Twinkle Little Star

Black Sheep, Part Two

Somewhat, if you stretch, related to the previous post...I read an interesting article in UU World about the religious left's world view as contrasted to the religious right's. It talks about the difference between commitment and obligation. Commitment being a result of one's choosing, obligation being the result of a standard set of absolute values that insist you follow. For me, it not only provided some insight into the religious right, it helped me to see the perspective of some family members that I often come to blows with. They are not necessarily religious right per se, just more traditional and conservative than I. (Not hard to accomplish that.) It is the mentality of "I choose," vs. "Thalt Shall."

For example, a peeve of mine is when people offer some assistance and then later complain about it. I assume assistance is offered out of choice, not obligation, so why would you complain? But to some people apparently...certain kinds of assistance is what you DO, because God or somebody said so. I give certain assistance automatically because it is in my personal value code. A couple of just silly examples: If the neighbor's house is on fire, of course I would let them come over and stay in my house and give them whatever assistance I could. But, and this is greatly depending on the situation and relative to the context, I would have my limits. For instance, if they were still in my house six months later and had done nothing to get themselves back on track, I'd probably put some limits on that. (Translation: Give them a deadline and kick 'em out.) However, if there were extenuating circumstances, like if someone had been severely injured in the fire and the family was spending all their time helping them recuperate, I would be more lenient. Some people think its obligatory to say, "Sure, you can stay as long as you want. For free. No problem." And then when they are mooching five years later, bitch and moan to everyone else but the family and do nothing about it. Who is more selfless? The person who has chosen to commit to helping the family and sets boundaries that they can all live with? Or the person who feels obligated, sets no boundaries, and says nothing to the person but badmouths them to everyone else? I'm just sayin'

Another example is when I hear a woman complaining about her husband and how he never does anything around the house and she has to serve him. Now, I'm not talking about the occasional complaining that we all do about our significant others. They all have little quirks that annoy us, and some never will go away. If you choose to stay with him, then you choose to accept the quirks and the flaws because you love him. I'm talking about the women who play victim, but can't possibly think of renegotiating the housework chores. If you are working, taking care of the house, the finances and the children, and your husband works and then comes home and sits in front of the TV or whatever...you need to renegotiate. It is too much for you to do and your husband is not doing enough. It is neither your ROLE nor your obligation  to take care of everything for him because you are the woman. You are either choosing this and playing the martyr by bitching about it, or you need to do something about it. I don't care what you think it says in the Bible or traditional roles you grew up with or whatever. Quit your bitchin' and sit that guy down and swap out those chores. But I guess some women still feel that this is their obligatory role. Thus they are allowed to complain because of course there is nothing that can be done about it. I have a different perspective. D is disabled and I get paid to assist him. We still have boundaries and negotiations about what gets done by whom. Lemme tell ya, if I didn't get paid, I would not be over there several times a week doing his laundry and whatnot. I'm neither obligated nor fulfilling my role as a woman in doing what I do to take care of him. These are all choices we have made together. If he doesn't ask for my help on something that I usually don't take care of (i.e. his foot ulcers) I am not responsible for it. And I will not take the blame for it. Although I do occasionally complain about working for him, I am complaining about the work itself, or having a hard day, not about my chosen and negotiated duties in his care.

After getting into conflicts with the same family members that are probably due to different world views about choice vs. obligation and neither party understanding the others intentions, I have been asked again to be the one who goes and makes an effort to make things right. I have continually been the first (and only one) to apologize, the first to try and listen and talk things out, the first and only to try to compromise and make everyone feel comfortable and to try to understand and keep my mouth shut when I see and hear such bigotted behavior against people with disabilities, and other minority groups. You can excuse bigotry to ignorance for a bit, but not after 11 years. I feel my need to represent and hold true to the rights of all people no matter what their ability level, race, sexual orientation, religion, whatever, and this includes myself, my partner, and my children, is stronger and more important than any family obligations. I cannot handle someone having a relationship with me out of obligation. Deceiving me about it and making me think it was a choice of commitment when it wasn't makes it all the worse. This has been done to me, and my aforementioned emotional bank account has been left in a state of heavy debt. The extreme insensitivity and cruelty that I have endured and then sought to amend is something I cannot talk about here, so sorry for this probably not making much sense. After many, many withdrawals from my symbolic emotional bank account, I have been asked to make deposit after deposit to these relationships  to keep the peace and make everyone comfortable at family gatherings and I have tried to do that. I was asked one more time, and I just can't. The line of credit has been extinguished and the bank account has been foreclosed. This doesn't mean the bank is closed. It is still open for deposits and credit repairs. But I have to commit, to choose to be in relationships. My family and those I love, and those I admire and respect have to also be respected. I don't do hardly anything out of obligation. And I cannot expend any more emotional credit on this when I'm doing all the paying out. This doesn't mean I'm going to be mean or disrespectful or be evasive. It just means there will be no more giving out of the loans. No more reaching out, trying to make things right, taking the first step, the high road, spending my weekends making things right by soothing everyones egos and counseling the forlorn or whatever. It has become a pattern that has gone on too long, been too one sided, and needs breaking.

Don't you hate it when you have to do this?

I promise the next posts will be less cryptic and more entertaining. Just needed to sort some stuff out in my brain. Stay tuned for more kid talk and bitchin'.

Black Sheep, Part One

When I was an undergrad, I failed Art Curriculum and Instruction because I missed a bunch of classes because I was ill. When I took it again, with a much more accommodating teacher, I told her at the beginning that I get sick a lot, and was hoping not to miss too much class, but if I did, could I arrange to do extra work to make it up. She agreed. I didn't miss that much class, I think like three, but to get my "participation" grade up I asked to do an extra assignment.

She gave me the book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey and I had to write some sort of paper on how it applied to teaching. This was when the book first came out. Now, I know, the lingo and concepts in it have been so overused and misused in the corporate world that when anyone brings it up, it automatically causes eye rolls and groans. Be Proactive! and Synergy! now have about as much value as the concepts in "Who Moved My Cheese?" which has to be the stupidest book ever written that corporate minions have ever been forced to read.

Anyway, I liked "Seven Habits." I also went on to read "First Things First" and "Principle Centered Leadership." I'm sure to many people the information in these books was nothing new. But to my little 19 or 20 year old brain, it was all stuff I felt like I hadn't been taught before. I think I had a gap in knowledge or maturity or something. And I see it in a lot of disabled people, especially young or newly disabled people. The gap is in the ability to set your own standards and expectations for yourself.

When you are disabled, people don't know what to expect of you. Their expectation are either way too high or too low. They either think you can't do anything, or they expect you to do everything just like everyone else. This either/or mentality permeates every facet of society. Social Security Disability Insurance either expects you to be able to work in gainful employment full-time or not at all. That is actually their definition of disability. In academia, all of the standardized tests a person with a disability takes with accommodations (i.e. with a person to read the test to you if you are blind) come with an asterisks on your score card saying your scores don't count. Families have trouble setting expectation for those with disabilities that are both fair and equivalent to their siblings. My sister is still bitter because she worked all summer to purchase a new bike and my parents bought me mine after I had my second hospitalization in a years time. Employers either flat out refused to hire you, or hire you but refuse to accommodate you. You never can tell sometimes if the people around you are letting your poor performance slide by or if they are amazed by something that you do that is completely natural for you  like it is a great skill. It is everywhere, and if you are the person living it, day-in, day-out, you come out of it not knowing what to expect of yourself.

The Covey books, for whatever reason, seemed to fill that gap for me, or at least get me on the road to figuring it out. Covey talked about a circle of concern; all of the things a person is concerned about. Within that circle is the circle of influence, which is what you can actually do about it. For example, I'm concerned about global warming, but I can't fix it myself. I can, however, vote, purchase, and live in ways that help solve it and not make it worse. I'm concerned about D's health. But I cannot keep him from having health problems. I can only do what we've both agreed that I will do to support his good health habits.

Another thing that struck me from the Covey books was the notion of an Emotional Bank Account. You make deposits to people's emotional bank accounts by showing them kindness and compassion. If you've deposited enough and have enough credit, than every once in a while, if you screw up and make a withdrawal, your debt will be allowed, or even a loan may be extended and you will have to pay it back in kindnesses. If you make too many withdrawals, your credit may be extinguished and you will no longer be able to bank there. It sounds kind of cold and crass, but it is not that much different from the idea of Karma.

This is important for disabled people to have a handle on, I think, because you sometimes have to ask for help a lot. You sometimes feel like you are always indebted, and you sometimes have low self-esteem socially and may let yourself extend too much credit to those who don't deserve it anymore. It is important to know that your bank is just as important as everyone Else's. You deserve deposits, you don't have to extend credit past where you are comfortable, and you should make sure you keep a positive balance with those who help you.

I gave these books to D when he was in the hospital. He read parts, and is now using the Covey system a bit to manage his time and responsibilities better. I think D has struggled with these kinds of issues since becoming disabled. It's tricky as I have talked about earlier. Some think he should be doing everything, some think that it is so unfortunate he got in this accident 12 years ago that he should not have to lift a finger to help himself. Of course it is somewhere in between. Support needs to be respectful of the persons individual expectations of himself. When that support goes overboard, it is no longer support. It is hurtful. It says to the person, "I don't trust you to do this. I don't believe in your abilities. I don't think you can survive on your own without me." I've seen D be hurt like this and have done what  I thought was right to stop it. But it is not for me to stop. He's going to have to deal with that challenge on his own.

I was asked today, "What would you do if one of your sons had a terrible accident like D did?" Well, of course I would mourn the loss of the body he lost. Then I would have to do what was necessary to be supportive. At first, that would probably mean a lot of hands-on help. But slowly, just as I'm doing even now in their first habilitation, I would have to step back and let him find his new life on his own. Slowly, my circle of influence would have to shrink, even if my circle of concern did not. The loss of bodily functions and health is enough to get through without the loss of self added to it. And after perhaps a couple of years, I would only see my son's disability in the most logistical and practical of senses, it would not be his whole identity. For he would have his own new self that has grown and changed throughout the years and throughout the rehabilitation experience and beyond. I would get to know that self, and not stifle him in the box of disability and rehabilitation his whole life. My mourning period would go through its phases and fade into the background. And my joy would return in loving my son for who he is. Easier said than done, I'm sure. But I've loved a good bunch of disabled people as friends and lovers, and have gone through their journey with them. What I was able to deposit in their emotional bank account the most was the ability to appreciate them for exactly who they are. The person who asked me this expected me to say something like, absolutely whatever I could to support him. And this is true. But I know through years of experience that that means letting him be the best person he can by letting him make his own mistakes and learn from them. Many, many times I have had to stand back and watch a child, even disabled children, even my children, struggle and goof up so that they could learn how to do it right.

When I was in blind rehabilitation, we had a blind cane travel instructor who quite often, made us go out and do a particular travel route on our own. Many other blind rehab centers insist that the instructor be sighted and be within something like 30 feet of the blind student. I have to tell you, without the blindfold, the blind instructor, and the traveling I did on my own as a totally blind person (wearing a blindfold) I would have NEVER believed in my abilities to handle myself when lost (and, yes, you do get lost. The trick is getting unlost.). If a sighted person was there to watch over me and catch all my mistakes, you probably would not see me traveling today with two small children. Perhaps I would not even had the confidence to have children. (By the way, no blind person has ever been injured or harmed in any of the many blind rehab centers who use this method. Its all about the skills and confidence in your abilities.)

I'm meandering a bit here, but I started thinking about this when I was asked this question by a dear family member who, with all the good intentions in the world, has hurt D. He has been that sighted person standing at arms length to catch him when he falls. It has been stifling for both of us at times. I made a mistake by getting involved in this, for as I said earlier, it isn't for me to tackle. It's a bit hypocritical for me to do so on behalf of D. So I apologized for that. It is not my intent to hurt anyone. But D is who I love, and I did what I was condemning. I gave too much of the wrong kind of support. One thing I never do enough of, is keep my big mouth shut. Most of the time I like me that way. But sometimes I do things that I regret.

The Amount of Hatred I Have for Bill Gates Right Now Cannot Be Quantified

My computer crashed a few days ago and wiped out my hard drive completely. I was able to salvage some stuff I had previously saved on another disk, but much of my emails for the last six months is lost.

I don't think I missed any email, and I have most of your addresses saved here in the comments...but if I don't respond to you and you sent something...it wouldn't hurt to send it again.

Did I mention that the 15 plus years I used Apple Macintosh products, this kind of stuff never happened to me? And this has happened to me now twice in one year? (Not the wiping of the hard drive, but the total crash of Windows XP, requiring re-installation. Service Pack my ass.) I converted because I was doing a lot of work for my former employer at home. Now, I will probably not be in the market for a couple more years, but my next computer will be back to the Mac.

I'm blind. My life depends on the computer!!! I cracked a tooth and can't even look up the dentist phone number without it. Have the folks in Redmond no shame?

That is all.

When I'm Left Behind, I'll Miss YOU Most of All, Kirk Cameron!

I went to church yesterday, finally. I've been skipping out since D has been sick and unable to go. Even since he's been home, he has the home health nurse coming every morning so he still couldn't go. I can walk with the kids in the stroller, it is about half a mile. So I have no excuse, and I like going and the kids like going. It's just the getting up in the morning early and getting everyone ready thing I don't like.

I'm glad I went though, because it was the minister's last day after nine years. He got married over the summer and is now moving to D.C. to take a job in some kind of Interfaith organization. His wife was there, and she is Jewish. She's something in a Jewish Synagogue in D.C., not a rabbi, but some kind of role. So we've been hearing a lot of Hebrew words and mythos mixed in the sermons lately, which has been interesting. I could tell the minister may be leaning more in that direction.

That's what I like so much about the Unitarian Universalist Church. The people and the minister can lean anyway they like. It has all the good things about a religion, the sanctuary, the community, the inspiration, the learning, the activities...with none of the dogmatic crap of other religions. Sure there are some church politics going on at any given time, but in general, it is a pretty nonjudgmental place to be.

If you are unfamiliar, UU is a creedless religion. You can believe whatever you want about God, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, or whoever, you can be Pagan, you can be atheist, you just have to want to be a good person in this lifetime. The religion is there to help you do that. As Abraham Lincoln said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." UU's are okay with not knowing. They are okay with the journey of spiritual exploration. They are okay with others coming to different conclusions on the journey.

There are seven principles that are followed. You can find them here. They are liberal and do a lot of social justice work. The religious education program (which I teach in) teaches about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu, etc. And also lessons that follow the seven principles. There is no recruiting or knocking on doors. They expect you to find them, they aren't going to preach to you. They grow when a particular church gets too big, a portion branches off to start another church. (Usually done geographically.) I'm not preaching to you either, just thought I'd tell you about it and a bit about how I got there.

My father's father, my grandfather was a minister for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Much of my father's family was/is JW. My father wasn't all that much into it, but was required, as the minister's son, to attend. They went to huge national conventions held in stadiums in New York, and my father would skip out and party. My mother didn't really come from a religious background at all, she came from a drunk, abusive, impoverished background. I don't know if she ever went to church growing up. When they met, my father's mother tried to get my mother to convert and she took classes and such for a while, but she thought it was crap and also thought that if my father wasn't into it, why should she be. So that was that.

When I was five, the JW overseer, the Watchtower, predicted Armageddon in October of 1975. This was one of many dates that had been set to no avail. When you are five, to hear that the world is going to end and you have to be saved by your grandparents or you will die is a hard thing to wrap your brain around. Apparently, my grandparents even tried to take custody of one of my cousins to save her from her worldly parents. Well, 1975 came and went, and as you can see, the world did not end. Even at five years old. I became skeptical of God and religion.

There was also these visits to my grandparents house where they would read us bible stories that didn't make any sense to me and would say bad things about my mother. Never my father. But they criticized my mother for working and leaving us with the babysitter all day long. I remember one time my grandmother had me peeling some carrots. She asked me where I learned how to do that, did my mother teach me? And I said, no. My babysitter taught me. And my grandfather said, "She taught you how to walk, how to talk, how to do everything. You don't even need a mother, do you?" I always want to tell all the mother-in-laws who diss their daughters-in-laws in front of the sons or their grandkids: I grew up with that. All it does is make the grandkids not particularly fond of you or want to spend any time with you.

I also remember that we couldn't have Christmas decorations on the outside of our house because they might drive by. And once we had a Christmas tree and they came over and my mother wouldn't let them come in so they talked out on the porch for a while and then they left. They would drop off the "Awake" magazine all the time and highlight articles for us to read. I remember reading one about sugar and how parents who let their kids eat sugared cereals were putting Satan in their kid's souls. I remember distinctly reading this right after I ate a bowl of Lucky Charms; picking out the marshmallows to eat. The pink hearts, yellow moons, etc. didn't seem like anything that would compel Satan to invade my soul. I also remember getting a little booklet about AIDS in the mid eighties which talked about AIDS as God's way to get rid of the sinners. It didn't make any sense to me, because I thought God was going to get rid of all of us except 144,000 JW's so what was the point?

For a few years, my mother took us to a congregational church. We went to Sunday School and my sister was in the children's choir. I don't have too many memories of liking or not liking this experience. We just went, and I remember doing a lot of projects where we cut out and colored a lot of Jesuses and pasted them in a book.

Apparently, though, they were kind of mean to my mom. I guess it was a bit of upper-crust types  (of this small town in Iowa that really didn't have much of an upper-crust to begin with.) Anyway, they knew my mother's families' poor history, and that my father did not attend and his JW history, so I guess they weren't very nice to her. There was also some criticism about our attendance, and that pissed her off. I don't have any recollection of this, we just stopped going.

Other than going to church with a few friends here and there, that's my entire religious? upbringing. In high school and college, I went through a really analytical atheist stage. I did attend mandatory "chapel" at a private Methodist university that I attended my freshman year, and I thought it was comforting. (Although I did skip out a lot.) Then I transferred to the University of Nebraska, and that was that.

Until I met D in 1994. He was raised Catholic, but had also taken a lot of classes on world religions. He was also a math and physics whiz. What convinced me to rethink religion was what he told me about science and physics concepts. What we do know and what we don't know about the law of matter and energy. That it can't be created nor destroyed. So what happens when you die? Your body, the matter, decomposes. It is not destroyed, but it changes and recycles. So what happens to your energy? Does the heat just float into the atmosphere and fade into nothing? Is it transferred and recycled? There is so much we don't know, that we can't imagine. We are just little unaware ants going about our lives in colonies. Do you think ants really know why some little kid comes by and destroys their anthill? Or do they think its a natural disaster, or do they think that it is those divine beings up there? Well, actually, they probably can't think about it at all, they don't have the capacity. And I think as humans, we probably don't have the capacity to think and understand in terms of what the possibilities really might be in the universe. So we create religion to comfort us.

Religion comforts me, too. At least the UU religion does. I am okay with not knowing, but I like to explore. I like to learn the lessons from all religions, I like to be inspired to become a better person. I like to have a place where people are friendly and kind and are interested in similar goals, but are also open to diverse thought. I like that I can give my kids a place that will teach them about religion and values, but will also let them think for themselves. I like having the opportunity to teach kids these things.

D is pretty open about religion...although he looks at things from his perspective of growing up Catholic. (Just as my dad still tends to look at things through his JW upbringing, though he doesn't follow the faith anymore.) I'm glad that more or less, I grew up without the confines of one certain religious perspective. I hope to give my kids that same thing.

D goes to church with me most of the time. He struggles with UU a bit though. He says, "It's weird to not know what the person sitting next to you thinks about God or the Afterlife." I say, "Well, ask them." I really don't care what the person sitting next to me thinks about God and the Afterlife. I like sitting next to someone who I know probably has an open mind, doesn't have any dogmatic hangups based on the Bible or Koran, or about homosexuals or whatever. That they are likely here to try to be the best  person they can be is enough for me.

It's a bit funny when you tell some people of differing religions (usually Christian in my experiences) that you go to a UU church. They ask you what they believe and you tell them and they just can't wrap their head around it. You have sermons but they aren't always based on the bible or any religious text. You have meditations but you don't have to pray. You sing songs from a hymnal that don't mention Jesus. Many of them end up deciding for themselves that it is a nondenominational Christian Church. I'd love to bring them to church for the Pagan celebrations of Los Dios de Muertos or Winter Solstice. Or the day when the UU Wiccans have their meetings. Tee Hee.

Ha! Ha! LOVE IT!

Thanks to Shannon and her photoshopping skills, for helping my kids get on an early track for their life of crime!

If My Nanny and My Pediatrician Could Be Fused Together Frankenstyle, Life Would Be Perfect.

Today the Wonderful Ms. Wendy the Wonder Nanny came over and watched the kids for the afternoon and evening.

YEEEEAAAAAAA!!!!

I didn't have any plans, but she stopped by last week for a visit and we just decided that she would start coming over maybe once a week or so to give me a break. I didn't have anywhere to go necessarily and was kind of tired, so I went over to D's and plopped on the couch. Wonderful Couch Plopping, I had. Then D said, well, do you want to do this, this, and this for me? And I said, No. If I was going to come over here and work for you while she babysits, I might as well have just handed her the cash I earn and let her go home and bring the kids over and work for you. Dumbass. He doesn't understand the miracle of being able to plop on the couch and sit there uninterrupted for as long as I damned well feel like it without having to get up and serve somebody. Paying someone $8 bucks an hour for Couch Plopping? Totally worth it. Paying someone $8 bucks an hour so I can make $9 bucks an hour doing the same things for a grown-up that I do for the kids all day long? So NOT worth it.

After I couch plopped for a while, I made D take me out to eat at Macaroni Grill and then we went to Bello's for coffee. This is in a outdoor mall that is right across the street from where D and I used to live. The weirdest thing about going there now is that when we lived there, the whole place was a field that I let my dog play in. Now it is completely paved over with the likes of Abercrombie and Finch. I miss my dog.

I stopped by the organic store to get Aaron this Particular Kind of Apple Juice and this Particular KInd of Prune Juice which, when mixed together in the proper ratio, allow my often constipated son to poop properly and thus makes the whole world a more beautiful place to be for all of us. We love us the Pectin around here.

So it was nice to get out for a while. I have absolutely no worries leaving the kids with Wendy. She Rocks. And the kids know her, so they like it, too.

Yesterday we went to the kid's pediatrician. He is, I don't know what he is. When we are finished, I'm always asking myself, "What the hell was that about?" I went without D, so we wouldn't have to talk about the foot. Well we talked about the foot anyway. We also talked about how my eye was "twitchy" but now it's better, whether I am good at music because I am blind, whether D misses his foot at all, whether I should have any additional children because of my "situation," and why I don't have lenses in my eye. Now this sounds like we talked a  lot about me and D, which we did. But, well, he did. He talks about us and our disability, draws his own conclusions, and pauses just enough to get me to agree with what he is saying. He jumps from subject to subject talking nonstop, and asks me a million questions about what its like to be disabled without waiting for an answer. One thing he doesn't talk much about is my children. It's kind of like if you went to your dentist, and he started in on a whole question, but no answer session on your menstrual cycle. He "smelled" D's infection the last time we were there and "knew" that D needed to get his foot amputated. Now he wants to know why I look different than he remembers. Is it the glasses? Because last time my eyes were so "twitchy." I think he is the one who is twitchy.

Its not that I don't know that my eyes don't always look especially normal, but I don't need someone pointing it out to me, you know? It's like, would it be okay for your kid's pediatrician to tell you that you are fat? I thought it was kind of out of line. When my open enrollment period comes around on the kid's insurance, I'm going to try to change peds. The kids are healthy now, but if they ever got sick...I don't know if I could deal with this guy.

Kid's got their polio vaccine and whatnot. they both weigh in at 19 lbs. Well, 19.6 for Aaron. Naim is 28 inches and Aaron is 29 inches long. They are both between 25th and 50th%tile on the growth chart so that is up from where they started, which was below 3%tile. I did get my referral to the pediatric ophthalmologist for both of them, but mainly to check out Naim's strabismus. I'm loathing what will probably come out of that, which will be patching Naim's better eye so his poor eye gets a workout. I had to do this when I was a kid and it didn't work (it was probably too late for me), all I remember was how much that thing itched and made my eye water. I hate having to put them through some of the crap that I went through, but I guess I lived through it, and I will hopefully be a bit more understanding of the pain of it all than my own mother was. I'm a bit nervous to get their eyes checked. There is guilt there if anything is wrong. But on the other hand, I knew going in that they might inherit some of my lousy stuff, and I think my life is worth it so theirs will be, too. I'm not seeing any indication of visual or hearing problems, except for the strabismus--which a lot of kids have--so maybe they will end up being the non-disabled members of the family.

Naim's Name

Here's a new one:

"Don't you think it will be confusing for them when they get older when one has a Christian name and the other has a Muslim name?"

"Confusing, How?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just maybe Aaron will feel better about himself because he has a Christian name. Naim is going to get stopped in the airports. I mean, Naim Ferris sounds really Arab. People will think he's Arab until they see him."

"Well, as far as I know, he might choose to be Muslim when he grows up."

Jaw drops all around.

I actually didn't intentionally pick one Arab name and one Judeo-Christian name. It's just kind of how it happened. My sister doesn't even think the name Naim exists. She thinks he will grow up being called "Name Ferris." Its actually NAH-eem. D and I have Midwestern drawled it down to NAH-yim. My dad calls him Nymie, and he calls himself Ni-Ni. But Naim is a real name. We'll see how much he hates me for it as he grows up. Hopefully, he will like its uniqueness. If someone named Naim becomes famous in the next twenty years, it will instantly become ordinary (see Aidan and Liam--sheesh.) And it doesn't bother me that it is a derivative of Noam as in Chomsky. I rather like that. Hopefully, the country will eventually come to its senses and he will not have to worry about being racially/ethnically profiled because of his name. I can only wish.

He was actually named after Naim Suleymanoglu, the four time Olympian who defected from Bulgaria to Turkey and competed in weightlifting, winning multiple gold medals. He's 4'11" tall, known as the "Pocket Hercules" and is one of a few people to lift three times his body weight. D and I first decided to name our kid Naim 9 years ago while watching the Atlanta Olympics in '96. We were not and are not weightlifting fans, it was just one of those things that caught our attention when watching the Olympics. When our Naim showed up on the ultrasounds as the little underdog twin, stuck down under his brother who was taking up the majority of the upstairs apartment suite in my uterus, we decided the name stuck. Naim was named from the time I was probably ten or twelve weeks pregnant. (One thing good about having a high risk pg, is you get A LOT of high quality ultrasounds to get to know your kids with. Most women get one or two, I probably got ten or twelve.)

I like Naim's name. Everyone mispronounces it. We have to explain it and spell it all the time and we get funny looks occasionally. But it fits him. Or he fits it. He just seems like a Naim.

Conversations You End Up Having After Eleven Years of Quasi Marraige

Me: Why don't you ever take me riding in a sailplane?

D: What's a sailplane?

Me: I don't know.

D: Then how do you know you want to go riding in one?

Me: Well, J (ex-crush/current bud) is taking some woman sailplane riding this weekend. So I think you should take me.

D: Oh, your just jealous that J isn't taking YOU sailplane riding.

Me: No, If that were the case, I'd ask him about it. I'm asking you.

D: You don't even know what you're asking me to do.

Me: Well, we'd find out. It's sailing. It's planing. What couldn't you like about that? Maybe it's like one of those planes that you land in the water.

D: You mean like the spruce goose?

Me: No. I mean like Fantasy Island.

D: There's no water around here. We live right next to a runway.

Me: There is the whole PACIFIC OCEAN!

D: You can't land a sailplane in the Pacific Ocean.

Me: How do you know?

D: Because it's hang gliding, you jump off a mountain and sail down to the ground.

Me: No, it's not. It's like Fantasy Island.

D: There is no sailing involved in those type of planes. That's not what it is, its hang gliding. And you would kill yourself. You have to be trained to do that.

Me: If it was hang gliding, he would call it hang gliding. It's sailplaning. And I think you'd need training to sailplane, too. It's like being a pilot.

D: No it's just another word for hang gliding. Maybe it's a regional thing. We call it hang gliding in the Midwest and out here they call it sailplaning.

Me: Well either way, we should go sometime. We need to do something fun.

D: I'm not running off the side of a mountain. That isn't fun. You don't even know what it is.

Me: Well, it's a date thing. So it has to be fun.

D: Lisa, there are a lot of things that couples do on dates that I know you would not think is fun. Some people go to bondage clubs on dates.

Me: I don't think sailplaning can be anything like whips and chains. It's sailplaning. It's too pretty of a name to be S&M.

D: I don't know. Jumping off the side of a mountain while holding on to a little triangle attached to butterfly wings could end up being S&M.

Me: IT'S NOT HANG GLIDING!

D: Yes, it is.

Me: When we get home, I'm going to look it up and prove you the hell wrong. And when I do, you have to take me sailplaning.

D: And if you prove me right, I'm not going to take you hang gliding.

Me: Fine.

D: Fine.

***************

Epilogue

Me:  ITS NOT HANG GLIDING! I win.

D: It's not Fantasy Island either, so no you don't.

Me: That wasn't the deal.

D: Yes, it was.

Me: No, it wasn't.

D: I'm not arguing about this. I wouldn't even know where or how to go sailplaning.

Me: Then lets go in a hot air balloon.

D: No. I'm bored of talking about this.

Me: So what do you want to talk about?

D: Electrical Circuits.

Note to Self: Yeah, About the Breastfeeding...SHUT UP!

The chic from Chez Miscarriage, who never ceased to crack me up but is unfortunately taking a long deserved break, talked about a "mother drive-by" which is when you are blogging or just walking down the isle of a grocery store and some other stranger mom who doesn't even know you says something disapproving about how you raise your kid. I never knew of this concept until I had kids. There are the attachment parenters and the Dobson/Focus on the Family parenters. There are the pacifier mongers and the no pacifier extremists. There are the circumcisors, and the intactivists. And then there are the breastfeeders.

Nothing compares to the Breastfeeding Nazis.

None of the other stuff bothers me. I don't care if you think I should have circumcised my kid. I don't care that you think I should kill myself with two baby bjorns and wear my children all day long until they are 18. I don't care if you think I'm the meanest mom in history because after getting up every 3 seconds to replace my babies' pacifiers I got rid of them all, cold turkey. But the breastfeeding thing, I feel guilty about. And I have my own little breastfeeding Nazi in my head, and she needs to go away already because that ship has sailed.

Lately, I'm all feeling guilty because of her. She reads my site and I read hers and she has never said a mean thing to me in her life and I certainly wouldn't consider her a Breastfeeding Nazi...but SHE has twins and SHE has a job and SHE breastfeeds. God! I hate her!*

There are 295 logical reasons why I couldn't breastfeed. Literally, I don't know if Naim would have survived without formula. I don't know if I would have. I had planned on breastfeeding because, you know, "breastfeeding is best!" and more importantly, it's practically free. Formula is like worth it's weight in Gold. When I figured out a budget for myself with two babies, the $280/month worth of formula was not factored in. The time it takes to make 16 little bottles in the beginning; and now 8 big bottles a day was not factored in. The babies pop out and you breastfeed 'em. No brainer. How hard could it be?

I'll pause for a moment so you can finish laughing at me.

I didn't factor in pre-eclampsia. I didn't factor in retinal detachments. I didn't factor in prematurity. I didn't factor in how severely lack of sleep can make you completely lose your mind and how much help I really didn't have to depend on the first few weeks.

Aside from the day my kids were born, the period from November 22 to about January 15 of this year will go down in history as the absolute worst, hardest, most ridiulously awful time in my entire life. Trying to get through pre-eclampsia and eye surgery with as little medication as possible while the contractions are starting, their heads are grinding into my pelvic bones, and losing all my vision was just the start. Then, after I had them, I had two preemies, one who couldn't figure out how to eat anything and had chronically low blood sugar, the other had jaundice, I have an 8" Cesarean scar with 28 staples in my gut and very little milk coming in, and my BP didn't go down after birth as predicted, and I went home like this, with no help set up except for a quadriplegic. (One of my bigger mistakes in life. But I didn't believe people when they said I needed help. People tell me that all the time and I always can do it myself. Not this time.)

I can laugh now at this sign the the La Leche League gave me. (La Leche League is kind of the gestapo of breastfeeding.) It was a sign I was supposed to give the hospital staff that said, "No Nipples! I want my mommy to breastfeed me!" It was supposed to be taped to their hospital nursery crib. Ha! My kids had bottles before I even held them. They were constantly threatening to put Naim in the NICU because his blood glucose was so low. Then, when I said I wanted to breastfeed, they gave me like 30 seconds of opportunity for each kid where mostly it was a bunch of them wrangling my breasts and the kid together like they were tying calf's feet at a rodeo. I never heard of lactation specialists until I got to the hospital. What a job! I don't know that she really helped. Mostly she said, "Do you really want to continue this?" Basically, she did her rodeoing for a few minutes and then told me to pump. Pumping. Who invented that device? One of the most ludicrous machines on the planet. Pumping takes forever. Seems like I could have spent less time pumping and more time just relaxing with my babies instead of trying to wrangle them up to me like a rodeo event. I thought I could have maybe taught them how to do it if there was just more time.

But there wasn't. Naim was losing weight fast. He was got down to 4 lbs. 2 oz. Aaron's jaundice was worsening. I needed to get on BP medication and quickly, I also eventually got on Paxil, both medications are not safe for breastfeeding. Aaron's pediatrician said that formula would actually be better than my colostrum to clear up the jaundice. With Naim, at least with a bottle you could squeeze a bit of milk in his mouth and he would swallow. This is how we fed Naim for the first month, By holding the nipple like a pencil and dropping a few drops at a time in his mouth, all the while trying to keep him awake so it didn't just trickle out of his mouth.

When I got home and had to do everything myself, I tried to breastfeed them both at once with a double nursing pillow, but with no one to help me set it up, I couldn't safely get them both in position by myself. Doing one at a time every two and 1/2 hours was near impossible. The blood pressure med I finally went on, Diamox, made me so tired that I simply stopped being able to function. I couldn't make a phone call, I couldn't remember which baby was which, which one I had fed, I couldn't listen to other people's information without falling asleep mid sentence. This period is like a hellish blur to me. Thank God the kids slept through it all and won't remember it.

D finally hired the Wonderful Ms. Wendy the Wonder Nanny to help me at night. Wendy did everything on weekday nights, and I slept 12-14 hours at a time. By that time, my breastfeeding window was over, not that it mattered because I was still on the meds, and Wonderful Wendy the Wonder Nanny could bottle feed them at night for me. Also, D could feed them, too, that way, which was nice, because it was one of the few ways he could help out then.

I also broke down and got on WIC, which pays for most of my formula. I remember going through the grocery line with my two kids and my WIC vouchers and my 62 allotted cans of formula the first time. It was kind of defeating and depressing for me. Then the clerk didn't know how to do the WIC vouchers and had to wait to get someone to help. The lady behind me was tired of waiting and she said, "Gee, lady, did you ever think of BREASTFEEDING?!"

My first Mother Drive-By.

So people have situations. Onlookers need to recognize that you never know what the other person's situation is. And this was mine. Will my kids be forever damaged for lack of breastfeeding? I think my litmus test is: Can I walk up to a stranger and talk to them for a little bit and get to know them and be able to tell if they were breastfed? No? Well, then it can't make that much difference, right?

So now I've written down every last reason that breastfeeding didn't work out for me. I've washed it out of my system. I'm done. For those about to breastfeed (e.g. all this), I salute you! But my inner mother who wants to do a mental drive-by is going to shut up about it, now.

*Just kidding, Ms. All This..., you seem like a very nice person with a great family. I enjoy reading your site!

Fight Terrorism! Shop at Costco!

I go to Costco (Costco=Sam's if you're from the heartland) about once a month to buy diapers, wipes, laundry detergent, and hearing aid batteries. This is all I buy there, because it is a scary, scary place that wants my money. So I purchase my things, and then I wait...for D...who has to look at every.........single..........item....f-f-f-four times. I usually wait sitting in the food area where I have a view of the tsunami of people filing in line behind Checkpoint Charlie with their purchases. Have you ever watched this? It is fascinating to see what and HOW MUCH! shit people buy. I feel all ashamed to be an American. This must be the image that al Quada uses to recruit members by showing off our American materialism. You'd think that we'd have won the war now if shopping was really the best weapon, as W claims.

They've been building a brand-new football field sized Quonset about two inches from my home, and lo and behold, its gonna be a Costco.

So now if one more person says to me, "Aren't you lucky to have a Costco so close to you? You'll be able to walk there."

Um, yeah.

First of all, I do not think I'll be walking to Costco everyday to get my four big gigantic boxes of diapers, my five gallon keg of laundry detergent, and my forty hearing aid batteries that Costco has locked up like they're Sudafed for the meth lab. Because you know why? That stuff is BIG. The point of going to Costco is to get a lot of stuff, not very often for a cheap price. Exactly how am I going to carry my four boxes and my keg whilst pushing the double BUS of a stroller that holds my little varmints? Think, people.

Secondly, I'm afraid. I don't want that element in my neighborhood. Consumers. Eew. They have all that money. They are nothing but trouble makers with their boxes of cornflakes that have more square footage than my house and their SUV's that bought specifically so they could haul stuff. And since they aren't construction workers with a real need to haul anything, they have to fill up their cargo space with BULK chicken mcnuggets. All those suburban white folks, gathering and plotting against me by piling up their cars so full of stuff-made-in-china that it will block their side view mirrors when they turn right on red. Poor little pedestrians like me will squished by the weight of all the trade deficit causing products in the global warming causing SUVs. I'll just be collateral damage, a sad casualty in the war against terr-uh.