{my topography}

Hating the way I feel right now

It’s completely kicking my butt, this parenting thing. Right now, I feel like a crappy mom. I wonder how on earth I could ever, really, be the parent to two kids when this one is driving me bananas.

He’s three, and that has made everything more complicated. And tonight bedtime was a crappy overblown push-pull of him wanting more of me, and me wanting to give less. One of those nights where I’m beyond tired and the laundry is everywhere (in the drier, in the washing machine, on the chair in the bedroom in heaps, in the hallway in heaps) and my last nerve has already been used up. And then he starts.

“I need milk, mommy!” he starts to whine. We’ve already done stories and we’re past the step where warm milk was an option, but it’s only been recently that he’s been forgoing it at bedtime, and really, I should have offered it to him at the appropriate time. And I didn’t. So here we are.

I’m lying on his bed with him watching how the shadows make the yellow of his walls almost gray. The light out the window is dusk. The last of the robins are singing from the tops of the trees, but the sun has already sunk below the horizon and the sky is the pale afterthought pink of post-sunset. I want to cry.

I’m not sure why I want to cry except I feel like I’ve been giving everything all day long to other people’s kids and now here I am with my own, the kid I love more than anything, and I don’t have an ounce of wiggle room left to give him.

“Fine,” I say. “But if I get you milk then I am not going to lie here and snuggle with you. You can have the milk but then it’s a hug and a kiss and we’re done tonight. Got it.”

“Noo!” He whimpers indignantly. His lower lip is protruding and he sounds particularly pathetic because he’s just getting over a cold. This makes matters worse. The fact that I know he’s been sick. That his behavior has always been worse when he’s sick: more erratic with bouts of energy and lulls.

But damn, I just want to be sitting on the couch with the cat wedged up against me, without anyone needing anything for eight point five seconds. That would be really great.

But somehow there is never enough time, at the end of the day. I crave energy and time and have neither by 8 p.m. So I go downstairs and get milk and bring it up to him and he’s already bawling.

“I want snuggles Mommy, I just want you to snuggle with me.”

I hand him the milk. I sit in the rocking chair near his bed. In my head I can see myself and I can see that I’m being stubborn and unreasonable and in general totally suck as a mom. I even think to myself why the hell can’t you just go cuddle with him, what’s the big deal? But the big deal is that since he’s turned three he has started to make bedtime into something momentous again, every night more negotiations, more extra steps and little details as he tries to control more and more of his world. And I picked tonight of all effing nights to curtail this trend.

What was I thinking?

So now he’s balling into his milk and snuffeling and needs a tissue. “I just love you Mommy. I love you Mommy. I love you Mommy. Are you happy Mommy?”

Damn it. Is parenting this hard for anyone else?

We somehow muddled through. I explained that I wasn’t happy with his behavior but that I loved him and loved him some more. And now he’s tucked into his beanbag ‘nest’ in our room where he has very contentedly slept for the past few weeks. And the cat is by my shoulder, and outside the trees look like the outlines of giants huddled together having tea, and the house is quiet.

But I hate not having patience. I hate feeling like I’m totally not cut out for this. ARGH.

A fun weekend

New baby chicks & new bantam chickens from a neighbor (we named the rooster Guisseppe!)

A new bike for Bean.

New plants in the garden.

Sore muscles.

A night with just DH.

And only four three weeks left of school.

I know I promised I’d write more

But it’s been sunny and I’ve been outdoors in the garden. I’ve decided I want to keep a garden journal here–but I’m afraid if I say so, I’ll surely sabatoge my entire attempt. Everything I seem to say I want to do I immediately lose all interest in following through on. Why is that? Anway, I’ve double dug three long beds–and am currently in the midst of digging mounds for squash, watermellons and pumpkins. My legs itch from using the weed-wacker to cut down tall grass at the edges of the garden, and I’m wearing a big floppy white hat.

Why am I posting then, when I claim to be in the midst of gardening? Bean is taking a poop. And dear lord, I still can’t figure out how to teach the boy to wipe himself. So I was summoned from the garden with yells echoing from the bathroom. “Mama! I need to be wiped.” I am sure the neighbors love that.

How do you wear this?

So, in a month we’ll be heading to Spain for a friend’s wedding. Have I told you that? I’m so excited. It will be my first time since 1997 being overseas. Holy shit. I was 19 when I left, after having spent a year in Germany (also the year I set my hair on fire on my birthday.)

Anyhoo, I’m trying to find a dress for a very formal, large, Spanish wedding. I like dresses like these, that are halter tops–like this one. But I can never figure out how the hell I’m supposed to wear them, really. I mean come on, only perky 19 year olds, can go without support in such a dress. And if you beg to differ, let me just say one word: breastfeeding.

Okay, so now that we’re on the same page, how does one go about wearing such a dress? What secret undergarments actually work with an open backed sheer-fabric dress?

I know, not my typical post. But see, I promised, I’m going to try to post more, so this is what you get. Run-ons and random clothing questions.

Also, on an entirely other note:

Bean is cureently asleep on one of those giant beanbags in our bedroom (which, by the way, are way flatter and less poufy than they appear in the picture.) I’m trying to get him to stop sneaking into our room the minute we say goodnight and come downstairs–because, though I don’t mind him coming into our room in the middle of the night, I do rather mind not being able to go to sleep spooning with DH. So my newest plan is to get him to at least sleep in his own space–in our room. He seems happy as a clam. Sound asleep, tucked under a comforter, and snoring away.

Weekend snapshots

(Bean took this one.)

The world has turned green. Less than a month left of school. The morning sun is waking me up, and I’ve been heading out to run more. Still not feeling totally in harmony with myself yet: still too much on my plate. But more days and more moments where the the orbit of things aligns with my own twirling self.

(Btw: The Cure was a wild, loud adventure that included getting lost when leaving Montreal–4o miles east, before we realized we were supposed to be going south. Oy. And the next day was a blur of tiredness.)

I am hoping to update here every day this week. I have a thing with perfection. I don’t like writing here unless I have long moments to spend, delving into the deeper fabric of my thoughts. But I miss the daily practice. The flawed jotting of notes, of small moments, of daily life. When I first wrote here, I wrote all the time… but somehow I seem to have upped the standard on myself, and now I’m dragging my feet, feeling like if I can’t post a brilliant post, I should’nt post anything at all. What is with that?

Nerdyness

We are going to The Cure tomorrow, up across the border. I’m not sure if this is cool. DH thinks it is, but he’s the kind of guy who can sing the lyrics to EVERY SINGLE SONG on the face of the earth. Really. His favorite genre: every song from the ‘80s.

Thus, when I found out that that The Cure would be near here, I knew we had to get tickets: just so I could go and watch him sing along to every word. True love, baby.

However, he’s returning the affection:

In late summer A Prairie Home Companion is happening my town, and this made me so excited I may have even equated Garrison Keillor with The Cure: as in, the Keillor is as cool in my mind as the Cure is in DH’s. Basically I’m an NPR addict all the way. Other shows that make me swoon/giggle hysterically: Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, or Say’s You.

Now that I’ve posted this DH is learning how to hide his head hole in the ground from an ostrich.*

Alas, I cannot stop.

What kinds of wine come to mind when you read the following clues:
(snagged from Say’s You—which I had to listen to in the driveway, until it ended because I could not stop laughing):

1) Fake window glass

2) A deer in the doldrums

3) The tide’s out at Mer San Michelle

Oh, I am such a nerd. It’s spring, I met my deadline, and I get to go somewhere international tomorrow to eat yummy food and listen to music I’m unsure about with my long-eyelashed guy. Life is good.

*See? Even my jokes are nerdy.

It figures…

…that the day I’ve set aside (taking full advantage of it being Mother’s Day so I can totally claim several back to back hours) for finishing up my two manuscripts (which incidentally are DUE tonight) is GLORIOUS.

Apple blossoms, a perfect breeze, seedlings to plant in the garden. Sigh. And here I am in my shady studio, clacking away on the keyboard. It is nearly impossible not to procrastinate now, when I’m working on revisions (which I hate) and a honey cheeked little boy comes running upstairs clutching a piece of bread and butter with the sole purpose of giving me kisses.

Anyway. Happy Mother’s day to all of you mamas out there. I’m so lucky to know so many of you.

Glimpse

He’s there on the couch playing guitar and the notes are doing things for him that make my breath catch. Not perfect, but strings of notes in a minor chord from the sun-faded couch where he’s sitting barefoot.

Outside the lilacs are just beginning to bloom. It’s Saturday again and I can’t seem to manage to put in more than a post a week right now, or get enough sleep.

Saturday in reverse

Eating Nutella out of the jar and writing.

A two hour nap with Bean, our noses pressed into nooks amongst the pillows, rain falling outside.

Buying seedlings: artichokes (the love affair continues), lettuces, swiss chard.

Following a dashing Bean around the Aquarium, checking out turtles stacked like pancakes, and sea stars and frogs.
“Let’s be sturgeons,” he said tonight after dinner.

Blueberry pancakes, made my DH, smothered in maple syrup (the only way to eat them.) Outside the azaleas are blooming.

A three mile run first thing this morning, on the treadmill, while Bean ate banana bread and butter and played with “Big Orange” the tractor.