Anne Nahm

Lately, when I’m done with the baby’s 4:00 am nursing, I lie in bed and try to cry.  It’s because of the stupidest things:  I’m too tired to get up and eat but also too hungry to sleep.  Or I get in this weird anxiety circle wherein my knowledge that the baby will wake up again makes it impossible to sleep because I’m so anxious about the fact that I desperately need to sleep Right Now Because The Baby Will Wake Up Again Soon.

Or because I know that starting with the baby’s next feeding (5:15 am) I will not be alone again until the baby goes to bed at 8 pm.  Or 10 pm.  Or you know, whenever she feels like it, so don’t plan anything.

Or I try to cry because my oldest kid vomits all over her bed in the next room (true story - happened this morning) and instead of worrying about her health like I normally would, I’m worried about the fact that Surprise! Now all three kids get to stay with me today.  In the house, and without aid of playdates or scheduled activities.  Because if there is one thing nobody likes to see coming, it is a mom with one screamy baby, one plague infested kid, and one child who is climbing up the wall out of sheer fucking mommymommymommy boredom.  So despite the fact that I am literally covered in small people who want to talk to me, I am desperately lonely.

Or whee!  As I was just writing that very last sentence?  My husband told me that he has a meeting at work.  At nine in the evening.

Actual tears, much like coherent thought, are just out of reach.  Right now as I’m writing this, I’m holding a squalling baby and the three year old has just crawled into my lap to sing to the baby, and I know it’s just a matter of minutes before the oldest comes to lay herself on the pile of people in this one chair.  Then one of two things will happen: Whatever is groaning from within the chair will give way and we will all fall down in a shambles, or I will freak out, run out the door, and drive to Mexico.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures my husband took while he was walking the baby earlier this week.  He says to me, “look how beautiful our life is.”

I say, “Take my keys so I don’t do anything stupid.”

He also took this picture when the baby was screaming during his walk.  He said all the animals stopped to rubberneck.  “It was like being in a Far Side cartoon,” he reports.

The children in this house are sick, and so am I.  Sick children are like water, where they trickle down into your personal body space and fill up whatever empty pocket of free time you were hidey-holing away.  They will fill this space with snot and tears and a need to be held.  While they sleep.  For six hours.  On top of you.  You cannot fool sick children!  Get up at four in the morning for personal time?  They will wake up and come find you if you so much as pee.  And you must pee eventually.  Even if you sneak out into the yard to avoid detection.

Speaking of excretion and front yards, a dog from across the way darts from his house to our yard to relieve himself.  Why???  He has a perfectly good yard he races across to make it to ours.

One time the dog owners saw him do it, while I was standing there with my kids, and thus they were forced to make some kind of comment.  They said, “ohh, Booboo!”  all disparaging and exaggerated like we were all on a sitcom or something.  Then they called the dog into the house with no attempt to reclaim the Booboo log from our driveway.  And I was caught in the wonderland of Angry Enough to Kick Something But With Nothing Within Kicking Distance Except Steaming Load.

Possible options:  1) Delivering the Booboopoopoo to their front door.  Possibly in a bag, on fire.  2) Somehow reconditioning Booboo by spraying him with water or something every time he’s caught in our yard. (Although this seems time consuming.  Unless I used Mace*, which would probably speed up the learning curve but also seems rather cruel, as it is hardly Booboo’s fault.  Damn pooping dog) 3) Bringing up the issue in a calm and rational way with the neighbors.  This option seems the most mature way to go.  However, it also seems a bit redundant/ineffective - they’re already aware that our yard is Booboo’s poopatorium.  Plus, if option 3 fails, I’ve tipped my hand at who in the neighborhood might be responsible for then resorting to number 1 or 2. And it seems that guerrilla neighborhood tactics would be more effective if Booboo’s owners do not know from whence the retaliation comes.

*If I don’t put this in, there is usually one person who reads this three weeks after I post it and who freaks out that I might actually mace a dog.

In which my mother and I are talking about a dottery, grandmother-type acquaintance (and I’m kinda being a bitch) (and my mother almost never lets that kind of thing slide):

My Mom: She’s smarter than she looks.
Me: *Snort* I don’t think so.
Mom: You’d be surprised.
Me: Really?  Because she once came out of the bathroom and told me she’d accidentally pulled up her pants before she stopped peeing.
Mom: Listen, you get to her age?  Things happen, and they’re not pretty.
Me: I don’t doubt.  I just hope I’m not telling random people about it.
Mom: … Really, Miss Anonymous Blog?  I tell you what.  There’ll come a time when you’ll look back and wonder why you were such a prude.

Things I have done this week:

*Changed a poop laden diaper while chewing a mouthful of beef jerky.  Thought with strange, preening pride while doing this: You are one bad assed motherfucker. Resisted temptation to use diaper genie like spittoon and jerky like chew.  But just barely.

*Set eggs to boiling.  Then forgot that I was boiling eggs.  Then, half an hour later, wondered if my husband had burnt toast.  Then had boiled eggs explode all over kitchen as water had completely cooked off.  Then spent rest of the day listening to my kids yell:  Pop! Pop! poppopopopoppPOP! And laugh these weird, freaked-out laughs.

*Forgotten the third thing I did.

*Gotten a wee bit of mastitis again.  Three days after getting off antibiotics for the last round of mastitis.  WTF?