Acceptance

"Can't stop now,
I've traveled so far
to change this lonely life."

-- I Wanna Know What Love Is, Foreigner



There's something so unspeakably incredible about a baby's gaze. Now that Jacob is crying less and sleeping better, we've been seeing a lot more of his good side... smiling and cooing and gazing.

He's so unafraid of staring holes through us with pure love. It's amazing.

It's supposed to snow like mad here starting tomorrow. I made sure I stocked up on shit so I didn't have to go out in the next few days. As if I would have anyway. I think I got out of my pajamas once in the past two weeks. The most actual contact I've had with outside life lately includes waving at Zoe's bus driver and greeting the CVS clerk -- both in my jammies. So, this week is now guaranteed to be no different.

And as much as I'd like to get the hell out of the house, I'm pretty sure I'm quitting my job. I know I haven't talked about my job much on the blog, but I assure you, I hate it. There is nothing at all that I like about it beyond the physical task of the work itself. The people, the philosophy, the mission... the company long ago dropped off my list of favorite things.

So it wasn't hard to start thinking in this direction.

Beyond my dislike of the job, I just don't think I'm ready to go back. I don't think I've got full handle of this parenting thing, and I don't want my super-cranky baby in day care just yet. I've thought about part-time or freelance work, and that might work for me right now. In fact, it's the only thing that would possibly keep me sane while earning an income.

The problem is the lack of health benefits. Joe can put Jacob on his insurance, but Zoe and I would be left without.

Unless Joe and I married.


I've heard from friends who think it is a horrible idea to marry him if there's even a blip in our relationship radar. And I've heard from friends who say marry him just to get the financial stability in the event we split.

But the truth is... I love the hell out of this guy. Sometimes I come close to talking myself out of loving him, but I almost always wake up the next morning (or in a few days) all gooey and in love with him again. No matter how mad I get at him, I can't hang on to any anger for him for long.

Maybe I'm getting older and more mature, or maybe I'm settling, or maybe I'm realizing I have very exaggerated faults in the relationship field, or maybe I'm too quick to think our young and complicated pairing should be easy, or maybe I have a horrible psychological problem that prevents me from seeing that I'm feeding myself a load of crap right now...

Or maybe I have just never been in real love before now. Maybe my stubborn, controlling self has met her match, someone who will stick around even when I get stupid and try to sabotage a good thing.

But I just feel all kinds of good when I am with him. Because I am with him.

And he has never hesitated in his desire to marry me. He's wanted to throw me out of the house, but he's wanted to get hitched nonetheless. :)

We are still in negotiations about all of this... and I am the one hesitating... I will peel back all my layers of self-esteem before I'm convinced...

But I admit I am feeling more sound and happy -- and almost giddy -- about finally accepting being in love for the rest of my life.


"I've got nowhere left to hide;
It looks like love has finally found me."
-- Foreigner

Brrrrrrrrr

It is so cold (how cold is it?) that the cable is going out.

There's no ice storm, no high winds, not even snow. It's just fucking cold!

Last night before I went to bed, Zoe's school web site said there was a two-hour delay. I got to sleep in! Well, if you can call having two kids crawling all over me in bed, instead of one, sleeping in. I drove Zoe to school when the bus didn't come only to find the sign outside said NO SCHOOL.

No school again tomorrow. I remember snow days, but cold days?

It was cold last week... and then on Friday it hit 35. It was balmy! I could actually go outside in my regular clothes, no coat, for a short time and not be chilled. It's funny how I became acclimated to this weather so quickly after being in Florida for so long. But the temps went downhill from there; I think today it hit 8. With wind chill, it was close to -20. Pittsburgh weather is absolutely nuts.

We did get in some sledriding Saturday. I didn't last long outside, but Uncle Rob and Zoe endured about a half hour of up and down the hill.



Jacob is doing better. He's crying a lot less since I relented and started giving him cereal. He's six weeks old now, and normally too young for it, but after several friends and relatives suggested it and claimed to have done it with their own kids, I gave it a shot. And it worked. He gets just a little before bedtime, and it's been sweet dreams for me by 2 a.m. instead of 5 a.m. And minimal crying.

Vital statistic

Joe doesn't ask me to pay any bills on a regular basis. In fact, we got on a family cell phone plan and I've eliminated that bill for myself. The only shared bill I fork out bucks for is food... groceries and dining out. So every once in a while, if only for my conscience's sake, I take a peek at the stack of bills while Joe is sleeping and pay a few of them here and there.

While snooping through the pile tonight I found an envelope with the return address of "Vital Statistics." It was Jacob's birth certificate, with his Social Security card tucked inside. I gave Joe the SS card when it came and made a big deal out of it... the kid has a number! But I never knew about the birth certificate. Joe stashed it away, as if the kid's mom had no interest in seeing it.

I find it kind of odd.

And I'm a little perturbed.

Actually, I'm quite pissed.

Why would he keep something like that from me? I mean, it's not like he has hidden it in a safe or anything, and he knows I go through that pile of bills from time to time, so maybe he wasn't intentionally hiding it. But I'm here every evening, in his presence, when he opens the mail, and one would think he might mention that the boy's birth certificate had arrived instead of running it upstairs and inserting it into a to-do pile.

I've never said this to Joe, but I somewhat regret giving Jacob his last name. There's a form on the back of the birth certificate to make changes. And it doesn't appear I need both parents' signatures. Could he be worried about that?

God, I love Joe, but it feels like I have to always be on my fucking toes with him.

For crying out loud

Kids really need to come with instruction manuals.

I read everything I could get my hands on when I had Zoe. This time, I read next to nothing, but I need more than anything to find that magic nugget that explains to me why this boy cries all the time and why I can do nothing to stop it.

I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel lately. After getting a clean bill of health from Jacob's doctor and trying all the "approved" remedies, I've been branching out. My dear dear dear dear friend Rebecca has been gathering intelligence from seasoned moms, and in the past two nights I've tried Karo syrup and rice cereal, with mixed success.

The crying has diminished. The sleeping is still lacking.

The figure-out-what's-bugging-him-tonight ritual has been starting later and ending earlier. But now I'm on HIS schedule, and when he does drift off, I'm wide awake.

We'll get it right at some point. I'm confident. But just when I think I might have it, he jerks awake, and it starts again. I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of success with each new thing.

Until the crying starts again.

He's almost six weeks old. Many women have to go back to work after that amount of time. I just can't imagine having to deal with that right now. I was supposed to have a six-week checkup to finish up my short-term disability benefits, but I can't even get it together enough to remember to make an appointment for that.

Joe is sick again. Zoe seems to be entertaining the idea of illness. If Jacob gets sick, I might just have to commit myself to long-term, in-patient psychiatric care. No visitors allowed.

It's a scream

Joe came home Tuesday afternoon. I have to admit, when I woke up Tuesday knowing he was going to be home, I felt like I could breathe again. Like I had been holding my breath since he left.

When I finally picked him up at the airport, I felt like I was holding my breath again.

He seemed somehow changed though, and over the next two days, I learned why as he told stories about seeing his daughters, who he hadn't seen in about four years, and his grandchildren, who he had never met. I could tell he already missed them very much and that he realized that spending that much time estranged was a huge mistake.

And he mentioned that his daughters insisted on coming to our wedding.

Sigh.

We spent a week of hell (again) last week fighting about what seemed to be the end of the world, and then after he calms down he (once again) acts like nothing has happened. It's amazing.

I finally got up the nerve tonight to tell him we needed to talk. "About what?"

ABOUT WHY WE NEARLY BROKE UP AND WHY WE NEARLY BREAK UP EVERY OTHER MONTH AND WHAT THIS WILL DO TO THE LIVES OF MY CHILDREN IF IT DOES HAPPEN AND WHY YOU SEEM OK TO GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON WITHOUT LETTING ANYONE ELSE KNOW.

I didn't want to talk about it tonight though. We are both exhausted. Jacob was screaming well into the night last night. And well into the morning. And some of the afternoon. And now.

Good, night

"In between the moon and you the angels get a better view
Of the crumbling difference between wrong and right."

-- Round Here, Counting Crows



It's almost 5 a.m. I have just gotten Jacob to go to sleep. Ahhhhhh.

I've stewed a lot today about why Joe should have scheduled his Florida trip for another time. I've gotten pissed at the Huggies people for the package of defective diapers I managed to buy that cost me two loads of laundry just today. I nearly burned out the motor on one of my car's windows thinking I had outsmarted the ice that collected in the crevices of the door. I've stared down parts of the house and over hours and hours slowly concluded that cleaning them could wait another day or two or three. I even sat on the toilet at midnight and dealt with the constipation that no coffee will do to a person, while simultaneously feeding a bottle to a newborn parked in a carrier, assessing a kindergartener's mysterious leg injury and trying to get through a column of news briefs in the nation section of the newspaper.

I'm talented, I tell ya.

And now, now that I've spent the past few hours doing little more than what I do every night -- figuring out a little person -- I finally succeeded in figuring out a little person: he will sleep when he's damn well ready.

I'm going to do something I would never think of getting away with if Joe were here: I'm going to collect my two beautiful, sleeping children and sleep in my bed with them, cuddled up, as long as they will allow me to.

Alone

Joe left this morning.

I had offered to drive him to the airport, but when I woke up to get Zoe off to school, he was already gone.





I don't want to be alone.

Can't keep it together

"Somebody told me
That this is the place
Where everything's better,
Everything's safe."

-- Walk on the Ocean, Toad the Wet Sprocket



Is it just me?

Or does everyone have all these relationship obstacles?

I'm thinking I might have my own set of unique relationship-busting traits. Take for example, my self-assured mantra that lasted until about, oh, six years ago, when I constantly told myself I didn't want kids, that I could not possibly bring a child into this horrible world, nor have the patience to nurture them through it.

My stand on that issue probably would have rooted out many potential suitors, and yet I ended up having children with men who also thought having children or having more children was not in the cards for them, and seemed happy enough to keep it that way. Yet seemed happy enough when the "surprise" spilled out on the delivery room table.

In my own trailer-parky way, I've managed to carve out two new beings in the universe. It's made me want a family of my own so much, probably since the natural progression of having a relationship then having a child should lead to some kind of cohesive, lasting thing. And losing my mother as a teen once made me snub that kind of thing, but now I have a pressing desire to re-create what my family life was like with her. I like to fantasize now that my mom's obit said she was married a bazillion years and died so old. And that I would do the same. And I feel like a failure. It didn't happen for either of us, for different reasons: She never got to, and I just never got it.

My kids will be half-siblings, but they will never feel that way if I can help it. And I have a deep admiration for both of them... the new one is so fascinating, but I never grow tired of sitting on the side of Zoe's bed watching her sleep. And if their fathers don't have an interest in me, they will never feel for a moment that their fathers don't want them, even if I have to beat the shit out of someone to make that happen.

But am I crazy for wishing I had a constant role model for them? Someone who will stick around, get on the floor with them, suffer through nursery rhyme stories over and over at bedtime, get dirty with them outside, relent and get them those expensive sneakers just this once, cuddle with them when they are sick? I mean, who the hell would be interested in that kind of shit? And take care of my sorry ass too?

Every time I think I have it.....