Post traumatic stress 4 years out?

Right before I got pregnant with Wildman in 2002 I started working at a lawfirm. A really really big lawfirm, in their IT dept. The job started as a temp position. While I was a temp I discovered I was pregnant with Wildman. I started quickly looking for permanent work, because my husband was unemployed and we had no health insurance. I actually paid for my own insurance for a few month to get the prenatal care. I interviewed at many jobs and suddenly the job I was at decided to hire me. At that point I was 14 weeks pregnant. I took it. I waited as long as I could to tell them I was pregnant. I think I must have been 22 weeks before I fessed up and boy was my boss mad. She did everything from there on out to make my life miserable!! I had no time off to start. The OB I loved had no evening hours. In a hormonal haze I told him my story. He was amazing. He let me come in and see him after hours every appointment. EVERY appointment. I never had to see his colleagues. I was very lucky. When the baby came I only had 6 weeks off because I had to be at the job a year to qualify as FMLA. I worked till I was 5 days overdue and went into labor at work!! Luckily my boss was out the day I went into labor and her fill in was mega compassionate and said GO HOME you are too pregnant to be here. My water broke 5 hours later.

After I came back to work they insisted on giving me a hard time about pumping. I was back after 6 weeks no way I was not going to make breastfeeding work. I learned to pump in less than 10 minutes. Eventually, my husband got a job and the baby was in a daycare near my job so that I could nurse him at lunch. I longed for that time to be with him. As soon as lunch hit I was running out the door to see my little boy. My awful boss would threaten me with taking my lunch away whenever I took longer than 10 minutes to pump. She wanted to suck every ounce of joy out of my life. I eventually got a new job when Wildman was 6 months old. Before I took the job I told them I was pumping and they were AMAZING about it. I went on to nurse Wildman till he told me he was done at 2.5 years.

My mentor at the awful job was a woman I will name P. She was in her late 40’s/early 50’s. She was so beautiful inside and out it hurt to look at her because she was so lovely with so much poise. She was also kind of mysterious. She had a daughter when she was very young and her daughter was not that much older than I was. P helped me learn my job. She was patient. She taught us and everyone who worked with us worshiped her. Eventually, she was offered the job as the low manager. The awful boss who was the middle manager made her life a living hell. She had the daily session of getting reamed out over nothing. One day soon after I left P just up and quit, no notice she walked out. She had been seriously bullied for months protecting all of her underlings the whole time. I applauded her and she wound up moving far away closer to family. Every so often she and I exchange emails like survivors of a terrible catastrophic event.

Last week one morning as I got out of the shower the TV was on. I never watch “Good Morning America”, but i was drowning out the sounds of the kids to get 10 minutes of peace before my husband went to work. They had a segment about bullies in the workplace. As I watched it I was transfixed, about 30 seconds in I started to cry. I could not stop thinking about that time, how I felt robbed of time with my baby, and how I felt about the abuse that P unjustly suffered. I had to email her out of the blue this week. She is well, with a new love and a newly married daughter. Rock on P, Rock on.

The Sexy Car Share

My husband and I have been debating the need of a second car. I must preface this with the fact I have been bucking a second car for a long time. Right now we have one car and we have to share. We have never had our own cars, share well, and we live 2 blocks from some amazing public transportation. Most of the time whoever has the kids has the car. Lately, there has been a few instances of him needing the car for the day and me needing to have the car for a few hours to take Wildman to school. Instead of buying a car we decided to join a car share. It is a very cool concept. First you join the car share. You have to give them your information, drivers license number, and credit card. They check your driving record for many accidents or DUI. Once approved they sent me a key fob and membership materials. This morning my husband took the car in to be serviced and inspected. I decided to make sure Wildman got to school and I got my morning off. I reserved a car share. It cost me under $20 and I got a cool hip hybrid to drive. The great thing is that you don’t have to put gas in the car. If the car is under a 1/4 tank they have a gas card in the car for your use. We are lucky enough to live 2 blocks from a place where the car share parks. My only problem with it was moving the carseats home after dropping off the car. It is a long 2 blocks uphill with 2 big carseats! Luckily, my neighbor took us home from the train station.

Overall, I really dug driving the car share car. The Toyota Prius is deceptively big inside for a small car and it was a 4-door. It was nice to have an environmentally conscious car and be part of a car share. It made me feel even a little bit hip and sexy!

Easter for Heathens

I want to preface this post with the fact that I was raised Catholic and have a questioning relationship with God. My husband was raised with no religion and is an atheist with agnostic tendencies especially on airplanes. Our kids have not been exposed to any religion. Wildman once asked what an angel was. I am still unsure how to broach religious questions with them.

This Easter season seemed like a chore full of insanity inducing candy and consumerism. I was not really looking forward to it. My parents are still snow birding in Florida, my sister is at her shore house with her 20-something kids, and my in laws are scattered. We had no plans and no guests I invited accepted my invitation for non-allergic Easter (lots of jelly beans, turkey ham, candied yams with marshmallows, and broccoli). So we were on our own and I have been bummed about it. My husband was off on Friday and took Monday as a vacation day. I got all my food shopping/ produce purchases done on Friday and we were free. Friday night we stayed up late after the kids went to bed for a date night.

Saturday started our fun times. I baked with the kids in the early AM and we made non allergic cupcakes with PINK frosting and jelly beans. The kids were very into the project and we had a blast. My husband took the kids outside in the AM. I decided to go buy some Salmon. We are big fans of Salmon and remarkably Baby A is not allergic and he likes it. I made an incredible dinner of pan seared salmon and fettuccine with eggplant, mushrooms, tomatoes and asparagus. It was amazing and even the kids ate well. After dinner we dyed Easter eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide. My husband bought an Easter egg dye kit that had tattoos to put on the eggs. We decided to put the tattoos on the kids instead. We have declared that it will be a family tradition. Both boys have sleeves of tattoos and their abdomens covered in tattoos. I have a red dinosaur walking on my real tattoo. My husband has a turtle on his neck gangsta style. After all that tattooing we got the boys ready for bed. Wildman decided that he wanted to sleep in the pack and play in our bedroom. He is getting WAY too big for it but he curled up and slept all night. It was amazing to sleep with all the people I love most in the world in the same room. It felt safe and nurturing at the same time. In the middle of the night I snuck out and hid the eggs and the kids baskets. I love being the Easter Bunny. The boys woke up at a sick hour and we went on an egg hunt/basket hunt. It was so fun and then we had a great breakfast. My husband took the kids out to play. He got Wildman Heelys to match his own in the smallest size they make. Baby A got a Radio Flyer ride on thingy. They were out in 34 degree weather for over 2 hours.

The boys then took a 3 hour nap. After nap it was out again to play outside and dinner of non-allergic proportions. This has to have been the BEST Easter I have ever had. We don’t need our extended family. Just us. We can conquer the world.

The Natives Of This World Have Me Captive! HELP

I am having a day with a capitol D. Wildman was all hopped up on Easter candy when I got him from school. Insert picture of a hellish car ride here. We get home sugar fueled chaos ensues as I TRY to get lunch together. Suddenly I discover that Baby A is missing. He locked himself in the bathroom and took all the toys out of the play shopping cart and put them in the toilet. I get kids eating and make a bucket of warm water with Lysol to sanitize toilet toys. I dry them and that is done. Wildman then has to use the bathroom. He is always quite chaotic in the bathroom but today was over the top. He was banging on the walls and using up all the soap while running the water. I left poor Baby A in the high chair eating and he decided that potatoes in his hair was a good idea. I cleaned the kitchen, and the boys.

I got lucky and they took a decent nap. We braved the grocery store. I bribed Wildman to try and hold it together at the store, with a visit from our neighbor kids who are 7 and 10 but usually get along with him nicely. When I got home I called their Mom and they came over since it is pouring out. Finally they settled in and watched Bee Movie for all of 5 minutes. Wildman could not deal with them in the house and he just went crazy. He annoyed them purposely and they left. Then I feed him dinner. Chicken, brown rice, asparagus good healthy stuff. He threw the food on the floor and all over the table like a two year old. Up in his room he went and I had another cleaning project. Thankfully, I have 30 minutes till bath time. I am not sure I am up for this ADHD parenting. I fear the future.

Please send the mothership to pick me up. The natives here are holding me captive.

Chopping Down a Tree While Sleep Deprived! Party On!

This morning was supposed to be Mom’s morning off. Wildman was to go to school and Baby A to his Friday morning sitter. My big plan was to fold laundry and sleep. I know, very glamorous. I crave that time every week. I got on my sexiest sweat pants and flip flops and I was out the door to drive the boys to their destinations. I was looking for the keys. I looked and looked and looked. I called my husband. I said, please don’t tell me you have all the car keys with you. He did. I promptly starting crying. He is working in one of his job’s outter offices today and took two trains to get there. He could not get back. I was totally disappointed.

I took a little while to regroup. I had to get my sleep deprived brain working. What to do with the boys. Walking somewhere after standing on my feet for 9 hours had no appeal. I decided it was a driveway front lawn day. Close to home lots of bikes, trucks and stuff. We made an obstacle course of traffic cones that my 43 year old, going on 15 year old, husband has stolen for fun. Wildman really enjoyed doing figure 8’s and stuff. Cool, that wasted all of 15 minutes. Now what to do. Wildman starts asking me when are we going to chop down the tree. We have a volunteer tree that was getting pretty big. It was growing very close to a retaining wall and I didn’t want the roots to destroy the wall. I have been bugging my husband all winter to chop the damm tree down before we had to hire someone to do it. Being that he is 43 going on 15 he never did it. I got a bright idea. Why not chop the tree down myself with the kids after sleeping 1.5 hours last night. I got out the saw and my two able bodied helpers got out their saws and after about 10 minutes of keeping them out of the way we started chopping. I sawed and sawed. My arms were weary but we pressed on. Finally, Wildman took all 40 lbs of himself and pushed the tree over. He thought he was the Incredible Hulk and the look on his face was priceless as he pushed it over. We then climbed on the tree as it sat on the driveway. It was quite the Mom – Boy bonding session I tell you. I recommend it for anyone stuck at the house with 2 kids on a nice day when you have had no sleep. Now, I have a tree in my driveway.  Nice.

The Dirty Truth

I will preface this post with the fact I love Wildman with every ounce of my being. That aside, living with him is sometimes akin to the 7th layer of hell. This winter has been particularly rough. He does not play indoors well. The last few weeks alone he removed a safety cover on an outlet and inserted his finger. He came to me with a black finger to the 2nd knuckle. I thought for sure he had a 3rd degree burn but it was just soot. He has opened a window and jumped 10 feet down to escape the house with no shoes in the freezing cold while I was using the bathroom. Now mind you this was after a morning kick ass activity. There has been no staying in all day in a long time.

I have been so worried about the end of his school for the summer. His preschool, as good as it is for him, is as good as it is for me. I need the time to regroup from his chaos. I have been thinking about the end of school and almost dreading it. Last Spring I was excited for the end of school with days to do what we wanted, when we wanted. This year I have been dreading it and it has made me very sad. His behavior is worse but it was bad when he was 2 as well. I was not sure what changed. Then today my husband took the car to work. He dropped us at my doctors appointment with the boys. Wildman was overwhelmingly charming and talking with everyone. We then walked to the park. We spent time, just the three of us at the park having a blast. He and Baby A were quite a team of boy energy. Before I knew it, it was time to come home. Then it hit me, I had forgotten how fun Wildman is on an adventure. Suddenly I was excited about the long vacation and the easy fun days of summer. He is so not going to school or camp! I was relieved to be able to see his charms after such a hard long winter. I forgot what a boy of summer he is and how delightful he is to have around sometimes.

More fun that people are suppposed to have

What a good time I had.  It was comical.  My nephew arrived 15 minutes late to babysit and as soon as he arrived I gave him fast directions and we RAN FULL SPEED out of the house so he could not change his mind!  We got downtown and my husband, of course, wore his Heely’s.   He was skating round downtown like a teenager.  It was great.  We stopped by my bar, had a drink and held hands.  HA us at a bar having a drink.  It was lovely.  We then left and went to Sue’s birthday.  WOW.  We ate crabcakes, lobster ravioli, and decadent chocolate pyramid desert.  We chatted with friends and sipped champagne.  After the party we stopped back at my bar we didn’t drink but we visited with regulars and co-workers.  We stayed out as late as we could and went home.  We got the kids to bed, put the trash out, hung outside Heelyed, and chatted like teenagers.  I went to bed way too late.  I am paying tonight at work, I am tired  but so worth feeling light with little responsibility for a little while.

I can’t wait to do it again.

Sunday sweet Sunday

This Sunday my friend Sue, the Christmas Mistress herself is going to be 40. I met Sue when I was working at a horrible consulting job. It was my first real job at 34. I had total and complete culture shock. Sue helped me a ton. We befriended each other. She and I had friends in common and she linked the corporate insanity to my real life. We both lost our jobs and used to take long bike rides together. I wanted a baby so bad. She did not.

I eventually had a baby. She got a foreign exchange student. She discovered the joys of a kid and decided to have a family. Her son is smack dab in the middle of my two. She is also an amazing baker. When Baby A is around she tries to bake for him and makes the best vegan cupcakes I have ever tasted. They were so good that caring folks kept Baby A from them at his birthday because they tasted so allergic and rich. Her vegan coffee cake was so good that Wildman asks me about it and he last had it a month ago. When I am lost in the woods on the food allergy thing Sue comes to the rescue. She is a dear friend.

This Sunday she is having a fancy birthday party. I am so excited to go. My nephew is taking the boys and this will be the first time since September that my husband and I have gone out. I will sit and eat fancy food without someone screaming MOM next to my husband. I possibly might have a conversation I can finish.

Holy shit people I am going out!! Go figure. I get to do this again NEXT weekend as well. I must have been a very good girl indeed.

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