He Just Doesn't Get It

Tom likes to tease Alyssa about being, in his words, a moose. He has also put limits on her snacking in the evening.

I’ve bitten my tongue and tried not to interfere as long as he makes his limits about health and not about weight.

Alyssa is not fat. She doesn’t think she’s fat and I don’t want her to start thinking about her weight at all. She’s healthy, she’s tall, she’s strong.

I tried to explain to Tom on Sunday morning that he needs to be really careful about his teasing and his food issues. He got annoyed, telling me that he never mentions weight or tells her she’s fat. He just wants to limit the amount of junk food she eats in the evenings after dinner.

I agreed with him that she loves her junk in the evenings and that we need to help her eat better for nutritional reasons but I also tried to explain to him that girls are sensitive. We take things differently than they’re meant.

I told him that I didn’t want either of our daughters to ever hate their bodies as much as I hate mine.

I think I must have gotten teary as I said this because he replied, “Well, you don’t have to cry about it.”

Ugh! Ass.

Seriously, why are guys such jerks sometimes? I wanted him to realize that the tears were a sign of how important this subject is and how hard it is to overcome body image issues once they’ve taken root in a girl’s head.

A little later, he said off-handedly, “You know you shouldn’t hate yourself, right?”

Duh.

I replied, “Yes, I know that. But knowing it doesn’t actually take away the hate.”

He said, “Well, most people I know have things about their bodies that they’d like to change.” He then poked his stomach out and patted it. The man has to exert serious energy to have enough of a stomach to pat. Jerk.

“Not the same thing,” I told him. “Wanting to change things and feeling a seething hatred of yourself are very different things. And when you have to force your stupid stomach out to make a point, you have no room to talk.”

He laughed because he knows I’m right.

But he doesn’t really get it. This is a man who can lose fifteen pounds in two weeks by giving up ice cream and bread. Then he can add bread back in and be just fine. He will never get it.

But I won’t stop trying to explain it to him because we have daughters and I don’t want what he considers teasing to give them issues they’ll be dealing with for the rest of their lives.

I owe that to my beautiful, healthy, smart, kind, loving girls. And he owes it to them to try to understand and even empathize even if he never really gets it.

Ugly Tuesday

Oh man was Tuesday a bad day. It started bad and got progressively worse until the very end, which is when it suddenly got so much better.

It was all me too. That’s the worst part. It was all in my head, roiling around, screaming obscenities at my all day long. At one point that voice, I’ll call her Thelma, screamed, “For God’s sake, stop whining, you stupid cow, you brought this all on yourself.”

She’s a mean one, that Thelma.

Pink’s song, “Fuckin’ Perfect” popped into my head at one point in the day and Thelma was quick to assure me, “That song wasn’t written for you, dumb ass. Definitely not for you.”

Thelma even took to singing a song herself. It went something like this, “I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate myself.”

It was so ugly.

I got up that morning annoyed that it was morning. Then the girls woke up all of ten seconds after I got out of bed. They followed me into the bathroom, which is a large bathroom until you have three people in there, two of them trying very hard to irritate each other, and then suddenly, it’s a very small bathroom and the mother of the house is snapping, “Please stop! Just stop. Go down and find Daddy.”

They did go find him and that’s when I heard it, the dreaded sound of packing tape. I hate the sound of packing tape almost as much as I hated myself that Tuesday morning. The sound of packing tape means Tom will have a package he needs shipped, either from my place of employment or from the post office, which used to mean he would be taking care of it but in the past few weeks I have somehow become the post office currier and I hate this too. I hate that I have to leave work in the middle of the day to mail something for him so that he doesn’t have to drive a whole four miles from home to do it himself. I know he considers this ebay thing ‘our’ thing but it’s not. It is HIS thing and if I have to leave the house every damned day for work, he can ship his own damned packages.

We’ve had this conversation so many times and it appears I always lose. We both end up angry and that morning I was in such a shitty mood I didn’t trust myself to say anything, so I just picked up the box and took it with me because the anger inside me was already boiling, I didn’t need to stoke any anger inside Tom. I decided to just keep my ire internally focused. I figured I was just being a bitch anyway, so why feed into it.

The bad feelings continued throughout the day. I hate my hair. I hate my body. I hate my stupid clothes. I hate that I don’t like to exercise. I hate that I want to eat crap these days after being so good for so long.

When I got home, I felt marginally better. I mean, it was the end of the day, right? Except I was still pretty angry with the world.

I went through the motions of dinner and baths and books and then, something shifted. Olivia was lying across my lap, as she does most evenings. She had a couple of dolls in her hands and was being silly.

Alyssa was on the couch, within touching distance and we were all just relaxing. I think I started singing and at one point, Olivia stuck the head of her doll in my mouth.

It startled me and I laughed, “That’s one way to shut me up.”

She giggled and said, “Did I put my doll in your mouth? Tell Lyssie what I did.”

I told Alyssa what had happened and said drolly, “It was like chewing on a goat. Or at least what I imagine chewing on a goat would be like since I’ve never actually chew on a goat.”

Alyssa laughed. She laughed so hard she could barely speak. She did manage to ask, “Why on earth would you want to chew on a goat?”

I answered, “I wouldn’t. Which is why having that doll stuck in my mouth was so unpleasant.”

Again, this struck both girls as hilarious. And that moment, sitting with my beautiful, sweet, funny daughters, my day turned around.

Thelma finally shut up. She stopped telling me what a horrible person I am, how ugly and useless I am. Even Thelma, in that moment, so my worth. She saw me having a moment, a beautiful, memory-making moment with my girls and finally, Thelma agreed that there is something I can do well.

I can love my children like no one else can. That is my claim to fame. That is my talent. That is why I’m here on this earth, to love these girls, to remind them every single day that they are beautiful, they are smart, they are worthy of every good thing this world has to offer. And if they are all these things, why do I think I am not? They are part of me, the very best part, yes, but still a part of me. They are the beautiful, the good, the joyful parts of me.

Thelma hasn’t had much to say since Tuesday and I’m grateful. I know I need to find a way to shut her up before she even speaks. I’m working on that. Obviously, I’m still a work in progress even at the grand old age of 43. And that’s okay too, no matter what Thelma might have to say about it.

Teachable Moments from Big Brother

Okay, so yes, I watched Big Brother. It’s a guilty pleasure. I just have so much fun hating every single contestant that I can’t stop watching it, even though it’s on three nights a week.

Worse still…I let Alyssa watch it. I know! I should be ashamed.

But I’m not. See, this season has a dude who is so obnoxious about his feelings for one of the female contestants that I am using every episode as a teachable moment for Alyssa.

This guy, we’ll call him Caleb, since that’s his name, has fallen hard for Amber. He thinks she’s so hot and so awesome and well, he’s just stupid about her.

The problem, as he sees it, is that she’s just not that into him.

One week Caleb threw a competition so Amber could win. And then he expected her to agree to go on a date with him after the show. Amber didn’t ask him to throw the competition. She owed him nothing, certainly not a date.

I told this to Alyssa. I explained to her that sometimes guys think girls owe them something after the guy has paid for a date. I told her that this is not true. I also tell her that she never, ever has to agree to anything with a guy just because he likes her. She has her own mind, her own heart and if she’s not that into a guy, she doesn’t owe him anything.

I’m not sure how much this is actually sinking in with Alyssa but the Big Brother season is long and full of stupidity, I’m sure we’ll have many more chances to have this discussion.

And better still, I have a feeling that Big Brother will be back for many summers to come. There’s no shortage of people out there willing to give up several months of their lives for fifteen minutes of fame. I’m sure those people in the coming years will be equally stupid and give us lots of chances to learn more about relationships, selfishness, and yes, perhaps even insanity.

Building Character

Alyssa had the fun of spending some time with friends this weekend. She was invited to spend Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning with one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met. I was thrilled when N called us to ask if A could come over to her house.

My mom dropped her off Saturday afternoon because Tom and I had to attend a funeral. Bummer, that.

O and I went to pick Alyssa up at 10:30 on Sunday morning.

When we got home, Alyssa asked Tom if she could be on the computer. I was not in the room when she asked this and so didn’t know she’d asked and received an answer in the negative.

So when she asked me the same question not two minutes later, I told her she could since she’d actually been away from any sort of screen for almost twenty four whole hours.

Tom laughed and said, “She just asked me that and I told her no.”

I looked at Alyssa, who was sheepish. I told her how wrong it was for her to do something like that. If her dad told her one thing, it wasn’t right for her to try to get the answer she wanted by asking me instead. She hung her head and decided to go spend time with Orville instead of time in front of the computer.

After lunch the same day, Alyssa again asked if she could be on the computer. I told her to go outside first and see if there was anything he needed her to do before we went to my mom’s to do a project for her.

Alyssa glared at me and headed outside.

I was amazed by the total lack of guilt in not giving in to her. I usually feel at least a twinge of something resembling guilt when I make my children do something they would rather not do.

But this time? Not so much. In fact, I felt good about the fact that I was helping her build character.

I told her that someday, she’ll have a job that she won’t necessarily like but she’ll have to go to work and do that job anyway. She might as well get used to delayed gratification because that’s life.

She huffed and sighed and went out to do some chores with her dad.

She didn’t end up getting computer time until just before dinner, which ended up being about twenty minutes for the day. Which, honestly, is more than enough if you ask me. And since I’m the mom, she does have to ask me and sometimes I’m a guilt-free mean mom. We’re building boatloads of character around here these days.

The Barking Light

My mom and stepdad recently enclosed their deck, creating a three-season room. It's a beautiful room and Olivia loves it. There's a ramp that she can somersault down and the rooms on two sides of the room make it bright and fun.

Once the room was finished, my mom asked if Tom could go to her house and help install a new security light by the back door of the sun room. He was happy to do this and the girls and I accompanied him to her house one day last week for him to do this.

It took a little longer than anticipated but once it was finally up, my mom had to fiddle with it to get it to do what they wanted. See, this light has a sensor that makes the light come on when motion is detected. Along with the light, a sound is activated. At first, the sound the light made was that of a man's voice saying, "You are trespassing."

This was fine. Except my mom didn't really want it to say that. Instead, she changed it to the sound of a barking dog.

While inside the room, the sound of the barking dog wasn't that big a deal to Olivia.

The next morning, though, as I dropped the girls off at my mom's for the day, Olivia heard that light barking and it freaked her right out.

I'm sure everyone remembers that O isn't a big fan of dogs. She hates them, to be perfectly blunt. They are horrible, loud, slobbery creatures as far as she is concerned.

When that light started barking the second I opened the car door, Olivia clapped her hands over her ears and cried, "Can you carry me into Grammy's house?"

I tried not to laugh as I reminded her that the barking wasn't an actual dog, that it was just the light. She didn't care. She hated the barking light as much as she'd hate a real dog barking.

I carried her in.

This morning we dropped Alyssa off so my mom could take her to a friend's for the day. The minute we pulled into the driveway, O covered her ears.

When I opened the car door, I noted that the light was not barking. I told Olivia this. It didn't matter. As far as she was concerned, that light might start barking at any moment and she wanted to be sure her feet were not touching the ground if/when that happened.

I carried her again.

Once inside my mom assured Olivia that the sound effects of the light has been turned off. It would never bark or talk again. Olivia didn't believe this, she wanted me to carry her to the car when we left.

We had to go to my mom's again this afternoon and once again, she wanted to be carried. I insisted that there would be no barking and then told her that I couldn't carry her because I had to carry a heavy box into the house. You'd think I'd told the child she had to walk barefoot along a path covered with worms. Her anxiety was at red alert.

She ran into the house and clung to my stepdad as I got the box out of the car and followed her inside.

Yes, I ended up carrying her back out to the car.

When we got home, I told Tom about her stress over the barking light and even just hearing us talk, O needed to cover her ears. When Tom barked at her, she demanded that he stop it. I'm proud of that demand. I almost expected her to quiver with fear.

We'll get past this, I hope. I think the more often she goes to Gram's house and doesn't hear that barking light, the less she'll want to be carried to and from the car. Again, I hope this is the case. Girlfriend is no longer a lightweight.

Dandelion Fluff

There is something about those white puffs that pull kids toward them. They have this need to pick that stalk and blow the fluff off, spreading the dandelion seeds across the yard even as their dad cringes in thought at having to spray for weeds yet again.

We were outside walking toward Tom’s raspberry patch (sure, the girls enjoy the fruits of his labor, but this patch if all Tom’s, he waters, he weeds, he ties the stems up when they get too heavy, he picks the berries and freezes/preserves them, it’s totally his patch.) and Olivia called to me to wait.

I turned and watched her bend down to pick a dandelion seed head. She held it up for me to see and then blew the seeds off, watching them in joy as they flew about in the mild breeze.



Something so normal, so perfectly summery and it made me so thankful for my girl and her life. She’s just a little kid, like so many other little kids. She enjoys all the same things as kids her age. She’s had to work a little harder to do some of those same things but she doesn’t really know that.

And I’m okay with her not knowing how far she’s come. I’m okay with her just being a little girl who plays with Barbies and makes her daddy roll his eyes when she blows the seeds off dandelions. I can stand back and marvel in her normalness even as she embraces it as just being a kid.

Stroller Crossing

I used to wonder at what age I’d stop worrying about Olivia’s endurance when it came to walking.

I wondered when I’d be able to not think about packing a stroller, or renting one if we were going somewhere that required a lot of walking throughout the day, like the zoo or an amusement park.

I wondered vaguely if we’d get to the point where we needed to request a wheelchair so that she could ride comfortably when she got tired after a day of walking.

I got my answer last week.

The answer is at seven and a half years old, I no longer worry about whether or not Olivia will have the strength and endurance to walk through an amusement park. She did. She does.

My mom and I took the girls to Cedar Point again this year. If you’ll recall, last year we forgot to pack a stroller and I ended up renting one for $28 because I couldn’t carry her another step.

This year, it didn’t even occur to me to pack the stroller (I did think about it last year but the car was so full that we didn’t have room and we were pulling out of the driveway when I considered that we might need it.) We might even have had room this year. But she’s stronger, bigger and healthier than she has been in well, ever.

At 53 pounds, Olivia doesn’t look skinny anymore. She looks healthy, sturdy even. She’s 50 inches tall and weighs 53 pounds, so she’s still on the slim side, but definitely not scrawny. She’s got strength in those muscles. She wrestles her sister, who is double her weight. She never wins, but she tries, which is awesome in my book.

While at the amusement park, Olivia only asked to be carried twice and I only said no to her request twice. She powered through when I told her she was tough, she could do it.

And she did. She walked without ever even suggesting we find a stroller for her. She rode rides, she swam, she walked and at times, she even ran. She’s so strong and I am so proud.