in the mere vicinity of each eye, no prying required, oh, dreamy.   Still, four times a day, and this time for 10 days instead of 5, but in the end, better.  Also, after we used it last night, he said it didn't sting, and that's so great.  It's bad enough to have to wrestle your kid into a half-nelson, to then apply painful stuff to his already painful spot, when there's a less painful option.  Phew.

But today, today I was tired.  Today, after I gave him a cupcake and we sat on the bench outside of the cupcake store and he ate it, swinging his small legs freely, waving his cupcake at passersby and saying, "ook!  ook at my cup-cake!  hi!!", with his little chocolate goatee and his little mutters of "yummy, mommy" - when we got home at the end of the trip, lunched, read books, and then I snuggled him down for a nap, and was falling asleep, I was so sleepy, I just couldn't not.  I could not resist the sleep's siren song.  But J, though he begged me not to leave his room, kept coughing in my face, and I was so sleepy and had to go.  I said, "I'm leaving, do not get out of this bed or I'll get upset," and crept into the living room where the sofa said, oh, hello, darling, and reached out for me and pulled me down into its cozy embrace. 

I regret saying those words.

For, upon waking an hour later, disoriented, almost drunk, I spoke briefly with Caleb, then wandered back to J's room, and was met with a scene that made me physically falter.  A stunning visual greeted me:  J, naked, half-smiling, pulling at the skin on his tummy, and his bed, covered haphazardly with poo, and stuffed creatures, also covered and smeared and besmirched with shit, and his bed, the ends, and the rug, and even the floor near the walls, and all his bedding; and there was shit on his feet and legs, and hands, and I began to cry, and he laughed.

And I swore, and spun on my heel and went into the hallway, where I found the very expensive rubber-coated wire whisk made by Le Creuset turned-mangled-plaything lying at my feet, and I threw it at the wall at the other end, I threw it hard.  It bounced off.  Good thing it's rubber-coated.  Made for a very satisfying projectile.

It was an ugly day.

Hug me?

like a faucet.

I was just spouting off yesterday.  I need to do it occasionally, so the damn doesn't burst, etc., but I feel better today.  Well, okay, anyway.  J is at my parents' house and that helps, but mostly I just want to finish having to slice deep into my gut and reveal the black memories that dwell therein to my therapist in order for him to add it all up, all the pieces that will help him best determine what kind of pills I can pop that will bandage up the wound I had to slice open in order for him to make that determination and OY.  Well, alright, to be fair, because I'd already sliced it open when we moved, but it was a messy, imprecise cut, less cut and more rend, and this latest one was medically administered with a sterile knife, but after I leave a session of pulling out spaghetti intestines and the blood has spilled anew and I have to somehow shove it all quickly back in and run through the gray rain to my gray car on the gray road and keep it sealed for a week, for another session of poring over the grisly, tar-coated innards, well, I'm not entirely capable of keeping things sealed properly.  I was always that kid who picked at the scabs, pick pick pick, and yesterday, I had not allowed the bandage to adhere cleanly to the wide-openness directly beneath its immaculate surface, I had to peek along the edge.  Just to see, you know, whether it was still there or whatever, and then - hey!  Oh!  Right!  I was raped in high school, and also molested in the eighth grade, which, while I don't count it as my first kiss, it technically was, and then there was Alaska, and god.  I shiver over sharing these things, these scary details, because who wants to see the wreckage?  People want to read blogs to laugh, even at the goriest of news items, we want to see them and shiver darkly and then get a good punch line to lighten the load, and I have no punchline.  Instead, I'm angry, I'm pissed, PISSED at those FUCKERS who have made things so much goddamn harder for me, this life that is already not a simple trot through each day, even for those who have been lucky enough to escape molestation on any level (of whom I am convinced there are but few).  So, I'm angry.  And I share because - you wanna know why?  Because there shouldn't be a ban on talking about having been taken advantage of.  I was stripped of my power in those moments, and -- here's a funny (although not punchline-y, sorry) thing:  when I was a stripper, throughout the entire experience, I recall hearing people say things like, Oh, you know, women who are in the adult entertainment industry have all been molested or raped at some point.  And I was always like, huh.  Well, that makes me an anomaly, doesn't it.  Since I'd somehow managed to completely forget that I was molested *and* raped before I finished high school.  You know why?  I'm gonna tell you that, too!  Because I didn't relate to the textbook definition of molestation or rape.  I thought about those precise, defined specifics, and compared my versions to those, and went, oh, nope!  None a' that here!  And when I shared the stories brokenly to my friends, their blank looks and non-responses or the occasional "Oh." brought me up short, made me think I was over-sharing and frightening people and I should probably just stop telling those stories that frightened people and made them not want to hang out with me.  Shame on me for having told anyone, was all I could feel and think. 

Isn't that all terribly funny?  Funny-weird, I mean.  I know it's not funny.  I don't feel like laughing.  Rather, I feel -- like I don't want to have a daughter.  Because I'll be compelled to tell her what I went through, and though in a perfect, best-case scenario, my explanation is clear and clean and her reception is solid and logical, and she learns from my stories and is careful about where she goes and what she does, but -- dude.  The guys who molested me in the eighth grade?  Were in the middle of a party of kids who were not drunk or stoned or high on anything other than their own selfish agendas and thought the whole thing was funny anyway.  So do I ban my future daughter from attending social functions altogether?  Well, no, but I would hope she would know to push someone away and call attention loudly and clearly to the inappropriate behavior, strong enough and confident enough to know that the molester should be humiliated to attempt such a thing in the midst of a fucking party.

But would she be successful, even then?  What if it didn't matter - what if she were molested anyway? 

How could I live with myself, having not prevented such a thing, and having allowed this precious charge of mine to experience something that has fucked me up like a rake in a hurricane?

Ah.  This is all such a THING, this mess.

SEE why we have to talk about it?  The more it's out there, the more stories we share about our losses of power at different but still important moments in our lives, the more "textbook" definitions there will be available for people to learn from, to see as mirrors or useful comparisons, to watch out for as roadsigns, to draw strength from, to recognize their own experiences as having been something more than a private, shame-filled thing to closet and keep buried.

Let's talk about it.  Talk about it here.  Please.  Don't give it any more power, not just over yourself, but over the future would-be molesters.  Let's use our old pain as a weapon for our kids.

If you don't want to identify yourself, you don't have to.  Be anonymous.  Or email me your story and I'll post it sans name.

This is one way to keep our kids safe.  You see, I'm aware that this could happen to my son, too, whether I ever have a daughter.  I don't want it for him, either.

we swear because we care.

I'm blown away by all the love (that, yes, I deliberately pleaded for in my, um, commitment post) that you've sent me.  And the concern, and the really excellent advice.

I just want you guys to know that I'm working on this, and that I think I'm having a terrifically, astronomically awful reaction to weaning.  I was guessing until last Friday that my thyroid (hypo) was hinky again, because my symptoms were seeming appropriate (low energy, depression, weight-gain, memory loss -- even worse than its generally abysmal state -- etc.).  But then I got the blood test results back, the ones showing "no significant abnormalities," and I had to return to my former illuminating position of "huh?"  (An unbelievably super place to be when you already don't feel like doing much other than eat cookies and imagine not having to ever stand up again.  So convincing yourself to do actual research re: your steadily-eroding mental poopiness is a toughie.)

Anyway, I looked around yesterday afternoon for some information about typical weaning hormonal adjustment complications, because I am, after all, weaning, and found a wealth of help to support this particular vein of thought, re: my body's seeming incapacity to handle hormonal see-saws (for instance, I can't take any form of birth control because of the affect on my hormones, resulting in terrifying mood swings - the Cyclothymia no likee.  Ol' Cyclo has a jealous grip on my mood-swing situation, and gets very upset when the hormones interfere.  It's all very logical, at least from Corporal Cyclo's standpoint.  Although it makes me really curious as to why El C didn't get involved during what could have been a richtering crash of a post-partum situation - maybe it decided to cut me some slack, or maybe it recognized that I was sort of expecting a modicum of PPD to smack me, given all of my past experiences with hormone crashes - maybe it's just trying to keep me guessing.  Fabulous.  Even my mood disorder has its own sadistic personality).  

If, even now that I'm armed with what seems to be a more educated understanding of what I'm going through, and knowing the hormonal re-situating could take at least another month or two, I find myself not capable of managing everything, I already plan to throw the reins at the appropriate medical personage(s).  I promise.

Meanwhile, you are all the wind beneath my wings.  Thank you. (Even in my insanity, I'm still capable of committing musical abominations in your presence.  That's not much of a gracious move.  Forgive me.  It's the crazy acting out.  And there's the yang of insanity - getting to blame the crazy for random stuff.  You knew there had to be a yang.  Okay, there didn't have to be.  But it's nice that there is.  Silver lining, people.) 

Swear I'm gonna take care of this.  (Thanks for caring enough to make me wanna swear.)

I'm gonna get some sleep, now.  Ni-night.

like hot, witch-on-curse action.

one of the worst days of the year to get your period?  Halloween.

Dr. StrangeDebbie. (or how I learned that I am not the bomb.)

I am not looking foward to writing this post.

That said, I think it's fair to explain that I am sensing some kind of emotional blockage, the likes of which could possibly be compared/contrasted to bodily blockages of other types.  However, I won't go into those, if for no other reason than to attempt to convince myself that I am not a  four-year-old regarding the body's basic functions and it's subsequent goldmine of shallow, lowbrow humor.

Where was I.  Oh, yes.  Serious-land.

I don't enjoy facing the dislodging initiative that I am forced to undertake if I want to get on with my day and wallow in lovely, light topics such as:

• various shopping expeditions I have been on in the last several days, and some of the more exciting!  delicious! man-tastic!  purchases I've made during said trips.
• various television shows I'm so scandalized about that I'm actually going through one of the more serious stages of withdrawal; please note the pasty, track-marked flesh, and the currently assumed position (fetal).
• shopping!  tv!  did I mention, celebrities?  because I darn well should've.

Now.  Unto thee I render the Great Emotional Unblocking 2006.

I obsess.

No.  I'm serious.  Remember?  We're in Serious-land?  I really do.  It's not just my blog moniker, folks.  I mean business, here.

For example, my little boy delights in eating any/all materials consisting of paper.  Especially cardboard.  He chomps away happily on bits of it until I am able to mouth-sweep the mushy, brown shards out and then he spends several minutes berating me.  Loudly.

Is it such a bad habit, this paper-consumption thing?  After all, he's certainly not on par with any law or insurance office (unless I quit monitoring him, because then, christ on a cracker.  He'll probably eat his weight in the stuff). 

So why do I spend limitless amounts of time pondering the implications of his ingestion of a little processed tree pulp?  Yeah, I don't really know, either.

And another thing; he just discovered his penis exists.  He likes to squeeze the wee unit (shhh, don't tell his father I said the "wee" word) in the bath, and I can't help obsessing, again, for hours on end, about when I'm going to accidentally interrupt him for the first, momentous, life-altering time.  (I haven't any dilemma with his eventual masturbation, I just. don't. want. to. SEE. it.)

These are only two of many, *man-y* topics over which I, sadly, must confess to obsessing about.

GAHHHhhhh.

Does it make me extremely, painfully uncomfortable to confess to the weirdness?  Yes.  Am I starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld with the self-questioning antics?  Eerily so.  Am I going to run away from the keyboard, screaming, because I still don't feel like the blockage has evacuated itself and am, meanwhile, discovering a deeply disturbing penchant for imitating the horrorific SofD?

*runs down hall, arms flailing*

Okay, kidding.  I totally didn't run away.  I'm not a little girly-girl.  I can take it.

Uh-huh.

So what brings out your obsessive tendencies?