Anne Nahm

1. Hearing about the treatment for colorectal cancer: “They basically hold your legs apart and microwave your asshole until it smokes, Anne. And then give you chemo so you have explosive firewater coming out your smoking crackle-hole.” Gee, really? Thanks. The imagery there has pretty much given me lifelong freedom from ever wanting to eat a fresh fried onion ring dipped in ketchup.

2. About eighteen months ago, when I was going through all my cheekbone/sinus troubles, and I couldn’t get off antibiotics, someone* quietly mentioned something called a ‘neti pot’ in comments. And I was all, “as soon as I quit sneezing blood and I’m fairly sure everything has healed from the surgery, I’m going to try that.”

And then I forgot all about it until about a month ago. I got pregnant. And naturally, immediately got a sinus infection. And I cried and cried and ended up on antibiotics, which gave me nightmares about flipper fin children.

And as soon as I finished the course of antibiotics, I could feel the headaches and snotball stuff start up again. And so I felt very sad and guilty that I got pregnant with my junk-yard-used-parts-no-warranty body. I figured I was probably going to have to take nine months of antibiotics. And/or surgery while pregnant. And then after  hyperventilating a couple of times and passing out on the floor, I remembered someone had mentioned that neti pot thing.

Anyway, I can tell you that I bought a vibrator when I was twenty (omigod as a prank gift! For a friend! I don’t even know what they do!) with less embarrassment than I bought a neti pot at the drugstore a few weeks ago.

I mean eww. Have you youtubed how those things work? Well, if you don’t know, save yourself a gross out and don’t go looking. But I didn’t want to expose the baby to antibiotics my whole pregnancy. My kids have enough strikes against them already just for being related to me. So I mommed up and bought one. And used it. And totally love it.

I mean, I don’t love that I occasionally waterboard myself with it, and I don’t love the idea of doing it, and for the first time in my married life, my husband and I actually have a verbal agreement that I will lock the door when I am doing this so that he never, ever has to walk in and see me in neti pot action. But I do love not taking antibiotics and not having a sinus infection.

But none of that is really forkworthy. What is forkworthy is that the neti pot I happened to grab blindly off the shelf is blue.  And, uhm. The end that you stick up your nose? Is pretty much shaped like a penis. I just can’t get over the idea that I’m getting nose banged by the Genie from Aladdin.

3. I hate kindergarten. I always imagined the first day would be: Me, in a lawnchair on the front porch, with a glass of champagne in hand, waving a handkerchief as the children got on a bus and disappeared for glorious hours before being returned safe and exhausted.

Instead it is a lot of picking up and dropping off and form filling out and adhering to someone else’s schedule and OH MY GOD, if you are late, your kindergartener gets a tardy, which means YOU get a tardy and you are the worst parent ever, and everyone looks at you. Also, there is a lot more silicone and manicures in the elementary school mom set than I ever imagined. MILF is a living, breathing, tennis playing thing in my town. I may have to get my hair done. Not that anyone will notice my highlights with that fork sticking out of my eye.

*PS, person? Step forward and take credit – I want to give you a big kiss. I tried to search for your comment using my own search button, but the only thing I discovered is that my search button is worthless.

Hellllloooooo peeps! How I missed you. Especially when I couldn’t get any internet access for a calendar week. O the pain. Unable to tell you about eating blackberries off the bushes

and swimmin’ in the rivah

and campfires under the stars

and not being able to get Girlfriend in a Coma out of my head for like, zomg, four days straight.

Damn you, Smiths. Damn you. PS, husband. If you upload stuff onto my Ipod again? I will hide tampons in your briefcase.

Anyway, If you subtract the Confederate flags, the stripper pole, and silicone implants out of most Kid Rock videos, well, that was pretty much the first part of the vacation:*

There were some rough parts of traveling to two locales with two children for nine days, via two plane flights and fourteen hours of driving time. Oh yes. But my momma always told me that if I couldn’t say anything nice then I shouldn’t say anything at all.

However, some parts of the past week, I was sweating blood, desperate to get on the internet and tell you all about the nothing! That I shouldn’t talk about! Because bad manners! But you would totally sympathies if I could just bitch about it because Omygodwhatthefuckbarbeque.

Anyway, I was completely saved from the fate of loose lips by relatives who said I could use their computer. As long as they could be in the room with me while I used it. Because holy shit, I am obviously some sort of parolee who needs to be monitored on that crazy technological tricycle called The Internet**. No thanks. Bathrooms, porn and the internet are just a few things that are only worth while if I can use them in complete privacy.

Anyway, as I was abiding by the say-something-nice-or-shut-the-hell-up rule, my growing silence was apparently puzzling to some of the relatives. Especially because then I could not explain some of the weirder behavior I started to display as the week progressed.

But how could I tell them I was eating with a spoon for a few meals because if I had a fork in my hand? I would have totally stuck it in someone’s eye. There’s really no polite way to tell a person you are fantasizing about how the puncturing of their cornea via silverware might sound like a water balloon (or possibly a really fresh grape) popping. Trust me. I thought about it a lot.

* Although before we had kids, going up to the woods was really more of a ’70′s Mountain Dew commercial.

Back then, we used the Mountain Dew as a mixer – and ooh! Do you see Brad Pitt about 23 seconds in? Yeah, Mountain Dew Margaritas will do that to you. God. Get off the sauce.

** Although I was going to access the computer to bitch about them, so maybe they had some crazy, self preservation point in wanting to monitor my behavior.

My youngest kid is two and a half. As far as I know, she:

Doesn’t read my blog
Has a distinct preference for popsicles
Is unaware that I am pregnant.
Has never played this game before

Somehow channeling the wisdom of her internet aunties Superblondgirl , Mr. Lady and MidLifeMama , she walked in a few moments ago with a stuffed animal under her shirt and said, “Look! I’m pregnant!”

She did this little hula dance.  Her shirt seams practically popped with the burden of the load.  One furry animal leg dangled out from the bottom of her shirt like the dance was instigating pre-term labor or something. Then she stopped, put her finger to her chin and said, “Hmmm… I’m gonna eat some ice cream.” And walked out.

I have been really sad lately. Also, I walked into a men’s restroom by accident and scared a man at a urinal. At least I think I scared him. He rolled his eyes and went, “Gah!… ahhhhh….” And kind of looked like this.

(photo no longer available:  think shark with it’s mouth open wide and eyes rolled back.  There you go.  Like that.)

So maybe he was just unloading a really wicked piss. Or perhaps this is how men act in urinals all the time. Until two days ago, I had only my imagination. Now I have the feeling that I must wash my hands until my eyeballs and ears are clean. Gah!…ahhhh…

Anyway, with the sad thing, I’m just hunkering down and waiting for it to pass. It doesn’t feel like it is in my head, but in my whole body chemistry, washing all my organs with sadness. It makes everything exhausting and like the only thing I am good for is watching TV. The amount of TV I have scooped into my brain this week is disgusting. I’ve watched so long I’ve come to actually like that Tori Spelling show. That’s how bad it is, people.

I got so many thoughtful and kind and helpful comments on that last post. I knew what I should do is write everyone who commented an email back. It sucks when you know you should do something and instead you sleep. I’m telling you I suck. Thank you for all your well thought out and encouraging comments. Especially the ones that let me know I was not unique in my feelings and that kids are resilient. I’m seriously impressed how you can step back and see the truth of an issue and say it kindly. Or with humor. Or at least without pointing out that my kids will probably be damaged by my neurotic behavior far worse than whether I have outside interests. You all deserve better than a general thank you post. But that is all I’ve got right now. So thank you.

Ok, now I’m going to stave off tears until naptime. Isn’t that lame? All of me knows how lame that is. But still, it will happen. Which just makes me feel more lame and want to cry. Which? Gah!….Ahh. Lame. Saturday morning we are leaving for a whirlwind family-reunion tour for a week. So hopefully, something interesting will happen there. If you don’t hear anything from me, just assume I’m still Eeyored out and saving you from myself.

Every time I get pregnant, I have to go through the process of letting go of being the daughter and taking hold of being the mom. Which is seriously baffling. Because every time I am in the pre-pregnancy-planning stage, I think, “Surely I have figured out how to raise a child by now. Do I really have to re-think this whole business?”

I love my own parents and think they did a good job with me. Also, I struggle with ways in which I want to raise my children differently. And holy crap, is that scary – to reject what I know and try to pull off some untested theory of parenting on some poor kid who hardly even knows me. Especially when I’m not even sure why I want to change things if I think I’m so OK with how they went down in my childhood.

Here’s what I’m working on this time around: Growing up, when I would ask for something that required my mother’s attention, she would smile at me and say, “nothing is more important than my children.” Then she would turn away from whatever she was doing and she would help me out.

Sounds pretty idyllic, right? She said that a lot. Because for the majority of my childhood, she was involved in all these side projects that kept her constantly distracted. Side projects included but were not limited to: Going back to school full time, working full time, and opening her own business. My mom’s brain was always on fire with things to do.

After a while, I began to understand how it must have cut her to say those words to me and pull away from what she was doing. I mean, can you imagine working on a thesis paper that is due in two hours and stopping mid-thought to answer a question about something that could have probably waited until you stopped for a pee break?

She stopped every time though, even if she looked like she hadn’t slept in days and people were calling like maniacs on the phone to get her attention and it took her a few seconds to drag her eyes away from what she was reading. She must have really loved me if she was willing to stop for me with all that other stuff going on.

Sometimes when I was older, I would make up something to ask her so I could interrupt her in front of other adults and hear her say that thing to me. Everyone was trying to get a piece of her attention, and I wanted them all to know I could get shifted to the front of the line because of who I was and what I meant to her. When I would call her office, all I would have to do is say my name to get the secretary’s voice to go from the very formal, “may I ask who is calling, please?” to, “why sure, hon. I’ll put you right through.”

I just don’t want my kids to believe they are loved because I am willing to speak to them.

So I stayed at home with my first child. I didn’t do anything outside the home for two and a half years. I was happy doing that. For a while. I learned to cook. Then I learned how to cook really well. Then one night I tried to make something that took so much preparation that I had to ask my husband to take care of the baby for an hour while I got ready for dinner. After dinner, I realized there was no meal that could be so fantastic it was worth the trouble I had just gone to. I stopped trying fancy things.

When my second pregnancy started, something in me changed again. It was back to basic training about how I wanted to raise my kids. I looked at my life and my refusal to get involved in anything besides taking care of my children. I started to worry about what I was teaching my daughters in terms of being women. And it is horrible, but when I thought about how I want my children to grow up, I thought, “I want you to be so much more than just stay at home moms. That part is important, but you could be so much more than just that.” It was really shaming to realize I wanted my kids to be more than who I was. Especially since I had chosen that life with premeditation and thinking I was making the best decision. And if that was true, then why wasn’t my life good enough for my own standards? I had to look at my own amputated ‘more’. That’s when I started this blog. That changed everything.

Three years later, with a blog in tow and two kids, I thought I would be so over this kind of mother-daughter anxty bullshit. But here I am again, remedial melodrama student FTW.

I can’t let go of this idea that I can only be a good mother to an infant if I let go of everything else. I don’t know if I can maintain my sanity if I let go of everything else. I’m not sure if I’d be a better mother sometimes absent and selfish about my own personal projects, or living with no side projects, 100% devoted, but also some degree of insane.

I’m afraid I haven’t learned anything about being a good parent. I’m afraid I don’t know how to make myself happy and so I will teach my children how to be depressed. I’m afraid I will become nothing. I’m horrified that maybe my mom did a better job at mothering me than I have done with my own kids. I’m terrified that I am becoming the same parent she was after I spent all that time and energy trying to do something different.