piecrust promises

It's Official: I'm My Mother.

So my mother and I have, what you might like to call, a so so relationship.  We've mostly gotten over that span of about six years when I did a lot of drugs that she didn't know about my rebellious teenage years. She hasn't accepted my lack of the Catholic religion...but she's dealing with it. (Or at least she's stopped openly talking about the baby spending eternity in purgatory and me burning in hell.) (I once had a nun explain purgatory to me like this....it's like having all the pancakes you could ever want, but with no syrup. The pancakes are still good...but not quite what you wanted.) (This is why I am so fucked up...my formative years were spent with a bunch of loonies comparing eternity to breakfast foods.) (Side note...Hey JD! Sister Myra told me that...remember her?) (Moving on.)

My mother and I have a once-a-week, 15 minute max, standing phone call.  It's like taking off a bandaid...you don't want to make the call but you know you have to...and then you do it as fast as possible with the biggest grimace on your face...but you keep saying out loud that it's no big deal.  So these phone calls generally consist of filler...like what she watched on TV that week, which one of my wonderful full members of the Catholic church elementary school classmates she saw in the Safeway, what the baby has been doing (with mumblings suggesting that maybe the kid wouldn't climb the bookshelves or keep stealing the remote if she had a bit more of the Lord in her), etc.  This past week she was talking about something that she heard on the radio...something that she heard on MIX 107.3 to be exact.  This is a station that I know well...non-offensive Top 40's with a little bit of cleaned up pop from the 70's, 80's, 90's, and today!  It was all I was ever allowed to listen to when I was a kid.  It's the quintessential Mom station.  And it's the type of station that I've been avoiding for years...heaven forbid my dial land on that sort of station!  Oh the embarrassment!  Or so I thought...

So I'm driving in the car this morning...and I'm listening to the morning show that is a blend of some music, some talk, some news, some contests...and then I hear it.  "You're listening to MIX 105.1!"  I'm listening to a mix station.  I'M LISTENING TO THE FLORIDA EQUIVALENT OF MY MOTHER'S RADIO STATION...FOR WEEKS! And I never noticed.  There I was every morning...laughing along with freaking Scott and Erica!  Playing along to the $25 Pyramid!  Yelling about how Florida is full of idiots...obviously the category is "Alternative Names for Wombat Dung!"  Singing along to Leona Lewis (KEEP BLEEDING! KEEP KEEP BLEEDING!) and fucking Daughtry.  DAUGHTRY...as in AN AMERICAN IDOL WINNER! WHY DO I EVEN KNOW THAT!? And the entire time...my sweet, innocent, naive child sitting in the backseat...dancing and clapping when they play the pick-me-up song of the morning...laughing at mama yelling at the voices.

When did I become a pre-menopausal woman?  I don't even consider myself to be a woman yet...I refer to myself as being a girl...not a woman.  Women are old and wrinkly and serious and listen to mix stations.

Now I've been struggling with this whole age thing for a while...but this seems like the beginning of the end.

And then this lead me to another line of thought...everyone has a musical expiration date...a time when you stop keeping up with current music and you just stop liking anything new.  New music sounds like noise..."those damn kids don't know what good music!" is you say...and you mean it.

I think I've hit this time period.  I used to listen to all sorts of music...now I just want to hear things from 1994. I've been trying to pinpoint when my musical preferences stopped evolving...luckily iTunes is good at helping out with this sort of thing. 2002. 2002 was the end for me. I pretty much stopped adding in anything new in 2002. I was only 21. I peaked musically at 21.

How soon before I peak at everything else?

So tell me...have you reached your musical peak?

The Spaghetti Incident?

Amelia has been charged with a crime...a very serious felony charge.  Meatball murder.  I don't know why they think she's guilty...what evidence do they have that such a sweet, endearing child could commit such a heinous crime?!

Oh...that evidence.

And on a somewhat separate news story...I am simply delighted that people searching for Guns N' Roses' fifth (and worst) album (sorry! It's a cover album people...COVER ALBUM!  COVERS OF CRAPPY SONGS FROM GLAM ROCK!  GLAM ROCK PEOPLE!) will stumble upon a meatball murderer. (Allegedly!) But at the same time...her Mama is now worried that the two readers will think she's some sort of Guns N' Roses superfan...and that simply isn't true. I promise!

And no...there isn't going to be a Monday Night Confession about me lurving freaking GNR...it was a clever title!  Get over it!  Geesh...maybe you should stop obsessing over it and help me clean up this baby.

(Incidentally...she got a hold of the dogs right after this picture was taken...I think she was trying to frame them as accomplices.  Just saying...)

I swear...

...she got in the dog cage all by herself, shut the door all by herself, and then proceeded to have an entire conversation with her baby...which may or may not have been about how Mama and Papa keep calling each other bleeders.

Thirty (THIRTY!) minutes later she emerged...only to have another very animated conversation with her baby...which may or may not have been about how if there is a Britney reality show she will so totally have to watch every second of that train wreck.

She then turned her attention on getting her baby up to speed on some serious gross motor skills...why isn't that baby walking already?! Lord knows Mama's Amelia's got the video camera in standby mode every second of the day waiting for the blessed moment.

Geesh...get on with it already...Mama Amelia has been patiently waiting for the moment where she doesn't have to carry her ridiculously heavy baby everywhere.

Seriously...the kid weighs 28 pounds. The baby doll is practically weightless...so Amelia really doesn't have much to complain about. Unless she wants to gripe about all of the pinching Mama does to those yummy tubby legs...but who can blame me?

Goodbye Dignity.

So I knew that when I became a mother I'd be giving up a lot of my former rock and roll life. I had no clue how far that would go...

You know you are a mom when you can successfully take a shit with 1) the bathroom door wide open, 2) a one year old alternating between playing the drums on the trash can and squealing with delight with every tug of the toilet paper roll, 3) one dog barking and running in circles around your legs, 4) and another dog trying to sit on your lap.

The best part is when you don't even flinch when your husband comes in and starts asking you about where to find the hidden rolls of blue painters tape.

Sigh.

Down with the sickness...

So I am sick. Again. Since Amelia was born, I've had five ear infections, countless runny noses, three upper respiratory infections, and a nasty two day stomach virus that made me experience one of my biggest fears (vomiting) multiple times. (Vomiting is just wrong. It's your body defying the laws of GRAVITY. Listen here vomit...gravity is the law for a REASON.)

I've basically become the destination for busy viruses and infections looking to get away from it all. The baby is obviously selling timeshare property in my upper respiratory track. And all these viruses are telling their friends and bringing their Aunt Mabel and their cousin Howard on these visits, because I am SICK ALL THE TIME.

There is only one upside to all of this sickness...Dr. V. at the walk-in clinic in Clermont. Now this particular walk-in is totally out of the way for me to go to...but the one closest to me is ghett-o. So take my advice women of Central Florida...go to the Clermont Centra-Care. It's totally worth the trip...hell...I might be feeling down enough to mosey on over there today...

Oh Dr. V...if only we didn't have to meet with mucus acting as a chaperone. Sigh.

Even Joel agrees that he might just be the dreamiest doctor he has ever been to.

I don't know exactly what it is about Dr. V. Maybe it's because he let me sob all over him when I was pregnant and had the flu and he wouldn't prescribe me anything because of the slightest chance of harm to the baby. Or maybe it's because he actually looks at you when you are talking...even when you've got pink eye and have all sorts of goopy shit on your face. Or perhaps it's just because he's so tall and handsome. Who knows...my fantasy dreamland doesn't need to be rational.

So at my last visit that was fueled by an abundance of mucus (I wrote and rewrote that line at least four times...trust me here...there is no good way to talk about snot)...I finally got up the courage to do something I almost never do...ask for help.

And here comes the confession. I'm a (wait for it...wait for it...) smoker.

Since the age of 16 I've chugged down at least half a pack a day of Marlboro Menthol Milds...and then after I had the baby...I slowly returned to being a half a pack a day smoker. Somebody call the bad mother line...we've got a live one. I don't know what it was...getting to have a ten minute break away was what I needed...and before I knew it...I had a habit again.

So I asked my beloved Dr. V. about what my options were...I'd already tried the patch, the gum, my own crappy willpower...I was ready to turn to the sweet world of pharmaceuticals.

That was when Dr. V. informed me that I would need to speak to my primary care doctor about that. What? But Dr. V....you are my primary doctor...hell...you're my only doctor!

And this was when Dr. V. and I broke up...if he couldn't see how hard this was for me...well then I just didn't think we could make it. And just like that...my doctor fantasy went poof. (Well...mostly...I am the forgiving type you know...next time I've got more boogies than I know what to do with...Dr. V. and I might have a little rebound action.)

So now I'm off on my quest to find a primary care physician! Know any good ones in the Orlando area? I especially like the ones who never have cold hands...and ones who don't keep you waiting for forever...and if they happen to give out lollipops that's a plus too. Not that I'm picky or anything.

Meet the Players - Amelia

Can the internet love a child that they haven't known since 2 minutes after conception? Guess we'll find out.

When I got pregnant, I searched for my online-due-around-the-same-time-we-can-go-through-this-together buddy. I picked the mightiest of buddies...Mighty Girl Maggie over at Mighty Girl. She never knew it...but she was my support system through the whole pregnant-I'm-gonna-throw-up-now-oh-is-that-corn-on-the-cob-yum-yum-yum ordeal. Her sweetie Hank was born just a few days before my Miss Amelia...and just knowing that she got through labor alive was enough reassurance for me. Who knows...maybe one day Hank and Amelia will toddle off into the sunset together...although I'm not sure if Amelia has enough hair for him yet.

What can I say about Amelia? About motherhood? About how this baby has changed everything? Considering the fact that I discovered I was pregnant the same day that the hubby and I were supposed to sit down and finally do divorce papers...yeah...life changing might be an alright way of describing Amelia. It was like somebody out in the universe smacked both us in the face and said, "Grow the fuck up. Here's a baby! Ha ha. Now go work shit out." That morning plays back in my head like some kind of bad laugh track sitcom. I woke up, walked into the bathroom and peed on a stick...for no particular reason whatsoever. I wasn't late. I wasn't feeling weird. I just decided that TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO PEE ON A STICK. Two pink lines appeared instantly. (CANNED LAUGHTER) I walked calmly into the living room, where Joel was sleeping on the couch (yeah we were at that stage of hating each other), I calmly stated, "Joel, please wake up. I'm pregnant." His response? "Very funny. You did an excellent job of drawing those lines perfectly straight...you're still not getting the dogs." (CANNED LAUGHTER)

And so it was...and suddenly a marriage that was teetering right on the brink was yanked back over the side by a fetus the size of a grain of rice. We're by no means perfect...and we still have the I-hate-you-no-I-hate-you-more-let's-get-a-divorce conversation every now and again. But we never do. We can't. We're just too damn perfect for each other. And besides...we both know that no one else will ever put up with our shit. But now we have some common ground...and a common enemy. The baby.

And now back to said baby. Amelia turns a year old today. A whole year. But how can that be? It was only yesterday that Joel and I brought her home, wrapped her up tight, put her in her Ikea crib, and asked each other at the exact same time, "What the hell do we do with her now?"

I don't really remember much of those first few hazy months...but I assume that we must have done something right because here she is...a whole year later...all limbs still firmly attached and 8-9-Yes-10 fingers and toes exactly where they should be. She's turned from this little wiggly bundle with an Academy Award range of scrunched up faces to this opinionated speedster on all fours. Sometimes I feel like I have two babies...the at home Amelia is BIG and LOUD and ALL OVER THE PLACE. But then there is the out in public Amelia...that's the teeny tiny small Amelia...the I'll-burst-into-tears-if-a-stranger-even-dares-look-at-me Amelia. So yes...Amelia is the shy kid...the only baby that will sit off to the side and just watch everyone else living it up...every now and then making a movement as if she wants to crawl off and chase after someone but immediately retreats. It absolutely breaks my heart...but she comes by it honestly...I'm the exact same way.

But I know she's tough...and we'll get through it together...or until I embarrass her by putting naked bathtub pictures of her on the internet. (COMING SOON!)

One year ago today, everything changed. 9 months of waiting + 16 hours of labor = a whole year of joy and tears and hope and baby giggles and more then I can ever say. I can't wait to see what the next year brings.

Here's looking back...and looking forward. Happy Birthday Amelia...Mama would tell you how much she loves you...but you hate it when I interrupt "Johnny and the Sprites." So I'll just tell the internet instead.