Anne Nahm

So after mis-singing the Lady Gaga lyrics for two weeks, I got some weird looks and finally had to google.  I bet you are much disappointed to learn she is not screaming “Au Jus bad romance!” towards the end there after the French part, because I know I was.  Also, because I would argue: Nothing better describes that icky-in-love feeling than if it came with a side of its own sauce.  Not as cool as I thought you were, Lady Gaga.  Oh well.

But then, good news!  In the midst of my disappointment, I remembered this video, which is tangentially related and makes me feel like I’m not the only one who sings infinitely cooler lyrics when alone in their car.

Anyway!  While on Thanksgiving Holiday, during which I was supposed to be reveling in the glory of all my relatives, I was often really back in my dad’s office, gasping for time without all those relatives, surfing the internet, and complaining of vague stomach pains when anyone knocked on the door and asked when I was going to rejoin the festivities.    As punishment for this scroogy behavior, I have fallen in love with these shoes, which I found (guess where!?!) on the internet.

They are about $300 more than I would normally spend on shoes.  And also?  If you look closely, you will see they have ducks on them.  Which, as my husband points out, is

• A) expensive,
• B) I’m never dressed up fancy enough to wear those shoes anymore,
• C) If I were to need to dress up fancy enough to wear expensive shoes, would it also be appropriate to have ducks on said shoes?
• D) Really, Anne, although people should have some sort of early warning system to alert them to your personality, do you really want to give them that kind of tactical advantage?

Ok, really, he didn’t say any of those things.  I just imagine he would if I could get inside his mind and read it.  Instead, he said, “you should get them if you want them” and then started measuring the TV console, because he figures if I get $350 duck heels, he can pretty much blow out the rest of our savings on a flat screen TV and I won’t be able to say jack about it because, hey! I’m wearing clown shoes.

So, of course I’m not going to buy anything now, because it will be so much more satisfying to yell, OMFG, husband!  You don’t even watch TV – WTF do you need one so large it would crush all of our children under it if it toppled? And then he gets to yell back, Maybe I would watch TV if it wasn’t being projected out of a tiny bubble!

And omigod, how could I trade that kind of holiday joy for any material item, no matter how cute?  I couldn’t, that’s how.

PS:  I’m pretty sure that if I did wear the clown shoes and the TV did fall on the kids, I would see it like this:

Each time I am pregnant, someone inevitably asks me, “so… you gonna have another one?”

With the first pregnancy, the askers were all shiny-eyed chipmunks, kind of like that Michael Jackson Gif from Thriller, waiting to see if I’d make it as a mom or totally lose my shit Rosemary’s Baby style:

During my second pregnancy, people asked that same thing again.  This time, they looked happy, but also with that upraised eyebrow to suggest I remember the  hallowed Californian guideline of Two And You Shalt Be Through.  This is also when people seemed to think it appropriate to ask about my birth control plans (Hey, have you considered the IUD?  It’s good for five years!) during circle time at Mommy & Me.  I guess they just assumed I was going to be part of the Two and Thru philosophy.

When I turned up pregnant with my third, people asked, “so… you gonna have another one?” like I was going to start shooting kids out of my vagina gun, rapid fire.  Follow up questions about whether or not I watched the Duggars show was a 65% probability. I mean, not all people were like that.  Most people were nice and some just looked mystified, or curious.  But I definitely felt the social pressure starting up:  When will your mad baby lust be satisfied?

And every time anyone asked, all I could say was, “I don’t know.”  And let me tell you, seven consecutive years of saying “I don’t know” when people are asking you about your own body, and you are supposed to be a responsible adult, in charge of yourself and those around you, ‘I don’t know’ can sound pretty stupid.  Or like you are playing coy.  Or like some veiled ‘none of your business’ remark.  But the truth was, I didn’t know.

Secretly, I yearned to be one of those women who said, “I know X pregnancy will be my last.  Tie my tubes while you are in there getting that last kid, please!”

I wondered if maybe I would never know when I was done, and how horrible that would be – to either keep going until I was living like the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe.  Or the alternative, to wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what was missing.  And maybe hunt around the house, panicking:  What had I forgotten?  And then finally realize:  I’m missing a kid I was supposed to have had.  But whoops!  Too late!  Because in the middle-of-the-night scenario, I am 47, tubes tied, and planning my daughter’s wedding or something.

So, in the context of fearing that phantom child who never got born will haunt me all my days:  Good News!  Because my youngest child is now 7 months old, and just about every third day of the last 7 months, something has happened that has made me think:  Wow.  This is totally my last kid.

Sometimes it is a tiny thing, like just looking down at her sleeping in my arms at two in the morning and thinking, I love this so much, and I am on the very cusp of being too old for this shit. And sometimes it is a huge thing, like all three kids have a hard day and I think:  I am stretched tighter than the asshole of a gnat getting cornholed by an elephant. And I realize, I am barely keeping up with their needs.  If I had four, one could slip through the cracks.  Even with three, I am unsure if I am good enough to watch over them in the way that they need.

Sometimes they are sullen, and I send them to time out. And it is not until days later that I hear about the fight, or the embarrassment, and I think:  I missed it.  I only saw the angry behavior, and I was too tired to look for the hurt.

I know that you cannot protect kids from everything, but this does not release me from needing to try, and I guess I got sidetracked with that line of thought.  Forgive me – I did not get much sleep last night.  Again.  For like the seventh month in a row.  But here I am this morning, certain in my bones that I do not have what it takes to have another child.

And also knowing that my husband wants four.  That for him there is going to be a phantom child out there that was meant to be born but never made it.  And I am going to cause that to happen.  But I have to.  I have to cause that to happen.  Because I am so completely done.

The universe is conspiring against me to get one effing thing done on my own this week.  Three kids is no joke, people.  They can successfully get out of pocket, outnumber you, grab you by your ponytail, throw a saddle on you and ride you with spurs on, and all sleep around the clock on different schedules, keeping you wide awake for 36 consecutive hours. Until you are hiding under the bed, calling 911 and begging for rescue.

Stuck inside my own head, with Lady Gaga on infinite play I’ve been pondering:  I think I’m a little crushing on the Edward panties.  You’re hovering over that link, but I know that if you are a sexually repressed housewife like I am, you’ve already seen them.  And conversely, if you already know what’s under that link?  Well then, welcome to my world, Horny McMommypants.  My kids are old enough to rattle the doorknob.  What’s your excuse?

The fascination with EdPanties09 makes me feel like I should have a comb-over, a yellow corvette, and a beer belly.  And yet?  Cannot look away.  Or stop thinking inappropriate things.  Mostly about how anybody could get all the way to putting Edward inside the panties and yet not be bothered to get an open mouth shot.  And ew, just writing that gets me right back in that self loathing place where I feel like I should smell like a roller-skating rink and have fuzzy dice on my rear view mirror.

But!  It has been thought many a times and so must be said as well.  Why with the closed mouth?   Much like the Twilight series itself, it gets so close to delivering some totally inappropriate and yet vaguely satisfying sexual thrill, but then just leaves you hanging… out on Ed’s face.   I’ve said too much, yes?  I must have, because there is that painful burning sensation at the thought of posting.  Yay!

As a super gross addendum, Middle sister called with a question about birth control and strokes in our family history.  Except she kept saying “I don’t want to stroke out,” which, in my vocab, is a sexual reference, even though in hers it is a medical term for brain bleed.  But double weird because we were kind of talking about sex-related things, but in the sterile atmosphere of birth control.  And also, it was my sister, and we’re tight, but not really on the level where we freely exchange masturbation talk.  Finally, I had to crawl under my desk and ask her to just. stop. saying. that.  But I couldn’t exactly say why, except for it was like a hotdog rolled in grape jelly – sisters and sex talk and strokes is no good together.  Ew-ew-ew.

And PS:  I was in a state of constant amusement this week how many people assumed I would not stumble to the idea of having a lock on the bedroom door.  I am laughing right now writing that.  I love that you guys think I am the kind of bad ass who would boink around without heavy barricades in place.  Even with them there, I am still having a hard time getting satisfaction.  One more week of nighttime only sex and I might seriously turn into the girl (over 15) who wears the Edward Panties for realz.  I can’t stay up until ten to have sex!  I am the mother of three children!

I’ve gotten myself in this stupid meta-blog-pickle in which I am keeping secrets from you again, and I’m not brave/stupid/ready to talk about that with you yet, and it is effing up my ability to talk to you about anything at all.

It is weird how I have to reenact secrets everywhere once they get started somewhere.  Like now, I am secretly planning to take the kids to Disneyland for Christmas, and am sneaking around, trying to plan this out without them knowing.  Which is a fool’s errand if ever there was one, because any essence of Disneyland is like blood in shark-infested waters, where small children can sense it miles away and come circling in.

In other secrety news, I have started freaking out about sex during daylight hours, because the kids are old enough to walk out of their rooms and tall enough to reach doorhandles, or knock on the bedroom door, even when it is nap time.  And although this has not happened yet, the threat of it happening eventually is hanging out there and causing me to feel a little weirded-out about getting freaky.  Also, it makes me remember the times I realized my own parents had sex.  And eww, nothing will cold fish your libido faster than thinking of any of those things I just listed when you are trying to get your MILF on.  I fear that soon I will be regulated to sex only in the dark, after 10:00 PM, and VERY, VERY QUIETLY for the next 18 years, because this will be the only time I won’t have to keep one eye on the doorknob.

Because, secrets, people.  Once you’ve got one, you’ve got an infestation, and there is nothing to do but buy that special cream at the pharmacy and burn whatever won’t wash.

Here I was in those size 30s two months ago.

And here I am this morning in the same pair.

Of course, after I took that picture, I started breathing again, ate breakfast, and promptly tripped on the spare tire that regrew over my belt loops.

It has been an interesting weight loss journey – this weekend I attended a party, during which this skinny mom sidled up next to me and whispered something about fat people, with this secret-handshake look in her eye, like I’d totally know what a pain in the ass fat people related paraphernalia is for skinny chicks.

I know she was saying it because something else had just happened that probably made her feel real insecure, but all I could do was look at her like she must have had a stroke or something because: hey beanpole, I’m one of those fat people and so I don’t know what it is like to swim in a pool of denim every time I try on a pair of pants.  In fact, I’m making this weird face at you from behind three chins even now.

Anyway.  Apparently I have passed the secret BMI borderline into the land of normal sized chicks.   You’d think I’d be giggling and rolling around on the floor or something.  Frankly, I’m a little surprised at my reaction as well.  Must be flu remnants sucking all the joy out of everything.  Or maybe realizing there was always some secret-handshake eyeball going around, except before I was on the other end.  Which makes me want to go back in time and yell, “I am not on your team, bitch!  I just happen to have lost some junk out my trunk.”

Which, I should totally remind myself that I react this way the next time I get mopey about not having any mom friends.