Lie To Me. I Promise, I'll Believe (that these pants are too big and I need a smaller size)

As many of you know, I'm headed back to 'work' (like I haven't been working, right?) and I started this week. So there have been many things to juggle: daycare, logistics of dropoff and pickup, wardrobe issues (maternity t-shirts stained with many DNA samples are apparently not appropriate for work, I guess?), and the concept of a professional work environment. These are just the more obvious issues, but these changes have all hit AT ONCE. Not only am I thrust back into the work world, I haven't really had any time to prepare or adjust.

We've had houseguests for a few weeks now, and it's been the most wonderful part of our summer. I loves me a full house. The kids woke up without anyone (extra) here and didn't quite know what to do with themselves. They were stuck with just me. All that said, it's been a nonstop ride, and I hadn't had time to ease myself into it.

SO. Work consisted of three days this week and I started it off with one pair of shorts that fit and one pair of (very stained) capri pants. I knew that I had to shop, and fast. Target was not going to cut it this time (and I had checked the store and it was still tank top summertime fun) and I knew that bargain shopping for 5 hours wasn't going to happen either. I am a clearance-rack girl. I'll spend the time. I'll put in the effort to try on random pieces, then find other random pieces to go with them. I'll pride myself in spending $78 for 5 items.

Those days are gone, baby, gone.

I decided, after rummaging around a very discombobulated chain store with clothes strewn everywhere, that perhaps I should try something a bit more upscale. Don't get me wrong, I found a few cute pieces (read: crazy-ass clearance rack shopping) but I was growing tired from the hunt and the 19 year old salesgirl was totally giving me the stink-eye. Later at the checkout it was revealed that she was like, totally pissed because she worked a double and he's like totally asked her too many times and no one else will friggin' take the double shift so she's stuck picking up after everyone and doing the work that they should have done the day before and she hasn't even had time for a break and that is all I will write because we were all 19 once and famous for journalling our shit in front of strangers.

So. Like a moth to a flame, Ann Taylor and her friend Talbots, beckoned me forth. Yes, Ann Taylor. Yes, I will pay $28 for a camisole so my boobies aren't so obvious at school. Yes, Talbots, I will try most earnestly to not chuckle at a $168 handbag the size of my ankle in your clearance bin. Aside: the clearance racks at these stores are not even in the same league as the discount chains. They are where you can find either ridiculous steals or ridiculous excuses for clearance prices. Sorry, $70 for a pair of stretchy brown work pants on the clearance rack? I'd be mad, but you wrap up all my shit in that pretty paper and put a cute sticker on it to keep it all ensemble. Oh, and the vanity sizing, Ann Taylor Loft? I'm down. I know you're a bunch of big fat liars, but I'm down. And I'll put it all on the credit card, thankyouverymuch.

The salespeople really know their stuff. They can smell pokes like me as soon as I walk in. They know I'm desperate. They know I'm time-starved. They know I'll pay to get in, get served, and get the hell out. And they are right. It hit me, as I was leaving with a bag of tissue-wrapped goodies, that THIS was why people spent more at stores like this. It was easier. It was fun. And I was treated like a princess. "Can I get you another size?" "Would you like to try that in another color?" "Would you like me to watch the children while you go and get some alone time?"

Or, no, sorry, wrong fantasy.

It was a bit of a dreamy experience. It made the rest of the workweek all the more relaxed. Although I didn't wear my new digs this week (the new clothes are hanging in the closet like a shiny trophy though), I did feel ready for at least some of this change.

And I wore a really long shirt with my capris.

I'm Really Trying to Get It

This John Edwards thing has got me really puzzled.

One part of me really understands that every relationship, every marriage, is a complex web that is woven over time. The foundation you build, the habits you create, the words that you use....it's as personal as it gets. And really, who am I to question what happens in someone else's home? The privacy of someone else's kitchen table, when secrets are revealed and foundations crack and hope seeps out like a leaking faucet that no one can repair.

The truth for me, is that I know good people can do really horrible things. Good people with good hearts and good souls and all the best intentions sometimes really screw up, and sometimes with horrific consequences. The Edwards family is different from many families in that they have a public life, and therefore public highs and public lows. Can you imagine what this family is going through right now? If your father cheated on your mother and you knew about it, you had the choice to tell a friend, a neighbor, an aunt. Everyone knows their very personal business. Everyone knows that Daddy had a dalliance with some woman and it's plastered across every media outlet you can name. Everyone knows that he did it when your mother was going through chemotherapy.

Can you imagine John Edwards' pain? Can you imagine how he felt watching his vibrant wife, full of love and spirit, start to drift away before his eyes? Did he feel powerless? Was he so surrounded by the thoughts of her being taken from him that he just had to find some way to feel good again?

Did he just want to be around someone with full red cheeks and vigor and life?

Perhaps the pallor of cancer was too much for him to bear. Perhaps he's always been an adulterer. Perhaps he had the audacity to think that he wouldn't get caught.

I'm trying, you see...to really make this make sense in my mind. These are people who buried their first child together. Who raised a family together. Who built businesses and campaigns and still managed to stay happy and connected. It seems. How can this happen? How did this foundation crack? How did he do this?

There is a part of me, down under some layers, that just hates this guy. How dare he. Did he think the public was that stupid? He lied, over and over again. Did that make it better for her? For the kids? How does he explain it to them? Remember when she was diagnosed? Remember how he came back on the campaign trail because he publicly said that Elizabeth wanted him to? She didn't want him to abandon his dream? Did you kind of think he sucked a little then?

I did.

Good for you. Forge ahead. Leave your wife for weeks at a time. And while you're at it, sleep with some woman. A woman who you'll later say, brazenly, that you don't love. Is that supposed to be a relief for your wife? Your best friend? Your rock?

And now there is Elizabeth. A woman struggling to stay healthy. To stay bright and positive for her children who are watching their world slip away. To remind them that their father loves them very much, no matter what. Can you imagine having to tell your children how wonderful their father is after this? But I bet she does. She will keep her head low, I bet. She'll take care of those kids and hope that when the dust settles, she can start to rebuild her life, her foundation...perhaps next time with new bricks and mortar.

Update from the Menstrual Blogger

Yes, thank you. I'm okay. Sometimes I just rant in my head and I decided to do it on 'paper' this morning. Except it was very G-rated (in my head it isn't).





I like to hear the sound of water! Notsomuch when I realize it's a tenant in our backyard, rinsing out her animal crate. She was rinsing it for a reason.





I love good food! I don't like spending what seems to be a double-digit percentage of my day picking up scraps of it off my floor. Oh! The delight she has in tossing it on the floor! Ha-HA to you Mommy! Remember when you let me cry a bit this morning? What goes around comes around. Oh, and you missed some pear. Right there. Nope, right THERE. Next to the dehydrated macaroni you missed from last night, jackasssss.





I like other kids! I don't like sitting in a crowded doctor's office full of them. Nasty little varmits. Don't touch me, don't touch my children. But I'm glad your mom brought her magazine. I wouldn't want to interrupt her 'me-time'.


I love fresh laundry! I just don't like it when I forget I've washed it and I now have a washer-full of stinky foot.

Good Night!

What?

Today, I would like no tips. No suggestions. No demands, no requests. I would like to eat a meal without cottage cheese landing on my toe. I would like to drink coffee and put it down wherever the hell I'd like. I'd like to not imagine the worst, today.

I would love a nice hearty walk in silence. I would like to play my ipod at full blast without worrying that I'll miss a simmering toddler-brawl, or a sippy cup hitting the asphalt.

I would love to not feel pissy.

I would like to not be so moved by so many things. I would like China to publicly apologize for replacing the real singer in their opening ceremonies with someone prettier.

I would like to not care so much about things like that.

I would like to prepare my children for an outing without a full body wrestling match. I would like to change a diaper without having to use the restraint strap and various gadgets to keep someone from becoming apoplectic.

I would like to not have the pediatrician on speed dial, today.

I would like to be light and funny and carefree.

I would like to enjoy the sunshine and have it change me from the inside out.

Fence Me In

A mild but pesky anxiety disorder has been averted for the time being, thanks to this fence. It ain't fancy, and it ain't permanent, but it's mine.



We have a beautiful yard, really. Almost an acre of grass (the lush factor is dependent on the rain and when hubby has last mowed it) and a few fun hillish spots for Sam to run down at full throttle. Often I am with the babies one at a time, depending on nap schedules. The truth is that my trips outside with the both of them, pre-fence, have been terrifying.



I'm a worrywart. I know this. You know this. It's not going to change, really, yet it will ebb and flow with intensity over time. I will be less anxious when they 'know better' but I will always know that they won't really 'know better' until they are my age, and I know that I don't even know what I don't know. Are you with me?



All that said, there have been a few scary moments while I've double-babied it outside for playtime. Like, the baby wants to put pieces of broken glass in her mouth (thank you, previous owners, for shooting bottles in your backyard....saaaweeeet! May I suggest Arkansas?) while the toddler runs for the road. Yeah, like the main road we live on. The one with the traffic and the speeding teenagers who are texting and scrolling their ipod for a new playlist and drinking an iced coffee all at the same time. And let's not forget the 18 wheelers who use my road to avoid the highway. Anyway, you get the picture. I've had to sprint (really, sprint! like volleyball all over again but without the taut thighs and pimpled chin) to get her. It was too much.



I made the plea a few weeks ago to my husband for something makeshifty. Not the real deal, that's major bucks we don't have right now. But something, anything really, to fence my babies in. Let's play without Mom needing a prescription. Let's play without Mom picturing horrible things in the middle of the night. Let's play with a Mom who is chillaxed. It wasn't a hard sell, as he bears witness often to my ebbing and flowing, and I didn't really have to sell him anyway. Within two weeks, it was finished, thanks to Papi and Dad and an afternoon of low humidity and a promise of Cornhole.