The summer after Alex was born, I decided to sort through the Tupperware coffin of loose pictures in my parents basement and take the ones that I wanted. I was tired of not having any pictures of me as a baby around and imagined huge battles between my brother and I over who got to keep the picture of our stupid dog Silas.

So, I dug in one day, and gathered a bag up.

I had lofty goals, Internet, you see. I was going to:

a) sort the pictures chronologically

b) throw out repeats/crappy pictures and

niner) place them all neatly in a book or thirty.

I got to about age 6 in my life before I threw in the towel and shoved the whole lot into a far smaller Rubbermaid bin and shoved it into a corner. My father and grandfather took pictures the way I collect orchids: obsessively. I was, apparently, a favorite target.

Years later, it’s still sitting there, collecting dust and mocking me quietly.

I shudder when I think about having to sort through the amount of things that my in-laws have saved. To call my mother-in-law a pack rat would be a grave disservice to pack rats everywhere. She is a pack rat times approximately 6,879. I don’t pretend to understand, so I just smile and nod, which seems easier to all parties involved and wins me more Daughter-In-Law Of The Year* trophies.

So I go through our house about every 3-4 months and purge the fuck out of everything, while, of course, Dave and Ben are away so that they cannot protest when I get rid of their collection of ancient reciepts and old mouldering socks. It’s great for my soul.

When Alex was born, I badgered my mother-in-law in the patented Becky-Drip-Drip Method, which I liken to being pecked to death by an overly large chicken, for baby pictures of The Daver. I love baby pictures of people that I know, and I was dying to see them.

Each and every time I was met with an excuse. Turns out that in the vast multitude of boxes, she has lost them somewhere. But during a visit, she’d brought up a handful that she’d had lying around and whipped them out to show me. Turns out that Alex looked very little like The Daver. Who knew?

Having recently given up on the task of placing my pictures in an album I pulled out a stack from my own babyhood to show her.

So we flipped on and on through the pictures of Baby Becky, while I commented on my fathers’ Iranian Taxi Driver glasses and his David Crosby mustache. She’d laugh uncomfortably, obviously trying to get away from me, but having nowhere to really go, she was stuck.

Eventually, it dawned on me that I was showing my EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE mother-in-law naked pictures of daughter-in-law. As a dimpled baby. Occasionally being nursed. But nearly always naked.

Including the bear skin rug set.

“Heh, heh, heh,” I sputtered, trying to recover from the situation and perhaps mend the ever-widening chasm between us.

“What’s up with kids in the eighties? Heh-heh-heh.”

I couldn’t stop myself.

“It’s like they were never wearing clothes. Heh-heh-heh.” Trying to salvage the situation.

“WELL,” she replied, her irritation seeping though her tightly clipped words, “Maybe not in YOUR house.”

Great, I thought to myself, just fucking GREAT, barely suppressing the laughter. Now she thinks you come from a NAKED Family. I snickered into my cupped hand.

Oh well, I thought to myself as she got up in a huff and walked away, leaving me stranded on a couch, in a pool of naked baby pictures. That’s better than thinking you came from The Jello Mold Family.

*I am the only daughter-in-law. Therefore, I have to be the best.

At about 7 months pregnant, I got myself a facial, for the first time in my whole life (I am SO going to love the search terms that get people here now that I placed that choice word in a post. Hot.) because pregnancy Round Two didn’t seem to agree with me. I had developed sort of an ashen, Don’t Come Too Close To Me Because I Look Ill And You Might Catch It complexion, and I assumed that it would help.

It didn’t (but delivery did!), and I walked out of the salon $100 poorer AND blotchy faced.

For months both before and after, I’d lusted after a mirror, a big portable mirror so that I could pluck the ole caterpillers without using a 1.5×1.5 compact mirror. This was before I had realized how prohibitavely expensive these were (I tell you, it’s always the strange things that cost a fortune), so I waited. Eventually, I found one on clearance (from $60!!!! Who on EARTH would spend that kind of money on a mirror, I don’t know) that came with all of the bells and whistles that I hadn’t actually required. I can now see my face with 4x magnification AND backlit!

I finally had the guts to pull it out of the packaging today, and oh holy hell, how scary is my face at that degree of magnification!?! It’s like each individual pore can now be seen waving at me in the happiest possible way while the hairs on my face wave lazily in the breeze. It’s so frightening that I am actually wondering how my friends put up with seeing my face when they come by.

I may have to Brown Bag it until I can tame the beast.

This weekend was supposed to house the night that I was to have completely free of the screamy baby.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Both Dave and Alexander came down with the cold that had taken up residence in my sinuses and because my resistance is way, way down due mainly to my complete lack of sleep, is still holding tightly onto me. So, Saturday night I headed to bed nice and geriatrically early (for me: 9:30), Nyquil firmly on board. 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 the sweet baby awoke for no apparent reason other than the boogies in his nose were driving him crazy, and that he wanted to make me wish that I were dead.

In order to inflict exquisite torture upon him because I am a Mean Person, I decided to pull out the Booger Sucker and do some work each time. But by 1am, I had HAD it with him and deposited him none to sweetly with his father, whose nose full of loud boogies had earned him banishment to the downstairs couch.

Back to bed I happily treked (actually full of guilt, but hey), only to be awoken by my husband 30 minutes later who waltzed in to get the Booger Sucker. Then, 20 minutes after that, back in they trekked, Alex now visably hysterical. Maternal Guilt took over, and I pulled Alex into bed with me. Where he stayed until several hours later at 7:30am.

Which effectively meant that I started out Sunday morning worse off than I’d previously been.

*Sigh.*

Today I finally broke down and did something I had vowed not to do again for a long while.

We were out shopping for something resembling a winter coat for the Wee One but what we ended up with was one for the Big One. See, I couldn’t remember what on Earth you are supposed to dress a baby in for the winter. Standard coats don’t work well because they ride up and look all uncomfortable, but the snowsuits are too damn hot for everyday use.

We found absolutely nothing, so we’re going to have to make do with some sweaters and blankets for a bit. I suppose I could throw him in his Halloween costume, but I have a feeling people might suspect me of being clinically insane if I show up to do my grocery shopping with a gigantic hotdog in tow. Oh yeah, a hotdog. Because someday he too will want to be Darth Vader for Halloween instead of a chicken (ahem, BEN.).

While we looked, Daver picked himself out a pair of jeans, which emboldened me to go alooking for something other than maternity gauchos or maternity yoga pants to wear. You see, a couple of months ago, I decided to go and purchase myself a pair of pants to wear that didn’t have an elastic waistband. The results were disasterous and completely humiliating, and I can assure you that if you did happen to see me weeping at the Gap that horrible day, no, I’m not insane. Just feeling discouraged.

I was only able to wear those pants a handful of times because each time I did so, I felt extremely discouraged and upset with myself. I didn’t WANT to be a fat pregnant lady and I didn’t WANT to be a fat postpartum lady, my body just likes to make damn certain that the baby is well padded and fed.

But winter is a-coming quickly around here (so glad I just bought that window A/C unit!) and the stretch pants are starting to unravel, so I sucked it up. I pulled out a pair of pants from the stack and shamefully marched my ass into the dressing room, fully expecting them not to fit.

Fit they did, and I could not be more thankful of that. My diet, after months of trying with other methods, is finally working.

To be clear, they are NOT the size that I was before I got pregnant, but hey, they’re only 2-3 sizes bigger. AND THEY DON’T HAVE AN ELASTIC WAISTBAND!

And now I feel like a million bucks.

Especially since that 0.5 lbs gain on the scale this week is neatly attributed to the fact that after 15 months, I once again have my period. Lucky, lucky me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived life in the present moment. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism for me, but I was shocked when I actually graduated college, stunned when I finally got married, amazed when Alexander was born, and these were all events of which I had a ton of control over but felt as though I did not.

Or maybe it’s because when you have a baby, then a toddler, followed by a preschooler that you become so busy wrapped up in whatever is going on day to day (and occasionally feeling like this stage is never, ever going to end) that you forget that time does eventually, march on, and pretty soon, your oldest child is a Real Person. And suddenly, you must start behaving like a Real Parent, which has far different implications when your child becomes of school age.

I’m not sure, but I do know that I took each stage as it came and I never, ever looked at my tiny screaming baby Benjamin and thought, wow, someday he is going to need me to make snack for school AND NOT EMBARASS HIM IN THE PROCESS, GOD, MOM.

For a shamefully long time, I admit to having felt like an outsider to the Club of Parenthood. I vividly remember taking prenatal aquatics classes while pregnant with Ben, and I was completely shunned by the other women. Not only was I younger, but I was much younger, I had no house, I had no husband, therefore I was not as good as them. Later, the nurses and my own OB at the hospital were shocked by my love for my teeny ickle Ben, as were my own parents. After that, when he started preschool, I was constantly reminded of the gap between myself and the other parents, they were older, more established and most of all THEY REALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT WAS GOING ON.

When Ben would go to birthday parties thrown by other kids, he’d come home with very thoughtfully exectued gift bags with matching shwag and candy, so incredibly unlike those that we would put together which consisted mainly of bags of stale chips from the pantry and leftover lighters we’d found lying around (y’know, for their crack pipes). While on days that Ben needed a lunch for a field trip, I’d run out and pick up a preservative-filled, nitrate laden, horrifying for you, Lunchables (shudder, shudder), these kids would have a nutritionally sound, perfectly cut, handmade, organic lunch. In matching tupperware.

We’ve signed up to do snack for his soccer team in the coming weeks, but neither of us is quite sure which day it is, which leads me to believe that whichever day it actually is, we’ll show up empty handed. So, like the good mother that I am, I’ll be forced to run out and pick up a couple dozen donuts and a big jug of coffee. For 6-year olds (for the record here, if I myself were bringing something to a party, it would be my standard bag ‘o’ Funyons and a box of chocolate covered donuts. I’m not creative.). But hey, don’t worry, I won’t forget the cream OR sugar. Don’t worry, Internet, I DO KNOW what’s important here!

But anyway, I find myself having to start to make the sort of rules that YOU remember your parents inflicting upon you: bedtime is between 7:00-7:45, only one hour of television/video games each day, don’t forget to brush your teeth and wipe your ass. And Internet, it feels weird.

I feel like a hack, an imposter, like I don’t really know what I’m doing. I haven’t read a parenting book, well, ever, aside from the one’s that promise to help your baby sleep through the night, I don’t have 1,001 creative ways to handle each situation, sometimes I find that a swift just punishment works far better than some kind of touchy feely “talk it out” punishment does.

Maybe we’re all just faking it ’til we make it, I’m not sure. The best that I can hope for is that he won’t have to spend TOO many thousands of dollars on his future therapist trying to undo all the damage that we’ve done. Like make him wear a “My Mom Rules” shirt in public. Frequently. That’s just cruel.

Some days, especially when it’s uncommon for you, it’s good to have a good morose day. Unfortunately for me, my brother seems to have inherited all of the good poetry writing genes, so I cannot seem to conjure up a good sad poem to save my life, which is what I imagine many people do during these days. If I tried, it would be something akin to:

The color blue
washes around me
Like so many cups of Diet Coke
Before lunchtime.
Oh McDonalds, how I want you!

When you read true beauty like that, it’s a damn wonder that I haven’t gotten a book deal to write Becky’s Deep And Poetic Poemes.

Okay, now that we’ve established that I cannot write a good poem to save my own life, what else is a person who hates chick flicks to do when she’s feeling bluer than normal?

If you said “Becky, you should listen to the works Leonard Cohen!” you’d win yourself the distinct honor of being able to see clearly into my sadly predictable mind. To me, there’s nothing better to listen to when you are feeling crappy than the despondant music of Leonard Cohen, because THERE is a man who really knows sadness. How can you not adore a line like, “You held onto me like I was a crucifix,” because everyone KNOWS those (get it?!? God, I’m hilarious. Where’s my standup career?) people.

To YouTube I went, to find what the freaky people have done with some of my favorite songs. I get such a charge out of looking up songs and people on YouTube, because it reminds me of how very normal I actually am, no matter what I happen to be feeling. I mean, go to the site, search for your favorite celebrity and find a photo montage dedicated to them. It’s very frightening what people do. In that vein, please do ignore the cheesy effects and/or pictures, because I swear to you on all that is holy that I a) would never make this sort of thing because b) I am computer illiterate. Plus, I’m not an idiot.

So it is my distinct honor to introduce a special version of “Music in the Morning.” This is my ode to depressive music.

Without a doubt, this is one of my all-time favorite songs in the whole wide world, regardless of how sad I may or may not be feeling. The lines in this song are just_so_awesome.

OhmyGod, this song is so achingly beautiful and yet so very sad (which is the case with many of his songs). It actually brings tears to my eyes, which is quite a rarity unless I have somehow managed to elbow myself in the boobs again. My words here are meaningless: listen to the song and weep.

Ah, finally a bit of a love song, but wait! it’s Leonard Cohen, so it’s also highly depressing. But sweet. I’ve loved this song since I was a wee lass, because, well, it’s a great song.

Remember back to the 80’s, when Christian Slater was all the rage, and he was starring in all of those great dark teen movies? I do. I was a bit young for Heathers and Pump Up The Volume, but my brother watched them religiously (he’s 10 years older than me), and since I thought that he was the coolest thing in the world, I watched them too. A leeeeeetle inappropriate for an 8-year old, but hell, when you find out that in first grade, when I had the chicken pox, I stayed home and watched Pink Floyd: The Wall, for the eleventy-hundreth time.

What’s interesting to me about this next song, is that whenever I happen to listen to it, I find another line that just sticks with me for the rest of the day and week. Today that line is “There’s gonna be a meter on your bed that will disclose, what everybody knows.” Get it? Because you’re a WHORE! Hahaha, whores! Concrete Blonde (remember them?!? Again with the 80’s loving brother!) did a cover of this one and it was actually pretty good, although I am usually strictly a no-cover kind of chickadee.

THEN, I get this email from my friend Chris, and words, they cannot describe this:

Although I do staunchly support The Britney, this song is all kinds of brilliant, and I’ll admit, she kinda deserved this.

Thanks, Chris, for snapping me (mostly) out of my funk. I’m so boring when I’m depressed.

I snapped this morning. Just snapped.

Chronic sleep deprivation is a strange bird, a horrid strange bird. The lights are so blindingly bright, the television so unbearably loud (was it always this loud?) and painful, your movements are jerky and uncoordinated so that you frequently hurt yourself unintentionally doing extremely mundane things. Like walking. Driving is too scary because you simply feel drunk and everything just moves too fast for your brain to comprehend, so you stay stuck at home where things are somewhat (slightly) safer. Eventually, you try going to the store to pick up a few things without a list, and you will likely end up buying a new SUV because you are so confused as to what it is that you are actually trying to buy, and the SUV was something that your brain recognized as having wanted at some point. Then you get home and your husband tells you that what you had actually gone to pick up was Tylenol for your aching back. Oopsies. But now you can’t really tell where the pain is coming from anymore because it seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Occasionally you see your friends, who are now totally confused by you, mainly because you are so tired that you find it hard to properly respond to what they’re saying. You just stare blankly at them, while trying not to say the wrong thing, wanting desperately to say the right thing, which would be easier if you could remember what the hell they were talking about. Your normally quick-thinking brain has slowed to a snail’s pace, so it’s all that you can to do try to make the appropriate noises and faces without letting them know that you are too stupid for them now. But this is your one salvation: the people that knew you before your brain stem fried, and you love them dearly. When they leave, you mentally rehearse what you said and hope like hell that it was not offensive, because now the prospect of seeing these people is all that is keeping you sane.

You’d love a nap, but when you lay down with the baby, he wakes up some 20 minutes later just as you were falling asleep. Which you remember had been used as some kind of torture technique for POW’s (along with playing some Christina Aguilara, who you listen to by choice, but you imagine that listening to Averil Lavigne would elicit the same response in you.), and suddenly the hallway tilts to the side and you feel dizzy and slightly tipsy, and you hope like hell that you can make it down the stairs without dropping the baby. So before making your decent, you consider the positions that would likely keep the baby safest should you fall, which sounds excessive until you remember falling though the screen door, cutting the hell out of your finger stupidly reaching into the diaper bag, and nearly fainting twice at the mall. Which was what happened just over the weekend. Besides, the baby has his whole life ahead of him and you, well, you’re feeling older and older by the day, besides if you hurt yourself badly enough, you’d get to go to the hospital and get some pain meds and finally get to rest, which is all that you really want anyway. When you finally make it down the stairs while clutching the baby for dear life, your husband wonders why you suddenly sprouted devil horns and a tail when he mentions that he’s “tired” and “wants to take a nap,” because to you, all it feels like is being spit at in the face considering that he’s hasn’t gotten up over night to really tend to the baby in many months, so he is fortunate enough to get 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep most nights.

Unlike you, who hasn’t slept more than 4 hours in a row in over six months, and that’s on a damn good night. Hell, you consider it a good day when you get to brush your hair AND put in your contacts.

But all logic and rationallity (you can be tired AND someone else can be tired at the same time, without negating each other!) have left the building with Elvis many, many moons ago, so all that comes out of your mouth is some vague sheep-like noises and then the tears of frustration begin, because you can’t even form an understandable sentence any longer, and you suddenly know how horrifying it must be to have dementia.

Daily, you check yourself to make sure that you are not succumbing to The Crazy that runs rampant in your family. You check and recheck your emotions, turning them over in your mind like a cube to ensure that you are properly reacting to things on an emotional level. Try as you might, you eventually discover that you are not in spite of your best intentions.

You have these vague fantasies about leaving the baby somewhere safe over night and walking to a hotel down the road and sleeping for the next twelve hours without telling anyone where you are because they’d come looking and wanting SOMETHING ELSE from you, but you know that your overwhelming guilt would never allow it. Your anxiety has reached the point where you must take sleeping pills to even get yourself to sleep, because if you did not, you would be up anxiously waiting for that sound, the one that has interrupted your sleep for months.

Crying it out doesn’t work, although you firmly agree with it, because it just makes the baby increasingly anxious and frantic because NO ONE IS COMING FOR HIM, so it increases your workload tenfold when you do finally breakdown and pick him up because now you must spend the next twelve hours not leaving his line of sight, lest a tantrum errupt. Besides, it makes you feel badly. He IS just a baby, afterall.

So what do you do when you don’t have the foggiest idea what to do any longer? You yell at a completely harmless baby, you scream and you cry out of frustration for what feels like years of having to cater to his each and every whim. You curse everyone around you for not being able or not even trying to help you more when you are just trying like hell to keep your head above water and someone else wants something else from you NOWNOWNOW! But you have nothing left to give ANYONE anymore. Not one damn thing. You’re drinking gasoline just to stay warm, but where are my socks, Mom, where is my bag, Becky, what’s for dinner tonight?

Then you drink yet another cup of coffee, burn your hands in the process, take a deep breath or thirteen, and promise yourself in vain that tomorrow will be a better day. Because someday, it will be. It just has to be.

I happen to be one of those people who, when faced with periods of high stress, lack of sleep, or illness that tends to let themselves go with routine maintence. My children will always be well groomed, dressed in clean clothes, and well fed, but I find myself continually looking like I may actually be half dead. I’m so discouraged about my pregnancy weight gain that I find myself apologizing to complete strangers for it. Like they actually care one way or another (although I’m sure that my many nay-sayers are probably chuckling to themselves about it).

Today I realized that it had been ages since I have either plucked the ole’ caterpillers (which I am usually fastidious about, otherwise I look like Bert or Ernie), given myself a pedicure (I cannot handle small rude Asian women touching my feet and then complaining that I have not tipped them enough WHEN THEY WERE COMPLETELY RUDE TO ME. Ahem.), or taken a freaking shower. Gross. Most of this routineness can be attributed to a lack of sleep, a nasty sinus infection, the bloody heat, and a baby who has been in a terrible mood.

I took care of all of this today and I feel loads better about life in general, which reminds me that I need to be more vigilant about doing so on a more regular basis. I don’t have the time to consistantly make it to the gym (and am frequently thwarted by events outside of my own control), and a lengthy soak in the tub is sadly a thing of the past, oh and the tanning bed? That’s going to have to wait until I stop nursing, what with the burning of the nipples and all.

These are all things that I will get back in the habit of doing regularly when circumstances allow it. But with The Internet as my witness, I will start taking better care of myself with the things that I am able to do with my crazy schedule in the future.

(and I have chosen what I will do when I reach my prepregnancy weight. It involves a haircut and dye, because I am still under the misguided impression that my hair acts as somewhat of a weight-hiding mumu.)

OHMYGOD: on a totally unrelated note, the baby woke up from a nap as I was writing this, and I realized that I could hear water running. While trying to ascertain WHERE said water was coming from while going upstairs to get the baby, I found the culprit: the bathtub from which I had just showered AND ON MY HONOR TURNED OFF. It appears as though we have a ghost.

This morning, after having practiced on such objects as his chubby starfish hands, his feet, my shoulder, Alex finally did it. The first of many (if he takes after his father) words has finally come out of his mouth.

Alex: “dadadadadadada.”

Me: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, kiddo. I’ll let you try to get your ‘dadadada’ out of bed every 3 hours every night. Why don’t you see how effective THAT is!”

I’ve been quiet here, partially because I’m feeling hormonal as hell (and yet no sign of my period, which Dave has pointed out, I’ve been saying “was coming any minute now” for the past two months) and partially because I think my brain may actually be melting. Seriously, take an MRI of my brain, and I can almost assure you that I may be missing a cortex or twenty-seven. I’m like a gigantic brain stem, just walking around having to be told what to do. Thankfully the sinus infection seems to be abating somewhat, but now this pervasive heat seems to be actually driving me past the brink of madness.

I seem to have made a grave tactical error several weeks ago when I proclaimed “Well, the A/C dying couldn’t have happened at a better time,” because yeah, it’s now about 10,000 degrees Celcius (and yes, I am aware that that is an impossibility) in my home. With a 60% humidity. It’s so humid here that I actually think I heard the carpet squish under my feet when I got up this morning. I’m not even exaggerating slightly. I actually made poor Dave go buy a window A/C unit for our bedroom on Saturday, as it was cheaper than going to live at a hotel for a couple of days.

But Becky, you say, your parents live across the river and they have 4 extra bedrooms that they are NOT USING plus glorious, oh glorious! central air conditioning! Why not just go there?

Oh, dear reader, I would just as soon take up Interpretive Dancing as a career choice (which creeps me the hell out) than ever, EVER do that again! When we were selling the condo before we got the keys to our new house, we moved in with them for about a month. Possibly the longest and most nerve wracking month of my life. Let’s just say that with the shear amount of empty rooms, whichever one we were currently occupying was suddenly the room that my father JUST HAD TO BE IN RIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWRIGHTNOW (including the bedroom that we were sleeping in), like he was a jealous four-year-old or something. It actually got so bad that we were strongly considering the fiscally irresponsible (but mentally healthful) possiblity renting a hotel room for the remainder of our stay, while the huge possibility of two morgages was looming on the horizon. It was AT THAT MOMENT that we vowed never, ever, to stay with my parents again. Ever.

So here I sit in the oppresively pervasive heat, losing possibly another cortex (one that was not previously damaged by the complete and utter lack of sleep that marks my days and nights. Man, I’m melodramtic today!), trying to look on the bright side of things.

At least Dave was able to fix the screen door that I fell through this weekend.

(I think it may be high time to Becky-proof the whole house before some ER doctor thinks that my husband beats me, which, if you know Dave, is a totally hilarious thought. If anything, I’d be the one who’d do the whuppin’. But how do you explain that to a resident?)