7:00-7:25 p.m. Elizabeth cries downstairs.

7:25-8:20 p.m. I try to figure out what the heck her problem is. I sing to her and rub her back as she says, literally, “Wahhhhh” (she’s done with crying but still wants to do it) and she finally goes hitchingly off to sleep.

8:30-8:50 p.m. William has a bad dream. I get him out of bed and talk with him for awhile: it helps to fully wake up from a dream before going back to bed.

10:00-10:40 p.m. I lie awake waiting for sleep to happen. The last time I see the clock before falling asleep, it’s 10:40.

11:00-11:05 p.m. A cat chases a plastic Easter egg wildly down the hardwood hall, skittering and bumping into walls. I’m so completely asleep, at first I think it’s morning. I get up, pick up the Easter eggs and put them out of cat reach. As I do so, I “move the cat aside with my foot,” in a gesture that some people might use a different verb for.

12:25-12:45 a.m. Henry wakes up and wants to nurse. I remind him that the pediatrician said babies Henry’s age don’t need to eat at night. Henry disagrees and/or did not receive that memo.

2:30-2:40 a.m. Electrifying sounds of a cat barfing repeatedly and energetically. I lie in the dark wondering if I’m going to cry first, hit something first, or just get up and deal with it. I just get up and deal with it. I can only find two tiny bits of cat barf—is there more somewhere? I refill the cats’ water dish.

4:15-4:20 a.m. The cats have been up and around ALL NIGHT. What is their DEAL? They’re fighting in the hall for the zillionth time. FINE. I will refill their food dish, because that’s probably the problem. They can’t wait even 2 more hours until morning. FINE. I go down to the scary dark basement and refill their dish—which STILL HAS PLENTY OF FOOD IN IT. The cats come running and galumphing anyway: it’s FRESH food now.

4:45 a.m. Elizabeth cries briefly and goes back to sleep.

5:25 a.m. Paul’s alarm goes off.

6:15 a.m. My alarm goes off.

This whole week, Henry has been so fussy. Did you ever see that thing, I think it was some PBS show, where first you see a video of a scary crocodile walking along the edge of the water, and they play horror-movie music in the background? and then you see the same video again, but this time with silly, ballerina-hippo-type music? It’s amazing how different the scene looks, just with that soundtrack change: first the crocodile looks scary and ugly, and two seconds later his waddle seems hilarious and lovable.

That’s how it is around here: Henry’s fussing is the soundtrack of my day, and it changes the way I perceive the scene. A toddler asking me “My have that? My have that PINK HOAT? an’ wear it, and it is so fuffy?” (My have that pink coat and wear it and it is so fluffy) is so cute under normal circumstances, but when the baby is crabbing in the background and has been ALL DAY despite cuddles and playing and tylenol and extra nursing/food and trying not to walk away from him because it triggers what is probably separation anxiety, it is very, very difficult to focus on a little piping voice insisting that I repeat back to her everything she’s saying, and it is difficult to find it cute when she wants to hear me say it once more with feeling, and it is difficult to see our household as anything but a roiling pit of noise and demands and complaints—even if what I’m actually seeing is cuteness.

(I originally had a 60-second video here that illustrated EXACTLY what I meant: Henry crying while cute Elizabeth tried to tell me something. But after letting Blogger “process” the video for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES with no end in sight, I gave up. And get this: I hit cancel, and it is STILL “PROCESSING.”)

I am feeling Not Good today. Last night I had Night Sadness (lying awake thinking of sad and oppressive things, and all the ways in which I have failed / am failing / will fail), and usually sleep cures that—but this morning I woke up with Day Sadness. It feels like I do the same thing day in and day out, and like it’s never going to change, and like I’m never going to handle anything right, and like the world is a bad and stupid place. I know that’s not true, but what I know doesn’t have much to do with it.

So today I’m in Postpartum Mode, doing all the things that can help with irrational feelings that feel rational. I got up and made myself coffee and two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast: caffeine! protein! hot beverage!—all things that can help. I took a shower with hotter than usual water, and I turned on a bunch of extra lights: usually Mother Earth has her way, but today the world feels like it’s going down the toilet whether I use extra electricity or not.

I used my favorite 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, which smells beachy. I used an apricot facial scrub. After showering, I used a serving of an expensive face lotion sample my mom’s friend Donna gave me: it smells like perfume and it feels like being rich, and I use it when things are Grim. I lit my favorite Illuminations candle, the Flower Garden one that smells like flower petals and fresh spring dirt.

I held the baby for awhile. This is not recommended if the available baby is in a crabby, squirmy mood and will make you feel like a bad mother who can’t even make her own baby happy. But if you have a cozy warm baby in a footie sleeper who hooks his little arm around your upper arm and rests his cheek against your cheek companionably, this is like a shot of psych meds straight into an artery, or perhaps I mean vein, or perhaps adding that kind of medication right into the blood wouldn’t help anyway, but what I mean is that it’s pleasant.

It is common for people to say to me, a mother of five, that they feel they really can’t complain about having “only” one or two children. “I can’t even handle TWO,” they say. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Once in a while, like this morning, I’m left in the house with fewer than my usual number of children. Right now I’m here for two hours with just Henry: my parents took Rob and the twins out to lunch, and Paul has gone on some errands with William. A rational mind would assume that this would be an improvement: what a treat, to be here with just one child! What a peaceful, relaxing time, to have only 20% of my usual workload!

NO. It is HARDER. It is HARDER to have one child. When it is just Henry and me, he wants my attention all the time. I go nuts feeling like I have to entertain him; he goes nuts feeling like I have to entertain him. He fusses and cries a lot, and that’s the only sound in this quiet house.

I don’t know what to do with him: when I hold him, he squirms and kicks; when I put him down, he doesn’t like that either. I move him from his exersaucer to his playroom to his jump-up, and nothing pleases him. Time goes very slowly: how long until I can give him some lunch? how long until he’ll go down for his nap? oh no, it can’t be only 11:24!

I’m simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. It’s VERY UNPLEASANT. It reminds me of the days when Rob was a toddler and William was a baby, and I used to get weepy because I wanted to have four children but I didn’t see how that would be possible when two was SO HARD.

One is HARD. Two is HARD. Really, I don’t know how you do it.

Ever since I saw the invitation, I’ve been dreading the birthday party I had to take William to today. It’s at one of those Ark E. Ade places where you have to follow your child around urging him to be sensible with his limited tokens, and then watching as he finds out that all he can buy with his 100 tickets is 5 Tootsie Rolls, and that all the other prizes on display are DENIED.

When we arrived, the mom of the birthday child (I’m assuming it was the mom: she seemed to be in charge, so I introduced myself, but she didn’t say who she was) said I could leave him. I said I could stay, and she said no, she had helpers, and she pointed to a group of nice- and responsible-looking teenaged girls. She really seemed to hope I would go, and a little impatient with me for hesitating—as if I were some sort of overprotective weirdo. So I asked William if that was okay with him, and he said yes, and I left.

I should be delighted: I don’t have to stand around watching him waste tokens on gambling games set up to disappoint children! I don’t have to try to figure out who everyone is, as I keep introducing myself and people keep saying, “Oh, hi!” in a friendly way but not volunteering their own names! I don’t have to stand there as all the other mothers turn down cake with a little laugh, and then feel like they’re all thinking, “That explains the size of her BUTT” as I accept a plate—when actually they’re probably thinking, “Aw, dammit, I wish they’d asked her first so I could have said yes too!” I should be really glad to be home doing whatever I want while the three youngest all take naps and Paul plays Risk with Rob.

Instead I am a big mess of nerves. William is a first-grader, and I have left him in a building full of people I don’t know. Worst of all, I told him to obey instructions, but I neglected to say that he should not obey anyone trying to get him to leave the building. How could I have forgotten to tell him that? It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to obey someone who said, “Okay, now we’re going outside for the next part of the party!” I can see him following cheerfully! Who would be watching out for him? NO ONE!!!

In vain I remind myself that we live in a relatively crime-free area. In all the years I’ve lived here, there’s only been one thing that even SEEMED like attempted kidnapping, and it turned out to be some drunk idiot. Nothing bad is going to happen. There were five teenagers and several adults in charge of about a dozen children. I’m going to go back to the arcade in an hour and a half, and William’s going to be there, pink-cheeked and wired and full of cake, with colored frosting stains on his shirt that won’t come out, holding a goody bag and covered in germs from the vile ball pit, and with no answers to my anxious questions designed to discover if we sent a present of approximately the right value. And all the way home, I am going to drill him about not leaving the building with strangers.

Follow-up: Of course he was totally fine and safe. On the way home I said tentatively, “Was it okay, not having me there with you?” and he said, “I had so much fun, I forgot all ABOUT you!”

We got a little work done on our house today. When we moved in more than 7 years ago, the inspector said the first thing we should do was put down more insulation in the attic. Did we MEAN to do it? Oh yes! Did we in fact take even one step toward doing it, other than saying, “We should do that attic thing”? No!

Does it lower me in your eyes if I say that my DAD finally arranged it? He was having his attic done, and I was like, “OH, um, maybe if you mention that WE also….” and so he arranged to have the estimate done, and he asked the scary guys questions about what the options meant, and he told me which ones I should initial and which ones were silly and I should X them out, and he gave them my credit card number. So all I had to do was be home today to nod knowledgeably and smile insecurely and wring my hands anxiously while guys came into my house and talked about “got a good 40, 41 here!” and “yeah, that’s over 3000 cubic feet of air going out [or possibly IN] your soffits!” and other things that seemed to mean, “Things are bad, but we can plug up the holes with money!”

They put a cool red submarine-looking thing over a doorway, and blew air around, and they all seemed very pleased with the results of their before-and-after measurements, and then they left and I was pleased to have them gone so I no longer had to hide in the MIDWAY of the house: not right where they’re working, so they’d feel self-conscious and watched—but also not so far away that if they needed to ask me a question they’d have to come looking for me. Whenever one of the guys coughed or cleared his throat (which happened OFTEN), I would pop up like a hand-wringing mole, eager to be available for any insulation-related issues they might need my expert input on—and they’d look at me briefly and go back to work, and I’d act as if I’d just come out to straighten the curtains ALL SET NOW KTHX! Just going back to this other room now! In a perfectly natural manner! Like I do every day in my own house!

Well, the upside of being an anxious introvert with strangers in the house is that the Nervous Cleaning kicks in, and my kitchen looks better than it has since my mother-in-law’s last visit. Plus, I had to empty a closet for them to get into the attic, so that closet is all tidy now—er, insofar as everything is out of it and all over our bedroom.

I know Tessie likes health kick talk, so I will talk about this book here instead of squirreling it away for private consumption.

(image from Amazon.com)

I read The Sugar Addict book a number of years ago, liked it, started following the advice in it—but gained ten pounds and dropped the whole system like a night potato. [Little joke interpretation for those who have not yet read the book: the author recommends eating a potato each evening.]

Now I’m re-reading it, and I’m finding it re-awesome and thinking of re-trying it. A lot of it is what I’m trying to do ANYWAY on my diet: eating protein for breakfast, eating more whole grains, eating more vegetables, eating less sugar. And perhaps this time I won’t go around saying, “Hey, fast food is high in protein!”

Here are the things I like/dislike so far, partway through my re-read:

I like:

1) The idea of sugar as a substance that can be abused. I find it helpful to think of it not as an inherently bad thing, but as something that can be used normally (the equivalent of a drink with dinner) or not (the equivalent of needing five or six drinks to feel anything at all).

2) The idea that some people have a problem with sugar, and some don’t. I find it helpful to think that just as some people can’t have a drink with dinner without finishing the bottle later that evening and going out for a fresh bottle the next morning, some people can’t handle their sugar normally. I have had the same bottle of vodka in my cupboard for over two years—but if that were a bag of candy, I’d think of it night and day until it was gone. Different people struggle with different things.

3) The gentle, comforting tone of the author. She sounds like she’s talking to a frightened wild animal, and she knows how to release your leg from the trap.

4) The way she really seems to understand what this is like. She doesn’t say, “Just stop eating sugar, you idiot!” She knows it can be a lot harder than that, and she has steps and tips and practical ideas.

I dislike:

1) The idea of sugar as a substance that can be abused. I feel uncomfortable comparing a sugar addiction to a drug or alcohol addiction. Sometimes it feels like when someone is talking about how they were only 5 years old when their mother died, and someone else says, “Oh, I totally know what you mean: my grandma died when I was 25 and I was SO BUMMED.”

2) The idea that some people have a problem with sugar, and some don’t. I really DON’T want to go around explaining to friends and family that sugar is like poison to me, or whatevs. *EYE ROLL*

3) The gentle, comforting tone of the author. Sometimes it seems soooooooo self-helpy, I feel silly reading it.

4) The way she really seems to understand what this is like. When she’s right, it IS pretty mesmerizing—but when she misses her guess, I feel out of place and awkward, like a fortune teller is telling me things about my life that aren’t true (“You will have only one chiiiiiiiild! And you will never marryyyyyyyy!”).

I keep a diet journal. I write my weight in it once a week, and I write down Steller Dieting Insights I have, and I make lists of useful foods, and I write down milestones like going down a size, and I write to distract myself from eating, and I use it as a confessional, and I write in it when I’m feeling very tempted to scrap the whole diet.

I recommend it. It’s helpful at the time I’m writing (accountability, therapy, distraction), and it’s helpful to look back and see progress: from “I don’t think I can do this” to “I’m doing this!”

It’s also helpful for my character, to be reminded of what a REPETITIVE, LAME, incredibly SLOW learner I am. I was looking back at my last diet, to see at what point I was able to fit in my next-size-down jeans—I don’t even want to TRY them if I might not fit. And I found myself reading basically the same things I’d JUST been writing.

Easter 2006: All day I ate sweets. They all tasted too sweet—sharp and cloying—but I felt like I’d regret it if I didn’t fully take advantage of this Free Day.
Easter 2008: Today I barely even wanted the candy, and ate it partly out of feeling like I’d be mad at myself later for not taking the opportunity when I had it.

Easter 2006: So I spent all morning eating Hershey and Cadbury and Reese’s. Do I feel great? No, queasy. Was it really fun and satisfying? No, it was just okay. So WHY can’t I take this experience WITH me, so I won’t pine incessantly for the candy I apparently don’t even want?
Easter 2008: I’ve felt queasy all day. When I eat candy, I feel yucky. But when I CAN’T eat candy, I want it ALL THE TIME. It’s a CONSTANT STRUGGLE. WHY IS IT? Since candy makes me feel sick, why can’t I REMEMBER that information and NOT EAT IT?

March 2006: My body feels suddenly different. I notice it feels different to wash, like after a haircut. My jeans are loose enough, I’m thinking of trying the next size down.
March 2008: I suddenly feel different, smaller. I’m tempted to try on smaller jeans. It’s like instead of a HAIRcut, I got a BODYcut.

In fact, what I recommend is keeping a diet journal just once, and then RECYCLING it. No sense wearing out your wrist and wasting ink.

I met Paul the first day of freshman college orientation, in the dining hall. Paul needed a place to sit. So did the guy we’d later name our first son after.

I met my first husband a month later, during a freshmen overnight retreat. We had to pair up with someone we didn’t know, and interview them, and then introduce them to the group. Thanks a lot, stupid “getting to know you” exercise.

I don’t remember when I met my friend Astarte, but it must have been after my freshman year of high school, because she was a grade younger than me and I didn’t go to her middle school.

I met my friend Steve in fourth grade. In high school, he dissected a frog for me. He kept trying to argue me down logically: if I’d accepted a date with his friend Edward, why wouldn’t I accept a date with HIM? He was just as smart, just as good-looking, just as nice. Plus, he’d handled the frog. I conceded his points, but there was zero chemistry. ZERO.

My friend Michelle was a year ahead of me. I just about cried when I found out we were assigned to share a room in the summer dorms, because I thought she was a jerk. She ended up being my closest college friend.

I met my friend Denise in chorus. We were both altos and there was an empty seat next to her. When I think of her now, I get an unpleasant adrenaline feeling in the corners of my jaw. She was one of the worst people I’ve ever known. If I heard that she’d died, I’d be relieved to know she was out of the world.

I met my best childhood friend Jen the summer before we started fifth grade. She thought I was going to steal her best friend away from her. Instead I stole Jen away from her best friend.

I met Al when I was playing playground tag in a group of high school friends and couldn’t catch anyone. He was a total stranger, and he hissed at me, “Tell them Al’s it!” So I yelled out, “Al’s it!” and everyone SCREAMED and started running. Al said we could still be friends even though I didn’t want to date him, but that didn’t turn out to be true.

I met Melissa in a factory where we had summer jobs. I thought she was too cool to be friends with, but I was wrong. We stayed in touch for years, but eventually all she was sending me was email forwards.

I met Edward in English class. We were each other’s very first date. We were 15, so his dad drove. We only went out once, which made me sad and confused. He died when we were 30.

Karen was my boss. After I quit, we became friends.

I met my friend Mairzy because she married an old classmate of mine and my mother sent me a link to the birth announcement of their baby.

John was always reading the sports pages during study hall. My friend Shannon and I talked with happy self-consciousness, knowing he was listening to us. He was kind. We had crushes on each other at the same time, but we didn’t know it until after we didn’t anymore.

I met my friend Liz at work. She correctly guessed my astrological sign; she said it was obvious. She called me “man,” as in, “I love working with you, man, but you have got to stop talking about babies.” Her boyfriend wouldn’t have children, because he had to compensate for his sister’s lack of concern for population control.

I met my high school boyfriend when he kept coming into the doughnut shop where I worked. His family was sick of doughnuts by the time I caught on. We dated on and off for two years. I didn’t think we should date anymore, but I couldn’t break it off either, so I got him to sign up with the military. That did it.