Bewildered Housemother!

Bewildered Housewife is finally back in the Blogdom, having emerged from an extra-long pregnancy wielding one gorgeous baby, two fabulous breasts, and a set of in-laws who, as grandparents to our perfect child, have only gotten stranger.  We aren’t talking about deadly cupcakes or evil racks of lamb strange, either.  No, we are talking just plain creepy.

Bewildered Housewife believes that if I labored, induced and unmedicated, for 20 hours to give birth to another human life, that baby should be called mine.  Apparently, my mother-in-law never got that memo.  If it were up to her, she would have slapped me in a t-shirt that read “I’m Just the Vehicle” for my entire pregnancy (as long as the t-shirt had a Mercedes emblem on the back) and ran off with the child the second its cord was cut.

Since the baby’s birth, my mother-in-law has ran even more off-kilter from an already askew reality.  To be fair, she started out on her best behavior.  But as her normalcy won her more frequent visits with Baby, her classic sense of narcissistic entitlement began to show.  I’ve mapped out some of the territory to better illustrate this:

(Keep in mind that these are more or less quotes, people)

Point A: I’ve just bought her a few darling little outfits —–> I just spent $1600 on a whole baby wardrobe with the word JUICY emblazoned on the ass ——> I can’t believe you went shopping for your baby – don’t do that!  —–> Point B: I’LL buy all the baby’s clothes!!

Point A:  I’ll follow whatever rules you lay down about your baby ——> Oops, sorry I filed the baby’s toenails, it won’t happen again ——> The baby’s face is all scratched up and her fingernails are jagged?  Oh I would NEVER EVER cut them!  Really, they look different from when you left the baby this morning?  Hmm… well, I might have ‘filed’ them a little…  —–> You said toenails, not fingernails! —-> Point B:  I’m devastated you called to tell me not to groom the baby!

Point A:  I’m sure you know exactly when the baby is hungry ——> You don’t feed the baby from both breasts?!!? GASP —–> Are you sure you’re making enough milk?? Maybe you should give baby formula —-> What do you mean only give the baby 3 oz. in a bottle – she ate all 7 of them at once!  —–>  The baby is STARVING! —->  Are babies supposed to be this fat? —-> Point B:  You’re overfeeding the baby!!  Don’t feed the baby any more!!!

And other random, incendiary comments such as my favorite, anytime I’ve dressed the baby in something pink:

You’re so CUTE when your mommy dresses you like a giiiiiiirl!

As opposed to what – dressing the baby like a priest?  A left-handed circus midget?  Or – crime of crimes! – androgenously in cotton?

According to the general mommy public, though, these is more or less the standard moronic landscape whenever a woman pops out somebody’s grandbaby.  What is not standard, however, is the way that this particular actually shield’s the baby’s face and walks in the opposite direction when either I or my husband attempt to retrieve our child.  I then get to look like the psycho when I bare my teeth and growl, “Give Me My Baby,” which is actually fine with me at this point. 

Because I am slightly psycho these days.  I haven’t slept in months, am often covered in poop or milk, and my hair has hit that lovely postpartum stage in which it begins to fall from my head like teams of suicidal jumpers off Wall Street.  I don’t have time for the creepiness.  Hell, I just now found the time to blog.

Hello again Blog World!

I. Just. Give. Up.

My bloggery pal over at Westward Bound had the right idea a few months ago, when she formally announced a hiatus during her last month or so of pregnancy.  I should have announced the same, but that task did not make it onto my spreadsheet of To-Do items and subsequently fell into the abyss.

And so, here (along with a final VENT) is official notice:  I give up.  I am round, sleepless, and can only touch my toes when sitting down.  I am sick to death of eating spicy noodles, waddling for hours throughout the neighborhood, and attempting to deny myself ice cream.  Other… ah… intimate means of labor induction have taken a turn toward futility at a time when my skinny old cat cannot even fit in my lap, nevermind my husband. 

I am becoming more hostile toward people who tell me I look ‘ready to pop’.  Really?  That hadn’t occurred to me more than eighteen times this hour.  The grocery girls have begun to look at me sideways and move backwards a step when I approach their line, as if my belly might explode in their general direction and muss their hair.  They cock an eyebrow as if to say, “Still?”  

There are smudges on the hardwood floors and they make me cry.  I stand in the refrigerator door and sigh at regular intervals.  I don’t even care about my double chin anymore, which looks as if it has taken over the task of replenishing my stores of amniotic fluid.  Cheekbones… what cheekbones?  I am actually LOVING the cramping that’s been happening the last week, PRAYING for the pain of labor to arrive, and anticipate laughing with hysterical relief through regular contractions.

So you see, I am blogging off for a while because my attempts at remaining chipper are beginning to fail miserably.  I tried to keep my bitching and moaning within the confines of my house, but it is slowly spilling out past the door and into the street.   Those around me cheerfully point out that the baby will be here when it is ready, to which I respond with a steely gaze permanently affixed to my tired face.  I am beginning to have my doubts about this alleged baby.  In fact, I am starting to wonder if there is actually a baby in here at all; maybe it’s just been a near-year of undiagnosed severe gastrointestinal distress.

I’ll update again when I can either a) stop complaining or b) describe my newborn.

(Oh, and Happy Freaking Halloween.  It’s been cancelled at our house, because I have eaten all the chocolate.)

Current Events

As is customary these days, I got out of bed at 4am this morning and went directly to the mailbox.  I am waiting for a letter from The Guinness Book of World Records that confirms I have had the longest pregnancy on record.  According to my calculations, it’s been at least 87 months and 22 days with no end in sight.  And I am not the only one around here paying the price; my closet has been woefully neglected in favor of the small cubby where I keep my shrinking arsenal of clothing.  This is my own fault.  I simply could not wrap my mind around buying a whole new category of clothing that either A) makes me look like one big giant psychedelic curtain or B) costs more than an inevitable boob job.

My husband dutifully tries to console me, saying that nothing about me looks that different at all (at which point I swing sideways and show him the silhouette of my enormous belly, just for the sheer thrill of seeing his eyes pop out of his head).  I’ve noticed, though, that his attempts at comfort have been growing increasingly half-hearted.  The last month of pregnancy doesn’t provide much cover in the way of denial.

The stock market is also doing little for the morale of Bewildered Housewife’s household.  It’s been a solid two weeks of forehead-smacking news each morning, our mouths agape in disbelief.  I am considering a ban on financial news until further notice.  I’m thinking pancakes would be a suitable alternative.

But I will have to wait a few hours for those pancakes because, oh, that’s right, my husband still manages to enjoy that luxury I once knew as “sleep”.  If I were a lesser woman, I would go flush the toilet right now.  Lucky for him, I have more self-control than that.  For now.

In other news, my bloggery pals over at buttercuppunch hosted a live blog during last night’s presidential debate, and I must admit that it was brilliant fun.  Some of the blow-by-blow highlights include a truly cranky Tom Brokaw, my new favorite nickname for Sarah Palin (“Caribou Barbie”) and John McCain switching to Geico.  I’d suggest high-tailing it over there for the next and final debate.

The local latest has the baby flipped around again to an upright position.  If she doesn’t tuck and roll REAL SOON, little girl is going to be grounded as soon as she emerges.  Turn, baby, turn.

Ah.  5:30 am.  Time for peanut butter.

The Meat Helmet and Other Oddities

I know, I know, it’s been weeks – weeks! – since I’ve posted, but I assure you that I’ve been hard at work doing things like growing a baby and navigating the final, whale-like weeks of a damn long pregnancy.  In addition, I’ve been busy taking notes on the oddities that arise on this adventure, and would like to present to you a few of these observations.  These are discoveries that require me to form entirely new words.  Based on your feedback, I’m considering submitting them to Webster’s Dictionary for inclusion.

Insomniman.  You know the man – he’s dressed in a filthy, tattered overcoat with sunken eyes and a nappy beard down to his testicles.  He’s usually standing on a milk crate spouting scripture from Revelations and raving about the Apocalypse.  We’ve all seen him, usually in person while getting lost in a major city.  If someone were to slice open my head at approximately 3 am each morning, that’s who they’d find marching around, pumping a crayoned The End Is Near sign into the air.  Because it is.  It is near.

I believe this is a common phenomenon among women in their third trimester (at least I’m hoping it’s common).  When we are not fretting about being sucked into a black hole before dinner, we lie awake imagining all the terrible things that could go wrong while driving a car, eating a salad or even emptying the dishwasher.  Frightening.

The Meat Helmet.  This is a new word I coined in response to seeing a photograph of myself last week.  The Meat Helmet is secured to the head during the late stages of pregnancy with a Meat Strap that wraps around one’s chin, and yes, you have my permission to use this terminology.  Still not clear on what a Meat Helmet is?  Think Drew Barrymore’s chins (I love you, Drew) before she began her running routine.

The Nesting.  Kind of like The Shining only tidier.  My husband has always appreciated the fact that I keep a clean house, but when I greet the day by scrubbing the baseboards and shining the stove before even brushing my teeth, he begins to question my sanity.  Truth be told, so do I…

And now I will tell you a secret.  A secret so shocking that even I sometimes do not believe it.  It’s called spreadsheets. Yes, spreadsheets.  I am that much of a nerd that I have created spreadsheets to get me through the next few weeks.  I don’t know how any new mother-to-be could do without one.  So I am learning that The Nesting does not apply just to the physical environment; apparently it’s meant to organize my interior landscape as well.  Fine.

Mensitivity.   This is the compassion displayed by a man in response to a woman’s escalating experience of discomfort.  Let’s use it in a sentence.  My husband shows a lot of mensitivity these days, which is good because sitting, laying, standing, eating and breathing all cause me to either a) whimper or b) literally attempt to jump out of my skin.  It’s sweet.

Crapality.  As in, Oh Crap, Reality.  This is the phrase uttered during natural childbirth classes while watching graphic scenes of babies crowning.  It is far too early in the morning to go into any further explanation.

I am still developing new terminology and theories as the days progress, so check back again.

Coming up later this week… stay tuned for High-Maintenance Granny!

The Preggo Chronicles: The Violet Beauregard Edition

There is a scenario that continues to find its way into my life almost daily, in which a strange person notices that I am pregnant.  In which this person says something to the effect of “Oh, I loooooooooved being pregnant”.  In which I ask her what meds she is on.

Somebody ought to bottle the selective amnesia that overtakes a woman post-partum and market it to the tired, bloated masses that are currently with child.  That way, we could joyfully dress in the morning without minding that we look like Veruca Salt (*Edit* It’s been called to my pregnant attention that Violet Beauregard was indeed the brat who turned into a blueberry.  I’m leaving the reference to Veruca up, however, because I am feeling rather like a spoiled child bent on making everyone else make up for my current misery.)

Not that I’ve anything against blueberries; I would simply rather eat one than resemble one.  Also, I was not previously aware that blueberries had cellulite.  Nor did I know that my bosom was to turn into an odyssey worthy of the cover story in National Geographic’s September magazine.  This pregnancy really is teaching me something new every day!

Final Destination

There seems to be an unofficial rule among parents-to-be which mandates that couples take a final vacation before the baby arrives.  So in the spirit of solidarity, my husband and I are going to join in the fun and attempt to enjoy the last moments of our lingering ’childhood’ before being thrust, headlong, into a lifetime of caring for something other than ourselves and each other.

We’ve chosen our favorite luxury hotel in wine country, where I will be terrorizing the general public by laying about each day in a bikini.  My husband will sample champagne in the mornings, and I will be found dipping my pregnant little hands into the decadent breakfasts layed out by uniformed staff.  Later each day, my husband will sip fine wine poolside, bedside, curbside, mealside, outside and inside as I slowly devour finger sandwiches at tea-time, and then we will nap all wrapped up in fluffy robes and slippers before dressing for dinner.  My husband will have a designated driver to all his favorite wineries, and I will get a rare opportunity to spit in a bucket without anyone questioning my breeding.  See?  We’ll both get something out of the deal.

I am so going to relish this last experience of civilization before being covered in burp-up, leaky milk and baby poop.  See you when we get back (when you’re in for the ordinary tales of backaches, rib pain and freak outs).

Run, Isla, Run

Having a mother-in-law is a stark reality I have come to accept.  On bad days, it’s like a terminal reality, but on good days I am almost able to see the bigger picture.  Difficult as she may be, she ties me to the billions of other women who, after muttering the words “I Do”, involuntarily witnessed a similar ball of flames volleyed onto to their courts.

One of the women to whom this dubious honor links me is the actress Isla Fisher, Sacha Baron Cohen’s betrothed.  In case you have been living under a rug in the Sahara Desert, Cohen is the comic (?) behind the hilariously horrifying movie Borat and The Ali G Show.  All seven-foot-eight-inches of him can be found carting around the USA and Europe, making asses out of unsuspecting victims.  Cohen recently fathered a child with Fisher, and they are engaged to be married – but only AFTER she converts to his religion.

Apparently, Cohen comes from an Orthodox Jewish family.  (I am not sure where the Torah prescribes staging homo-erotic cage matches, but whatever.  I’ve also been trying to figure out where Orthodox philosophy condones not only dating a non-Jew, but knocking her up out of wedlock.  That’s three no-no’s in one short sentence!)  

Don’t get me wrong, being religious is fine; what frightens me about this story are the accounts of Cohen’s MOTHER.  She seems to be dissatisfied that Fisher has returned to work making movies “so soon” after having her grandchild, when she had expected Fisher to stay home and spend her time making borscht with the extended family.  She is also very upset that Fisher seems to be taking longer than desired to convert to Judaism – which means that the summer wedding she was planning on throwing her precious son and his hussy bride must be delayed.  (Oh, this is bringing back my own memories!)  The atmosphere between Fisher and Cohen’s mother has evidently become so hostile that Cohen himself is mediating relations. 

My, what a good little boy he is!  Throwing the mother of his child into the controlling clutches of his family.  What a guy.

Since reading about this drama, I have actually developed a shred of gratitude for my own in-laws.  While they have insisted, like children, that I call more/look pretty/obey/quit ruining their son’s life, they would never demand that I convert.  They aren’t Jewish enough for that.  They are what you call Deli Jews:  Jewish enough to faint over good Rugulah and drink Diet Coke with everything, but not enough to go to temple.  Jewish enough to dub a shiksa anyone not wearing Cartier, but not enough to light a menorah.  Jewish enough to Oy with gusto, but not enough to demand that I Oy along with them (although this is admittedly my favorite part).

And thank the great pagan gods for that.  It has been a point of brief contention with my husband, but it isn’t a big deal.  He mentions converting every several months, and I promptly shoot it down.  Other than not subscribing to the concept of organized religion, my reason for not doing so is simple:  If reciting a few words and going through hand motions can magically “make me into” something else, I’d much rather spend that energy becoming tall, blonde and independently wealthy. 

Perhaps, though, Isla really feels it.  Perhaps she has been so moved by her love of Cohen, and by the history and ritual she’s witnessed thus far, that she is willing to walk into her mother-in-law’s den and risk suffocation and identity-snatching for love.  Maybe there really is a part of her that seeks the mothering presence of manipulation and control in order to make sense of the universe.

Me?  I’d tell her to run, Isla, RUN.  Just as far as your unholy shoes will take you.

Down to It

Am finally getting on the task of record-keeping for the baby-to-be.  Here is the beginning!

 

July 7, 2008

 

Dear Xxxxxx,

 

I think that’s what we’ll name you.  I’ve meant for a long time to sit down and keep track of my pregnancy with you, but for one reason or another time has gotten the better of me.

 

I’m sorry to have let it slide for so long, but I’ll try to catch you up.  The previous months were relatively uneventful – if you call endless excitement and anticipation for you “uneventful”.  Nausea was okay, not fun but okay, and there was a slight bleeding episode at 9 weeks which landed your Dad and me in the emergency room with a very annoying doctor attending.  But you’ve stuck around!

 

So we’ll begin the diary at xx weeks.  It’s better late than never.  I’ve really wanted to put things down for you.  I want you to be able to read this and have an awareness that the world, and time, and people move along a continuum on which you are about to appear for a while.  As I write this, you are gestating sweetly in my womb, while billions of people are breathing, eating, sleeping, rejoicing, crying, laughing, singing, working, resting and probably more than a few are making the babies you’ll grow up to love, hate, read about and hang out with.  Someone right now is digging a hole, riding a donkey, planting a field, needing a meal, losing a loved one or birthing a life.  So much is happening as you sleep inside… much has come before and much will go after.

 

(I remember being a tiny child without the ability to grasp the concept of the world existing without me.  My sisters and I crowded my father’s knees one afternoon and asked where he had just come home from.  “Golf,” he said.  “I used to play a lot of golf before you were born.”

 

Before I was born was a concept entirely foreign to me.  I could not wrap my mind around it and was as utterly confounded as any three-year-old could be.  What the hell was he talking about?  “I’ve always been here!” I protested.) 

 

It is my hope that you will grow up to recognize this continuum and to effortlessly, without force or strain, find your place within it and effect its flow in a positive way.  It is my hope that the person you are emerges with all her beauty and passion and courage to leave the world and those you love better for having known you.  This is my wish for you.  May you be fully realized and driven by your own true joy – whatever that may be.

 

We can’t wait to see you!

 

Love,

Mom and Dad

Food and the Pregnant Woman

I am normally a foodie.  I appreciate the art of cookery and have rarely, if ever, asked a chef to change my meal or told them how to do their job.  At home, cooking dinner was a sort of yoga that served as both art form and meditation.  Until now.

The task of eating has become entirely too confusing in pregnancy.  While there are odd things I can tolerate, and even crave, there is a lot of my normal fare that I now insist on keeping, at minimum, outside an arm’s length. 

Take today, for instance.  My husband had the dubious honor of accepting my invitation to “grab some lunch” with me.  I had every intention of both “grabbing” and “lunching”, but the simple act of ordering an acceptable sandwich turned into a thirty minute ordeal that nearly left me in tears.  I had to reorder my lunch three times – THREE TIMES.  The first sandwich was tossed in the trash the second I opened the wrapper and smelled teriyaki.  Intolerable.  The second sandwich was literally covered in mayonnaise, such that when I stormed back to the counter with the disgusting specimen and tried to peel back the soggy bread as evidence, it kept slipping from my hands.  The third sandwich was finally made to my liking, despite the eye-rolling and looks of amazement passed between the employees: a plain piece of chicken with a pile of lettuce on half of a wheat bun.  By the time I finally bit in, my husband was already picking his teeth, and the rest of the joint thought I was crazy.

Here is a small sampling of my favorite wacky, generic guidelines that pregnant women should follow:

Eat sensibly.

Okay!  But before we commence, let’s try an experiment.  First, your job is to swallow an eleven-inch-long melon that possesses the spectacular ability to both a) navigate small crevices, especially while kicking/punching, and b) expand daily.  Observe the slowing of your intestines, your heightened sense of smell and the zest with which you recoil from broccoli.  Next, throw in a few gluten allergies and, oh heck, a little lactose intolerance for good measure.  Then, sob in fits and starts at most commercials.  Finally, YOU FIGURE OUT HOW TO EAT SENSIBLY.

A pregnant women needs only two hundred extra calories per day in her second and third trimesters.  Two hundred calories is equivalent to two rotis without ghee, a medium katori (bowl) of chole or rajma, a couple of idlis, or a couple of aloo tikkis.

Well.  Glad that’s cleared up.

Eat five or six small meals per day, instead of three large meals.

I’m confused.  Does frozen yogurt with bananas count as a “small meal?”  (Don’t answer that.)

Be sure to get 6 six servings of whole grains per day.

This is not hard to do when most of what I can picture eating is associated somehow or another with an english muffin.  It is, however, entirely counter-productive to my effort to stick to my Blood Type O diet and healing my allergy to gluten. 

Make sure to meet your expanded vitamin requirements.

Gosh, now there’s somethin that never occurred to me.  I suffer from paranoia daily that I am not getting enough calcium, folic acid, vitamin C, B-12… and then I lay awake at night wondering if I’ve gotten too much.

Goddammit.  Where’s my yogurt?

It’s Official

Although I’ve been broadcasting the news for months, it seems to be dawning on us just now that I am, indeed, pregnant.  Gone are the days of sucking in my stomach.  Expelled from my closet are the the skinny jeans.  Evicted from the mirror is the smooth, lithe torso, and in its place a lumbering 30-something has moved in with her dizzying array of leg cramps, stretch marks and very round luggage.

Until these oddly-shaped harbingers arrived, my pregnancy was more about pseudo-interesting commentary, such as would be tossed out over tea with the girls, like “Robert and I are vacationing out by the pool in July,”  or “we’ve just remodeled the kitchen,” or “wasn’t that pie fantastic.”  Then the table is cleared and we all go on with our respective lives.  Not so now – this IS my life.

In an effort to accentuate the positive as much as possible, I’ve decided to compile an ongoing list of the benefits of pregnancy:

Husband smashes all the spiders.

Husband takes out trash.

Husband deals with litter box.

Ice Cream.

A free ticket out of dinners with people I don’t want to have dinner with.

Cupcakes! But not those.

Everyone asks how I feel all the time, and I get to tell the truth. 

Pregnancy glow and fingernails strong enough to slice a rare steak.

People are generally nicer, which I’ll take any day.

C L E A V A G E!

A (legitimate, finally) excuse to act crazy and clean out all of the closets in the house.

What are/have been YOUR favorite parts of being pregnant?  Stay tuned as the list grows…

 

A First for Everything

WestwardBound has invited me, kicking and screaming, for a brief sojourn into the world of Meme. I had to google the term to figure out just what a meme is, and as far as I can tell it is a bunch of questions or confessions focusing exclusively on the behavior, thoughts or preferences of – you guessed it – me and me.

I have seen a few of these before, and find them to be alternately a) a little boring and b) strangely fascinating.   I believe that there is really only so much that a person truly wants to know about another, but the tidbits that arise about one’s day-to-day provide the reader an almost voyeuristic glee; either that, or an ashamed acknowledgement of like neuroses.  So, being part sociologist, here are 6 unspectacular quirks to keep you unamazed for the next two minutes, at least.

The rules are to link the person who sent it to you, mention these rules in your blog, then (the fun part) tell us about 6 random, unspectacular quirks that you possess.  Then tag 6 others to do the same.

 1). I love liverwurst (sorry about those visible chunks of fat, WestwardBound).  It’s definitely an acquired taste and not for the squeamish.   A brief glance over the ingredients list is all most people need to steer clear of it for a lifetime – and granted, this works on me too, sometimes.  If I find myself longing for liverwurst more than once every three months, the words “pig snouts” are enough to stave off my craving for another thirty to sixty days.  However, in times of emergency such as these, when my pregnant belly is beginning to swell to massive proportions and I need a hit of iron, protein and fat NOW, dammit, I eat it once per month.  An aside: since becoming pregnant, I’ve switched to Braunschweiger.  I have a whole other set of feet and noses growing inside of me; I don’t need to be ingesting them, too.

2) Before I sit down with my daily cup of coffee in the morning, I will have picked up the house, opened the blinds, done the dishes, made the bed, watered and fed the animals (including my husband), picked a lemon, swept the halls and started the laundry.  It may be neurotic, but I simply cannot start a day without things in order.  Riveting, isn’t it.

3) The secret to my pasta sauce is this: brown the meat and remove to a bowl.  Sautee all the vegetables in the same pan, add the crushed tomatoes and then puree the crap out of it.  Return meat and puree to the pot, add spices (including a dash of cinammon) and simmer for hours.  Oh dear, now I’ve gone sharing something spectacular…

4) Sometimes I stand with my back to the mirror, look over my shoulder, and try to tell if I look pregnant from behind.

5) I don’t enjoy clothes shopping very much.

6) I still want to be an astronaut.

 Who have I tagged?

meganbhulsey

The Mad Housewife

Baby Chaos

The Not

 Mildred Pierce

Sunday Haiku Series

Swept up into arms
Make all the boo-boos better
Happy Father’s Day

In Defense of Housewifery II – a note to commentors

A great many responses to my previous post were from very angry women.  Most of them perceived that I was comparing the merits of being a housewife with the merits of being a mother/working mother/stay at home mother, etc.

What is most bewildering to Bewildered Housewife is that nowhere in my missive did I mention any comparisons.  Nowhere did I breathe a word about the worth of working mothers.  Where, exactly, did I imply anything at all about mothers, working or not, and where, exactly, were workloads compared?  Please peruse the first seven paragraphs for reference. 

Oh, you mean the pizza and cocktails comment has our panties in a bunch?  Tsk.  That was an observation of another couple we know, and what they do nearly every night.  In fact, spending time with them recently and seeing that pattern while fielding questions all night about what I “do” spurred the writing of my post.  I’m sorry if that hit a sore spot for you.  These are the perils of writing, my friends.  We are bound to see ourselves in someone’s material at some point, and it’s our decision to take it personally or not.    

As a final word on the matter (because it is my blog, after all) at no place and at no point is it my job as a writer to:

A) Justify my material

B) Be belittled by a reader’s projections

C) Post abusive commentary

D) Change a single word

On a side note, I was raised by a working mother who has been, and continues to be, the most amazing example of Woman I have ever known.  It is simply bizarre that so many perceive a Defense of Housewifery to be, by its nature, equal to an attack on working motherhood.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It is the projections that have created a polarity, filling in blanks that are not even there.  One woman’s choice for her own life has nothing at all to do with another woman’s choice for hers.  And yet clearly, so many take it personally, as if Limited Good were in effect.  It’s an incongruency that needs some attention – and one that won’t be resolved until dialogue takes place that can be raised above the adolescent level of name-calling and multiple exclamation points.  

At any rate, I am done with this topic for now.  In Defense of Housewifery was written as a response to an occurence in my life, not as a means to unwind the tangled web of an entire society’s views of femininity and worth.  Onward.

In Defense of Housewifery

As is customary among most American adults, I am often asked what I do for a living.  Whereas I used to dazzle my audience with my resume from the past ten years, I now give a different answer.  Depending on my syllabic mood, I say that I am either a homemaker or a housewife.  In a few short months from now, I’ll have my job title distilled down to one succinct word: MOM.

And then I wait for the inevitable reaction:  First, eyebrows raise in surprise.  Close on those heels comes the usual, slightly passive-aggressive platitude, “Well, THAT must be nice.”  I tell them that no, sitting around eating bon-bons all day must be nice.  What I do actually keeps me busy and on my toes. 

“So, what DO you do all day?” they ask.  What, you mean besides being secretary, accountant, nurse, therapist, housekeeper, laundress, nutritionist, personal shopper, event planner, decorator, executive chef, and, oh yeah, pregnant?  Why, I just sit around eating bon-bons all day.

What is odd is that it never occurs to me to ask what other professionals do all day long.  It’s a question that makes its way specifically toward housewives and other similar women.  Its asking is intended to marginilize us, as if no task we carry out could possibly be as important or necessary as the things that other working people do.  For reasons I have yet to understand, divulging this information makes us a fair target for others’ judgements, as if as stay-home women we become property, kept or child-like, and need to justify our actions and motives even to strangers.

Important to note is that not everyone holds judgment or demands explanation.  I do encounter people - granted, not often - who don’t bat an eyelash, but rather greet my response with a satisfied nod.  It’s no strange coincidence that these are all people who have set their own lives up in such a way as to be doing the things that they love.  Some of it might pass as “official business”, but all of it qualifies as passion.  I have come to imagine that the people who have conciously created their realities don’t find the concept offensive.  It takes a fulfilled person to understand fulfillment.  This is because a satisfied person has had to first embrace the possibility of an authentic existence in order to create it.  A happy person has the capacity to be happy for others.  On the contrary, a dissatisfied person has a compromised ability to imagine satisaction, let alone to be pleased with someone else’s version of it.  To them, satisfaction is always somehow partnered with guilt (guilt for seeking satisfaction, guilt for not seeking it), and it’s a happy housewife’s funny fate to often be an object of that projection.  In reality, my being a housewife (and soon to be stay at home mom) is not a problem – it’s actually YOUR problem.

Is this all to say that I have no desire or drive to do or be anything else?  Of course not.  Am I able to hold a provocative, informed conversation on a myriad of current, cultural and/or academic topics?  Sure am.  Will I continue my education once the babies are a few years old?  You bet I will.  Will I fufill my other dreams of teaching college, writing books, and contributing positively to my larger environment?  There is not a doubt in my mind.

But will I allow my desires for the future to undermine the importance or joy of the commitment I have made to my home and family in the present time?  Absofreakinglutely not.  And I won’t let you do that, either.

In short, I don’t cluck my tongue at you for chopping your hair off and schlepping for a boss so that you can share bitter cocktails at 5pm and order a pizza for your child after daycare.  You’ve made your choice.

This one’s mine.

 

Oy. Just Oy.

Well, THAT didn’t last very long. 

Narcissists apparently suffer from amnesia quite frequently.  Every point made in the recent blowout between me and my mother-in-law has vanished into thin air, every last bit of lightning-sharp anger has been dutifully swept away like a broom to her size 5 footprints.  It has been nary three weeks since, and the woman has already reverted to her old ways. 

This is the problem with resting on one’s laurels; they bio-degrade entirely too fast.  I am foolishly disappointed, but I am not surprised.  I feel like a superhero who had been flying along famously until she looked down, at which point her cape deflates and she tumbles past skyscrapers to the city floor.  I thought for sure my venom had more staying power, but will dust myself off and take it as a lesson to further hone my fury.

Father’s Day is quickly approaching (and I’ve got ideas about the origins of that day, too.  It was most likely created by the same woman who dreamed up Mother’s Day, in order to a. have another reason to guilt her children in both May and June, because we all know there is little guilt to be found in August and b. have a way of gauging which parent is favored, by who got the better gifts). 

This means that another Royal Family Craptacular is on the horizon.  It’s brunch at the castle this time, which is bad because it will no doubt entail my mother-in-law’s cooking, but good because of the close proximity to my pick of ten private bathrooms in which to vomit. 

I shall wear my best tiara.

 

This Just In – My MIL is an OBSTETRICIAN!

There is a baby boom happening here on the West Coast of the United States.  The wealthy Jewish daughters of my mother-in-law’s friends in particular are popping out children at breakneck speeds, destined to be weaned from supple breasts straight into Juicy Couture.

My mother-in-law delights in these children (which on most days, I find odd, given that I am halfway through my pregnancy and she still hasn’t told a single soul).  She takes every occasion we see each other as an opportunity to describe each of their births in detail.  Fortunately, these stories are never very long; most last about two sentences and invariably include the words “scheduled”, “induced” and/or “voluntary c-section”.  But there is an art to my mother-in-law’s storytelling.  Her labor tales are always related with a soft tilt of the head, the last syllable drawn out long, and the whole thing colored by a tone of voice usually reserved for explaining something incredibly complex to a five-year-old, such as “That big bad tiger wouldn’t be nice to people, so that’s why we keep him in a zooooooo,” or “People are putting money in that man’s cup because he has no place to liiiiiiiive“.

Once my mother-in-law burps up the initial news and the method of birth, she narrows her eyes and pauses to look me over for a moment.  Now comes the head-tilt.  I watch in slow motion as she opens her mouth.  Here is where she inserts her expert medical opinions, apparently earned during her lengthy residencies at Saks and Nordstrom. 

She opted for surgery because:
(choose all that apply)

She’s just such a tiny girl.

Her hips were far too narrow for a natural birth (for the eightieth time).

She was just so exhausted, she couldn’t bear to be pregnant anymore.

and my favorite, which rolls the soothing voice, the narrowed eyes, and a slow head nod all into one bundle of condescending bliss:

It’s just what people today dooooooooo.

I follow along with all the rapt attention of a giraffe on qualudes.  Who knew that a woman oblivious to the dangers of injecting botulism into her face could be so knowledgeable about labor and delivery?  And here I was making monthly appointments with amateurs.  Boy, am I naive!  Hopefully she will break through the line of security officers instructed specifically to keep her out of my delivery room, and show us all how it’s really done.  But that will only be if I am very, very lucky… but then, I AM her daughter-in-law. 

If that doesn’t make me lucky, I don’t know what does.

 

The Healing Power of Anger

I am the type of woman whose throat physically hurts if there is something I wish to say, but don’t.  When I am not just merely miffed but genuinely angry, I pace, fragile things spontaneously break with the slightest graze of my fingertips, and the top of my head tingles as my hair literally stands on end.  I become an impossible, immovable force and when I have finally had enough, you will know it.  I ought to wear a sign across my chest that says, Do Not Reach Inside the Animal’s Cage, or Don’t Fuck With the Mama Tiger.

Cut to early this weekend.  Telephone.  Living room.  Mother-in-law.  Pregnant woman who had not yet eaten breakfast.  You see where this is going…  I shall not re-enact the torrent of fury unleashed that morning, but I think its quake may have postponed the Big One in Los Angeles for at least another few years.

Confused, silenced and stunned, I do believe my mother-in-law is now beginning to understand how serious this Mama Tiger really is.  So a bit of advice to all the accomodating and polite ones out there, sweetly operating under the pretense that whatever must be said can be communicated kindly:

“Kind” only works if the party you are dealing with is SANE.  Don’t squeeze another compromised moment’s worth of sweetness from your body.  Pounce.  Hard.  Show your fangs and watch the unheard points you’d been offering with honey for a year suddenly received in an instant.

And sleep like a baby.

 

The Prego Chronicles

The word prego is often used as a cute little reference to pregnancy.  It is also a marginal pasta sauce.  Prego, in my case, as a woman both pregnant and eating a lot, can be used interchangeably. 

This morning I am in pain.  Everything hurts.  I began my nifty new pregnancy workout video yesterday, armed with only a sports bra and the naive expectation that after three nauseous months of relative inactivity, my muscles would still be raring to go.  Talk about a miscalculation.  It was the equivalent of thinking that because I can tilt my head to look at the sky, I am qualified for space travel.

The woman in charge took me through 45 minutes of yoga, calisthenics and breathwork.  She looks to be about 6 months pregnant, speaks with a French accent, and is adorable.  I may develop a crush on her before this pregnancy comes to term.  Also, she is a Cirque d’Soleil acrobat, a smug fact in which she rubbed my nose every time she effortlessly cast her leg above her head.  And flex.  And down.  And breathe.  I lay there cursing her ligaments as my own hips underperformed.  Surely, I am more flexible than this!  Aren’t I?

Dammit, no.  This pregnancy is already wreaking havoc with my body.  Let’s start with the tummy.  If I didn’t know me, I’d be one of the women about whom I’d say either, “She really should not be wearing low riders,” or more likely, “Lay off the beer, lady.”  This is that in between stage when my whole middle is getting thicker by the second, but it really just makes me look like I am coupling too much wheat with too few sit-ups. 

This pregnancy thing is also getting expensive.  Not only will I have to buy new clothes in about a week, but I believe that I may be contributing to the deforestation of the Amazon with the amount of toilet paper I am using.  Pregnant women get very thirsty, and so we pee A LOT.  I could probably power a small third-world country with the force of my urine stream alone.

And the breasts.  Ohhhh the breasts.  I won’t complain too much that I am about to need a bigger bra, because that secretly delights me and openly delights my husband, but the pain certainly is odd.  The worst time of day is when I am in bed at night and have to get up to tinkle (see above).  It has something to do with gravity, with moving from a prone position to leaning over to lift the toilet lid, and there are no words to describe how achy and uncomfortable this can be.  Actually, the words “bricks”, “weights” and “gallons” come close, but not quite.  It is an utterly new sensation – everything about them is novel.  I actually raced home from one of my walks last week to phone my best friend and announce breathlessly that my boobs are now casting shadows.  I am mortified, but thrilled.

On the subject of walking, I have no idea what the hell is going on with my hips.  I used to be very graceful, and even received frequent compliments on the way that I walked.  Now it’s as if my legs are tied into splints; I am beginning to plod.  My lumbering through the neighborhood sends small animals scurrying and local geologists running to their desks.

I don’t know what this body is doing, but it’s certainly up to something…

 

Bewildered Update!

It was bound to happen.  All good things change.

When you visit this blog from now on, you should be automatically redirected to my new home:

www.BewilderedHousewife.com

Please update your feed subscriptions, just to keep it easy.

I still love you, WordPress.  It isn’t you; it’s me.

Mother’s Day Countdown – The Revolution!

My husband is a wonderful critic.  He enjoys my use of humor as defense, and prods me to keep writing even when my mind goes blank for days, or weeks, at a time.  Last night we were talking in bed, various arms and legs asleep under the weight of our animals. 

“It’s just a little dark,” he said.  He was talking about yesterday’s post, which apparently reads like a Grimm Fairy Tale.  He’s right, it is dark, but only because it’s true.  I huffed and puffed and channeled my inner Steve Martin and said, “Well, I can’t be funny ALL the time!”  People who are funny ALL the time are a bit creepy, to be honest.  I want to smack them upside the head and tell them to come out with what’s really hurting them.  I figure that if I falter into such “darkness” every once in a while, I’ll escape the resident creepiness that comes from denying it.

People have been asking if I truly hate my mother-in-law, so let me clear this up.  I do not hate her; I simply don’t like her.  This is a certain distinction.  I don’t wish her harm or that her airplane will fall out of the sky, and if it did I would surely feel badly.  Kind of like when my husband immediately apologizes to the big black spider we just smashed and flushed down the toilet – sorry, little buddy – even after I’d hopped from foot to foot shouting, “Kill the bastard!”  It’s not the spider’s fault it is ugly and potentially poisonous; it is simply being itself.  I, however, don’t have to give it the chance to bite me.  This is the way I feel about my mother-in-law.  Make sense?

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and the second year in a row I have managed to escape spending the afternoon with my husband’s mother.  Last year at this time, we were newly engaged and I was plagued by a string of migraine headaches that were miraculously cured by saying the word No.  (I ought to bottle the word and sell it freely to daughter-in-laws everywhere, sparing them unpleasant experiences while simultaneously making myself rich.)  This year, it is refreshing to have stated openly and weeks ago that I would not be attending the worship ceremony.  I have my OWN mother to adore (albeit, over the phone) for being such a wonderful woman; I have no need to make smiley faces at another dame who would change my hair, my clothes, my attitude and, oh yeah, my husband if she could.  Call me crazy for banning the holiday, but the last time we celebrated an occasion in public (aka my rehearsal dinner), she pulled me aside before leaving the house and pounced on me with a tube of lipstick and a can of spray-on tan for my legs.  Do I feel like being accosted AND bringing flowers this time?  Sorry, but no.

Oh, look!  There went my headache!  Damn, this stuff WORKS.