It's All About Me

I realized something very interesting today. Even when I don’t spend the day with Genevieve I still can get exhausted.

I started my day with the GRE test, which I lightly prepared for over the last few weeks since the score I receive doesn’t matter. I don’t know my writing scores yet, but for quantitative I received a 450 and for the verbal I received a 570. These scores are from a possible 200-800. I feel darn good about the math score (I haven’t taken a math course in more than 15 years), but my verbal is a tanking if you ask me. For some reason I just seemed to be reading very slowly this morning.

After the exam, I was lucky enough to have the entire day to myself. This is the first time that this has occurred since Genny was born. Nick was out in Jersey with Genny doing work and family stuff. I took a yoga class at Be Yoga. I window-shopped in Manhattan. I got a haircut and a manicure and pedicure. Yes, we are talking about a morning of yucky exam, but an afternoon of enjoyment.

Now I am absolutely wiped out from all the fun and alone time. I felt giddy at points during the day. Positively giddy. And you know what? I don’t really even care that my GRE scores weren’t better. They are what they are and they are fine.

Ah. I need to talk to Nick about me having days like this more often. Even one Saturday a month to myself would make a huge difference I think. It was just so refreshing to not have any responsibilities to any little person today. I just had to watch out for and take care of me.

That felt good. I am an excellent exhausted right now.

Family

Another day done. Nick and I went out for dinner at La Flor in Woodside; a wonderful wedding gift from our friends Rebecca and David, which included babysitting. It was so luxurious to order anything we wanted without worrying about the price. That hasn’t happened in a long while.

Genevieve is sleeping and will hopefully remain so for the rest of the night. I have my GRE test tomorrow, early. I’m not stressing about it at all since it doesn’t matter what score I get—it’s just a formality for Graduate school. I was worried I would over study, but I’ve actually been pretty chill about it.

I feel like I’m actually learning to do something Lloyd and I discussed a week or so ago. I’m forging through my feelings and acting in spite of them. Also, an article I read from this month’s Yoga Journal was pretty inspiring. It’s all about acting as if you are enlightened. I connect these two ideas in my mind. I am doing what I know needs to be done and what is best for me. Well, this is what I am aspiring to do.

Tomorrow is going to be hot. And, yes, for some reason I feel that it’s important to discuss that. I hope the GRE testing facility is a comfortable temperature. The exam is actually taken on computer, which should be an interesting experience.

I’m looking at the photograph from the wedding Joanna sent. Nick, the baby and I sitting together. Genny is reaching out and touching my flowers. Her white bow lopsided in her silky hair.

We’re a family. This picture says to me—family.

Dirty Diapers

My neck and shoulders are massively tight from all the organizing Nick and I did tonight. We are both savers and have thus found ourselves engulfed in our apartment by stacks, files, boxes and crates of stuff. We got two huge office filing cabinets from Nick’s cousin Alison; her office is relocating and ridding themselves of lots of stuff. Ah! Stuff! Just what we love.

It really feels liberating to get started on the job of sorting and organizing all the collected crap from our many years. I hope Genevieve hasn’t inherited the collecting gene from her parents—if she has, we will need a bigger home. It’s amazing how much stuff she already has for a being who has only been on this earth for thirteen months.

I had therapy today and a Starbucks Frappucino. A good combination.

Everything surrounding my frustrations and depression with Genevieve comes back round to my mom right now. Her continuing battle with both cancer and chemo. I wish there were more I could do for her. I love her so much and it hurts to see her in pain and worn out. I would love to do something amazingly wonderful for her, but I’m not sure what that would be.

I think that’s all I have to say right now. Not very inspiring or enlightening. As Lloyd and I discussed today, right now my life is all about taking out the garbage. And the dirty diapers.

Time to take out the dirty diapers.

Me

I am so completely mentally exhausted. Genevieve’s crying jags today bore holes through my eggshell brain. I feel like she crawled all over my soul.

What is a mom to do when she feels like she is losing her mind? There are friends and family, but they cannot take away my mental anguish. There are medications and healing techniques, but they do not always work.

This is what I describe as my depression. I can look at what I’m feeling and writing and say, “Gosh, Sheila. Sounds to me like you’re depressed. Why not do something to make yourself feel better?”

Unfortunately, when I’m in the depression’s clutches it is hard to make myself participate in any possibly beneficial activities.

Perhaps I need to wallow in my frustration? And why am I so bothered by being home with Genevieve? I even had a slight break today when I went to work. Why am I not handling being a mother better? For someone such as myself who has a perfection streak running through her veins, it’s hard to understand why I am not feeling like one of those mothers who love every minute of their motherhood experience.

I know some women must lie about it being so great, but I’m sure there are some who are totally serious; they love motherhood. And even though I know there is nothing wrong with me for feeling the way I do, I still find myself asking—what is wrong with me?

I Am The Winner

Genny is thirteen months old today. That is so young in comparison to most of my stuff. But she is definitely looking like a little girl now rather than a baby.

We took a ride to Connecticut today, so that I wouldn’t have to spend an entire day alone with her and so that I would be guaranteed two naps from her, even if it meant I didn’t get to nap at all, since I’d be driving when she was sleeping. So, she did z-out in the van both there and back.

We had a life insurance salesman over tonight. Nick had to decide on insurance now that he’s not at the old job anymore. Every time Mr. Insurance Man was about to say something about what would happen if Nick died, he would preface it with, “Heaven forbid something should happen to you, but…”

I have so many projects looming. I know I mentioned this before, but it warrants being visited again. I need to figure out for sure about the Mommy and Me class and I need to prepare for my new yoga clients tomorrow, and I need to study for Saturday’s GRE and I need to work on my essay and I need—a bunch of other stuff, too.

I had a run-in with a limo driver this morning getting onto the Whitestone Bridge. There was a twenty-minute backup to cross the bridge because of construction. I waited patiently like most normal, law-abiding individuals, but there have to be those morons who think they’re so much more important than everybody else that they don’t have to wait in line.

So, I’m almost to the point where the roads completely fork and where people try to zip up the wrong lane and sneak in at the last minute, so butthead limo-man and his bigger butt-headed businessman passenger try to edge in front of me and I honk and lock up the space so they can’t get in. Very unyogic of me. They’re both laughing and I’m fuming, but as I passed them by, my heart racing like an alarm clock about to buzz, I felt like I had won. And then I felt awful and sad and angry and all those things, but at least I had prevailed. Sure, the calm guy behind me let them cut in, but whatever.

Who am I kidding? There was a tiny part of me thinking maybe they felt bad afterward for mocking me (they waved to me hysterically as I inched them out of the lane), but I know they weren’t sensitive to their own idiothood. They are not sitting at home right now feeling guilty and amending their ways, saying, “Next time, I’ll wait in line like everyone else.”

Nope, they’re both probably chuckling about that bitchy woman in the gray minivan who had to be a bull-dyke and not let the burly he-men jut into her space. Well, whatever. I won.

Zzz Dream

My thirst cannot be quenched tonight. My stress cannot be squelched. My temples cannot be eased.

Genevieve seems to be teething; either that, or she is going through menopause or puberty or becoming a werewolf. She’s been crying and squawking all day. Goo has been running from nose, mouth and eyes. Onesies have been soaked through and Mommy’s patience has been worn through.

She has entered a new non-sleeping anywhere phase. Strangers still think she is cute though. Somehow, people even smile in an “Aw, shucks” kind of way when they see poor me pushing around this red-faced, bawling bundle of baby. The urge to invite them to spend a day with her and see if they are still standing at the end is very strong.

But I push on and she screams on.

And I feel myself being on the brink of falling down a long chute into a pile of dirty diapers the size of a Great Lake. Any great lake. A big one. A big pile of dirty diapers. You get the idea.

I’m the one who needs a yoga lesson today. I need a great yogi to appear to me and stretch out my body in all the right ways and whisper words of wisdom in my ear.

Then I’d like a great babysitter to appear and quietly say, “Worry no more. I will watch the baby when she is more than you can handle. I will ease your temples.”

Easy and breezy. A cool peppermint-scented wind blows by my nose and lullabies me into a peaceful, uninterrupted 8-hour stretch of zzz’s. Oh, dare I dream?

Weekend

Last night was my first night that I wasn’t able to blog. We stayed in New Jersey at Nick’s Dad’s house. The majority of our time was spent watching digital television on a large screen TV. That’s what we do when we go to New Jersey.

I was dealing with some major mood swings all weekend. I snapped at one point when Genny refused to nap for the umpteenth hour. I carried her out of the bedroom, said something like, “I hate this child,” and bawled and trembled.

Genny has entered this new non-sleeping at other people’s homes phase. Last night was horrible. After she slept for a few hours, she awoke with such gusto and springiness that Nick and I had to wrestle with her for hours.

We did get out of the house this afternoon and go to a playground at a place called something like Scooby’s Mountain. An obnoxious little blonde boy, about five or six or seven, picked up my camera and took a picture of the ground and then knocked over my bottle of water.

“That isn’t very nice,” I said.

The boy was unphased. He reminded me of all the snot-nosed little pranksters I had to deal with as a little girl. And I felt just as powerless in communicating with him today as I did way back when.

Argh. I have a crazy week. New yoga clients. Planning a Mommy and Me yoga class. Taking the GRE’s on Saturday. And trying to remain calm and centered and in one piece.