Hooray!

I’m having a hard day today, and the worst part of it is that I have no idea why. Having an overly emotional mother has left me with a pretty amazing ability to take each emotion that comes through my mind, turn it around, and examine why I feel a certain way and if it is an appropriate feeling to be having. After all feelings are not facts, which is something many people struggle with.

Part of the problem is that I’m a bit used up after this weekend, because in my role in our house, I am the go-to person. Having a bad day? Tell Becky why and she’ll try to make it better. Need a problem solved, go-to Becky/Mom. NEED TO EAT RIGHT NOW, OHMYGOD I NEED TO EAT MOOOOOOOOOOMMM, Mom will make it and feed you. Most of the time, I can handle this and take it all in stride. I’m awesome at multi-tasking, if I do say so myself (and I always do, don’t I?), but sometimes, just sometimes, I need someone else to take the ship and steer it without my help. Last week, because when it rains, it pours, it just wasn’t possible to fix it all and leave anything left of my sanity. There was at no point, during any of my days last week that SOMEONE didn’t need me for SOMETHING RIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWRIGHTNOW, and I’m just shot.

I knew I was in for it last night when I realized that I haven’t been able to eat all of my Weight Watchers POINTS this week, as I am an emotional non-eater. I actually stood at the cabinet last night trying to find something worth approximately 16 POINTS (which is a lot, if you don’t know anything about the diet). I decided on a Colorado Bulldog (a strong drinky-drink), which is like the worst thing for you ever, because I just couldn’t handle the thought of putting real food into my mouth.

The only healthy solution that I have ever been able to use to quell the upsetedness (I loves me my confabulation) is to do hard manual work. As such, my house is now reaping the benefits of having me in a stew–it’s glistening and shining and smells awesome. It worked for awhile, but now that raw feeling is creeping back in, so I’m comforting myself that tomorrow will be a new day and I’ll start to feel more human again.

Sometimes, I just wonder what it’s gonna take.

At 5 months postpartum, I still am 38 pounds heavier than when I got pregnant. This fact makes me highly bitter, as I neither enjoyed eating while pregnant, nor did I eat myself into a stupor as I did when pregnant with Ben. Plus, I cannot avoid all of the “wow, I breastfed and lost 93 pounds in a week!” propaganda that LaLeche League puts out. I’ve been working steadfastidly at losing weight and STILL have only lost 7 or 8 pounds. That’s depressing.

I fear that the only way that I can go nose to the grindstone to lose this weight is to quit breastfeeding. Ah, breastfeeding, have I ever felt more conflicted about something? In short: no, no I haven’t. I share a love-hate relationship with it, more hate these days with the incessant biting that Baby Alex loves to do to my poor bedraggled nipples. I’m imagining some sort of gradual weaning taking place over the next couple of months.

So, what does someone as OCD as me do in this sort of situation? I make a plan.

I am going on the record here to proclaim that I plan to lose 15-20 lbs by Christmas Day. Considering how overweight I currently am, this may be a loftier goal, but come hell or high water, I’m going to give it my all. I could lie and say that I’ve been only halfheartedly sticking to my diet, and maybe it’s partially true, but now I mean it for serious.

It’s on fat, it’s SO on. You’re going to have to take up residence on someone else (like Dave, for example, he needs it more than I do).

It’s been a long two years, marked with such exciting events as “Why Becky Is A Sucky Pregnant Woman” and “Wow, We Need To Make Up Our Mind As To Where We Want To Live,” and in that time I’d like to think that I’m starting to learn a bit about this whole Being An Adult thing. And if not, at least I’m learning a bit about homeowning, or as I like to call it Why Lowe’s Is Heaven On Earth.

Over and over again, I sit around googling prices for things, because where I grew up, I never had to worry my addled mind about such things as lawn furniture and light fixtures. In fact, you might even say that I was oblivious to them, because I could not have cared less. Now that I have my own house, I am constantly struck by just how incredibly off my internal pricing is about the crap that you suddenly find yourself obsessing over. Like why shiny brass fixtures were so important to the previous owners. I mean, WHY?!?

Take for example lighting fixtures, which I, for good reason, never ever had chance to explore unless we were high and OOOOOHH!! a pretty light! I had always assumed that they were unbelievably expensive. Prohibitively so. In remodeling the bathroom, I’ve learned that holy hell, they’re actually pretty reasonable. Which makes me wonder why on earth my parents stuck with their pseudo Tiffany style, hanging fruit covered, stained glass monstrosity for so damn long. Illogical, and if you ask me, unforgivable.

Which brings me to nail guns. I’d always assumed that we’d acquire one during the bathroom remodel, because, hey, we’re putting in a chair rail (<-----don't I sound sophisticated!?!) and we have to replace the trim, plus they might be handy to use to threaten Daver with. Then I walked by the selection, and wowzers, they're SUPER expensive!! Who knew?!!? Why is lawn furniture so freaking expensive? The set we'd picked out cost over $2,000, which I wouldn't spend on ANYTHING (unless, of course, you mean bed linens, in which case I would and have), and most other stuff looks like it belongs in the same circle of hell as our old bathroom did, and even THAT is expensive as fcuk. Unreal, simply stated. I guess that I still have a lot to learn about this Adult Stuff, after all.

Sudddenly, I’m very afraid.

What began as a bad birthday weekend is now shaping up to be a bad birthday week. Does anyone know how to rid yourself of a curse? Anyone perform exorcisms?

I still cannot see well. Things are almost completely blurry, which makes everyday living annoying if not entirely unbearable. Sound like I’m overreacting? Take the lens out of one of your glasses, or remove one contact and walk around for awhile: that’s how it feels. I spend several hours a day trying to remove long dark hairs out of Alex’s neck fat, diaper area, arm fat and hands (I heart you postpartum hair loss) not because the hairs are really that prolific (anymore), but because I can’t quite navigate exactly where the damn things are. And because of the complete loss of depth perception, I can’t drive myself to the doctor (or anywhere else, really).

On Tuesday, right before I was planning to go to bed early (foronceinmydamnlife), I heard the dog barking loudly outside. Because I cannot see (read: lazy) I sent Daver out to investigate, while I went to the sink to wash my hands. Then I smelled it. A combo of burning rubber and burning oil. Oh holy fuck. Shit.

The dog was tangling with a skunk.

Needless to say, I won’t bore you with the details about baking soda and H2O2 covering the kitchen, or how when the mixture reaches your skin in drop form your skin looks like you have vittaligo, or how truly awful fresh skunk goo smells.

Let’s just say that I didn’t go to bed early that night.

And the Vicodin, while awesome, leaves me an awesome, drooling, high as hell mess, which means that I cannot parent Alex. Dave = workaholic, who for obvious reasons, like our house is not the same as work is not here much. So I cannot take my precious pills. I wouldn’t mind being blind so much if I were high.

Ain’t that the truth.

Daver and I happened to be sitting out on our back porch one night, mildly discussing our past relationships. Mainly, it was a back and forth game of virtual tennis, but instead of balls (hehe. BALLS!!) we hurled insults. Basically, it was like playing ‘War’ but without the cards:

Actual example:

‘Dude, you dated Sabrina. Why won’t she update her blog? Email her and have her update her blog.’

‘No. Besides you dated Nat.’

‘Right, but Nat didn’t have an entire section of his website devoted to sappy poemes about me. Didja hear the fancy way I said poemes?’

‘But it’s Nat.’

‘Dude, I so win’

‘No, you don’t. Nat trumps Sabrina.’

‘…ad nauseum

During this discussion, Dave made mention of sappy love poetry he’d written, and I was forced to reveal that although I had ‘œwhored around’ I had never had a crappy emo poeme written for me.

Ever.

The Daver saw his opportunity to shine, and went a-running with it. So now, at the tender age if 25 I am in possession of my first ever crappy, sappy and lame emo poeme, reprinted here just as the author had intended it.

Becky’s Crappy Sappy Emo Poeme (I named this bad boy; Dave would probably have named it something emo-like and crappy like ‘Velvet Turbulence’).

‘Burning like tear-trails,
desire unrequited-
with a glance, your flame
flares searingly through
my veins.
Blood boiling,
then cooling,
then freezing my icy heart.’

So I retorted with this beauty:

It Tastes Like Battery Acid, You Bastard!

‘you sweet and sensuous velvet sparkly
caresses my mouth,
i yearn,
i burn,
for more.
i need you,
like i need air,
shamelessly,
without remorse.
i listen not to others,
who complain about your taste.
as they have no more taste-buds.
you taste like angels,
and faeries,
and all that is good with the world.
like the guy at the 7-11 who provides you to me.
daily’

As I handed my prized poeme off to The Daver for inspection, expectantly waiting for the ‘Wow! You’re an amazing poet!’ compliments to start flying my way, I was sorely disappointed. For all of my .56 seconds of effort (most of those .01 seconds were spent trying to figure out how to spell angel and caress) I got a measly:

‘Becky, this poem isn’t about me. It’s about Diet Coke.’

Touche, The Daver, touche.

I got my first tattoo almost three years ago for my 22nd birthday. It’s a gecko that takes up most of my right foot, very niftily colored and adorable and he’s there to remind me to always be true to myself which is something that I had to learn the hard way.

Location was key because I needed to be able to hide it. I have enough foresight to know that in 50 years, getting “I HEART KURT COBAIN” on my boob probably wouldn’t be a huge hit at the rest home and might require a little explaining on my wedding day, so the foot it was.

It hurt like a motherfucker. Of course it did. For weeks.

To celebrate becoming Aunt Becky, RN, BSN, I decided to do something special for myself because what I just did–graduate school after completely flipping around my educational dreams and desires and change career paths entirely–that’s a Big Fucking Deal. It needed to be commemorated with something more than a haircut or a purse.

My other foot is now the proud new owner of a throbbing swollen foot covered by a large, pink tattooed seahorse.

It’s the other lesson I want to remember with The Wedding That Ate My Life looming just around the corner: I can always make it on my own.

Always.