I Want Daddy

Over the weekend I was living it up with a basket of laundry to fold and a particularly rousing episode of Jeopardy! on the tube when I heard a weird noise coming from my daughter’s room. To the casual observer it would have just been a little cough. To mom ears, it was the death knell.

please don't let it be barf, please don't let it be barf, please don't let it be barf

We had barf.

Nothing works me into a neurotic lather like vomit. I can handle pretty much any illness without batting an eye, but when vomit is involved, I immediately become Woody Allen on the inside. I’m terrified I’m going to get it, I don’t want to touch it, I don’t want to look at it long enough to clean it, I don’t want to smell it and I don’t want to interact with it.  You know that friend in college that would hold your hair back while you were puking up grape flavored Bartles and Jaymes in the front yard of that dude’s house that you guys met at the ASU game? I’m not that friend. I’m not even the friend who is pointing and laughing. I’m the friend who’s running back into the house with her fingers in her ears while going “La la la la” to block out all the noise you’re making and now all the noise I’m making with my theatrical gagging . Yes, your terrible misfortune and inability to hold down cloyingly sweet chick liquor will make me the bitchy friend. This aversion runs so deep that it led to my husband and I agreeing before we had kids that all poop related mishaps would fall squarely on my shoulders while all situations involving vomit would be left solely to him.

I'm not in this picture because I peaced right on out of there.

Of course fate is a spiteful whore and with the exception of one episode, I’ve been the sole parental unit available each and every time a kid in this house has lost their lunch.

Maybe it was born of the fact that I was the only one around and HAD to take charge or maybe there is something to the adage that things coming out of your kids seem less vile to you than if they’d come out of someone else’s cake hole but my whole reaction to barf has changed.  Don’t get me wrong, if you hork in front of me you’re still on your own, but my kids just don’t elicit that reaction. I jump into action, cleaning them up and administering Gatorade like a pro with nary a gag to be heard. As a person, I've grown.

Which brings me to the coughing sound that rang out in the night right in the middle of Double Jeopardy! last Friday. I walked into Julia’s room to see that she had in fact become sick, not just all over herself and her bed but the wall beside her bed too. I cleaned her up, changed her sheets, Lysol-ed the wall, put on Frozen and made a little nest for myself on her floor next to the trash can I’d commandeered from the bathroom. We’d get through this together, for I was Super Mom.

Oh yeah, this is me.

    

 The process was repeated again 10 minutes later when it was deemed more comfortable to toss her cookies a second time on her fresh sheets and pillow instead of the trash can. I changed everything again, all while being as comforting as I could be. The poor kid looked pathetic and I really did feel horrible for her. With a lot of “Mommy’s here” and “Mommy will take care of you”, I dragged her mattress out to the family room and plopped down on the couch (Laying on her floor for 10 minutes was enough. I’m not 21 anymore and nothing proves that more than lying on a floor for any duration of time. Even Super Mom has her joints to consider.)

Poor kid

Back rubbing, hair holding, soothing words and calming singing abounded as I held the trash can under her head and willed her to get everything up so she could feel better. By 2:30am I was bleary eyed and worried, having done everything in my power to make her feel as comfortable as possible. As the dry heaves racked her body once more and I rubbed her back, whispering softly to her that it would be alright, that mommy was here, she said:

“I <gak> want <gak> Daddy.”

Really? I mean, seriously? I’m the one who just hosed you down, rinsed your mouth out, wiped up the Kandinsky painting you tried to replicate on your wall, wrestled your mattress down the hall and into the family room and did two loads of laundry in the middle of the night, all while taking shifts holding your hair back and cooing to you while you chundered up so much that I’m pretty sure a license plate came out of you and you want daddy?

The best mothers will say that they understand, that they don’t expect recognition for all that they do. They’d say that it’s a normal reaction, that 4-year-old girls are attached to their daddy’s and it’s natural for them to want his comfort.

Well, I've never claimed to be the best mother and I’m here to tell you that shit sucked.

All I wanted to do was make her feel better, to be the soothing presence that people think of when they think about their mama. Her words made me feel like I’d failed, like if I’d been doing a good enough job taking care of her she wouldn't feel as though she needed daddy to step in. I wasn't merely not good enough, I wasn't even enough period.

The better animal, in this instance, being Daddy.

I realize, with my head, that my thinking was highly over dramatic and that her desire to have daddy near was in no way intended as a rejection of me, but I still sat sullenly on the couch as she finally fell into a fitful sleep, my eyes burning with exhaustion and my hair stinking of hospital grade disinfectant. Why was I chopped liver? Was my position as the primary care giver causing a case of overexposure? Was a feeling of ambivalence, or worse, resentment resulting from my constant directives to clean rooms, put on shoes, finish homework, eat two more bites, take fingers out of noses, put the toys away, try to go potty before we leave, go to time out, stop licking the dog bowl, don’t throw that inside, that isn’t food, my phone isn’t a football, wipe that up, drink some more milk, keep your diaper on, don’t unbuckle yourself on the freeway, no we can’t listen to Let It Go again, don’t sit on your brother’s face, and stop punching your sandwich?

The worst of it seemed to pass and around 4 in the morning I gingerly attempted to roll off of the couch to go to the bathroom without waking her.

“Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

Her small, whispered voice stopped my heart.  I kissed her forehead and promised I was just going to the bathroom, a certain clarity settling into my thoughts. She didn’t love me or need me less than she did Daddy. The fact was, she loved and needed both of us. The nature of his job required him to be out of the house for longer durations than me, which meant that she was far more likely to ask for him in times of stress. You don’t ask for stuff that you already have, so my being the ever present thorn in her side just meant that she took for granted that I’d be there. She hadn’t been asking for Daddy instead, she’d been asking for Daddy too.

I felt like a petty little moron for getting so butt hurt over it, but as I watched her sleep while clutching her blankie I was a happy, petty little moron. It was clear that the assumption was I’d be there to take care of things when everything went to hell in a hand basket. She felt confident that I would be there for her. I fell asleep myself, knowing that at least in this, I’d done something exactly right.

Gall bladders, Eating Right and Zumba

There comes a time in the lives of many, be they male or female, when the reflection staring back at them in the mirror is unsatisfactory. Maybe they've put on some weight, maybe they've gone a bit soft in the middle, maybe they feel that they could use a bit of toning here or there. For some, all it takes is the realization that they aren't where they want to be in order to trigger a change. For others, a wake up call is in order before they can effect real change. For instance, someone asks when they are due and they aren't actually pregnant. This happened to me. A few times. I responded to their insinuation that I was fat by anger eating a bunch of Taco Bell mexican pizzas. That'll show 'em.

In my case it took passing out while pooping at work, passing out while pooping at a friend's house and the then hasty removal of my gall bladder to make me think that I might need to stop treating my body like a garbage dump. I am not shitting you (I did have to stop shitting myself though, apparently).

It was like this. Except at work.

I'm gonna admit, it wasn't like I really had a choice in the matter to make some changes. When you have your gall bladder out your body just doesn't process fat the way that it used to. Sure, there are people out there that go back to some semblance of normal afterwards but I didn't fall into that category. Without boring you with the gory details, let's just say a couple days of fatty eating and I was less than comfortable. You guys, seriously, I'm not going to delve any further okay? I'm a fucking lady.

Stopped up worse than LA traffic.

No one out there wants to go through life feeling horribly sick every few days, so I think I made the only choice the majority of people would make. Having said that, I also had to make a choice as a mom too. If I'm curled up into a ball and useless to the world, how am I going to take care of my kids? As it was, the only reason that my failing gall bladder went from an organ that might need some attention to a full blown emergency situation was because I simply didn't have time to be sick. I'd be passing a stone, literally on the floor and clawing at the carpet in agony while gasping for air and I was convinced it was gas. "Nothing to see here people, just  a grown woman who needs to fart. It'll be over in about an hour." How I could convince myself that gas was the cause of that level of pain can only be chalked up to the fact that my kids were 2 and 1 and my husband worked 24 hour shifts. It was simply not convenient for anything to be wrong with me.

Finally an episode of "Hey, mom is writhing on the floor again" just didn't want to end and my parents took me to the emergency room, which brings us back to what we already know. My gall bladder was full of stones, one of them was lodged in my general bile duct which was creating a blockage that put my liver enzymes through the roof and I needed surgery. Now.

So out it came, which took me from this:

(About a month before the surgery. Even my elbows are fat. How in the hell does one get fat elbows? Oh yeah, midnight cheese eating.)

To this:

Day after surgery. Just informed that dinner was Jell-O and broth.

So I had to change some things. I was advised that all the gunk that had aided in mucking my system up could still form in the liver and even without a gall bladder I could suffer from blockages again so I started watching what I ate and exercising, which anyone with kids knows isn't necessarily an easy task but the far preferable choice when the alternative is endoscopic surgery following an episode of agony from a blockage. Better option or no though, instituting these changes for myself wasn't going to be easy with toddlers in the mix.

First, they don't want to eat what you eat. I learned this one day when I made some tuna salad and placed it on my son's plate only to watch him gag like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, complete with eye watering and sound effects. Which means that there are nights when I do what I swore I would never do before I became a mother. I make two separate meals like a freaking short order cook. Mostly I try to make them at least intersect; turkey burgers with baked fries for the kids and a grilled portobello with baked fries for me, but sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. If I know for a freaking fact that they will power down some mac and cheese and I'm craving an egg white omelette then damn it, I'm gonna go ahead and pretend I'm a line cook at Denny's and make a bunch of random shit. It's not like I'm going to be eating my dinner hot anyway, who cares how long it takes me to put my portion of it together?

This was all fine and good, but finding time to exercise was the other piece. I mean, I didn't feel like carving 5 seconds out of my life to do that before I had kids, now that there were actual constraints on my time and freedom it was going to be damn near impossible. I had the obligatory  gym membership everyone gets, touts in conversation and then summarily blows off for episodes of The Biggest Loser and root beer floats. I don't know what it is about that show, but it makes me want dessert. And to not work out until I puke/cry/hurt myself. It definitely makes me not want to do that. 

I couldn't blow it off anymore, however, so I decided to load the kids up and go work out. My daughter ran toward the other kids and the play equipment in the Kid Zone as if she didn't have a care in the world while my son stood at the door and sobbed, his expression so full of "fuck you" that I felt like a selfish ass leaving him there. I made it through 12 minutes on the elliptical machine before the kindly care provider came out and assured me that I was, indeed, a selfish ass and that he hadn't stopped crying since I'd left. A second attempt at taking them with me ended after 19 minutes when my daughter decided to squeeze herself into an exersaucer designed for a child half her age and proceed to take the hugest poop she'd ever accomplished. It was becoming readily apparent that I needed to workout at home.

My solution to this, as irony would have it, was to buy ten used Biggest Loser dvds at Bookman's. I would now be doing the workouts that I watched the people on the show do while I loafed on my couch in the face of their efforts. They range from Weight Loss Yoga with Bob Harper all the way to the Last Chance Workout with Jillian Michaels. They are hard, but they are doable and I am able to slap one into the dvd player a few times a week in order to fit some exercise into my routine without having to load the kids up, take them to the care center, stop my workout every two seconds to attend to whatever they are doing, load them back up and then shower them with Purell. 

Don't get me wrong though, it still isn't a cake walk. Just because it is more convenient doesn't mean that working out in my living room yields any type of "me time" result. 

This is when they were running around me singing, "Everybody poops! Everybody poops!"

My daughter likes to alternate crawling under me during downward dog and climbing onto me during plank.

Efforts to shoo her were in vain. Also, the dog was wet from jumping into the pool and came inside to shake off  in my general direction.

With these kinds of distractions at home, I decided that it would serve me well to actually leave the kids with daddy once a week and take advantage of my gym membership alone. The problem was, I'd gotten accustomed to the ADHD quality of workout videos. The constant change up in activities, the encouraging banter from the host, the Stepford wife-like smiling of the participants now made the elliptical seem boring and since I only run when chased, it looked like I was going to have to foray into the world of workout classes. The one that fit my schedule was the 6:30pm Zumba class and so off I went.

It is here that I would like to take a moment to explain to you the utter humiliation that is Zumba. Zumba is an aerobics class that fuses several different dance styles to the pulsing rhythms of Latin music. The instructors and many of the participants are very well coordinated and posses basic talents, like the ability to quickly discern left from right and the mind boggling talent of clapping whilst moving the feet. These people typically stand in the front. 

I, however, stand...

I'm so far in the back that I'm practically taking this picture from my living room.

It's an hour of shaking your ass, throwing down some merengue and generally humiliating yourself. Seriously, you're supposed to look like this:

I am being entirely genuine when I tell you that I, in reality, look like this:

So why do I do it? Why do I subject myself to a class that, for an hour, reminds me every time I turn the wrong direction and violently accost the person next me that I have no rhythm and really no business attempting to shake hips that were clearly fused to my pelvis from birth so only a strange and awkward seizure like movement is achieved from my efforts?

Because it gets me out of the house without my kids, which makes me a better mom. I love them. I honestly do. But the other day I was in such desperate need of a shower that I put them in there with me and then attempted to shave my legs while my son built Trump Tower out of shampoo bottles and my daughter repeatedly pointed to my lady business and asked, in horror, why it was "moldy". At 3, I'm pretty sure the explanation for why mommy doesn't always have time to wax will go straight over her head so I just told her it was because I was a grown up, nicked myself on the shin with my disposable Daisy razor and then made every attempt not to shoot my son across the shower like the escargot that Julia Roberts loses in Pretty Woman as I rinsed shampoo from his hair. (I still don't know how I pulled this off, wet toddlers are about the slipperiest things on the planet.) So, I Zumba to get a break from my routine, to take time for myself.

And because, after all of the failed attempts at synchronized clapping and abysmal forays into staying on the same foot as everyone else, I look like this:

(Taken in a bathroom stall for your amusement. Don't say I never gave you anything.)

It's genuinely a hell of a workout and just distracting enough in its indignities to be over before you realize that an hour has elapsed. Don't take my word for this, go and try a class out. If you have a gym membership I guarantee you that there is a Zumba class there and if you don't, most cities have a rec center that host fitness classes for a really small drop in rate. Try it out, take some time for yourself. You'll need to keep your strength up and your sanity intact for when your daughter lays down on the floor in the Hobby Lobby to furiously kick her arms and legs in unison and refuses to get up, even as she is causing a bottleneck in the aisle, because she's "swimming in the pool."

Is that just my kid? Oh, okay.