Anne Nahm

I’m a pissy little bitch over here in Anneland these days.  Welcome to Anneland!  Let me stamp your passport.  *whapwhapwhapwhapwhapwhapwhapwhapWHAPWHAPWHAP*

I am gaining weight.  It makes me so mad, but here’s the thing:  Yesterday afternoon, I was trying to make some lunch for my sick 4-year-old and my sick 10-month-old, and as I’m moving from stove to fridge, there is suddenly a tiny wailing human who pulls up and stands behind me, fists full of my pants leg, firmly attached to the back of my knees.  PS:  I later that day found out this human has pink eye, a sinus infection, and an ear infection.

As I am carefully shuffling to the fridge so as not to knock Ye Olde Town Crier down (and thus make her go from wailing to outraged screaming) she is actually cruising, taking these goose-stepping, Frankensteinesque steps behind me.  Rah! She says.  Aeghhh!

The 4-year-old, who demanded the mac & cheese for lunch, announces she does not really want mac & cheese at all.

The baby gets louder so I can hear her over the 4-year-old.

The 4-year-old starts shouting so I can’t hear over the baby she DOES NOT WANT MAC & CHEESE AFTER ALL.   GOT THAT, MOM?  GOT IT?  I WANT…. (Baby: ahhh!)… UHHMMMM… (Ahhh!)…. UHHHHM.  (timer beeps for noodles, but there is no way I can transport boiling water in present situation)  MOM?  MOM ARE YOU LISTENING?  (Ahh!)  MOM?  IT BEEPED!  IT BEEPED, MOM. WHAT ELSE IS FOR LUNCH?  I WANT… UHM…. (ahhh!)

Is the screaming coming from the baby anymore or from inside my own head?  After two weeks of this same basic scenario, it is hard to tell. But at this stage yesterday, I was pretty sure that I wanted someone to make me something.  A glass of wine.  But baring being stoopid drunk by 1:00 in the afternoon, I just really wanted someone else to make dinner, so I didn’t have to think about it, or make it, or clean up after it.  I wanted someone to take care of me.  Which is how I’ve been feeling all month.  Which is why, when the baby pulls on my pant legs, my pants no longer threaten to fall off.

My mom, who left at the end of January after being my sole babysitter (and giving me two days notice) is still gone with no plans to return.  What’s worse is that I’m kind of an asshole for being mad at her, since funeral arrangements are hardly like sneaking away with your pool boy lover to the Caribbean.  I am worried and sad for her.  But also?  My eye twitches when I think about how stupid I am for not having back up child care.  I am up at 6:30 every morning and with kids until 8:00 every night, and there is no time in between that I have time away from all three.  I am typing this with a kid in my lap!  And just to underline my asshole status:  very angry at my mom, even though I am unjustified, does not stop me from stepping outside so I can stomp my foot and curse under my breath and plot petty revenge fantasies like I am 14 instead of 35.   STOOPID.  And angry.  And thanks to my recent overfishing of the Drive Thru Burger and Swedish Fish population, jelly bellied and mortified, too.

ETA:  Wrong thing I laughed at this week:  2010 Winter Olympics – you win some,  you luge some.

My uncle died this afternoon.  I feel compelled to shout, My Uncle is Dead!  Long Live My Uncle! But that would be really weird right?

I keep wondering where he is now, only a couple hours after.  In some Train Station to the Awesome There After, looking at his watch and wondering if he packed an extra set of eternal underwear, perhaps.  Or maybe he is just the sound of a phone ringing, waiting to be picked up on the other end.  Or maybe, whammo!  Already wherever he is going, drinking a Bud Light and sitting in the sun, like it’s three in the afternoon on a fishing day.

As it turns out, both his surviving siblings have such other big emergencies right now that they may not be able to attend the funeral.  Because that is the way things roll in Crazytown.   What could possibly be more important than your beloved brother’s funeral, right?  Except if I told you, you’d likely go, ohhhh, yeah.  That is more important. But!  Not my story.

Thank you for the music.  It is helping a great deal. Today, I took my two younger kids shopping at the grocery store.  Because it was that or eat that last dented, unlabeled can that haunts the back of the pantry.  We call him Casper the mystery product.

Anyway, halfway through shopping, I realized I had to pee.  And I didn’t have a carrier/stroller/place to put the baby in while I did my business.

When I got to the bathroom and shut the door, I discovered the purse holder was also ripped off the side of the  stall and the kotex box was open with all sorts of disgusting junk blooming out of it like blood bouquet.  Also, my bladder was actually making the ticking timebomb sound to let me know it was about to explode.

I recruited my 4-year-old to hold my purse and nottouchanythingpleaseOK? and I dropped trou, sat, and peed while the baby sat in my lap.  It was a completely miserable experience, profaning the act of peeing, which is one of the very last bastions of privacy I have left.  Plus, during this procedure, the baby furiously twisted for the kotex box and shifted her weight around and screamed in fury that I would not let her cram that stuff in her mouth.

I pulled up my pants, trying to bask in some small feeling of victory,  only to realize I had no effing clue how to zip up my fly with one hand (other hand wrapped firmly around squirming, screaming bundle of joy)  Or wash my hands for that matter.

And right then, with my pants sliding back down my hips toward the filthy floor and zero plan of action in my brain?  it was all I could do not to just start screaming, with my 4-year-old standing there with my big purse slung over her shoulder and looking like the mom and me feeling like the kid who needs so much freaking help and a nap and a time out.

Fortunately, the baby is still small enough to be carried like a football for very short periods of time, and thus I tucked her under my arm and didn’t have to ask the check-out clerk to zip up my junk.  But it was a close effing call.  And where was I going with that?  Oh yeah.  When I got home, I put the kids down for a nap, listened to some of the music you suggested, cried, laughed, and got my shit together the teeniest bit.  THANK YOU.

I was wide eyeball awake in the darkness this morning after escaping from a dream in which the whole world flash-flooded.  I totally death-defied drowning even though I went over the edge of a tremendous waterfall.  It was one of those dreams where your sense of falling is so real that you expect to wake up on the floor next to your bed, and so even in the dream, you are a little bit, well thank goodness this is almost over, because there is no way I’m not really falling.  Except I didn’t wake up at all.

The water receded, and the whole world was strewn with pasty, broken corpses.  They were like litter in a windy town, twisted around the foundations of destroyed houses, clogging up the storm drain opening, and wrapped under the wheels of waterlogged cars.  Some of the bodies were still twitching.  And then, of course, seeing my little sister was one of them.  She was blinking even though I was fairly sure she was dead.  It was indescribably awful, except to say it looked like the way a fish gasps for air even though it’s getting gutted on the dock.  Like it was just a reflex of dying.  My sister!

After a moment of staring freak-assed awake in the dark of my room, I decided the best thing to do was jump back into that nightmare and make the end so that I ran over and gave her CPR and she lived.  And so I did, and in the dream, part II, she came back to life because I willed it to be.  But there is something about those lucid dreaming techniques that feels like knocking on wood rather than changing reality.  Anyway, I woke up for the second time completely sad and scared and worried, and wheee!  Here I am. Because on the plus side, it’s 5:00 am, and the first time this week I’ve had some writing time.

Anyway, a ton of bad crap continues to happen all around me, and since it is not my story I don’t really want to talk about details.  Plus, second-hand details are only slightly less mind numbingly boring than other people’s dreams.    But if you’ve ever over-marinated meat?  All of me feels like that tastes.  I am burned, baby.  I am just so mutherfucking burned right now.

Everything has gone pink-assed crazy over here for everyone outside my immediate family.  I am running hither and yon with casseroles and cupcakes and condolences and congratulations and furrowed, worried brows when people talk, with lots of head nodding and knee patting and there-thereing and trying not to look at my watch.  Do you care?  No you don’t.  And everybody around here is way too traumatized for me to say, “yeah I know you’re hurting, but could you watch my kids for like twenty minutes?  Because the last time I had a chance to pee by myself was in January.”  PS:  My mom was home for two days.  After being gone two weeks.  And she’s leaving again this afternoon.  Wheeee.

So since I’m feeling full of piss and vinegar (which is evidently what happens when you don’t get a chance to unload your kidneys until they pickle*) here’s some pictures of me in those jeans, seen previously here (September):

And yesterday morning!

I’m a little dismayed that after losing 70 pounds (weighing from the week before I gave birth) that life is pretty much the same.  I have yet to find myself riding in a red convertible with David Lee Roth blaring and me suddenly blonde.  Nor am I wearing make-up and feeling myself up all the time, which is kind of how I imagined it would be.

In fact, I’m kind of struggling with the fact that my critical eye just moved from my belly to other places I’m feeling too insecure to name right this minute.   And I’d like to put a bow on that idea for you, but guess what?  I’m taking care of my own children this week, which means my time is up!

* That would’ve been a better line if I’d made some reference to drinking wine, for the vinegar part.  But I don’t want to mislead you.  I haven’t been drinking.  And to pretend like I was, and then post pictures where I was losing weight seemed like a bitchy thing to do.  If I drink, I chub out about three seconds later.  And not chub like seeing Brad Pitt slide down a greased pole, but rather like a bowl of yeasty dough in a warm kitchen.  Mmmmm.  Chubby.

*I was reading this article about sexual innuendo in the Bible.  It claims that the word “testify” is from the Latin “testis”, which apparently means both “witness” and “testes”.  And, get this!  When you would testify in old times, you would do so by swearing an oath while grabbing the testicle of another.  LOL Old Times!  Although I must admit that if someone grabbed me by the balls and swore something, I’d be inclined to believe them.

*I’ve been seriously considering making a baby book for my youngest kid that is comprised entirely of LOLbabies.  Like LOLcats, only featuring my daughter in candid shots, with poor spelling (LOLbabehz! ), and lots of invisible fight scene captions. There are clearly a lot of good reasons not to do this, but I keep thinking about how funny those ’70′s pictures my mom took of me are, with the powder blue tuxedo ruffle shirt, bowl hair cut and collars that tipped out at my shoulders.  How could I not treat my child to the same type experience?  Plus, as embarrassing as LOLbabehz might be, it’s not like I’m doing something really cruel like giving her a mullet.

*So if you are still here, you must be bored, and so I’m hoping you will take a moment to advise me on something if you have knowledge.  Anybody out there quit their career and start a new business?  If so, any advice to impart?  Why did you do it and how did it turn out?  Good or bad, and also feel free to email if you don’t want it splayed across comments.  What do you need to know to give up a job and start something new?