Ode To My Belly

I've been thinking a lot about my stomach lately. Usually in quite negative terms. It's funny, really, that this particular body part should bug me so much when, in reality, my butt and thighs are bigger. But it does, and always has. I've never had a flat stomach, even before kids. My grandpa didn't, either - I can remember as a kid catching him in his undies once and being surprised at how much his tummy stuck out. So I guess, like the batwings I inherited from my grandma, it's at least somewhat genetic. But lately age has started making its presence felt - or at least gravity has. Things are sagging more than they used to, including my belly. And that C-section didn't help much, either.

However, today I want to praise it. To stop being mad at it and start acknowledging the good points about it. Why? Because it doesn't seem likely that it's going away anytime soon, so I might as well stop criticizing it, and myself.

Belly, here are the things I appreciate about you:

1. You carried three children. Two to full-term. I can't touch you without remembering what it felt for you to be big and round and full of babies.

2. The cats love to paw you. Apparently you remind them of their own kitty mommies' bellies, and kneading you can be quite fun.

3. You make a nice shelf for holding ice cream, or any other kind of bowl. Not as much as when you were big with babies, but still a nice shelf, nonetheless.

4. You actually don't feel too bad. I may think you are unattractive when I see you in the mirror, you may be bigger than current beauty standards, but really, if I rub you you just feel like skin - and nice, soft skin at that!

5. You distract me from the reality of my butt.

6. You can be fun to jiggle!

7. You're mine, you're part of me, and gosh darn it, I'm gonna like you!

8. You did help me pen a bit of verse:

"Oh sweet belly, large and big and round
I'd love for you to be quite small and flat.
And though you're not, I'm truly grateful that
At least for now you don't reach to the ground."

Age Is Just A Number, Baby

It occurred to me yesterday that at 38, I have now officially been an adult longer than I was a child (yes, I know this has been true for 2 years, but hey, I'm a little slow). This freaks me out. Just like it freaks me out to realize it's been 20 years since I graduated from high school. 15 years since I graduated from college. Heck, it's even been 10 years since I officially quit my quest for my PhD. How can this be?

I often joke that I still feel like I'm in my 20's, at least mentally. And that's true. I also often joke that I have the worst memory on the planet. That's also quite often true. Where it isn't true, however, is with any memory heavily tinged with strong emotion, *especially* when those emotions revolved around boys or men. I can't remember almost anything from my sophomore year in high school, but I can quote verbatim things my boyfriend said to me that year. I don't know much about the courses I took in college, but when I think of my first love, the emotions feel almost as fresh as if it were yesterday. Grad school is mildly less blurry. Mildly. But most of what I remember from it revolves around emotional experiences - a lot, of course, around my husband, whom I met there.

So when I can remember emotions so strongly to the point where they feel immediate again - when I can feel the euphoria and pain, the anger, the fear, the curiosity, the longing - why can't I remember much else? I don't know. Is this true for everyone else? Just me? Obviously those time periods resonate with many of us - at least judging by the number of movies Hollywood churns out about high school and college years (or maybe that's just because then they can put the Young and Extra Beautiful people in those pictures...).

I just find it hard to believe that those times are so far behind me now. I can remember being 12 and wanting to be 16, like John Cougar Mellencamp sang in "Jack and Diane" (and that's when he still had the Cougar in his name!). I can remember being 17 and feeling so close to being an adult, can FEEL all those feelings I felt at 17, about boys and myself and life. I can remember being 20 and falling in love and the wonder and heartache of it all. And all those things are nearly half my life ago.

Wonder what it's going to feel like when I'm twice as old as I am now? (Assuming I'll reach that ripe old age.) I just hope I can still remember, well, something...

Priorities, Priorities

So Eleanor announced to me today that for her 4th birthday, she was going to buy the big pink Barbie Jeep she had sat in recently at Toys 'R Us. I guess this was her way of saying she wanted to put it on her birthday list (since the kid doesn't have 2 cents to rub together). The conversation went as follows:

Mom: "The Barbie Jeep sounds cool! But it's pretty big, so I don't think we're going to get that for your birthday."
Eleanor, whining: "But I wan it!"
Mom: "I know you do, honey. And you'll get some nice presents. But the Jeep is too expensive."
Eleanor, whining more: "No it's not! I wike it!"
Mom: "Yes, honey, it's too much money - they cost like $200, and we need to save our money to pay for things like our food, our clothing, and our house."
Eleanor, disgusted: "Mom, our HOUSE is too *BIG*!"

Whoever said one should try reasoning with a 3 year old? And I'm glad to see she's willing to sacrifice her living space for a sharp set of wheels. Priorities, mom. Priorities.

Duh, Mom!

Me, to Jefferson: "Girls like kisses, Jeff. Just remember that when you're a little older and want a girlfriend."
Jefferson: "I'm never getting married!"
Me: "Why not?"
Jefferson: "I want to live on my own so I can decorate my house myself."
Me: "Oh. Won't you be lonely?"
Jefferson, in a 'Duh, mom, it's so obvious' tone: "Mommmm - I'll get CATS!"

Duh me!

Completely Baffled

This morning I went to Lowe's to find new toilet seats, vacuum bags, and, I hoped, a replacement for the thingy that sits in the sink and guards the garbage disposal. You know, the little webby black thing. Which is basically what I called it when I stopped to ask where the heck to find one (the plumbing aisles had revealed nothing).

Me: "I'm looking for the black thingy that sits in the sink, you know - the thingymabobber that keeps the big stuff out of the disposal? Do they make replacements for that webby black thingy?"
Lowe's Employee: "You mean the baffle?"
Me, perplexed: "It's called a baffle?"
Lowe's Employee: "Yup. Down there, aisle 35, with the garbage disposals. But I'll have to remember your terminology the next time someone asks."
Me: "You mean not everyone comes in asking for replacement thingymabobbers?"
Lowe's Employee: "You'd be surprised how many people do."
Me: "Well, thanks for telling me the thing's name, because it had definitely 'baffled' me (insert groan here)."
Lowe's Employee: *weak laugh*

Isn't he glad I didn't come back after picking up the baffle to express my joy at being completely "baffled" again?!?

Yes, I am weird and find humor in dumb places. Yes, I am O.K. with that. Even if it may baffle you.

Chemical Reactions, Baby.

The thought popped into my head this morning that really all we are is just a bunch of chemical reactions. I'd been thinking along this line for a while, musing on hormones and neurotransmitters and wondering how much they control who we are - versus what we believe to be free will.

See, two weeks ago I had a couple of days where I felt like All That. I just felt pretty, and relatively thin, very happy in my own skin, proud of who I was. And in the middle of feeling that way, I wondered why I didn't always feel so - because I certainly don't. I hadn't eaten chocolate, but it felt a bit like a chocolate high, the one that brings the confidence I crave (albeit temporarily) and which fuels the addiction. Only this one lasted several days and wasn't, I believe, fueled by food.

I do have great days like that once in a while. But more often I have days where I feel fat and frumpy and sad and anxious and lonely and not good enough. Often within close proximity to the other days.  Clearly a few days (or hours!) is not enough of a time lapse to truly morph from frumpy blob into sexy blonde or vice versa - so it's gotta be all in my head. And if it's all in my head, what does that mean? And how do I keep the biochemicals on the fun side, rather than the irritable crabby low self-esteem side I usually seem to reside in? I really wanna know. Chocolate does it, but only temporarily, and with some bad side effects (i.e., Fat Ass Syndrome). SSRIs don't seem to have a permanent effect, based on the day-to-day mood fluctuations.

I just wonder how much of who we are is bound up in what kinds and amounts of chemicals and chemical reactions we have going on in our individual brains.

Am I in control of the chemical reactions, or are they in control of me?

Don't Count Your Chickens...

Even the best Mother Hens might end up with cracked eggs once in a while, right? No matter how (over)protective I am, I cannot save my children from, well, the world. From the pain of rejection or ridicule or judgment or teasing or frustration or emotional wounds or whatever. And I know, logically, that not only can't I do that, but I shouldn't. But oh, how I want to. How I want to.

I was walking with a neighbor tonight, a nice woman who is quite friendly but with whom I don't feel I necessarily click, in part because we have had quite different life experiences and I think our interests and intellectual levels also differ (egads, that sounds snooty, but I think it's the truth). However, she is very sweet and I'm getting to know her a little better. Her daughter used to play a lot with my son, but hasn't in probably a year or so - I kind of presumed the daughter felt like she wanted to hang around other girls or even just kids from the public school that she knows. I don't think she has anything against Jeff, but she definitely dropped him. He hasn't seemed to notice (an AS blessing in disguise?), but her mom (this neighbor with whom I was walking) has brought it up a couple of times. Today when I mentioned that sometimes I felt bad that we didn't know more of the neighborhood kids because Jeff goes to private school, she intimated that perhaps that wasn't a bad thing since Jeff has his Problem. I didn't get her meaning, so I said, "What?" She kind of floundered and said something like she didn't want to say he was slow (slow? my son? This actually almost made me laugh. Almost.), but he seemed to have a problem with anger or whatever. Which is true. So I actually explained that that is a common thing among people with Asperger's (she'd never heard of Asperger's). And we kept walking and talking a bit. At one point she again mentioned she felt bad her daughter wasn't playing with Jeff anymore, and I said "Why does it bother you? It doesn't bother me," and she replied, "Because he doesn't have any friends left!" I laughed and replied, "Um, yes he does!" But it stung. Not because it was true, but because the misconceptions she has about my son might just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what he will face in his life.

I know we all have misconceptions about other people. We all make judgments based on what we see and hear, and sometimes those judgments are wrong. I know I do it. I know I did it about this neighbor in some ways, presuming from the start we wouldn't be friends because we were just too different. Still, it stings to know that Jeff's "differences" are being noticed even by people who don't know him well. So far it hasn't come often in negative forms, but it's still there. And I wish I could protect him, so that nothing could ever hurt him. Luckily, oddly enough, I think the AS *will* protect him in some ways, in that he's often just unaware of what's going on around him and people's reactions to him. But will that last? Should it?

I just want him to know he will always be loved. Fiercely. But will the time come when familial love isn't cool, isn't worth as much as peer acceptance and approval? What happens when mom loves him, but mom isn't cool? Will he make friends? He has two main friends right now, and a few younger friends he likes. Will he be able to maintain those friendships as he enters the middle school years? Will those boys catch on that Jeff is a bit different, that he doesn't always get the back-and-forth give-and-take nature of friendship? Will they start to care about his tics, instead of just basically ignoring them? Will he feel hurt? How will he deal with it?

I don't know. I guess I can't know. And that's what breaks my heart. I don't like not knowing, I don't like not being able to protect and fix and deflect and... These same feelings arise around Eleanor, too. Same feelings, different issues and different realities. I guess this is the nature of being a parent. But this Mother Hen isn't liking it too much. She just wants to gather her eggs and never leave the henhouse.